There’s a daycare chain in Ohio that’s discriminating against breastfed kids. Read the whole story here. And then get out your red pen, and write those folks a letter.
I’d write more, but I’m just way too appalled to say anything constructive. Get going, and let me know what you did about it. Come on, there are babies counting on you…
Sunday morning, Jason surprised me. “Hey babe, we’re going on a mountainbike ride!” He’d arranged the whole thing; Marc was going to watch the boys, and Dave was going to take us to this new, cool trail. “Easy stuff!” he assured me. Bless his heart, he sees that I’m spending ridiculous amounts of time in front of the computer lately, pulling long days for work, doing boat foo, writing projects, taxes… it’s hard on a body, and I really seriously need exercise. So he set it up. Great man.
I checked it out online before we left. Here’s what I read:
Description: This is a good one to take your friends who are new to mountain biking on, or to get in a quick after-work ride. Even though this is a good beginner trail, there is still some fun to be had for the hardcore riders. Not much to else to say, except this is about the only legal (public) singletrack in Marin.
Sounds right up my alley. Doable, in a pleasant, no-biggie kind of way. I’m in.
Then, we got there. And parked, next to this mountain. Yes, I mean mountain. It went up… and up… and up… Assuming that must be a different trail, we geared up, I followed Dave and Jason…yep… straight up the freaking mountain. I was ready to die at the end of the first switchback. This was the first time I’d been on dirt on this bike, and the first time I’d had any aerobic exercise of any kind in over two months. I finally gave up on biking (in lowest, low “granny” gear, mind you), and just walked, holding my bike, because it was faster than trying to ride. I still kept having to pull off the trail to let the gearheads whizz past me, and it was pretty humiliating. But I kept on, because really, how much of this could there be?
A lot. A whole lot. I’d walk, stop, wheeze, drink some water, walk some more. Took me an hour and a half to get to the top of a trail that said the whole thing only took an hour. I feel, at this point, totally hopeless.
“Oh, it’s OK!” Dave effuses at me, “The rest is downhill!”
I should have known at that point that with Dave, it’s about what he doesn’t say, not what he does. It was all downhill from there. Steeply. On rocks. On a trail with a cliff on one side. I rode my brakes like a total weiner, and just hoped and hoped I wouldn’t die or biff spectacularly.
Ever heard of the Law of Attraction? It says that what you focus on, you bring to you. So of course, on one of the steepest, gnarliest little bits, my front tire hit a slippery patch I wasn’t prepared for, I biffed it, and went straight down the cliff, with a ladylike little squeal. Poor Dave had been hanging back to keep an eye on me, and came rushing to my aid. Luckily, I’d had the foresight to land in a bunch of oak tuff, and though I was scratched up, I had only landed on two or three rocks, and none under my head, so that was fabulous. I climbed back on the bike, determined to keep going.
The next few miles were, if at all possible, more slippery and more rocky. Some mud patches. And by this time, the Hardcore Crowd was out, and it seems that they lived to pass me by at mach speed, and then grin lazily from convenient rest spots along the way, while I huffed and puffed and whined my way along behind Jason and Dave, who annoyingly enough, seemed to be having a fabulous time. Every so often, Jason would circle back, and say something encouraging, like “Wow, Babe, your whole back is covered with little bits of oak tree still,” and “hey, those bruises on your legs are wicked! Gotta get some arnica on those when we get home!” I guess my face must have said it all, because eventually he fell still, and said, “um, how about Persian food when we’re done?”
Capital survival instincts, my man has. Persian is my favorite food in the world, and there’s a good restaurant about two miles from where the godforsaken hideous miserable trail they’ve drug me out on ends. I can survive anything, if someone promises me garlic torshi and Persian dolma at the end. Dave mumbled something about a brewery, and Jason, thinking I couldn’t see behind me (mommy eyes, back of head, you know the story), was making “cut! cut! shut up!” motions frantically behind me, and Dave mumbled to a stop. I think he was disappointed, but hey, this was survival we were talking.
I kept riding. Eventually, I relaxed enough to enjoy the scenery, the smells, and even the exercise. So that must have been the point at which the endorphins kicked in. Because suddenly, it was all OK. Even the blood dripping from the gash in my leg.
So naturally, that was the point at which Dave, riding in front of me, snapped his front brake cable. Pow!
I started giggling, cause what else are you going to do? Clearly, this was some Marin version of the Bataan death march, and no one had told us. I pulled over to watch Dave try some guerrilla bike repair with duct tape, tweezers, and some old chewing gum. Casually, I flicked a tick off my sock, and mused on the pleasures of the Great Outdoors. Dave decided that he could do OK with no front brakes, and so off we went.
The rest of the trip was pretty much without incident. The trail leveled out, smoothed off, and became more crowded with foot traffic. People were jogging, with their dogs. Y’know, people. Not sadistic gearheads.
Upon arriving home, I looked again, at this site, which more reasonably said:
This ride starts at Performance bike store in Montecito shopping center, San Rafael. It has a distance of 15.2 miles and involves steep climbs with an elevation gain of over 1800 feet.
Aha! So I’m not crazy; there are two trails by the same name, one is a pleasant, flat, sunny, level version of the monster ride I went on. And lunch? Lunch was fantastic. Maybe not worth the ride I took to get there, but still… I did it, and that’s saying something.
It took me a while to begin this post, because I couldn’t decide if the title should be what it is, or “Our Culture Is Hopeless.”
Recently, we flew to Puerto Rico, from Oakland, CA. Due to the logistics, this entailed going through four security checkpoints. As onerous and ridiculous as these can be, we have gotten pretty used to them (which is a sad commentary all in itself), and were basically OK sailing through them.
Except, of course, for the formula.
Jason had Rowan in the Ergo on him, I had Kestrel on me. Kestrel is 21 months old; not a baby any more by anyone’s definition. He’s walking, talking, and pretty huge. Not A Baby. And yet I got pulled aside at each and every checkpoint, to get grilled about whether or not I had formula for the baby. One zealous agent even went so far as to search my bag for the formula I assured her was not there.
OK, follow along here, sportsfans. I am travelling with what is clearly a toddler. And every one of these people assumes my toddler is still on formula.
And yet Emily Gillette was kicked off a plane for breastfeeding a child just a few months younger than Kestrel.
So which is it, folks? If a baby is formula-aged, they’re breastmilk-aged, and that should be OK, but it isn’t. If they’re not breastmilk-aged, they sure as anything shouldn’t be sucking down formula. Where did we get so off-course? How did we become so backwards, so contrary to millennia of human evolution?
It’s a quandary that I ponder… while I nurse my not-such-a-baby. Good thing none of those guards wanted to check my carry-on milk supply.
A friend recently informed me that February 12-18 is Random Acts of Kindness Week. Kind of a cool idea, I thought. Although the idea that kindliness to strangers needs to be so actively encouraged is a little bit sad…
But not nearly so sad as the idea that was explored on one of my mommy groups in the not too distant past, about how random acts of kindness from parents to children also need to be actively encouraged. Check out this little ray of sheer brilliance from a writer I really respect, Pam Sorooshian, called “Becoming the Parent You Want to Be“.
If you’re like most of us, the idea that you should proactively go do something cool for your kid doesn’t occur to you outside of holidays. I was sort of horrified to realize that I hadn’t been doing that at all. And so I began.
I am absolutely ashamed to report that the first time I brought Rowan a spoonful of peanut butter (one of his favorite treats just now) while he was watching TV, just out of the blue, he looked at me like he was confused. “I didn’t ask for that.” he informed me. “I know, baby, I was just bringing it because I thought you might like it.” He smiled and accepted it, and in that instant, I became more determined than ever to work on “Just chang[ing] the next interaction you have with the kids.” Because if my relationship with him is closer than most of the relationships I see, and if even my kid was surprised when I went out of my way for him… things were far more dire than I supposed, from his perspective, and there was not a moment to lose.
So every day since that day, at least once, I engage in some proactive parental Acts of Kindness. I bring him something, I go find him and suggest we go bounce on the trampoline together, I do something, anything, that indicates to him that I love him, care for him, and want to be with him, above and beyond sheer parental maintenance.
It had honestly never occurred to me that this exercise had any ramifications beyond simply strengthing connection, which is what people who love each other are supposed to do naturally anyway. But I had completely forgotten that children model what they see, and that even though you may forget, they see, and they remember.
Yesterday, I pulled a 12+ hour day at work. At one point, Rowan came into the office, and asked if he could sit on the bed behind me and watch Dora on the spare computer. And mid-Dora, he asked if I was OK. I’d been rubbing my neck. I explained to him that I was working, and that things at work were kinda frustrating, but he shouldn’t worry about it too much, and just then, Dora asked us to do the Monkey Dance, so that was the end of that heavy discussion.
Later in the evening, after dinner, I was sitting in the rocker, massaging my face, where the knots in the muscles around my eyes from the tension of staring at the screen all day made little bumps all over. Rowan looked at me, jumped up from the couch saying “I know!”, and dashed off. Whatever. I kept rubbing the stress points in my face (or was that rubbing my face, which was one giant stress point? Hard to say.)
Beaming from ear to ear, my son handed me my silk flax-and-lavender eyepillow. “I got it for you, Mama, to make your eyes feel better!”
Good thing it’s absorbent, because I started crying into it.
It’s Grandpa’s birthday.
And like every year since the year he died, he’s the first thing I think of when I wake up, on this day. He’s been dead a longer portion of my life than he was alive, but I still miss him hugely.
Right now, thoughts of him are closer to the surface than usual, because of the boat. Grandpa was a sailor in the Navy in WWII, and I have a photo of him in his Navy blues on my wall. Grandpa retained a fondness for All Things Boat throughout the rest of his life, and I can’t help but think that he’d have enjoyed this next part of my life. Maybe it’s weird, or macabre, but we scattered his ashes at sea (off the end of the old Venice Pier), and I have this thought that he’s always going to be in the sea I sail upon.
One of the things that came to my family upon Grandpa’s death was a brass plaque that says “Captain’s Quarters.” The Bear had chosen it, of all Grandpa’s things, as his token to remember him by. And he passed it to me this Christmas, because it belongs on the boat. A daily reminder of Grandpa, coming on adventures with me.
This morning, though, I woke up thinking about the dolls.
My Grandpa was a traveller. He was constantly going to Europe, to South and Central America, across the US. He took advantage of his relative familial freedom (Grandpa was single pretty much for my entire life), to do some hardcore globetrotting. And every place he went, he brought me back a doll. If he could manage it, they’d be folk art; handmade, local, reflective of the art and spirit of the local people. If not, they’d be more mainstream, like the Madame Alexander dolls that wear a “local costume”. I treasured those dolls, and when I went away to college, I packed them away carefully, and they haven’t been out of their box since.
In my dreams last night, I took them out of the box and displayed them in a glass case.
One by one, my subconscious unwrapped them, and pondered them. Brazil, Costa Rica, Russia, Guatemala, Panama, China, Japan… in glorious expression of native culture, my dolls were there in the case. And once I was done, and they were all displayed… there were empty shelves in the case.
Clearly, Grandpa wants me to carry on the tradition of the dolls.
So from here on out, when our boat makes port, the boys and I are on a Mission, to find Grandpa’s Dolls. In all the travels I’ve done so far, I’d forgotten about them, so clearly, I have some catching up to do. But we can start from Puerto Rico, where the boat is now, and go from there.
Isn’t it funny, how the dead can be so incredibly alive, and so insistent, within our thoughts? Why the dolls? Why now? I have no idea. But I am just sure that Grandpa, whose answer to every question about his plans or schedule was “wherever the wind blows me”, must know something about boats, and about dolls, and even though this might have nothing to do with anything, it’s another way I can honor him, and so I will.
Happy Birthday, Grandpa. I miss you.
It’s Valentine’s. Obvee. So the sentimentality is in the air, right? It’s low-key for us, because when love is a verb instead of a Hallmark Occasion ™, one more day is no big deal. Except for that this morning, Jason was counting as he made his coffee. Thought a moment. And then said, “you know, we’re coming up on eight years.” And then he grinned.
I really don’t think any effusion of roses or chocolate or diamonds or anything in the world could ever be quite so rewarding. We did it. Nearly eight years, and the bloom is still decidedly on the rose, where it belongs.
This is huge for us. Both Jason and I had a string of what we refer to as “Training-Wheels” relationships prior to this one. We both behaved like idiots, we both learned a lot, and we’ve used every single bit of what we learned to create what we have now; something rewarding, fulfilling, something we both wake up happy to still be doing.
Happy Valentine’s, Love. It’s been an amazing ride. I wonder what the next eight will look like?
http://lifewithoutschool.typepad.com/lifewithoutschool/2007/02/the_crooked_law.html
This is a post I wrote about the fascinating place where our beliefs about unschooling as a theory hit the serious practicality of a landscaping project. Please check it out, and comment. I need help generating more traffic. =)