Pretty Is As Pretty Does

My kid did something a bit, uh, odd. She took the entire contents of her recent packet of school pictures (you know the kind: the ones whereby some (who?) bad photography farm is allowed to access our wallets through some mysterious, uncompetitive process designed to entice us with their ludicrously over-priced packages of cheesy, posed prints, no digital product available, of our grammar school little darlings) and set them out all over her room, to be gazed upon... chiefly by herself I must assume.

Don't think I need to go overboard on the "love yourself first" message, eh?

My Little Pony

Whatever keeps 'em in the barn and not at the mall, I'm all for. Even if I have to go on welfare to keep paying for it.

Communication Overload Causes Mom To Scowl

My kid just totally techno-punked me. A sign of things to come fer sure. Was trying to have a serious busy-ness coversation with someone, on a cell, while kid was supposed to be quietly finishing homework. Kid decided she needed mommy-input right that moment, or rather for mommy to just get the heck off the phone and do kid's homework for her.

Seeing that mommy was NOT going to be interrupted from yet another boring (for kid) conversation (one that could potentially supply income to household) to pay undivided attention to her, kid just utilized another communication device to call and try to interrupt her mother's conversation, from another room.

I scowled and ignored incoming call. After finishing call and lecturing kid about interrupting busy grownups, she just pointed to a messaging device where I immediately listened to a message -- about how kid needed help with homework.

I finally put aside all communication devices and helped with the damn homework. Jeez, the more we communicate, the more needy we get!

Groovy Girls Won!

Click To Play

Settled For Cluelessness

Linda Hirshman, writing for the Washington Post, implies that most women, particularly married-with-kids ones, are politically clueless. Hell, essentially culturally clueless from what I can tell from this piece.

Way out here in Mommy Land, I can tell you -- she's right. I can't think of but a very few mom-women I know who are "up on" much of anything other than Brangelina, sales, food items, costuming, PTA, vaccinate or not, putting things in cutesy flower pots, American Idol, and whether their kids prefer Beefaroni or sushi. It's pitiful and sad, but true. I can't say I've discussed "what the hell is wrong with McCain" with any other moms. Should I even try? They'll just change the subject to stroller brands, or "have to run go get my kids" all of a sudden.

On the other hand, political astuteness isn't necessarily what I'm seeking from my friendships and alliances with other moms. That's what having super-smart and savvy men-friends is for, right? Here's a taste of what's bound to get any gender going:

A 36-year-old former financial sales executive considers herself an independent, reads only the Style and Weekend sections of The Post and the Marketplace and Personal Journal sections of the Wall Street Journal, and also counts on her husband, a Republican, to tell her what's interesting in the rest of the paper.

A former human rights activist told me that she still reads the New York Times, skims the Economist, and gathers political information from PBS's "News Hour," a local broadcast from the BBC and from her church.

Neither the former teacher nor the retired television reporter read any newspapers at all.

There are some constants. Most of the women read People and Real Simple magazines. They all listen to news on the car radio, mostly National Public Radio. And almost all their full-time working husbands consume immeasurably more political information than they do ("He reads 10 times what I do," one told me), reading news magazines and political Web sites and bringing home political information from their jobs. The women gather little information from their almost exclusively female society of other stay-at-home moms.

Full article here. They oughtta at least make time to scan the SGR, eh? But as one mom told me most gleefully the other day on the playground, as I was no doubt boring her to wandering-eye distraction with my own "something I read on a blog the other day" tales of deadly-boring astuteness (basic response of other moms: "what's a blog?"), "I just learned to cut and paste last week!" I had to turn my face away lest she saw my look of undiluted disgust.

So does this mean that the only reason I absorb politics is because I'm divorced and have no man around the house to tell me how to "feel" about it all? I'm going to go hurl now, because this reminds me of how I loath going out with married couples. (T&C not included!) It's always "we this" and "we that." There simply isn't individual thinking or feeling going on for much of anything - least not publicly, the little liars.

The Future

Conversational snippet just overheard from my kid and her pal on their way out the door to play:

"Hurry, we'll be late for our work at the News Report."

Let's hope they're aspiring to online editorship.

Reign o'er Me

God is surely a woman. How do I know? After a rather brutal week, She gives me my due, my moments of joy -- the gift of driving a bunch of six-year old girls to school on a beautiful breaking morning with The Greatest (thanks for the CD for X-mas Aunty M) fueling the ride, the girls yapping up their gossipy little storms in the back. Six-year olds do not like Cat Power! Too bad. I'm the mommy 'round here. I have stereo priviledges from the front seat. Ah... aint' life grand!? Again.

Now for a little Cat Stevens coming around again...

Write Your Damn Thank You Notes

MOMania, or Theresa over at the AJC, poses a timely question on her (fake) blog today: Do you make your kids write thank-you notes? You'd better believe I make my kid write thank you notes, particularly after Christmas, although I admit to getting slack, occasionally, when the slew of gifts comes in at the annual kiddy party come March. We've hardly gotten out all the Christmas notes when that CF rolls around.

Woe to the family that doesn't command the children to write thank you notes. That family will be talked about behind its back as the white trash it undoubtedly is all year long by the families that do write them. The practice of sending thank you notes down South, preferably on monogrammed stationary, is as sacred as bowing before the family portrait of Robert E. Lee every morning.

And no, emailing, blogging or YouTubing a thank you doesn't count, especially in my family as most of its members are too:

a.) arrogant
b.) drunk
c.) batty

to own or operate a computer.

Happy Birthday Lola

Lo turns seven. There really isn't any cliche too worn with overuse that won't fit how fast they grow up in front of your eyes. Blink and you miss something. And indulge me as I post a newborn shot (of Ava, who will be seven soon too) since it truly is hard to recall they were ever this tiny or this helpless .

Certainly not at all believable when they're screaming "I am NOT going to take a bath NOW or EVER" at you from out in the yard, and you throw up the window and yell back, "Oh, hell yeah you are Missy, and right now too." And then you realize at least six neighbors are gathered out there too. Ahhh... urban condo living.

Did those Pat The Bunny moments even happen at all? I think so, but there's homework now and already things like "March right back up there, young lady, and take that makeup off." Childhood really is just a beautiful dream... sigh...

This Ain't No Mommy Blog. No CBGBs

Excuses abound here. I warn 'ya...

Sometimes I wonder why I don't do the "mommy blog" thing more often. To tell you the truth, despite you not asking for it, mommyhood is just downright exhausting most of the time, so the last thing I want to do is dredge it all back and write about it after slogging through it most of the day. And there is no day off. When the kid goes to bed, most of the time I do too.

The horror of the dog attack (on my daughter) on Mother's Day still sends a knife of pain right through me, making it hard to breath and crumbling my knees with a mere flicker of recall; I can't imagine, right now, tackling the sitting-down necessary to write about it. Maybe one day... later.

But I am not going to suppress that incident, nor resign it to some utter bullshit bin of fabricated shamefulness that's not supposed to be talked about, as I was taught to do in that good old-fashioned, southern repressed atmosphere of conformity, dismissiveness, oppression, and overt sexism.

There simply will be no more supressing of horror or grief or truth or anger or shock or pain or abuse or fear or lies or strangeness in my life. Having done so for a lifetime has been nothing but devestatingly destructive on many levels. The buck stops with this blog.

Another reason I don't mommy-blog is that Tania Rochelle at Stone's Colossal Dream does it so damn well, I needn't bother. Besides, she's got numerous kids and a husband. I've got only the one kid. And of course the goldfish and the (good) dog. Tania blogs with lots of pictures too, and most of the time my settings are so weird on my PC, I can't upload pics to Blogger.com anyways.

Gawd, is her 19-year old a genuine Southern beauty or what? Tania was hardly ever homely herself, so Sadie turning out to be so stunning is hardly a surprise. And I needn't bother with the poetry, as Tania's always had that in spades. But I've been known to slip one or two of those in here. Could be more on the way. Consider yourself put on notice.

tags: Tania Rochelle, blogs, Internet, mommy blogs, writing, Life, Family, Poetry

Is That Caitlin Singing In The Abby?

So much for the information age! Why am I just now hearing about arch anti-feminist writer, the ultra-fem Caitlin Flanagan? Maybe because I'm on a 3-month backlog of New Yorkers right now. Still, this woman is intriguing, although I gotta hate her, not because she's so icky-retro and loves marriage and suburbs and kittens and stuff. I just hate her already because she once tried to write a novel set in the Deep South. That from a woman who grew up in Berkley. Sacre Bleu! Or maybe I love her because at least she gave up that foolish sacriledge and went for non-fiction instead. Whew.

Whatever she does, she sounds like your basic hypocrite -- praising the at-home environment as a womanly ideal, yet really spending as much time cashing-in while out of it on book tours and cushy assignments.

Listen you elitist piece of shit... I don't know one mom out there who would NOT stay home with their (tiny, helpless) ones if their families could afford to do so, or if an asshole-jerk of an unsupportive spouse wasn't pressuring them to keep working, working, working until they dropped like flies.

That's what happened in my case, and yes, I got depressed and bitter too -- up until the point when I divorced his sorry ass. Bye bye blues then! And yes, Ann Coulter and your "Godless" BS, I go to church every Sunday, get on my knees and thank God I'm no longer married. Take that you barren-mind (uteri too it seems) opportunists.

From today's LA Times:

"She (Flanagan) calls herself an "at-home mom" who would "sooner miss a blood transfusion than an open house" at her sons' school. Yet she acknowledges that she qualifies as a working mother, with gigs at the Atlantic Monthly and the New Yorker. And she has a second book in the works that will expand on her recent article on the "epidemic" of fellatio-obsessed adolescent girls. It's tentatively titled "On Their Knees."

OK... that's totally ick. Those kinda epidemics are for grownups only! And I'm blowin' (hee hee) off soccer practice and headed for the Rusty Nail for happy hour with my best feminista pal, Suzan, an indie filmmaker and mother of two. We'll be sure to knock a cold one back for priss-ass Ms. Flanagan here 'cause I doubt either one of us will be buying the junk she's pushin'. Nor that honky bleach-haired beast's either. (That trash-mouth's new book is out on 666 (6/06/06). I kid you not!)


tag: Caitlin Flanagan, motherhood

The Pavement Ended In Buckhead

Edna Earle could sit and ponder all day how the little tail of the "C" got through the "L" in a Coca Cola sign. Eudora Welty, The Wide Net.

Just got back from attempting to live the dream - again. Made it about 48 hours this go-'round before I got so fed-up with my own kid, I just packed up and drove down the mountain laurel-laden road and on out of Lake Rabun, the tranquil, mountain home site to many seriously Old Atlanta families, with a few assorted Yankees and New Money types thrown in to give people something fresh to gossip about every other generation or so.

Here are the results of my Single Moms' Memorial Day Getaway Survey:

Number of novels-per-mom envisioned reading lying on dock: 2-4.
Number of New Yorkers anticipated devouring from cover to cover: 4-6.

Actual number of pages of novel read: 8.
Number of paragraphs of one New Yorker article gotten through without "Mommy, I'm HUNGRY. Fix me something NOW!" bellow: 10
Number of "Mommy, I'm cold"s registered: 76
Number of "Mommy, I'm hot"s: 156
Number of "Mommy, the other kids won't play with me"s: 1,242
Number of "Mommy, this life jacket is making me too sweaty"s: 246
Number of "Mommy, what are those teenagers doing in those bushes over there?"s: 7
Number of kids parading through room when just dozing off for nap: 5
Number of "Mommy, there's just too much water in this lake"s: 1
Number of "Just Stop Whining"s issued from Just-Settled-Into-The-Boxed-Wine-and John McCain-Article mom: don't ask
Number of Euro-trash nannys wished for: dozens