So right after I blog about what a great sleeper I am and what great sleepers my kids are blah blah blah, a stomach bug invades my house. All three kids are puking. Always at night. The kids are on the bottom floor of our house, all three in one room; my husband and I are on the top floor, so we hear the whole sequence of events on the baby monitor: a cough, then a series of coughs, then a splash.
One crying kid ends up coming to my room to sleep with me. My husband goes down to sleep in her bunk. She is so psyched to get in my bed that even though she’s just been throwing up, she’s smiling ear to ear, her hands clasped in front of her. She burrows in next to me and then she throws up all over my bed, something brown and thick, possibly refried beans. I want to cry. But she’s already crying. So I change her clothing, my husband changes the bedsheets, we get a bowl for her in case she has to puke again. She keeps talking and talking, for at least an hour. She wants to know all about Santa. How can he stay awake all night? Does he really stay awake or does he nap in the sled? When she’s finally quiet and back to sleep, I ‘m awake for another hour.
Maybe I’ll delete my earlier posts and open that Preseco tonight.
I have not read The Three Martini Playdate, but the title cracks me up. Even though it makes me laugh, drinking and parenting don’t work for me.
In Nora Ephron’s last book, I Feel Bad About My Neck there’s a piece called “What I Wish I’d Known.” I just reread her hilarious list, reprinted in an anthology called I Found This Funny edited by Judd Apatow. One of Ephron’s maxims: “The reason you’re waking up in the middle of the night is the second glass of wine.”
My last blog post was about sleeping. I love sleeping. Love it. I think it’s the best thing ever. I love my bed, I love being in my bed. I think a lot of parents fetishize sleep. Ephron is right, alcohol messes with my sleep, even just a little bit of it. When I don’t sleep, I get cranky. Then I yell at my kids and feel guilty and horrible.
Not only am I meaner when I’m sleepless, I’m less productive. I’m self-employed, and I need to be highly motivated to get anything done. I started a non-profit, and I can’t just show up for work and slog through. I’m also a writer, and I have little desire to write when I’m sleepless or hungover. I know lots of writers, incredibly famous and successful ones, have managed it: Hemingway (though he shot himself in the head) Faulkner, Mary Karr (though she got sober) But not me. Not with three little kids. Of course, lots of factors contribute to exhaustion. Some are just very easy to eliminate.
I’m sure lots of people can handle drinking a glass of wine or two–jeez– and many parents probably find kids less tiring than I do. I can’t imagine being a preschool teacher or kindergarten teacher, for example. I think I’d last about one hour. I adore my children, but they’re energy suckers. Or maybe something more symbiotic, less parasite sounding. My kids make me incredibly happy, but I need to choose very carefully what else I allow in my life or I wouldn’t be able to do much else but amble through the day.
Not drinking makes me happier, nicer, more patient, and more motivated. It’s very possible I won’t always feel this way, but right now it’s working for me.
Two women’s magazine’s recently issued profuse apologies for offending their readers, totally missing the point with their mea culpas.
Maura Kelly, a blogger for Marie Claire, wrote about the TV show “Mike and Molly,” which features a couple who met at an Overeaters Anonymous meeting. Kelly didn’t like having to look at fat people; she doesn’t think they should be on television. She wrote:
www.marieclaire.com Typical photo from Marie Claire’s web site
I think I’d be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other … because I’d be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room – just like I’d find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.
When she was flooded with emails she wrote:
I would really like to apologize for the insensitive things I’ve said in this post. Believe it or not, I never wanted anyone to feel bullied or ashamed after reading this, and I sorely regret that it upset people so much…I was talking about a TV show that features people who are not simply a little overweight, but appear to be morbidly obese. (Morbid obesity is defined as 100 percent more than their ideal weight.) And for whatever it’s worth, I feel just as uncomfortable when I see an anorexic person as I do when I see someone who is morbidly obese…
OK Kelly, first of all, you work for a site that glorifies extremely skinny women; I have a hard time believing anorexia makes you uncomfortable. But say it does, let me explain something: criticizing women for being too thin doesn’t mean it’s okay to criticize them for being too fat. In fact, it’s actually the exact same thing! The issue here is judging women’s bodies– and human character in general– based on appearances. You’re assuming there’s some perfect body type and you can tell if its been reached just by looking. Guess what? You can’t! A person may look like she’s at a ‘perfect’ weight but she could be bulimic, a smoker, a cocaine addict. Plenty of thin people are unhealthy and plenty of fat people exercise and are disease free. Your apology should not be about attacking fat people but for acting as if it’s perfectly okay to judge a book by it’s cover. Most kindergartners learn that’s an inaccurate way to look at life.
www.popeater.com Temptress LeAnn Rimes
Next up: Valerie Latona, Editor-in-Chief of Shape Magazine who aplogized for putting LeeAnn Rimes on the cover. Her readers were upset about it and she was very sorry; she didn’t mean to glorify a “husband stealer.” Are you serious? Is this the year 2010? Men are not helpless creatures, objects capable of being stolen by wicked women. Affairs are symptoms, not causes. Marriages are complex and mysterious. No one just walks away from a happy one for anybody. Demonizing women for tempting men is an age old stereotype based on fear of female sexual power. I wish Latona had responded to her readers that labeling and shaming LeeAnn Rimes is reductive to women and men.
Wouldn’t it be great if the media aspired to recognize women and men for the complex and varied creatures they are instead of reducing them to two-dimensional cartoon characters?
In court documents filed this morning, Prop 8 backers say same-sex marriages harm the state’s interest in promoting responsible procreation through heterosexual marriage.
These people are so desperate, its sad. I feel sorry for them.
When I think about responsible procreation– and responsible partnerships– one word comes to mind: love. That’s the main thing a kid needs; heterosexuals don’t have any kind of monopoly on love. In fact, there may be evidence to the contrary– gangs of homosexuals don’t have much of a record for beating people up just for being heterosexual.
Good parents are patient, tolerant, and not violent, kind of like how Jesus preached people should aspire to be.
For more on Walker’s historic ruling read my post here.
Just when men are reaching the age where they are maturing sexually, around 50 or so, finally understanding women’s bodies and how they work; how to really make love; that women prefer a “slow hand” (as the Pointer Sisters asked for so eloquently twenty years ago) instead of growing up, they’re medicating and regressing. Viagra is making sex worse, not better, and a lot of women wish that men would stop taking it.
Lucinda Watson, who blogs about single life for the over 50 set, posted about the trials of dating men in the Viagra demographic. Though she also writes that WEB MD reports that men under 40 are the fastest growing demographic of Viagra users. Watson blogs: “”Pfizer, the makers of Viagra, state that this is understandable as younger men want their sexual performance to be superior.” Watson warns this is exactly the wrong direction to go in to create better sex and better relationships.
For the record: women are sexual beings and enjoy sex. The challenge here is not that women are asexual, frigid, or that women need to be in love (or even like) to enjoy sex. It’s almost the opposite: much of women’s bodies qualify as erogenous zones– hair, shoulders, back, neck, and contrary to popular belief, breasts. Breasts are not in fact, purely decorative, only around for visual pleasure of men (or feeding of babies.) Breasts are secondary sex characteristics, and exist in part for the sensory pleasure of women.
While men’s erections are slowing down (or even before that happens if they’re smart) it would be great if they tried to become less genital/ intercourse/ self focused. It’s an opportunity for sex to get more incredible, rather than taking a little blue pill to transform themselves back into the not-so-great penis/ intercourse/ self focused teenagers they always were.
After watching Joy Behar’s show on the Oscar curse, and hearing a male guest suggest that when actresses are “given this giant gold ballast, men get insecure.” Also, feeling that the curse is another way of letting women know they can’t have it all, I decided to start a movement.
After watching Joy Behar’s show on the Oscar curse, and hearing a male guest suggest that when actresses are “given this giant gold ballast, men get insecure.” Also, feeling that the curse is another way of letting women know they can’t have it all, I decided to start a movement.
I was watching Joy Behar’ show on the “Oscar curse,” and the male guest said that when actresses are “given this giant gold ballast, men get insecure.” Maybe they could change the shape?
The latest reports of Sandra Bullock’s husband cheating on her may not be true, but remain depressing nevertheless. Stories of Sandra’s husband’s affair burning up the internet as she simultaneously celebrates worldwide public recognition for becoming one of the most powerful women in Hollywood sends an ominous warning to women: don’t rise too high, because if you do, you’ll probably be alone.
Just a couple weeks ago, Sandra seemed to have it all: critical acclaim with her best actress Academy Award win and financial success, her films were also top grossing movies. Many were calling this Hollywood’s “year of the woman.” When Bullock gave her acceptance speech, she thanked her husband, Jesse James, whose love, she has said, made her a better actress, giving her the courage to try new kinds of parts because she had him to come home too. James watched Bullock claim the Oscar with tears in his eyes. Viewing the show I was thinking: it’s so great and so rare to see a man publicly love and admire his woman, sit in the audience and watch her while she shines, so different than the scenario we’re used too of the wife being the cheerleader for her guy, the wives of female politicians always clapping and grinning by their husbands’ sides.
Sandra Bullock
Bullock isn’t the only actress to have her marriage break up after reaching new heights of success.
Reese Witherspoon’s family famously fell apart after her Oscar win for her incredible performance as June Cash in “Walk the Line”. Supposedly her husband, Ryan Phillipe was jealous. The same thing happened after Julia Roberts’ won for “Erin Brokovich.” She was with Benjamin Bratt. Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes also ended their marriage after her win. Other successful actresses whose marriages supposedly broke up because they surpassed their husbands include Hilary Swank and Jenifer Garner, who didn’t win an Oscar but also eclipsed her husband’s TV fame.
Of course, we don’t know why these couples really broke up, but the rumors themselves perpetuate a dangerous myth that becomes real female fear: if a woman reaches too high, she will become unattractive to her partner. Women as a group are permitted one kind of power in our culture: sexual power. But in order to really win at that, they mustn’t get too much of other kinds including money, intelligence, acclaim etc. This is the same philosophy behind the idea that still persists: women can be pretty or smart, the stupid barbie or ugly feminist dichotomy, breast size has an inverted ratio to brain size.
While for a man, just the opposite is true. His intelligence makes him appealing. And the higher he climbs– in sports, in business, in the arts– the more women want him. Sexual desirability is a highly motivating factor to achieve, but too often, it works in reverse for women.
Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillipe
Before all the social Darwinists claim females seeking out powerful males to protect them is in our DNA, that’s just a convenient way to justify the current power structure. If a woman appears weak, it’s easy for a guy to appear strong. When women are told their main power is sexual, and if they try for anything else, that will take away from their attractiveness, it’s an effective tool to keep women in their in place. Allowing women to be smart, rich, and pretty is too threatening– what else might those women do?
Julia Roberts and Benjamin Bratt
I’m not attacking men here, by the way, but the power structure. The gender power gap in our society, or taken to its extreme as in the gender apartheid of the Taliban, doesn’t make any one happy. Men are imprisoned by these roles too because pigeonholing is limiting for everyone. Duh. Being competent, doing something well, is super-attractive in everyone. The world will be so better off when the other half is allowed to shine.
Anna S. writes on Jezebel after reading my post on the “Auntie Brigade” (inspired by Elizabeth Gilberts new book Committed) that she agrees childless women should be more valued in society, not necessarily for taking care of or inspiring others but also for their own accomplishments. Commenters tell Jezebel stories of important aunts in their lives.
Anna S. writes:
I’m of two minds about this. On the one hand, I grew up really close to a childless aunt. She introduced me to the Archie McPhee catalog, let me stay up late while she told embarrassing stories about my mom, and taught me why they don’t send donkeys to college (nobody likes a smart ass). She’s been a pretty huge influence on my sense of humor and on my cultural tastes (though her tendency to remember only the one funny line from an otherwise shitty movie means I no longer go with her to Blockbuster), and she had a big enough hand in my brother’s and my upbringing that my mom used her to explain the concept of an allomother. That’s an animal who provides some care for other animals’ young, which seems to be sort of how Magowan understands aunts.
But: my aunt has also spent much of her life not caring for anybody’s young. She works, she plays with her dogs, she has a big network of friends and cousins she often travels to see. Helping raise us has certainly been part of her history, but she has many other identities besides “aunt,” and she deserves recognition as a person in her own right, not just as a contributor to my family. As Magowan points out, childless men are often “admired, or even envied, as the self-sufficient bachelors they are.” Childless women deserve to be admired for themselves too — not just for what they can do for others.
www.marieclaire.com Typical photo from Marie Claire’s web site
www.popeater.com Temptress LeAnn Rimes
Sandra Bullock
Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillipe
Julia Roberts and Benjamin Bratt