So soon after my return to blogging, I disappeared again. But there was actually a reason this time. The last week in our house was full of sickness. I was the only one who didn't get sick at all (knock on wood), so I got to do a lot of caretaking. Poor Evan got to experience vomiting for the first time in his life, and poor James was out of commission for 3 days, an all-time record in his short little life. And poor Greg, who turned 30 on Thursday, had to spend a very subdued birthday with no real festivities to speak of.
Luckily my mom came out to visit over the weekend, enabling me to emerge from the sickhouse for the first time in days, to have lunch with a friend and to go running. All of a sudden there are signs of spring in Rochester, and the mild temperatures and blinding sunshine have encouraged all of us to get out in the fresh air. The weather has made me so happy, despite the illnesses plaguing our home, that I feel as though a weight I didn't even realize I was carrying has been lifted. It's not that I was sad or depressed over the winter (most of the time) but spring has unexpectedly elevated my mood beyond where I though its peak was.
We've had other things going on lately that are probably contributing to my high spirits: Evan got into the class we wanted at the preschool we applied to (another cooperative preschool, which appears to be less hippie-ish than the school James went to, but still looks like it will be a good fit for us), and we joined a CSA. I'm sure both of these items will be covered in great detail on the blog once they've actually started, but for now, suffice it to say that we're all pretty excited about both.
So, as soon as we're all healthy, and provided Mother Nature doesn't surprise us with a late March (or April, or May) snowstorm or ice storm, it looks like we're going to have a pretty good spring.
16 March 2009
catching up, again
23 September 2008
what's for lunch
Yesterday James had the best lunch he's had since the school year started. This is because the siren song of saturated fat and empty calories is so alluring to my son that I agreed to let him choose one or two lunches per month to buy in the cafeteria, and yesterday was his first school lunch.
"It was awesome! I had a cheeseburger -- with extra ketchup! -- and rice balls with bread on the outside,** and an apple and applesauce!"
I have had a fear of school lunches ever since I read Fast Food Nation several years ago. It's been too long for me to accurately remember all of the details, but the basic reason school lunches are so terrible is because government subsidies make meat and dairy the cheapest foods for schools to buy, so lunches are very heavy on meat and dairy (and, consequently, fat) and not so big on fresh fruits and vegetables or whole grains. Looking at James' school's September lunch menu, I see entrees such as mozzarella sticks, nachos, hot dogs, cheeseburgers, several varieties of breaded and fried chicken, and pizza every Friday. Sure, they're serving canned fruit and vegetables every day, but somehow I doubt calling your sides "sunny corn" or "yummy carrots" adds much to their appeal.
On top of the questionable nutrition of school lunches, we also have a commitment to eating ethically-raised animal products on a very limited basis, so you can see why we're not keen on school lunches. We more than qualify for the free and reduced lunch program, but as cheap as I am I just can't bring myself to sacrifice my son's nutrition to save some money. So I've been trying to be creative with packing James' lunches so that he won't feel left out of the daily grease ingestion.
Let me tell you, there are some good resources out there for school lunch ideas. I've been taking inspiration from the idea of bento boxes, which are Japanese home-packed meals featuring a wide variety of foods, and often some cool artistic designs made from food. There are many photo sets on Flickr showing ways in which people have adapted the bento idea for other types of foods and cuisines. I've also been checking out Vegan Lunch Box (not that we're vegan, but I got the corresponding cookbook from the library and it has a lot of great ideas as well as some tasty-looking recipes) and LunchNugget, two blogs in which mamas document the tasty lunches they make for their offspring.
Now, I'm not nearly ambitious (or awake) enough at 7:30am to use cookie cutters on vegetables, or fashion octopuses out of hot dogs, and we don't have a real bento box in which to artistically arrange lunch. But I do find it really useful to have so many ideas to consider, so that my kid is not just taking a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and an apple to school every day (which, incidentally, is Evan's lunch nearly every day, since he does not yet know what he's missing). And James, luckily, is willing to let me experiment and find out how well a burrito or a leftover chicken drumstick holds up in the lunchbox for three hours.
So far he seems to be satisfied with a once or twice a month special school lunch. Let's hope I'm good enough at this creative lunch-packing to make that last the whole year.
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**Tater tots. How happy am I that my kid doesn't know what a tater tot is?
21 February 2007
sick day
Poor James is sick today. Probably just a virus -- fever and lethargy are the only syptoms so far. Lethargy is key, though; it's how I can tell my normally rambunctious preschooler is actually feeling badly. I can tell this illness isn't particularly bad, though, because even though he's sprawled motionless on the couch watching a movie, he still manages to laugh from time to time. On his worst sick days he more closely resembles a zombie, so I'm not too worried today.
I used to love days when James was (mildly) sick, because those were the only days, as a toddler, that he would slow down and sit still, that he would ask me to snuggle with him, that he would act as if he actually needed me for something. But now that his little brother is the Neediest and Most Demanding Toddler in the Universe, I get my fill of snuggling and feeling needed on a daily basis, so it's not as much fun anymore. Now I'm more worried about Evan's demands keeping me from comforting James.
Anyway, I think we've got a pretty lazy day ahead of us, so I can't really complain. As long as he doesn't puke on me.
22 January 2007
why i'm pro-choice
Today is Blog for Choice Day* here on teh Internets. I wasn't going to post about it, because I write a tiny blog read only by a handful of my family and friends, so what would it matter? But women's reproductive health is an important issue to me, and after reading many blog posts on the subject today, I feel compelled to write about it.
Why am I pro-choice? I was pretty adamantly pro-life from the time I became aware of the issue until I became pregnant at the age of 19. When I found out I was pregnant, I was between my sophomore and junior years of college, my on-again, off-again boyfriend and I were off again, I was preparing to study abroad in Milan, Italy in the fall, I had no money, and I had plans for the future that didn't involve an unexpected pregnancy.
I went through a lot of agonizing and soul-searching about what to do, and I very seriously considered abortion -- seriously enough to get a list of abortion providers and phone numbers to call to schedule a procedure -- but eventually Greg and I decided to have a baby. It wasn't an easy choice to make, but I wasn't aware until I was faced with the decision how difficult it would have been to choose abortion. Like many pro-lifers, I assumed women who aborted were irresponsible sluts who took the easy way out. Only when I was in a position to consider abortion did I realize how ignorant I was.
What really turned me from being pro-life to pro-choice was that decision-making process. If I hadn't had the chance to choose for myself what was right for me, for Greg, for our lives and circumstances, how might things have been different? How would I have felt had I had no choice? Would I have resented my baby if I were forced to have him, instead of choosing him? I think it's incredibly important that I was able to choose my son, and because I was able to choose him, I understood how important it must be for other women to make a choice for themselves as well. I chose to have a baby, but I can no longer judge a woman who makes a different choice.
I became pro-choice because I learned first-hand how important it is to be able to make such an enormous decision about your own life. I've become more and more strongly pro-choice over the years as I learned first-hand what pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood are like, as I've learned more about what life is like for women who aren't allowed to choose, as I've learned more about the dangers of illegal abortions, as I've learned more about how much better off women and children are when children are wanted and planned for, as I've learned more about the realities of women's lives that don't fit neatly into the black and white pro-life mentality.
Recommended posts by women who are far more eloquent than I: Jill at Feministe has an amazingly comprehensive post listing dozens of reasons to be pro-choice, and an old post from Bitch, Ph.D. asks whether or not you trust women to make decisions for themselves.
Share your pro-choice stories or links in comments!
*Edit -- Forgot to add that today is Blog for Choice Day because it is also the 34th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Hooray!
26 April 2006
if i should die before i wake
Today in the mail, I got my first-ever pamphlet from a cemetery about burial options. Okay, so it's addressed to "Resident", but that applies to me. So I thought I'd write a slightly morbid blog post about what should happen to my body when I die.
I've never been into the idea of traditional burial -- it seems kind of meaningless to me. I've attended many a funeral, and visited many a burial site, without ever feeling a shred of emotion or attachment to the place, to that hole in the ground, nor have I ever needed that physical location to remember and honor my deceased loved ones. I always kind of thought I'd like to be cremated, and have my ashes scattered, this being for a long time the only alternative I knew of to burial. But it turns out that cremation releases harmful gasses into the air, and burial leaks harmful chemicals into soil and water. So what's an eco-friendly girl to do? Why should we have to pollute to dispose of our dead?
I didn't really think about this much, though, until I read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach (recommended, if you're into that sort of subject matter -- I found it really interesting), which talks about the variety of things done to bodies once their occupants have died. The idea of donating my body to science appealed to me at first, until I found out that some donated bodies are used for practicing plastic surgery, among other things. Call me shallow, or superficial, but there will be no plastic surgery performed on my dead face.
And then I read a really attractive idea, which may sound kind of terrible if you haven't heard of it before: human composting, a method developed by a Swedish ecologist (read about the process here). Then, thanks to my random pamphlet, I was doing some internet searching on burial options, and found out about green burials. What better way to spend death than to become part of the earth and help new life to grow and flourish? I've always thought cemeteries were a tremendous waste of space that could be turned into public housing or something. I do enjoy cemeteries such as Rochester's own Mt. Hope Cemetery (the resting place of Susan B Anthony and Frederick Douglass), which was designed (in the Victorian Era) to be a park and picnic area as well as a burial place, complete with gardens, picnic tables, benches, fountains, and a gazebo -- it's a lovely and fascinating place to visit. But so many cemeteries are not like that -- they're empty, silent, lonely. I love the idea of the green cemeteries mentioned in the article linked above -- "nature preserve first, cemetery second".
So someday, should all go as planned, my body will be laid to rest in an ecologically-friendly way. Of course, I'm an organ donor, so that'll be taken care of first, but then a green burial, or composting, should it become available in the US by the time I die. I do feel a little odd for thinking about this in so much detail, and actually researching it a bit, when I'm only 24 and I hope to live at least, oh, let's say 70 more years, to be optimistic. But I do think it's interesting in a larger sense to think about the land use, the pollution, and the impracticality of the traditional burial procedure. And I suppose it never hurts to be prepared.
14 April 2006
sick little boy
James is sick. He's had a high fever since yesterday afternoon. At first I thought he was pretending to take a nap to get out of picking up the living room, but then when he actually fell asleep I knew something wasn't right. So he is having lots of rest and lots of fluids, and we're in wait-and-see mode for now.
It's always a tremendously sad thing when your child is sick. Especially something vague and, as yet, untreatable, because you feel so helpless. Your child feels terrible and you can't necessarily fix it. But on the flip side, when there's an easy cure like antibiotics, it's so rewarding to feel as though you've healed your child.
Trying to look on the bright side though: a sick child gives you more unprompted "I love you"s and thank yous than at any other time, because he is so grateful for anything you do that makes him feel a little better. He also snuggles more, because he is sleepier and in need of comfort and actually sitting still for more than five minutes at a time.
Here's hoping it's just a quick little virus that runs its course quickly.
03 February 2006
human-animal hybrids and the culture of life
Okay, so after posting yesterday, thanks to a discussion with Greg and a link from Kim, I've learned that there is some truth to Bush's "human-animal hybrids" remark -- but that he or his speechwriter chose a pretty vague and misleading term to describe it. To say "human-animal hybrid" brings to mind The Island of Dr Moreau, or hybrid creatures such as satyrs, centaurs, minotaurs, or chimeras -- which is actually what the scientific community is calling the results of their research and experimentation. The images brought to mind by Bush's terminology are probably helpful in creating the opposition he desires, though: in mythology, these hybrid creatures were often dangerous or immoral, and in the case of Dr Moreau, those who create such creatures are totally insane.
But what Bush is probably referring to is actually legitimate scientific research, and potentially very useful, as this National Geographic article describes. As Greg reminded me last night, some animal parts are currently transplanted into humans, such as heart valves. The link Kim left in my comments describes how scientists are putting human genes into mice to study Down's syndrome. Scientists all over the world are combining human parts (for lack of a better, all-encompassing term) with animal parts to create these new chimeras. This research is being done to study human conditions to better understand how to treat them.
Now, I understand that there are ethical concerns in playing around with DNA and creating things that God or nature never thought of. But the more I know about Bush and science, the more I am convinced that his "culture of life" does not extend to actual, living human beings with actual debilitating medical conditions (unless, perhaps, they're practically braindead), or to those who've committed crimes, or to civilians who become casualties of war, or to women who find themselves pregnant and unable to continue the pregnancy for whatever reason, or to poor people in general, but is limited only to cells that have the potential of becoming human life. His inconsistency in being concerned for life continually astounds me, as his policies so often neglect those living people who are truly in need of help.
If medical research will allow us to save the lives of those who are already living, to improve the health of living people, then I think we're obligated to do whatever we can to help these people. Is it ethical to let them continue to suffer when we might have the technology to help them? It reminds me of the Plan B article I linked to yesterday, in the sense that some people in authority are so concerned about what some people might do (teenagers might have sex, scientists might get carried away), that they're denying lots of people the benefits of science and medicine that could change or even save their lives. And to me, that's not a culture of life.
30 January 2006
the worst thing about being a stay-at-home-mom...
...is that you don't get sick days.
Here I was, priding myself on having not gotten sick yet all winter, especially when everyone else in my house has been sick with various things at various times. And then what do I do? I go and get strep throat. This comes right on the heels of James' ear infection and Evan's ridiculously horrible diaper rash, so we have not had a break from illness and malady in this house for some time now.
Today was day three of strep, and I felt really terrible and tired. So I called in a favor and got a friend to babysit the boys for a couple of hours so I could nap. And gosh, was that nice not to have to worry about them for a while. I felt so grateful to have someone who would watch my kids so I could put myself first for once. Then this afternoon I went to the doctor and got sweet, sweet penicillin. So hopefully things will soon be back to normal.
