Archive for the ‘life’ Category
TV Free July
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Moderation is not one of my strong points. Blame it on my addicitive personality, but no matter how much I swear I’ll “only do a little” sooner or later I’m up to my ears and barely holding on. So I knew that when Dearest decided to turn back on the TV it was going to be a fight to keep it turned off. And it’s a fight I’ve been losing lately.
I can tell when the TV has taken over. The kids’ behavior diminishes, they are more loud and disruptive than usual. But the big thing is that meal times take a flying leap off a cliff. They’re too antsy to get back to the next episode of Mickey Mouse to bother eating the bowl of cereal they begged for. When it becomes a daily war I’ve got to put a stop to it.
So I’m instigating a TV-Free July. Goodbye cartoons, goodbye movies, goodbye mindless entertainment. And for me *gulp* goodbye news, TLC, and cooking shows. If I leave any stone unturned we’re quickly slip back into staring blankly at the screen when we should be doing other things. And frankly, this summer is going by too fast to miss out.
The only exception I’m allowing is sports. Dearest would morph into the Incredible Hulk if I even suggested not watching each and every baseball game being broadcast. He’s generally less than enthusiastic about some of my ideas, especially ones that require making any kind of change. He sort of lives in the “I did XYZ and I’m just fine” mode, despite clearly being not fine in that area at all. But it’s not a war I want to have, so his precious sports stay on. I’ll just make sure to get the kids out of the house when he’s watching his sports.
I’ve got a few bookmarks full of ideas and encouragement to keep me strong. It’s hard when the temps reach triple digits not to just reach for the remote and an ice cream to keep cool. But I’ve got to stay strong.
July will be over before I know it, and then it will become just one more summer wasted on the boob tube. Gods knows I have plenty of those summers in my own life. Hopefully I can break my TV addiction and curb it’s growth in my kids.
I can do it. Who else is with me?
Like what you read? Drop a buck in the tip jar.Tags: entertainment, television, TV
Final Thought On Rape Analogies
One last note in the Rape/CIO analogy arguement.
In the birthing community there is a term that some use to describe their birth experiences called “birthrape”. Where the mother felt so violated and traumatised by her childbirth experience that to her it was comparable to rape.
Now, I’m on the birthrape is real side. I think that if someone violates your body without an express Yes it is rape./ Whether that person is a stranger in a dark alley, your husband in your bedroom, or a medical doctor in a hospital. I am capable of seeing the difference between a violent sexual assualt and an episiodomy while still recognising that to the woman involved the feeling, and therefore the term used to express that feeling, is the same.
However, there’s a flip side. Mention birthrape in mixed company and you’ll get a few dozen angry comments about it. From both rape survivors who feel that their experiences are being used lightly and from women with similar birth experiences who did not feel it was akin to rape. And many, many are insulted that a woman dare use the term rape to mean anything other that what their rape was. Hell, there are also some who feel it can never be rape if it’s between a husband and a wife but that’s a whole ‘nother bag of chips.
Now before anyone flips out on me for saying CIO is totally the same as birthrape, I’m showing an example of a situation where two groups see the same term being used used in two different ways. One side sees it as a light, flippant “diss” and the other sees it as a sharp and biting analogy. When Annie compared forced sleep to forced sex I got it. And judging by comments both on her blog, here, and Twitter I’m not the only one. I can see a huge difference between sexual assault and CIO while also seeing a similarity in the action of disrespecting another human being that can be found in both situations. As well as seeing how depending where you live either action may be seen as aceptable culturally. But not everyone did, not everyone got past the word rape to see the point underneath. Not everyone cared what the point was simply because the word rape was used.
Not everyone even cares about respect when compared to “the greater good”. I.e. “Don’t complain about your c-section having a healthy baby is all that matters / It doesn’t matter if the baby is very upset sleeping through the night is all that matters” For some the ends justify the means and therefore the means are perfectly acceptable.
Does disagreement on how the term is used mean that it’s being used lightly? Well, to some yes. To some, a woman calling tramatic birth experiences rape is insulting and shallows the word. And others think you can say it’s LIKE rape in this way or that way without it being entirely 100% rape. There’s no universal right and wrong here.
There are always going to be people turned off by your words, no matter what you say. There are always going to be people who stop listening because they disagree with this point or that. There is no way to please 100% of the people reading your words 100% of the time.
Hell, when I wrote a few months ago that infant male circumcision is mutilation you should have read some of the emails I got from people who feel I was lessening or cheapening the experiences of female circumcision or other acts that they felt were the real human rights violations worth discussing. Yes, many tuned out and stopped listening. But that doesn’t change how I feel about it and it doesn’t change how I’m going to express that. While tiptoeing through the tulips about it (circumcision is wrong, but totally your choice and perfectly fine and gee what a great mom you are and everything you do is wonderful) might be less controversial and piss off fewer people, it just wasn’t being honest about how I truly felt about the topic.
You absolutely have the right to think I’m wrong, to think I’m cheapening others’ experiences, to think I don’t know what I’m talking about. And if you’re on the side of the fence that says using the word rape in any way other than 100% rape is wrong, great. But don’t believe that there is only that one side, or that you speak for every single person on earth who has had that experience.
I’m getting rambly so I’ll end this here. The point, summed up is, where one person sees an insult another person sees a perspective. And that includes when talking about the word rape.
P.S. Despite what you think about me or Annie, neither of us have told other women that their rapes weren’t real. That’s a line some of us, but not all of us, choose not to cross. I guess that’s the kind of feminist mama I am.
Like what you read? Drop a buck in the tip jar.Slither Hither Little One
In a less controversial post today, this big thing made a surprise visit to my house yesterday afternoon.
It was definitely bigger than it looks here. I would estimate it at about 2 feet, maybe 2 1/2.
The boys and I were picking up toys in the yard so Dearest could mow. As we came back from the backyard this guy was slipping up onto the front porch. I wasn’t sure if he was poisonous or not, and wasn’t about to find out, so I tried herding him across the porch. It didn’t work. He ended up right in front of the door, trying to figure a way into the house. So there’s the boys on one side of the snake and Saff sleeping on the other side.
Luckily he had just eaten so that big undigested mouse was making him slow and stopping him from getting through the gaps. The neighbor was out in his yard and came over to help herd it off the porch with a stick. He whacked it silly, grabbed it’s head, and carted it off across the street. That’s when I could get in the house and grab my camera.
He only stayed out for a few minutes, then uncurled and slowly slithered off down the street back.
About half a block away there’s a small creek that’s left pretty wooded and wild. We’ve had a ton of frogs hop up from their, but this is the first snake that came out for a visit. I guess I’m going to need to get some sort of guide to snakes so I can tell which ones are safe and which ones to call animal control about.
Isn’t nature fun?
Like what you read? Drop a buck in the tip jar.Success And Failure
I’ve spent much of this week helping Evan learn to ride his bike without training wheels. It’s been a frustrating time for me. He can do it, I see him doing, I know he can do it. But just as he gets going he falls down. On purpose.
Again and again and again just as he would get going I would watch him make himself fall down. Half way through a turn suddenly jerk the bars the opposite direction. Suddenly slam on the breaks as he’s going down the road. Even just throwing himself and the bike down then trying to act like he lost his balance. Again and again I had to stop, breath deep, and talk him back up as he swore he didn’t know how do simple things like push the peddles. In my head I was screaming “Why? Why do you make yourself fall down when you’re so close to getting it?”
Then I got it. Sometimes it’s scarier to succeed than it is to fail.
Oh man, I’ve been there myself more than a few times. I remember in 4th grade the school I was going to started a program for students who were above average. Every student had to take part in a test to see if they could be in the program or not, and I hated it. I remember sitting there, purposely marking the wrong answers over and over again, trying my hardest to fail. Because succeeding was more frightening to me.
I can definitely see Evan reflecting myself. How many times in the middle of starting a new project have I slammed on the brakes and fell down? How often do I claim I don’t know how to peddle my own bike? When I notice I’ve got my balance I suddenly wobble and fall over.
Damn it, sometimes it feels safer to fail. Failure is predictable, it’s simple, it doesn’t require much work. But to succeed you have to try, work at it, and always wonder if you can do it bigger and better next time. If you ride without training wheels today tomorrow you might have to jump the ramps with the big kids. It’s easier to just keep falling down, to never get to that point.
Every time Evan fell down and wanted to quit I wouldn’t let him. I’d give him a hug then put him back up on that bike. Through scraped knees, a busted lip, and swearing that he would never be able to do it Evan slowly learned how to ride the bike. There was a lot of stopping, taking deep breaths, and saying over and over again that I knew he could do it. I’ve seen when he gets into the failure funk enough to know that if I let him give up he’ll never get back on. If I don’t push him back onto that bike right away he’ll spend the next year whining about wanting to ride the bike and refusing to even get it out of the garage.
When I failed the test horribly I thought it was done. I had “proven” that I wasn’t anything special. After school my teacher called me aside to talk to me about my test score. She knew I could do better, she knew I was capable of succeeding, and she wasn’t going to let me stay down. She arranged for me to retake the test (the benefit of going to a very tiny school) and sat with me the whole time. I wanted to just fail, to stay where I was. The second time I took it I scored high enough to make it into the gifted program. The next few years I got to go on special field trips and take special classes with the other kids who passed.
Now as an adult I don’t have someone to stand over me, brush me off and make me get back up on the bike. I have to be my own motivator, make myself keep going even when I want to slam on the brakes. Even though succeeding is scary, I can’t let failure be an option.
Update: Yes I realize Evan isn’t wearing a helmet. A recent storm knocked down a large tree branch, which fell across the bikes and helmets. Luckily the bikes were fine, unfortunately the helmet was cracked down the middle. Wednesday is our shopping day, and that’s when we’ll hit the sports store and try to get a new one that fits. Chill out.
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