I hope I have learned to make better hair choices for both Avery and myself since then.

The other mothers at dance class probably think I’m crazy, and maybe I am in a strange hormonal flux right now, but I couldn’t stop leaking tears as I read the updates on the eighth day of protests in Egypt. A mass of protests that look to be successful now, with Mubarak scheduled to announce he won’t run in elections held this fall. Probably even Mubarak cannot garner his usual 95%+ of the popular vote if he is not actually on the ballot.

Of course I am not Egyptian and I have no ties to the country besides fond memories of the two years we lived in Ma’adi several years ago. I took Arabic classes and Tom taught at the American University in Cairo, which was located on Tahrir (Liberation) Square then. I also taught conversational English classes one night a week at a little Christian church in Mar Girgis. We lived the privileged existence of American ex-pats anywhere; it was expected but still I felt guilty over the Egyptian maid we employed, burdened by my bourgeouis awareness of the circumstantial inequality of our resources, opportunities, and life expectations.

Once I dragged her, Nadia, out to the guard station in front of our apartment building for a translation. I was impatient when she tried to hide the skin of her forearm from their gaze. Forgive me, Nadia.

One of the hardest things to get used to in Egypt was the laid-back attitude towards deadlines and commitments. When will the repairman be out to look at the washer? Perhaps Thursday, insha’Allah. When will our bus leave for the field trip? After a tea break, insha’Allah.

The worst was while waiting on the tarmac in an airplane bound for Luxor. The pilot gave his pre-flight spiel over the intercom system, assuring us of a smooth and safe flight, insha’Allah. I wanted some confidence in my incredible-flying-machine-operator, not a shrug and a nod to “God willing.”

So I have devoured everything in print on the protests in Egypt, excited and surprised and hopeful that the momentum of dissatisfaction with dictatorship would swell to critical mass. No one I talked to in Egypt eight years ago liked Mubarak, but he was the status quo, the only president my twenty-something classmates and students remembered. He was the president, insha’Allah.

But I’ve learned something about patience, and submission, and being dependent on God willing since then. The pilot who flew our plane was a trained aviator. He and the crew followed the pre-flight equipment check protocol.

Saying insha’Allah was not a renouncing of responsibility but an acknowledgment that we are, after all that we can do, in God’s hands.

The protestors have risen from their Friday and noon-time prayers to protest, calling “Come down Egyptians.” The world is helping them by developing speak-to-tweet technologies that circumvent Mubarak’s appalling internet and cell phone blackouts.

And some are scrawling protests on their prayer mats. Insha’Allah, Egypt. I hope God wills your freedom. And succors those who have lost loved ones.

But it wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t fair, of course. She told the cop that, too. She asked what she was supposed to do if someone was tailgating her and he said to pull over (but there was no shoulder) and in that case to call the Highway Patrol (we don’t have cell phone driving laws out here in the Wild West).

Two things about my mom. First: she is the most scrupulously honest person I know, and second: she was completely flabbergasted by the injustice of this $185 ticket. So unfair! Not her fault!

Frankly, it sounded like a case of “you speed, you get a ticket” to me. Whatever else was going on at the time doesn’t really matter in the eyes of the law. But I didn’t tell her that. I made soothing noises and “uh-huh” head bobs as she told me the story. (Twice.)

The last time I got a ticket it wasn’t my fault, either. I fought it in court; I felt one hundred percent in the right, and also almost-debilitatingly intimidated and aware that the cops and judge had all the power.

While I don’t personally know that many people who have been arrested, just about everyone I know who is of driving age has received a ticket of some sort, and I can’t honestly think of one case in which it was actually the fault of the person getting the ticket. It’s never our fault.

Mr. Bennet and I were evicted from our apartment in Harlem when I was eight months pregnant with Sally. It was a sixth-floor, one-bedroom walk-up with an amazing cross-breeze and deafening reggae music from the childrens’ birthday parties that lasted into the dawn in the summer. We were so grateful to have that apartment. Renting in New York City, on a student budget, is a little hard.

We went to the city court building with the gold statue on the top and spoke with some of the smarmiest individuals it has been my pleasure to meet in a cheap suit. Basically it was Kafka in The Trial without Germanic philosophical epiphanies. Turns out we’d been illegally subletting (from that respectable man in the expensive suit who collected our $825 a month but couldn’t be bothered to pay the city-subsidized rent of $250 — for nine years).

It was December in New York City, I was three weeks away from my due date (did I mention that? First baby? No clue? Twenty-three years old? Family over 2000 miles away?), we were beyond poor and the unsympathetic lawyers wanted “help nailing this guy.” I couldn’t take the stress, so we walked away, and Mr. Bennet found us the first floor of a nice little Archie Bunker house in The Bronx.

And then there’s my friend “Annie.” Remember her? The responsible, caring mother who had to appear in court, get lectured by a snooty judge, and pay a fine because she left her kids in a warm, locked car in December for twelve minutes while she ran into a store? She cried, and was terrified, and felt guilty, and didn’t think it was fair. (I didn’t either.)

The system — made up of cops and judges, lawyers and sheriffs with eviction notices is unfair; it’s unsympathetic. Some people get off light, some people get harassed. Some people get parole, others get convictions that DNA will overturn in fourteen years.

Some people get arrested in their own home after what appears to be a break-in.

Professor Gates and President Obama want to say this is all about race, all about black and white, but I’m just not buying it.

Surely there are cases of racial profiling that shame us all. But what about my friend, who would never endanger her children, being made to feel like a criminal? What about my own heavily-pregnant self? Thrown out into the snow by an uncaring city machine?

Either the police are out to get us all and actively try to view us as suspiciously as possible  (and in “us” I include myself and my friend — middle-class, college-educated white girls) or,

OR,

They (police and judges, all cogs in the “system”) are, for the most part, doing the best they can. They strap on a gun if they work a dangerous beat, they go undercover if that’s what’s called for, they work overtime, they put themselves into situations that no sane person would enter, and they try to do right.

Do you want to be a police officer? I sure don’t, though I did take an Auxiliary Police training course in Manhattan.

But I’m still scared of the police, I’m scared of the power they wield.

When I was seven years old my younger sister threw a tantrum about setting the table so she was told to take herself to the backyard while we ate. Several minutes later two cops knocked on our front door. My dad was in the Navy, a family practice doctor doing a medical residency at Camp Pendleton, and the cops made him feel like dirt and insisted on seeing for themselves that my sister was physically unharmed.

(My father is white.)

I bet just about everyone (black, white, and in between) has a tale of judicial injustice. The way our society is set up, where humans are fallible and not everyone knows everyone else, and no cop knows the whole story behind the set of circumstances that brought you here, the system is completely imperfect and probably un-perfectable.

And the problem is, as much as I distrust the system, as much as I fear the imbalance of power between uniformed and un-uniformed, there is no other country on earth that I would rather get arrested in, even if it were for breaking into my own house.

Lexus has their annual December to Remember campaign going on. The ads start with a little boy or little girl speaking directly into the camera, a voice from the past, reminding you how excited you were to get that Atari or that pony, and how you thought that was the best Christmas ever.

Parents and siblings interact with each other in the semi-sepia tinted background while self-centered, spoiled Johnny or Sarah is childishly unaware that Christmas is about something bigger than expensive toys.

The commercial ends, of course, with the little child from your past taking you aside and saying SPEND SOME TIME WITH YOUR FAMILY THIS YEAR, NUMB NUT, AND REMEMBER THE REASON FOR THE SEASON, YA BIG DOPE.

No, shockingly, the commercial ends with the stunning revelation that the best Christmas ever would be one in which you get a Lexus.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that school kids are often introduced to logical fallacies and critical thinking by exploring advertisements. Check out this lesson plan for a quick review of logical fallacies (or this site for a comprehensive list) and how they show up in everything from magazine ads to infomercials to Super Bowl commercials to blogs.

Which isn’t to say that all logical fallacies are bad. Grampa sent us the dog house commercial last week. Dick thought it was hilarious, and I think he learned a lot from watching it.

Why are some ads so grating, and others, every bit as commercial and fake and obvious, turn out to be just plain entertaining? Are you willing to forgive a multitude of logical fallacies as long as something is also funny and clever? And at what age do you start pointing out the logical fallacies to your children?

Jane

But the Vietnam war? Basically I know that my dad got an academic(?) deferment and that Jane Fonda was against it. So when I heard the soundbites about President-elect Obama’s ties to William (Bill) Ayers during the election, I tuned them out. But references to the “Weather Underground” struck me. Wouldn’t that make a great title for a children’s book?

Anyway, Bill Ayers has an op-ed piece in today’s New York Times. He says that the media painted him as an “unrepentant domestic terrorist” during the campaign, an invented character that is “not even close” to what he really is.

Since I know as little about the Vietnam War and anti-war demonstrators as anyone who’s seen Forrest Gump possibly could, here’s how Bill Ayers describes himself and the actions of Weather Underground, a group he co-founded in 1970:

The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious . . .

The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense.  . . . We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.

Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.

So, what is Bill Ayers?

1) He admits to placing bombs. Non-fatal bombs, and anyway, peaceful demonstrations hadn’t worked. What’s a conscientious protester to do? Besides, terrorism isn’t about non-fatal bombs, it’s about “spreading fear.” Unh. What, exactly, is the point of a bomb if it is not death and it is not fear? Isn’t fear the APPROPRIATE RESPONSE to random bombs? Perhaps they should have tried sparkly fireworks if all they wanted was to make a statement.

2) He says terrorism is “for political ends.” How is the end of a war not a “political end”?

3) He differentiates between targeting property and targeting people. This argument is tragically, tragically flawed. What if a Pentagon secretary forgot her purse and returned to get it before going home to her family? How lucky was it that no one died in those offices where people worked every day?

Is Bill Ayers not an “unrepentant domestic terrorist”?

terrorist = risks or destroys human life for political ends

domestic = in the U.S.

unrepentant = (Ayers says his “real regret” is that “the antiwar movement” was unsuccessful) = unwilling to ‘fess up, even as your own facts condemn you.

What I’d really like to know is if, in his job as professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Bill Ayers is so removed from independent, critical thinkers that he could write a piece like this and consider it at all persuasive. Wouldn’t a first-year composition student point out the glaring contradictions and self-serving rationalizations?

Does he not have a working dictionary to define complicated terms like “terrorism” and “domestic” and “unrepentant” for him? Let me help a professor out, Dr. Ayers. Try dictionary.com.

Jane

p.s. I’ve got a fun post coming about falling in love with my family at the dinner table last week. It’s cheerful and moving and mommy-grateful-loving. I just had to get this off my chest first. Thanks for bearing with me. (or if not, you know, whatever). Love you!

Mrs. Keil quit her lucrative accountant job to stay home, and she wants to be “compensated” for what is now her “full-time job” of caregiving. “She sees it not only as a battle about income but also about dignity and respect.” She’s never regretted leaving her paying job, she enjoys her new role, and she’s confident in her competence, but she worries about the financial repercussions of working for nothing.

There’s a growing group of caregivers who are lobbying to not be taken advantage of anymore. Advocates for these caregivers suspect that the government does not pay them (so far) because “they know they would do the work anyway.”

Have you guessed who the charges are?

All of the issues in the article could apply to a stay-at-home mom caring for her kids, but instead it’s about soldiers who come home from war in need of full-time care. In many cases the health aides paid for by the government provide unacceptable care, so many wives of soldiers have quit their jobs to care for their loved ones themselves.

I don’t want to make light of the atrocities of war that render grown men and women in need of full-time caregivers. And, of course, the least we could do as a grateful nation is facilitate our veterans’ return to living to their full capacity.

But.

How come we don’t talk about mother-caregivers in similar terms? I’m not saying I’d like the government to pay me for being a mother, though I do find it appealing when Nora Roberts has characters choosing to accept the “professional mother stipend” in her futuristic Eve Dallas crime books.

I’ve pointed out before that the Child Care Tax Credit is unfairly preferential to working mothers (and fathers) who pay non-relatives to care for children.

Why doesn’t anyone talk about “compensating” (or at least not punishing in the tax code) mother-caregivers? After all, it’s not just a matter of income, but of “dignity and respect.”

Also, why weren’t there protests about this betrayal of feminist ideology — this suggestion that people are happier when cared for by a relative rather than a paid aide or in an institutionalized setting? Shouldn’t someone warn these women of all they are giving up and how they are setting feminism back by settling for a mere caregiver role?

Jane

*I’m not saying a man can’t be a caregiver, but all of the examples in this article were female.

Tonight I talked to a nineteen-year-old girl who was playing the piano for a church function. She said her almost-sixteen-year-old sister loves to babysit and wants to make money. Then she said that she too would be happy to babysit, as long as it’s a week that her work schedule is light enough. Not this past week, for example, when her job at Olive Garden (which she loves) had her working 42 hours. 42 HOURS.

I asked if she was going to school full-time? And she is not. At all. She ran out of money and doesn’t want to take out loans, so now she’s working to save up enough money to return to school.

She is unmarried, un-child-hindered, healthy, fit, cute, living at home with supportive parents, and she thinks that working 42 hours a week is too heavy a schedule to allow for an evening of babysitting once a week. Even though she likes babysitting and is desperate for money to continue her education.

Um?

Dick says not to worry: we’ll sign our girls up at the workhouse as soon as they discover boys.

Maybe I shouldn’t have complained every week when mom made us do our Saturday chores. Without those formative experiences, I might get fatigued over the breakfast dishes.

Jane

I’m right here, right? (I mean, of course I know I’m right, but, you agree, right? 42 HOURS. Healthy. Young. Not In School.) Dick says I can’t talk about it anymore tonight. He’s afraid the kids will think I’m yelling at him. I’m not.

*Udpated*

I really gotta stop posting so late at night. I realized after reading a few comments that I didn’t include two pertinent facts (and I promise I’m not making them up — I know it probably seems like that because they support my position, but you’re just going to have to trust me that I learned this about her last night as well): A) she and her family just moved here from CA a month ago, so I’m guessing she doesn’t have tons of old friends she just has to hang out with and b) She’s not interested in dating, because she has a “fiance” (date set, no ring) in California.

This added to the rest makes it kind of incomprehensible to me — because I think she should be pursuing an education with everything she’s got. And, when she mentioned her schedule, she said nothing about always working nights or weekends, her only (stated) objection was the number of hours. Quite possibly she has seen my kids at church and has no desire to babysit them. I wouldn’t blame her for that, because half the time I don’t want to babysit them. But I hope she has so more get up and go for the rest of her life, is all I’m saying. (I mean, I think babysitting should be like her third job, after a second part-time job. But that is just hard-working (All this TYPING) me.

What he meant was that I was a bad mother who didn’t care that my kid was freezing and likely to catch her death and never grow up to be a productive member of society, and also that my new haircut was really quite ugly and didn’t I care that my husband actually did prefer it long and that he doesn’t even like my special white chili and neither do my kids, who would rather eat the “orange” macaroni and cheese every day of the week and also that it’s really gross that if someone tried to eat off my kitchen floor they’d choke on the cracker crumbs and get their tongues stuck on the milk-and-cereal glue.

Then, before I could open my mouth to defend myself/tell him to mind his own business, he turned to me suddenly, smiled, and said, “I bet she refused to put on her jacket this morning, huh?”

Reader, I wanted to kiss that man.

Right there in the middle of the no-parking zone in front of the stacked bundles of firewood for sale. Because. That MAN. He gets it.

(Perhaps he cheated by having kids of his own.)

Tonight I said something really stupid to my sister. We had the fam’ over for dinner and a presentation of Susan’s first-ever church talk “I Am Thankful For My Special Bunny . . . and Jesus.”

My sister is sweet and capable and vulnerable, and I said something dumb to her. I wanted to apologize, but didn’t want to risk reminding her of what I’d said, in case she’d forgotten or hadn’t really noticed (which doesn’t make writing about it here a good strategy, but hopefully she’ll accept this public flogging of my flopping lips so I will not have flopped in vain).

Why do I say stupid things? And why do I get all mad when someone else says a stupid thing? Probably they regret it when they have a chance to think it over (if they’re blessed with a stop and reflect gene, anyway).

I have the stop and reflect gene, only, it is just a tad slow, not to mention sometimes out-of-order.

How about you? (And, am I the only one who hears a lot more when a stranger makes an off-the-cuff, sorta-nosy remark?)

Jane

But, dadgum, we voted, and I didn’t cry until I was out in the car! Of course, I had to sing Nine Inch Nails lyrics under my breath every time I welled up, but NOT A TEAR WAS SHED until after I had safely voted.

In other news, I have now recognized people I know at both the Walmart and the voting booth, and so I feel as quintessentially American as Barack Obama and John McCain.

Sally didn’t get to see me vote this year, and I don’t know if she remembers my tearful explanations at our polling place in Florida four years ago. So this is how I’m going to explain the voting process to her today:

For Sally

We have two major political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. The Republicans are red, and the Democrats are blue, so you pick your favorite color and vote for it. No? Okay: the Democrats are donkeys and the Republicans are elephants, so you pick pachyderms or cloven hooves (kidding!).

Okay, for real: the red people are like the blood that takes oxygen to your muscles — muscles need oxygen just like we need freedom. The blue people are like the blood returning to the heart to get oxygen. We need to recycle and care for our environment just like our bodies care for our muscles.

If she asks me about abortion, I’ll tell her to go read my post and then pray about it for herself.

If she asks about taxes and welfare I’ll tell her that:

Democrats want to trust those who don’t have enough to take only what they need.

Republicans want to trust those who have extra to give as much as they can.

Which is why I wrote in George Washington, and I’m going to be mighty disappointed when he doesn’t win.

How do you explain to your kids who you vote for?

Jane

*I didn’t really vote for George Washington. He’s dead, you know.

***Updated to add***

I had some good, all-American pizza ready for my hungry second-wave voters. Sally asked me after school if I voted for Obama, because Carson’s dad says that McCain wants gas to be higher, like 300, while Obama wants gas to be 100. I had to disappoint her, sadly.

Sometimes a phrase spoken in haste and frustration is worth a thousand pictures.

“I just don’t feel like I should have to deal with that”

is what Dick said when, to cap off a pretty crappy weekend, Spot pooped in the tub on Sunday morning.

He had reasons. Oh, did he have reasons. He was busy, he’d changed a poopy diaper the day before. He was already in his suit. He was trying to get the Sunday School scriptures read.

Almost before the words were out of his mouth, he retreated (and said, resigned, that if I blogged about it, just wait till I see the post he has to write about me).

Well. Who can resist that kind of marital give-and-take?

The truth is: this could be my motto some days:

I just don’t feel like I should have to deal with that.

Dirty dishes, stinky laundry, the princess pony creep.

Sad kids, angry kids, tired kids, hungry kids.

I just don’t feel like I should have to deal with that.

I’m afraid I’m not alone. Probably our economy and our society, our hopes and our dreams could survive with one or two of us adopting this motto, but if everyone says

I just don’t feel like I should have to deal with that

Who will?

What if, even though you sincerely regret trashing someone else’s literary style, the very mulling over of their overall conclusions fills you with such urgent indignation that you wish you could write your incredulity again, this time in all caps AND bold. And maybe italics for a little emphasis.

Well, what’s done is done, I’m taking my medicine (can’t vomit it out, anyway, those nasty rue-the-day’s burrow deep and gnaw at the oddest moments). And I’m left to wonder if part of the problem is the very nature of free stuff. Compare the Episode of the Book to the Physical Therapist aka the Angel of Rehabilitation and the Realtor Who Sold the House of Death.

Physical Therapist aka the Angel of Rehabilitation
Gail, who’s real name is Gail M., has spent five hours of her life on my shoulder. The best part is when she hooks up the electrodes and the heating pad and the massages and the stretching and the ultrasound waves and the electrodes and the massages and the exercises and the ice pack at the end. The other best parts are her listening to all of my worries and her reassurances that the thread poking out of my skin is a normal, not-yet-dissolved dissolving stitch, and her commiseration on the fact that my (not very empathetic) orthopedic surgeon is an orthopedic surgeon. The end.

Best of all is her confidence that the surgery and what we are doing now will be successful in fixing my shoulder. It’s also nice that she doesn’t mention the fact that I have not shaved my armpit in two weeks. Her only flaw is that she has refused, so far, to hook up the pulsing electrodes to my brain, where I think they could do the most good.

Realtor Who Sold the House of Death
We lived in a drug-infested neighborhood in Florida. Our house was shot into and burglarized, the house next door was raided by SWAT teams three times in two years, our fence was vandalized and stolen. I guess you could say that it wasn’t the best investment decision ever. We listed it first with a realtor from our church who was a nice guy though he didn’t really know our neighborhood (how could he? He was just like us). After seven months of that, we switched to John because he was already selling in our neighborhood. We had to move before the house sold, and John babysat it for us, showing up right after the police when the fence was stolen and spending his Saturdays supervising the repairs. He braved the maze that is Home Depot to organize a purchase order for us and then to pick-up and transport the building materials to our house for the contractor (that he found) to fix it.

That house went under contract seven times before it actually sold. People looking to buy in that price range were hard hit by the mortgage industry implosion, so financing fell through every other day. It took a few months and a loss on on our part, but he sold the house.

You really do Get What You Pay For
My physical therapy appointments are costing me, and my insurance company, big money. We paid John the Realtor 3500 bucks for his trouble. And both of them earn(ed) every penny. In Ayn Rand’s book, Atlas Shrugged, there’s a part where Dagny Taggart has arrived in Galt’s Gulch and John Galt is giving her a tour. They need transportation, so Galt pays a quarter to rent a car from a good friend. Dagny asks why they can’t just borrow the car, and Galt says that’s not a good way of living. It’s not good to get something for free.

I almost hesitate to invoke Ayn Rand. I don’t have the confidence in my own ability or talent or self to withstand the strict requirements of Art and Being that she evangelizes in her books. (Not to mention the objections I have to the insane sophistries she employed to defend her private infidelities). But I think she was on to something here: you value that which you work hard for. Or, if she were a prepositional stickler and against second-person, “one values that for which one works hard.”

How on earth does that relate to the book I got in the mail with a request to “recommend” it? Well, I expected, when first approached, to enjoy a book about the journey a mom takes from mundane despair to utter fulfillment. If, however, I had found the book while browsing at Barnes and Noble, and if I had considered whether to part with my hard-earned (Dick’s hard-earned and well-shared) money on that book, I would have read the back blurb carefully, skimmed a few pages (much less than I read for my initial review), and I would have set it back down carefully. Then I would have walked to the children’s section, where Spot would’ve been shrieking with delight as she found book after book to throw on the floor.

By the time I got home, I wouldn’t have remembered the name of the book.

So, from now on, I think it’s best that I only do product reviews for dark chocolate, Mountain Dew, and sleep aids. You know, things I can reasonably expect to enjoy even if they are free.

You know, of course, that if you don’t vote, you don’t get to complain, right?* About taxes or wars or crappy schools or pitchy voices or asinine song choices. I know, it’s disheartening that it’s all so staged and phony. Not to mention demographically rigged. Blue-collar women like Hillesha, ‘tween girls and everyone over 75 likes McArchuleta, rockers and other assorted cool people like Baracook.

THIS is American Idol.

—-

No real political views were harmed or expressed in the making of this post.

*Unless you vote in the form of conscientiously-abstaining from voting in our troubled democracy, naturally.

—

I’m linking this up to Writer-Mommy’s Writing Wednesday carnival on Hope, because, baby, this is my hope for America.

Who’s paying for your education?

How do you and your friends view smoking cigarettes? Do you smoke? If not, why not?

If you could have anyone’s job in New York City, whose would it be?

How many more people do you think you’ll sleep with before you get married?

How many would you like to?

I’m glad they didn’t bother with any frivolous questions like “Has college changed how you view the world. If so, how?” or “What one thing do you wish were different in America?” or “What’s your favorite gosh-darn book?”

Some of their answers to question four really inspire me about our future. Here it is, out of the mouth of babes, a bright, shiny new world:

I intend to sleep with a lot of people before I get married (if I get married). I think I’ll sleep with at least 20 people, maybe five of which will be as a part of committed relationships.

Hmm … assuming one a year, and I get married at 30…that’s 10 more people. I’m going to be stingy here and guess that I’ll sleep with maybe 12 to 15.

And to the final question:

How many would you like to?

Theoretically, like 14 — and without consequences.

Where did she get the misguided idea that such things could have consequences? I told you we should do away with that History of Civilizations course!

Before each school year, I map out our day in 15 minute increments, and this autumn I spent hours on an incredible meal plan that includes this color-coded table.

The colors indicate the suggested starch accompaniment. I have another document with weekly shopping lists and hyperlinks to allrecipes.com.

Do I ever meet my goals? Sometimes. Do I start the dishwasher every night? Maybe three times a week.

Have I ever, ever used this meal plan to guide my shopping and cooking? Nope.

But still I stick with the list-making and the illusion-of-structure perpetuating. The planning and preparing satisfies my desire for control, my optimism that if only I lived one day perfectly, everything would fall into its proper place.

In reality, if I’ve exercised four days this week already, and I get a day off unexpectedly, it’s as exciting as finding a ten dollar bill in an old purse. If I have this idea in my head of what dishes I could make, when I get to Wal-mart and the kids are screaming, I can usually think of three things to make in under thirty minutes.

Whatever chaotic plane I really exist on, my myth-building of organization and order keeps me sane. And that’s what works for me.

Then Sally came home from school with a conscience, and a song. I think I may have been premature in diagnosing her as tone-deaf. She can definitely follow a tune. In more than one language, yet.

(First in English): I tell the truth, the truth is what I tell. In any situation, I can never fail with ho-nes-ty, wooo-oooo ho-nes-ty. I leave the Spanish translation to your imagination; You’d never guess from Sally’s accent that she was American.

Today’s discussion topic (Now children, when you’re home with your mom and dad, ask what they would do) was What would you do with a hundred dollars? Dick said he’d buy a microphone for his podcasts.

I said I’d . . . well, to be honest, I didn’t say anything because I was trying to block out the entire conversation. The kid’s lucky to have one parent paying attention at any given time. Two would be overkill.

Sally said she would buy a fancy house and a cat, and then give the rest to charity. I think we’re all feeling a bit freakin’ bonkers stir crazy being indoors this winter. So a fancy house means one with room to run around in AWAY FROM MOM, and the cat is a recurring refrain. Whatever. But she would give the rest to charity. Dick and I are obviously doing something right.

Nothing involving reality, or awareness of the world, money, value, cost, or anything of that sort. But, still. It’s inspiring. So, does anyone want a really cute vest?

I had assumed that Dick and Jane were Republicans, but probably they were apolitical, although, really, they were quite Eisenhower-ish, hmmm.

Dick says Obama is awesome. If he has to choose between Obama and Clinton, the choice is clear. What? Why does he have to choose between those two? Aaack. I think Obama has an awesome PR team, as long as you don’t notice you’re responding to the upbeat music, rousing images, and slightly self-aggrandizing, and, perhaps, just the teensiest bit over-confident slogans.

If anyone really could end a war, save the planet, and change the world, I don’t think I’d want to elect him. I’d want to canonize him, at the very least.

Mr. Romney: Do you believe that the Founders are now members of your church?

See this talk by President Benson if you don’t know what I’m talking about.

A certain well-meaning father told his daughter that she could not start a blog, that she could not have a blog of her own. Because, as I heard it fourth-hand, he was aware that some girls use their blogs to discuss (brag about? encourage in others?) unseemly behavior, including the kind of stuff that I certainly hope to steer my own girls away from as they grow up.

Ban the books! Burn the computers!

My first thought was that Dick’s reaction to our daughter’s desire to start a blog would be opposite to this father’s. Not that he would attempt to make a unilateral decision like this in the first place. Dick knows what aspects of our lives he’s in charge of; I’ve told him what they are.

If Sally were to tell her father that she wanted a blog, Dick would be delighted. He’d help her set it up, pick a platform, choose a theme, brainstorm topics to write on, work through any technical difficulties, support her in taking pictures for uploading or scanning schoolwork for posting. And what does that translate into right there? — lots and lots of time spent together.

As Sally posted and explored her own thoughts, feelings, experiences, goals, frustrations, triumphs, what would we do? We’d comment on her posts, encourage her in her goals, congratulate her on her triumphs, commiserate with her frustrations. In short, we’d know even more about what’s going on in her life, what her hopes and dreams are, and we’d know how her writing, reasoning, and reading skills are coming along, and we could probably figure out ways to challenge her to improve where needed.

If we thought she could use some more spirituality in her life, we could suggest that she post a favorite scripture or inspirational quote each day, or that she use a meme or other writing prompt to examine where her life is now and where she wants it to go. She could write birthday wishes to friends and family members or post a goal each Sunday and be held accountable for her progress on it as she reported each day.

We could keep track of links incoming and outgoing and comments made. We could make sure she never used her real name or any identifying information and only posted pictures that represented her in a way she would always be proud of. And if any mistakes were ever made, or bad things happened, we would do whatever is possible to fix them. It isn’t a perfect world, and the world of blogging isn’t perfect either, but it’s worth living in.

But you don’t have to take my word for it: I have it on the best authority (Dick heard it from someone who heard it from someone who knows) that the Apostles of the LDS church have an internal blog where they can share their thoughts and experiences with each other. I hope that’s true (and I wish I could read it), but either way it sounds good to me.

And here’s something I’ve been thinking about since I taught the R.S. lesson on “The Women of the Church” from Teachings of the Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball:

Much of the major growth that is coming to the Church in the last days will come because many of the good women of the world (in whom there is often such an inner sense of spirituality) will be drawn to the Church in large numbers. This will happen to the degree that the women of the Church reflect righteousness and articulateness in their lives and to the degree that the women of the Church are seen as distinct and different—in happy ways—from the women of the world. … Thus it will be that female exemplars of the Church will be a significant force in both the numerical and the spiritual growth of the Church in the last days. (my emphasis)

Perhaps it is incorrigible human nature to be afraid of new technology (ipods terrify me). But if we’re willing to concede that not all books are bad just because some books are very bad, I think we need to explore web 2.0 (as Dick would say) possibilities. It is not only our right, as women of the church, to have blogs of our own, but, as they provide unsurpassed opportunity for developing our articulateness, it might just be our duty.

The virginity thing is interesting too. Dick Cavett (former gag writer for Johnny Carson, among other great things) wrote a column asking if it were possible for anyone today to graduate from high school as a virgin. I can’t tell you how much I hope and believe this is possible; homeschooling just looks better and better — a bomb shelter in the woods starts to look not-so-crazy-militia-whacko. According to David Brooks (second link, first paragraph), one possible reason could be that later-born children are exposed to more risqué stuff younger that the first-borns where sheltered from longer.

Brooks also thinks that you can’t teach sexual morality: you have to get kids somehow to live it; they have to feel loved and secure and be getting what they need, basically, from their parents so they don’t look for it in other places. He doesn’t come out and say that your example and expectations are the number one factors, but that’s what I think.

Dick wanted to know if this convergence of trivia was meant to indicate that being smarter is linked with being virginal. Actually, it’s just coincidence that these three articles were in today’s newspaper.

I’m the firstborn of five. If you know my siblings, you’re probably thinking, wow, imagine how smart Jane must be. At the birth of each of our children, Dick has looked anxiously at their hands, hoping they haven’t inherited the unbroken crease on my palm (a sign of Downs Syndrome). Dick used to tease me with, “Just think how smart you would be if you didn’t have Downs Syndrome.” Of course, counting all the brain cells I’ve lost in pregnancy, it’s only fair that I was also the firstborn.

Alas, I was not still a virgin at 21. I only made it to 20 years, 11 months and 29 days. But, as you might guess from posts last week, I got married exactly two days before my twenty-first birthday. I wonder if that counts?

A “lifestyle change” is usually a worthy goal, but I find it rather overwhelming, and also, sometimes impossible to contemplate or envision when one is right in the middle of the current lifestyle. I think diets have been the tragic victims of a pejorative campaign, and I’d like to rejuvenate their image. In this sense, a diet is any course of action that is 1) sudden, 2) widespread, and 3) not necessarily intended to last forever. I think a “diet,” from sloppy spending or caffeine or bad carbs or lazing around or excessive TV watching or [insert bad habit], can help us see reality a little bit more clearly.

For example, last week when I realized I needed to make a major (!) change in my spending habits, I stayed home for a few days with the three angels. Gas is expensive again (still?) and I just thought I should avoid all temptation by sticking close to home. I was surprised by how much food Sally and Susan ate at breakfast and lunch. Susan ate three man-bowls of Cheerios in one sitting (with powdered milk!). I was mystified, until I realized that usually the girls snack constantly on apples and animal crackers, etc, in the minivan while I drive around doing whatever it is I do (did).

Also last week, I was feeling really puffy and flabby, which is not unusual for me since I am the mother of three (and not a model), but I felt it even more so right then, and that was weird because I’m weighing less now than I have for seven years (I should feel at least some better, right?). The next day my face broke out as it has not since the night before my junior prom. What on earth was going on — early menopause?

And then, two days later, my period started. Now, this shouldn’t be such a surprise to a healthy 29-year-old (for 9 more days!) female. But it was only five months ago that I went on a “diet” from the artificial birth control hormones, and so I was surprised by a string of events (“reality”) that any 13 year-old girl* would have recognized.

So, if there’s some diet (of any kind, not just the food variety) you’ve been thinking of trying, I urge you to give it a shot. With a diet, you can see immediate improvement (or at least change), and even after it’s “over,” you’ve re-set your perception of the baseline, or of reality. And then, one small brownie is as big a treat (almost) as half a pan used to be.

*(if you’re male and uncomfortable with girly things, you might want to skip this, but if you have girl-children, or might have girl-children in the future, it might save you some trouble.) The August after I turned 13, some cousins came over to play for the day (I don’t know where they came from or which cousins they were — maybe it was even Cousin Sylwia’s husband’s family — or maybe I am misremembering and it was just neighborhood children). Anyway, I remember jumping on the trampoline and eating hotdogs off the grill, and, four times that day, going downstairs to our big laundry room and hiding a bloody pair of underwear in the hamper, after which I rejoined the party outside.

That night, after all the guests were gone and my dad was at the hospital, I finally told my mom that I was bleeding. She called my dad (a family practice doctor, husband, and father of four at the time) to tell him his oldest daughter was bleeding. He told her to have a look and see if I had a cut. My parents had an awful (plush and functional though) brown and forest green master bathroom with deep soft carpet. Mom had a look. No cuts. Hmmm. I don’t remember how long it took (but certainly too long) before they realized that I had grown up.

I don’t know why that story makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside. Not about having to have a period (or wear a bra or nylons or high heels — well, I only wear one of those). But somehow it’s so cute that my parents (and I) were not expecting that. When you think of how quickly kids grow up nowadays (how ‘tween girls are encouraged to dress like Paris Hilton), I think it would be a wonderful gift to be surprised when your daughter’s biology is ahead of her interests. I hope I can capture that reality for my girls, and let grown-up things come in their own time.

Possible Motives

need, desire, fear, love, anger, envy, empathy, experience, expedience, moral belief

These could be debated for hours. And it points to the utter irrationality of some of my actions. At first I didn’t have anger up there, but in trying to make this complete, I thought about everything I’ve done in the past 24 hours and analyzed each motive. So: Why do I yell at my kids? There is absolutely no good motive for this (unless I’m fearing for their lives and they are too far away to hear me), and I’m not even sure what the motive is. Usually I’m angry when I yell. But is that a “motive”? (Or does it just show how dumb I am?).

I think if I can match good actions with good motives, I will be happy. And these motives are not always easily classifiable as good or bad. If I envy my sister who is always cheerful, that could inspire me to be more cheerful (sure, you might say I “admire” her, but really, if it’s going to make me actually change my life to be more like her, it has to be something stronger, like envy). If I have a moral belief that abortion is wrong and then do harm to anyone else in acting on that motive, that would be wrong. If I am angry that I feel flabby and that leads me to eat less brownies (anything’s possible, right?) that would be good.

Not to belabor this point, but I think hate is a motive which I hope I don’t have–but if I hated sin, that would be a good thing, right? Ok, if you think of any motives to add to this list, please let me know.

Now, to question my motives if I have a question of action, like … I don’t know…

Should I (Jane) seek to go on WIC?

Do I need more food/money than I have? maybe

Do I desire more food/money than I have? yes

Do I fear going on WIC? maybe

Would I love to be on WIC? no

Am I angry about WIC (about where the funds come from and how they’re administered)? yes

Do I envy WIC recipients? hmmm. I think so, a little bit.

Am I empathetic towards those who need to seek out WIC? yes

Do I have any experience with monthly assistance (from anyone besides family; obviously my parents supported me for about 20 years) to learn from? no

Would it be expedient for me to go on WIC? In the shortrun: yes. In the long run: probably not, because it would not fix my problem, which is having less income than expenses.

*yesterday my father asked me if I needed him to send me a set amount each month in lieu of WIC checks. it took me approximately 5 seconds to run through all that money over time in my mind and revert immediately to my present problem (less money than expenses).

Do I have moral beliefs in regards to WIC? hmmm. Do I? Do I think anyone other than me has a moral obligation to feed me? yes. I believe my husband has a moral obligation to provide for me and our children; in fact, if he were derelict in his duty (he is NOT), I would prosecute him in court.

Do I think my family or my fellow church members have a moral obligation to assist me in providing for me and my family? yes, I believe they are morally obligated to assist me after (if and when) I do all that I can. If they were unwilling to do this, would I be justified in taking from them anyway? no.

Do I think my fellow countrymen are morally obligated to assist me in providing for my family after I have done all I can, after my family and my church have assisted me, and if I still am in need? yes, I think they are morally obligated to me as Americans (and I would say that as humans we have this obligation to every other human). If they were unwilling to assist me, would I be justified in taking from them anyway? no.

So, that’s my rundown of my possible motives in this case. You already know the conclusion I came to a few months ago. After further ponderance on this issue, all I can say is thank goodness I listened to Dick at the time. I knew I married him for some reason…