Eating in Class

I promise I will eventually get to a blog about my semi-reunion, for those who are interested. But what I want to talk about now is this issue of students and eating in class, which came up during the reunion as several of us are teachers.

One of my friends was shocked - shocked, I say - at the audacity of students who would dare eat in her classroom. And she is not alone - many, if not most, of my colleagues tell me that they find it rude and disrespectful when their students eat in class.

What I can't for the life of me figure out is why.

bell hooks has written eloquently about the disconnect between education as a practice of the mind and education as an endeavor that involves the body (see, in particular, her brilliant discussion of pedagogy, Teaching to Transgress).* As she points out, both our bodies and our minds are present in the classroom, and we need to recognize both.

In my view, if a body in the classroom is hungry, uncomfortable, or needs to pee, the mind attached to it won't be paying attention to whatever else is going on in the classroom.

"But what about crunchy, bag-rustly potato chips?!" someone reading this now is thinking. "How can you say noisy food isn't distracting?! And how can students who are eating possibly be paying attention?!"

Well - first, I hate to say it, but if you're distracted by potato chips, it can't be a very interesting class. Not that I haven't had classes like that myself, but seriously, if the chip bag is distracting, then it's welcome distraction. You should be grateful. It means that your students may still be awake.

And second, not only does eating during class mean that students are not distracted by their hunger, it also means that students are giving their bodies the necessary fuel to stay awake.

Trust me. I used to be one of those students who would routinely have to struggle mightily not to fall asleep in class, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the topic. Unless it was a lively discussion class in which I had to contribute, I would face the risk of falling asleep. It got so bad that I would have to get up once or twice during class and leave the room just to walk around. I brought Altoids to suck on in the hopes that they'd keep me awake. I drank coffee and diet Coke. I brought chocolate. Only eating and drinking helped. (To this day, I have great difficulty sitting still and listening. You do not want me in your lecture class.)

But finally, when it comes right down to it, I don't want my classroom to be a sterile, formal environment. I want it to be a little bit messy, so that smells and tastes and traces of the real world drift into our conversations. I would rather have a student bring her lunch and eat it in class than have to skip lunch because she's got two classes back-to-back. Sometimes that lunch become the focus of our discussion. My comp class this fall will be reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.* There's a whole chapter in there about school lunches. At some point, I'll probably ask them to write a page about school lunches. If on that day someone has brought lunch to eat in class, I can predict that the lunch will aid classroom discussion of the disgusting mayonnaise on the sandwiches that one girl in fifth grade used to bring. Or maybe a student's lunch becomes part of the discussion because she is talking about how she is working so hard just to pay for college that between her two jobs and classes, she never has time to eat.

A professor of mine once likened the classroom to an intellectual feast and urged the class to nourish our bodies as well as our minds by not only bringing in food if we were hungry, but by bringing in extra food to offer to others. That is the kind of environment to which I aspire for my own classroom. But for now, I'm satisfied with students eating crunchy potato chips - and rustling the bags - in class.


* You might notice that I didn't provide links to Amazon dot com for these books. I've been thinking that I'd prefer to send you all to the *real* Amazon bookstore (independent and woman-owned), but I'm having trouble getting direct links on the site. However, you can search the site very easily, and both of these books are available through Amazon Bookstore.

O. M. G.

I just got back from a birthday party for a seven-year old. It involved six little boys between the ages of 4 and 7 and three adults. I don't know about the others, but I am WIPED. Maybe it's because I only have one kid, but being around SIX running-around-screaming kids exhausted me in less than ten minutes. I don't know how parents of more than one do it.

Another Fashion Post

I went shopping yesterday in search of clothes that would be appropriate for teaching, yet not matronly, stodgy, or dull. Flattering clothes. Style-conscious clothes. Clothes that would not reveal my butt crack nor my cleavage. Clothes that would not make me look like I was being slowly squeezed out of a tube of toothpaste (yes, I'm talking to you, tapered pants). Clothes that did not look as if they had been torn apart and then sewn back together. Clothes that hit the edge of goth without having a cute l'il skull and crossbones sewn on the front where everyone would see it and think, "cool, she bought that at Torrid." ('Cause *real* goths aren't mainstream.) Clothes that did not make me look older or younger than I am.

Here is what I found: one black faux-velvet vest at Old Navy and one ginormous pair of pants at Torrid. (By "ginormous," I mean that each leg is wide enough for my son to hide in, should I ever be wearing them and need for some reason to hide him.) Neither of which are appropriate for teaching.

Also available to me in our mall are cute little smock dresses and overalls with cartoon characters on them, or Madonna-type bustiers and lace-up pants.

I have a mental image of myself come next Thursday, standing in front of the class wearing a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie. I am heading out to TJ Maxx and Chico's now and I'm loaded for bear.

Here Are My Sunflowers

A friend plantsat while we were away, and the flowering ones seem to have gotten some kind of insect infestation. You can't really see the eggs on the leaves in this picture, but they're there.













For some reason, we couldn't get any to grow in these clay pots. I must've planted at least six seeds over the course of several weeks, but nothing happened. Finally, the last two came up. Right before we left on our trip, I transplanted one into a second pot. They are thriving, but not flowering yet.














We picked them up this afternoon from the plantsitting friend and put them back in their old places, but then this started brewing:














Just as it started getting really ugly, I realized that I was out of decongestant for my early morning plane trip tomorrow (I have a cold coming on). So, braving the tornado watch, I ran out to the drugstore and got back to find the infested plants sitting on the dining room table courtesy of helpful partner, who was listening to reports of tornados and heavy winds heading right for us. After I got done yelling at him for bringing the buggy plants into the house and for putting the buggy plants next to the non-buggy plants (I'm assuming the bugs travel more easily when the plants are smooshed up next to each other), and then apologizing for yelling when he was only trying to be helpful, I found that the storms are, so far, now heading in the other direction.

That's really all I have to say about the plants. See you next week, with a report on my 20th high school reunion, Part I.

(Can you tell I got a camera for my birthday?)

They're Gonna Turn You On

So, I'm finally back from a very long "vacation," if visiting family members counts as a vacation. Kidding aside, it was mostly good - visiting the East Coast always makes me feel at home, as indeed it *is* my home. And it's sort of sad to come back.

But I had with me a gift for turning 38 - which, I should just mention in passing, is much, MUCH better than turning 37. I highly recommend skipping 37, which was a devastatingly depressing year, and moving right to 38. Anyway, the gift was Volume 1 of The Best of The Electric Company. You remember The Electric Company, right? That psychedelic kids' show from the '70s that was on after Sesame Street and before Zoom? With Morgan Freeman (Easy Reader), Rita Moreno, Bill Cosby, Spiderman, and a host of others who still show up sometimes on Law and Order?

I think it says a lot for the quality of the show that I can watch it now and be just as enthralled as I was at 7 when I was watching it for the first time. But what really gets me is being able to watch and enjoy it along with my kid. This show is all about reading, so very often, a word will appear on the screen, and while the voiceover is repeating the word, the word itself is dancing about, doing whatever the word suggests. (For example, the word "row" actually appears to row across the screen.) After a few such scenes, my son began asking, "why is that word doing that?" And this child, who regularly tells me, "stop that, Mommy!" when I try to teach him reading skills, began to understand that words do things.

He began to get it - that words mean things, that the letters have something to say. That we can read them and know something that we didn't know before, as when the character on the screen learns which door says "out" and which one says "in," and is then able to leave the supermarket.

After just one evening of The Electric Company.

As we got ready for bed, he asked, "Mommy, where's my Leap Pad? I want to play with it tomorrow." (This is the same Leap Pad that he barely touched for the last three weeks.)

And as I tucked him into bed, he held up the book he was looking at and said, "I want to know what the words on the page say, but I can't read."

We’re gonna turn it on. We’re gonna turn it on. We’re gonna turn it on.
We’re gonna open the book,
And read every word that we see.
We’re gonna get us the power to learn about anything,
And the power’s gonna get us free.
Power’s gonna get us free.

We’re gonna turn it on.
We’re gonna bring you the power.
It’s coming down the line, strong as it can be, through the courtesy
Of the Electric Company. The Electric Company. The Electric Company.

Behind the Wesleyan Legend: Boon Tan, Part Two

This post is directed toward the other social misfits, rebels, and high achievers who went to Wesleyan (the Connecticut one).

And now, the real story behind the legend of Boon Tan - with annotations by yours truly. Oppyman writes:

I googled the name Boon Tan tonight and found your posting from April. I need to correct some information for you. I am the person who first drew the Boon Tan face; I invented the legend. I did an interview with an Argus [Wesleyan student newspaper - plainsfeminist] reporter in the 80s on this. He intrepidly tracked down Boon's erstwhile roommate and this person referred the reporter to me. So somewhere in the Argus archives, a correct version of the Boon legend exists. I will now give you the story.

In the fall of 1976, Boon Tan was supposed to come to Wesleyan and live in Foss Hill, unit 4 [Hey! That was my frosh dorm!]. I was the head of West College at the time and took it as my responsibility to go around to every unit and meet everyone. So the guys in unit 4 knew me. (At the time, the only co-ed freshman unit in West College was on the top of unit two. Units one and four had males on the first floor and females upstairs. Unit 3 and the first floor of unit two were for upperclasspeople and were co-ed. We fought very hard for this and succeeded in getting this grudgingly from the housing office in the fall of 1975. But I digress.) [Ten years later, these halls were co-ed by room - one room would be two women, the next would be two men, etc. The bathrooms were also co-ed.]

Boon didn't show up during orientation. Word was that he would be coming during the first week of classes. He didn't. By the second week of classes, he wasn't there, but the guys in unit 4 and some of their friends in unit 1 (where I lived) started to play jokes on Boon's erstwhile roommate, Mitch Harwood. They would leave suitcases outside the room with notes saying Boon was at dinner. Or they would
call up and say they were Boon. One night Mitch went to take a call on the hall phone and his door blew closed, locking him out. Before security arrived a number of partiers arrived in the hall and Mitch wound up too intoxicated to do his work. (I believe he was in the college of social studies program and is now a very successful lawyer, but I'm not positive about either of these facts.) Back in
those days, security officers would not really mind if people were drinking and smoking in the halls as long as no fire detectors were set off; many officers took a toke tax. [This was true during my time, as well.] amidst the frivolity, someone asserted that Boon had planned this all along, to undermine Mitch. So the seed of Boon as an evil spirit was planted.

A few weeks later, a creepy incident on campus came to our attention. I was up on the second floor of unit 2, the all important experimental co-ed freshman hall (in its second year) when people started talking about it. apparently, a freshman woman on Foss Hill (I remember the name but won't say it) had left the university. She
had been stalked, essentially. (The term did not exist yet.) After receiving a number of notes from an unknown admirer, she found one on her pillow. She had not been in her room that evening and her door had been locked and she did not feel safe. (I cannot vouch for the veracity of any of this, beyond the fact that the woman went home. I believe she came back the next year.) A freshman woman who was
rapidly becoming one of my best drinking buddies told me the story and later that night after she went to bed, I took a small piece of paper about six inches by four inches and wrote on it "I rote the note" and made the Boon face, two slanted lines for eyes and the jagged inverted Vs mouth (if Boon is happy, usually over something
evil, the end Vs are Vs; if he is mad, the end Vs are inverted) and put it inside the little plastic nameplate on her door. She saw it the next day and knew it was me and laughed about it. And she showed it around to people.

What happened next was astonishing. People told me they loved the Boon face, which was really a racist perversion of the happy face. (I told the Argus reporter that I thought the whole Boon thing was a chance for everybody in the peace and love West College environment to let their dark sides out. Of course by the end of that school year cocaine began to make its loathsome appearance on campus and at least two people had acid related breakdowns, so Boon wasn't needed. And hindsight tells me that there were at least two women in West College with serious eating disorders and that two other women there had probably been molested by male relatives. Four or five people who were in heterosexual relationships during those years came out
later; how did they suffer at the time? I know that the woman that I wrote the Boon note to did. None of this was on my radar at the time, of course. But I digress.)

People started asking me what else Boon did. so I made up a few more Boon cartoons and posted them on the bathroom door of unit 1. On had Boon going for a walk in the
park with his pet piranha Fang. Boon had a Pol Pot for President T shirt on. I can't remember what went on in the cartoon, except that Boon said nasty things and did an upside down version of Spock's live long and prosper sign (which actually comes from a Jewish benediction) and said "Die soon and rot." I believe Boon addressed all the "round eyed devils" and told the decadent liberal West College people that they were bourgois pigs and would soon get theirs. I can't draw, by the way, so Boon was just a head on a stick figure and Fang was a fish shape lying on the ground; Fang had lots of teeth and his leash was a curved line.

Next, Boon had to fall in love of course. So in Boon meets Boonie, you had two stick figures with that face, one of which had two curved lines coming out of the side of her head. Each one was saying I love you to the other and each had a thought bubble coming out of their head which said (again, I love the innocence of the age) I will give him/her the clap. People liked that one a lot.

But by the next day, there were about ten or fifteen more cartoons on the door. Some were beautifully drawn. some in color. Mitch did a great Boon at Altamont where he led the Mormon Tabernacle Boys Choir in (to the tune of jingle bells - Mitch and I are Jewish so I suppose we felt this was OK) "Riding through the Reich in a new Mercedes Benz, killing lots of kikes, making lots of friends, Rat tat tat tat tat, mow the bastards down, Oh what fun it is to have the Nazis back in town" followed by a huge furious/inspired giant Boon face screaming, SING EUNOCHS SING. There were other not quite so tasteful Boon cartoons too, and they came from the buddies of the guys in units one and four who lived in other Foss Hill Dorms and some from Butterfield. [Butterfield, FYI, was less cool than West Co, and not just because I lived in West Co. I'm just saying.]

A woman who lived on the second floor of unit one was a Techie and she showed the cartoons to some of her buddies. and within a week, there were drawings in the staircases of the Sciences Library, all puns on Boons name with little drawings. Ahab throwing a harboon. Boon appetit and some food. Moon tan. Etc. etc. etc. The thing just took off and was all over campus. and from what I heard from the Argus reporter in the 80s, it was still going stong. [Yes - definitely still going strong by '86, when I got there.] The creative folk process at work.

We eventually got word that Boon enrolled in a program in his own country, Malaysia.

The West College crowd made sure Boon was known through a prank that in its way sums up the ingenuity and sheer silliness of our circle. One night during spring weekend, we (all I really did was sign off the invoices for the supplies and put the main pranksters in touch with the people they needed to talk to and with each other) drew a giant day glow yellow Boon on the roof of the building that housed the power plant on the main green. (It was in between North College and Fayerweather Gym, which I hear was just torn down, the northeast corner, I think of the buildings on the green.) this building happened to be where the security office was. But I knew some guys that worked security and they told me when patrols went out. And I knew guys who had no fear of climbing the roof, and others who could easily rig up the ropes to draw an absolutely perfect circle and others who could work out the exact ratios of the quintessential Boon face and others who would sketch it and paint it in, so one night between two and three some people (four, five in number? I was
sleeping) climbed the building using a ladder that was removed and then later brought back and drew and painted the giant Boon face on the roof right over security's head. the operation went off without a hitch and at the crack of noon the next day I was awoken with knocks from some of the proud pranksters who walked me out to the field with my eyes covered so I could see the giant Boon in all his
dayglo glory (fifteen feet in diameter? 20? 25?) !

Most of the people who drew Boontoons did not know about his genesis or that he was based on a real person. I don't think most people were being consciously racist when they drew Boon, although everyone involved in this story was caucasian and crude cartoon stereotypes are, of course, inherently racist. those of us who first developed the Boon legend were being intentionally offensive, of course. (That
same year a friend and I employed the new student printing press to put up two sets of placards all over campus, both of which were immediately torn down and ripped up all over campus. One said, Free Arthur Bremer, Everyone Deserves A Second Chance and the other said, Democrats '76 - Kennedy/Eagleton, You Drink, I'll Drive. You can do a little historical research to find exactly how tasteful those posters were.)

so there is the truth about the Boon Tan phenomenon. I think the Argus reporter told me that Boon was a doctor in Malaysia.

I've posted Oppyman's email in its entirety for the benefit of other Wes alums who, like me, have always sort of wondered about the legend.

And if any of you are reading this, and you have a WesCrew shirt you'd like to sell me, or you know how I can get one, PLEASE send me an email.

Vacation.

In case anyone is wondering - I'm on vacation. For a couple of weeks. And I have limited internet access. But just as soon as I finish my long-distance grading, for which I need precious internet minutes, I will post a Boon Tan update.

Stay tuned.

Random Thoughts in the Movie Theater, Part 2: Monster House

WARNING: Spoilers to follow.

It's troublesome being a feminist at the movies. I'm used to seeing sexist plotlines and underdeveloped female characters, but I keep thinking, "hey, it can only get better. I'll try again."

And Monster House is a cute movie. The basic plot is that the house across the street comes to evil life, and the three children - DJ, Chowder, and Jenny - who are the main characters know this, but of course, none of the adults believe them. Two windows in the front of the house become it's eyes; the doorway is the mouth, with a long runner snaking out to grab unsuspecting victims. (Everyone who gets eaten manages to survive at the end of the movie, which makes it palatable for older kids.)

But there are two major problems with this film. First, although it is two boys and a girl who fight the house, DJ and Chowder do the work while Jenny mostly just comes along for the ride. While Chowder is driving a steamshovel, simultaneously battling the now-mobile house and leading it to a strategic point under a crane, DJ and Jenny are scaling the crane, DJ with explosives in hand that he will drop into the house's chimney, blowing it apart. Jenny has a minor role in this - I can't remember the exact sequence of events, but it's something like, DJ stumbles and drops the dynamite, she grabs it, throws it to DJ, and he drops it in. It was all so predictable - and so unnecessary. Why couldn't Jenny have dropped it in? Why are girls almost always accessories and rarely the heroes? Allowing Jenny to be the one to finally drop the dynamite would have made it a group effort, rather than a boys' effort with a girl tagging along. (Sound familiar? It's the same tired pattern we see in most adult movies.)

Second, and perhaps more disturbing, is the house itself. It has an insatiable appetite. It swallows balls, kites, people: anything and anyone who trespasses on its lawn or front walk. DJ and pals assume that the house becomes haunted with the ghost of it's recently departed and extremely cranky inhabitant, Mr. Nebbercracker, who has for years confiscated toys and frightened children that wander onto his lawn. But as they learn later, it is in fact haunted by the spirit of his wife, Constance, who was accidentally killed and buried when the cement floor of the basement was poured. Not coincidentally, Constance was a circus fat lady who had been terrorized by the public and who, embodied in the house, attacked anyone who came near.

As the house, Constance is therefore enormous, insatiable, crazed - just as she was in life. Mr. Nebbercracker, in contrast, is small and skinny, the one who placates her great rage. This portrayal of a fat woman as out of control with huge appetites (whether for food or for sex) - as, literally, a maneater - is unfortunately all too common. In fact, the very difference in size between a large wife and a smaller husband, whether in literature, film, or real life, communicates the message that she is the dominant partner. These stereotypes of fat women are particular to fat women - the reverse wouldn't work. There are no cultural figures of fat men whose appetites must be controlled by their skinny wives.

Further, the house is only silenced when it is destroyed, at which point we see Constance's ghost dancing with Nebbercracker before swirling off into the sky. Nebbercracker then breaks down in relief that he and Constance have finally been set free. Thus, it is only through Constance's destruction that her appetite is forever controlled.

What's wrong with this picture? Monster House doesn't merely reinforce negative stereotypes - it depends upon them. There would be no plot if not for the purposefully grotesque figure of Constance. Further, as the film makes clear, DJ and Chowder are just entering puberty, and so their interaction with Jenny is one in which they must be heroes in order to impress her, while her role is simply to be impressed. Given the target audience for this film, that means that the film models for children "appropriate" gender roles: good boys are heroes. Good girls are observers. Bad woman are fat, hungry, and out of control. Bad men are skinny and small. Balance can only be attained through the destruction of bad women.

Only a movie? Perhaps. But these notions about men's and women's appropriate sizes and behaviors are real, not imagined, and ingrained in our culture.

If you doubt me, try this: ask the heterosexual women you know - especially the tall ones, the fat ones, and/or the athletic ones - if they date men who are shorter than they are. Then ask them how it makes them feel when they are taller or bigger than their dates.

Random Thoughts in the Movie Theater, Part I

1) Queen should stop performing "We Are The Champions."

(I got to hear a sampling of "hot" hits while waiting in the near-empty theater for Monster House to begin. More on that in a future post.)

The guy can't sing like Freddie Mercury, which means that during the chorus, you can't really hear him, and he can't hit those nice high notes, as in "we'll...keep on FIGHTing...'til the end..." - he doesn't even try. That's bad enough. What's worse is that the he adds a lot of cheesy "whoah-oah-oah yeah"s, which I think is his attempt to really own the song, but which makes it crappy instead of, if not good, then at least not a horrible rendition.

2) Transamerica is a great movie if you think "transwoman" means "prissy drag queen." Or if you really want to see Felicity Huffman with a penis. It's basically a trans version of To Wong Foo, but without the small town and with one born woman playing the lead instead of three straight men.

I mean, really. Was the studio all out of good scripts? This is, no question, a movie for straights, not as in strictly heterosexual people, but as in "don't scare the straights." This has all the important components: self-loathing, awkward attempts to "act" like a woman, the hating family that miraculously becomes supportive almost on a whim. Couldn't we have a transwoman character who isn't uptight and doesn't have a penchant for bad makeup? Cripes. I felt like I was watching Tootsie.

And, for that matter - what? Are there no transwomen who can act? Whatever happened to Jaye Davidson? Surely there was a role for her somewhere in there - perhaps during the transwoman house party?

3) Firewall. Yawn. Even the title is boring. Poor Harrison Ford is running out of opportunities, and even I am getting tired of seeing him play the same guy over and over, seeing the same tired expressions cross his tired face. I swear, one of his opening lines is lifted right out of one of his many other films (something about asking the maid to take his blue suit to the cleaners). Also, his name is Jack in this one, which is weird, considering. I kept wondering what had happened to Anne Archer, if she didn't want to do another sequel or what, until I realized that he wasn't playing THAT Jack.

Why This Democrat (Probably) Won't Be Voting for Stephanie Herseth

It's always frustrating when we have to vote against some of our deeply-held convictions in order not to violate others of our deeply-held convictions. And so, since Rep. Stephanie Herseth has decided to ally herself with the unconstitutional and homophobic effort to push the Federal Marriage Amendment, she has lost my vote. Probably.

Herseth is also a strong advocate of women's reproductive freedom. But I am sick and tired of being manipulated in a battle to ensure that the least offensive candidate get into office. I don't want to vote for the least offensive candidate. I want to vote for the best candidate. That may mean that I do not vote for any candidate for the House in the next election.

This is not the first time that Herseth has disappointed me with her stance on gay rights. After her last anti-gay vote, I saw her at the fair and told her how upset I was. The usually cool and poised politician surprised me with her anger. She had clearly had enough of being challenged by queer activists and allies, and she lost no time in telling me that Democrats could not allow the Republicans to set the agenda.

And I do realize that all of this furor over same-sex marriage is a smokescreen to move our focus away from the devastation the Bush Administration has caused to the U.S. and to the world. It's a very effective one! And I'm torn between not wanting to help Herseth sell out her constituents and not wanting to allow the smokescreen to work.

But at the same time, I am troubled by Herseth's statement* that "marriage is a religious based institution and should be reserved for one man and one woman." In fact, and despite her belief, marriage is a legal contract. Making same-sex marriage legal would not mandate that church clergy perform such ceremonies. In fact, and despite her belief, the United States Government should not be in the business of dictating religious belief - that, in fact, is unconstitutional. In fact, and despite her belief, church clergy regularly officiate at same-sex unions. In fact, and despite her belief, it is the legal rights and benefits that come with the legal - and not religious - contract of marriage that same-sex couples so desperately seek.

Herseth goes on to say that "an amendment should not prevent individual states from recognizing civil unions." Gee, thanks. It's good to know that in Herseth's fantasy-land, some states, like Maine and Massachusetts (for the time being), will recognize same-sex marriages. Of course, in the real world that the rest of us live in, such an amendment makes it possible for individual states to refuse to recognize such unions, and that, of course, is exactly what's happening now, as state after state passes legislation to this end. (It's coming up for a vote in SD this fall.)

"It is my hope that both sides will use the debate on this issue to engage in a respectful dialogue that will result in a better understanding of the deeply held convictions on both sides." Because that's really the problem, isn't it - all of us queers just don't understand how much the good Christians of SD hate us.

"I believe that all Americans should be treated with respect, which is why I supported efforts to increase penalties for crimes motivated by hate." See? There's some good that she does. And so I can't say for sure that I won't vote for her. After all, the other options are even worse. But - and I say this with all due respect - both her couching of same-sex marriage as an issue of mutual respect for and understanding of people who OPPOSE same-sex marriage, and my waffling about whether or not to hold my nose and vote for her, are copouts. And I expect better. From Herseth, and from myself.

*In a letter to a local gay activist, who shared her comments with me.

Kathy Griffin: D for Personality

I used to be a huge fan of Kathy Griffin, back when she'd only had one Bravo special and in the early days of her reality show, "Kathy Griffin: Life on the D-List." What made her so much fun was her willingness to laugh at herself - that and her dishing of celebrity gossip. Kathy was just like the rest of us. She was a hard-working woman struggling to make it in an industry that doesn't much care for women, especially women who don't have money, who aren't thin, who aren't white, etc. And Kathy would get out on stage and just pop all of those little fantasy celebrity bubbles. She would tell us which stars thought they were something special (Sharon Stone) and which ones were cool (Celine Dion). And we would sit back and laugh with Kathy, because she was cool, too. As she told us, we were her "peeps."

Except lately, I'm not feeling so much like I'm one of her peeps. Before, I always had the sense that if I were to run into her in an elevator or a waiting room somewhere, we'd make eye contact and immediately "get it" - we'd chuckle about the obviously closeted gay guy standing next to us and the equally clueless matron trying to fix him up with her granddaughter. We'd laugh at the fashion fiasco that is the '80s revisited (boots with capri leggings? I don't think so.). And I'd feel that she was real and genuine and down to earth and friendly, just as she acts like she is in her stand-up routines.

Except that she isn't. She's still real and genuine and down to earth and friendly with the poor schmucks who have the audacity to book her for dog shows and fundraisers, which are never high profile enough to suit her and at which she is never given the diva treatment she obviously feels she deserves, never hesitating to point this out to us, the viewers. (It's funny, though, that she never turns down these gigs that are so beneath her.) But as soon as the poor schmucks turn their backs, there's Kathy, making nasty comments about how low rent their special events are, how pathetic her life is, how terrible it is that she has to put up with small crowds, with people not recognizing her, with no large private dressing rooms, and how Jennifer Aniston has no idea what it's like.

This is, of course, the whole gimmick of her reality show. As the title tells us, the show lets us know what life is like for a D-list star, and it is funny to see her get the key to a city when there is no one there to see her receive it. But it's hard to reconcile this image of poor, hard-working, friendly Kathy with the Diva Kathy who hires an insane L.A. dog trainer instead of actually working to train her dog (what do these people think? If you have an animal, you need to train it. It doesn't just magically happen.). Just for example, insane dog trainer tells Kathy to dress up as a huge squirrel as part of the dog training, and Kathy is so far gone that she has the balls to tell her assistant, Jessica, to do it (Jessica flat out tells the camera that she will not, and eventually, Kathy backs down). The Diva lives in a huge and very expensive house; she stays at fine hotels; she even brings her DOGS to fine hotels. It's hard to feel like she's one of us when she is constantly telling us that she's better than us, that she deserves more than we do, and that we (meaning America) had better start appreciating her.

And, sort of off-topic but not really, her fag hag routine is kind of humorous, given her husband's and parents' obvious homophobia, but it's also kind of offensive. I can't help but notice that when she talks about "the gays" as if they're her private fan club, she always means men. Queer women never make an appearance in Kathy-world, and I suspect, though I can't say for sure, that if Kathy were to make a statement on lesbianism it would be something akin to Carrie Fisher's and Madonna's insulting conversation from several years ago, in which they decided that lesbianism was ultimately too ridiculous and too lacking to get them off. Oh, and demeaning - lesbians packing dildos were demeaning, too, if I remember correctly. So anyway, I can see Kathy saying something like that, with the added jab that lesbians have a poor sense of style. So I guess I'm glad that I haven't heard her speak on the topic.

Frankly, she was a lot funnier when I didn't know what she was really like.

Oh, Dear Lord

This is just NOT ACCEPTABLE, people.

That is all.

Are You A Curly?

Man, I just blew $100 on hair product. (It'll last me a while.)

Check it out.

And if you're looking for product recommendations, I use the Gentle Lather Shampoo, the Too Shea! Extra Moisturizing Conditioner (I leave it in), and then just a bit of the Confident Coils Styling Solution. What I like about these products is that they are never too much for my hair - it's never stiff or sticky, it always looks and feels totally natural, but it doesn't frizz.

(My curls aren't nearly as defined as Jess' are on her site - she's using a lot of product. Looks great on her.)

For those of you who are languishing somewhere where few hairdressers know how to treat a curly, let me also recommend the book that saved my life: Curly Girl by Lorraine Massey. It's revolutionary - REVOLUTIONARY, I tell you. Say goodbye to your shampoo and hello to gorgeous curls!!



Oh, and one more thing. If you read the book, you'll find that you might well be a curly - only you just don't know it yet. Try the no-poo test: stop using your shampoo for a few days. Keep washing your hair - scrub your scalp and rinse really well. If you prefer, use conditioner to scrub. If your hair gets curly after a few days or a week - congratulations! You are a curly!

Currently Reading...

Ah, summer. The time for catching up on all the books and movies and t.v. shows and exercise that you missed all winter.

Well, at least I'm getting back into the gym these days. I haven't seen many films, though there are many I want to get to - Pirates, X-3, MI-3, etc., etc., nor have I watched any of the episodes of Lost from the second season after, say, Thanksgiving (I have, however, managed to keep nearly current on animated films that are appropriate for four-year-olds. Go figure.)

But I'm reading. I just finished Inga Muscio's Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, which I read most of last summer, and which I enjoyed picking up again. I didn't pick it up for the longest time because of the title - not that I was offended (I love that word when used in reclamation), but I thought it was going to be all about the word and then, perhaps, about vaginas, and the thing is that I've done quite a bit of reading about vaginas already. But the book is more of a feminist manifesto, the kind of feminist manifesto that pulls in all people who are oppressed (my buddy Drek will hate my use of the term, but it fits here), the kind of feminism that speaks against all injustice. The book largely focuses on women and the kind of crap that we face in our lives, from low self-esteem to violent attack. What's cool is Muscio's response to this - she has one for everything. My favorite: know a guy who sexually assaulted your friend? Why not get all the gals together, go to his place of employment, and tell his boss what kind of guy he is? Why not picket his house?*

(* Before someone leaves a comment to the effect of "but what about women who make up sexual assault stories? What about being innocent until proven guilty?" - let's keep in mind that false accusations of rape are something like 2% of all reported rapes.)

I'm in the middle of a few others. I started The Motherhood Manifesto on one of my recent plane trips, and it's a quick read, but I kind of stalled out partway through. For one thing, it was kind of preaching to the choir in my case, and I didn't learn a whole lot of new information. For another, the new information I did learn was horribly depressing, like the fact that the U.S., Estonia, Slovakia, Poland, and the UAE have the same mortality rate for children under five - and the U.S. spends far more on healthcare than any of these other countries. But it's an important book, nonetheless. I'm particularly interested in its discussion of flex time, job-sharing, parental leave, and other creative ways to help parents keep good jobs and still parent.

I'm reading Nancy Mairs' A Troubled Guest: Life and Death Stories. Mairs is one of my favorite nonfiction writers, though in this book she seems to have a different voice than the one I remember, perhaps because of the topic. I admit that, at first, reading the book made me feel a bit depressed, but as I read on, I'm finding that it's helping me sort out my own feelings and fears about death.

I just finished Spike Gillespie's Pissed Off: On Women and Anger. People who know me have proably heard me say that I firmly believe that most people don't know how to express their anger well - and that this is particularly true for women. This book is an exploration of moments of anger, of how women have expressed their anger (positively and negatively), of the catharsis of anger, and of the importance of moving beyond anger to a place where one can let go of anger. I liked it, though I did think that in the case of some of the angering moments Gillespie writes about, it was not clear to the reader why certain people deserved her anger. In fact, I found myself identifying at times with the people she had set up as the villains, simply because her own anger seemed so out of place in response to the events in question. But then, that, too, is part of the discussion of anger - processing when it's appropriate, and how, and why, and what to do about it.

Finally, I'm reading Marilyn Abildskov's The Men in My Country, a travel memoir about her time in Japan and - I think (I'm not very far along) the men she met there. I just finished a class with Marilyn at the Iowa City Writing Festival, so I'm hearing her voice in my head as I read (which is sometimes cool and sometimes annoying. You know how it is. You want the only voices you hear in your head to be yours.). I was reading a little bit of her book earlier, and hearing her voice put me in mind of being back at the workshop, a whole week of dedicated time to write, and it compelled me to come out here and sit down and write this.

The Devil You Say

I admit to having read The Devil Wears Prada when it first came out, and also to not being terribly impressed. I mean, I enjoyed it, it was a fun book, but it was not very well-written and it was not very interesting. It was also pretty over-the-top, I suspect because Anna Wintour (on whom the villain of the book, Miranda Priestly, is supposedly based) is pretty over-the-top. I think what made it not work, in addition to the sophomoric writing, was that truth really is stranger than fiction, and that these fictionalized truths were so Andy Warhol-esque that they weren't believable (though I suspect they really did happen).

But here's the thing. The New York Times reviewed the book twice, both times giving it a poor review (see here for the Book Review and here for the review in the daily edition). Kinda begs the question of why they'd bother to review it, not once, but twice, doesn't it? Makes you wonder what pressures might have been brought to bear? The Times' reviews focused on poor Anna Wintour who was being so unfairly maligned. And now, the film version is out, and again, the Times has something to say - in its Business section. There's also an actual film review, and not a bad one, but I think it's interesting that the Times felt the need to publicly defend Anna Wintour from the movie - and when I say "to defend," I mean "to noisily and wetly kiss her ass":

David Carr
The Devil Wears Teflon

Published: July 10, 2006

"The Devil Wears Prada," a chic, not-so-veiled look at the fashion magazine world and its empress, Anna Wintour, depicts a demanding, occasionally toxic editor named Miranda Priestly who cares deeply about the semiotics of a particular choice of belts.

The movie, based on a casually vicious roman à clef by a former assistant of Ms. Wintour's, is diverting enough. But is it accurate?

Having spent a few hours here and there watching Ms. Wintour do her job, I would say that although the devil resides in the details, the broad strokes resonate. When she came into a room to survey finished magazine pages or racks of clothing, the air seemed to ionize, with minions moving quickly after she exercised summary judgment.

However, the movie's other chief preoccupation — is Miranda Priestly née Anna Wintour really happy? — seems entirely beside the point. It is a question that seems to come up only when the successful executive happens to wear a dress.

Ms. Wintour has been the editor of Vogue for 18 years and is consulted by every major fashion house. Editorially, she has reinvigorated Vogue and created a platform sturdy enough to build an empire with Teen Vogue and Men's Vogue, and next fall, Vogue Living, reaching at least 2.3 million readers.

She does not put a finger in the wind to judge trends: she is the wind.

And her imperiousness, the precise thing that is parodied throughout the film, means that the movie is just one more spitball against a battleship. Most mortals would have responded to a wide-screen depiction of their excesses by dressing in sackcloth and hiding in the basement. Ms. Wintour donned Prada, natch, and went to a New York premiere.

IN that way, "The Devil Wears Prada" has become just one more lesson in Ms. Wintour's indomitability. A dead raccoon, a gift from antifur activists, dropped on her plate at the Four Seasons, is calmly tented with a napkin by Ms. Wintour before she orders coffee. A flung tofu pie is remarked upon for its benefits as a facial. And when she's satirized on the big screen, she makes sure she's in on the joke.

When the real Ms. Wintour wears Prada, it seems to be woven with Teflon.

"I'm sure she would rather have great press or no press," said S. I. Newhouse Jr., chairman of Condé Nast, which owns Vogue. "She rises above it. Anna has had great success in all aspects of her life and has tremendous inner strength and confidence."

A funny thing happened on the way to Ms. Wintour's cinematic impalement: she not only survives, but her place in the world is curiously ennobled. The movie, a more complex story than the book, tells a cautionary tale about the sacrifices that everyone — big and little, boss and worker — makes to get to or stay on top. But at its heart, the movie is paean to the transformative powers of fashion.

Anne Hathaway plays the schlubby assistant who succumbs to the allure of the fashion closet of the magazine, like Cinderella with a lot more slippers to choose from.

And in spite of what you see in the movies, Ms. Wintour has lots of friends. A brief call to Vogue about this column in the works brought a hail of phone calls from people with names like Harvey and Oscar. To a person, they say that she is nothing like the cartoon of an editor in the movie, that with Ms. Wintour, it is always about the work.

Part of the loyalty is reciprocal — Ms. Wintour sticks by her friends — but the other driver is her enormous power in the industry. Large, multinational concerns involved in fashion do not make a move without first consulting Ms. Wintour. In return, they can expect friendly treatment in the one magazine that brings high-fashion class to a heaving mass.

"She knows how to inspire and provoke the best in her staff," said David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. "But she also does something that is very rare: she projects and makes effective use of her public persona. That's a high-wire act that takes talent and daring, as well as pure presence."

Ms. Wintour has managed to be the public face of Vogue, but has done so in a very private way. Bonnie Fuller, another successful magazine editor, reveals more about herself in just the title of her how-to book, "From Geek to Oh My Goddess: How to Get the Big Career and the Big Love Life and the Big Family — Even If You Have a Big Loser Complex Inside," than Ms. Wintour has revealed in her entire career. Ms. Wintour's idea of showing a little leg involves a miniskirt and nothing else.

"She is one of the greatest creative executives working," said Barry Diller, chief executive of IAC/InterActiveCorp. "She has absolutely no fear of performing her role. Many male executives have fears and insecurities. She has none."

Powerful women in the media always get inspected more thoroughly than their male counterparts. One of the movie's running jokes occurs when Miranda Priestly, Ms. Wintour's cinematic doppelganger, arrives at work and flings all manner of jillion-dollar handbags and coats on the desk of her hapless assistant. A boss who is always dumping on her underlings: imagine that. Katie Couric's backstage mien was the subject of breathless speculation, and Martha Stewart's executive approach was scrutinized long before her stock trades were.

Male media stars can ingest illegal drugs, make obscene phone calls or hire prostitutes without apparent consequence, but the failure of a female media figure to say please when ordering coffee can lead to wholesale indictment. In her everyday life, Ms. Wintour has a stable, dedicated team that has been with her for many years, never mind her bedside manner.

That is not to say that Ms. Wintour is anything approaching warm and cuddly — while she can be exceedingly droll and funny, she wears her impatience as others might wear a brooch. But that same characteristic in a male executive would seem not really worth mentioning. No wonder she has learned to wipe the pie off her face and keep moving.

***

And if you've read this far, check out Wikipedia on the subject. An excerpt:

The Wintour angle was of great assistance in promoting the widely-anticipated book. It sold millions of copies in hardback, stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for six months and has since been translated into 27 languages.

Critics, perhaps resigned to the knowledge that their reviews would be irrelevant to the book's runaway success, and also mindful of its subject matter, were largely unimpressed. Kate Betts, a former editor of Harper's Bazaar who also worked for Wintour at one point, spared no barb in the Times Book Review stressing the author's ungracious ungratefulness at the unique opportunity of working at Vogue: "[I]f Andrea doesn't ever realize why she should care about Miranda Priestly, why should we care about Andrea, or prize the text for anything more than the cheap frisson of the context?" Janet Maslin, in the daily paper, joined in: "a mean-spirited Gotcha! of a book, one that offers little indication that the author could interestingly sustain a gossip-free narrative ..."

It was, however, duly noted that Maslin tactfully avoids naming either the magazine where Weisberger actually worked nor the woman she allegedly modeled her main character on (the latter practice continued on the Times' part when the film came out[1]), and that Betts, as a former Condé Nast editor herself, was hardly an impartial reviewer).

Critics who favored the book admitted it had problems, as any first novel might, but praised it as a "fun, frivolous read."

No Condé Nast publication reviewed or otherwise mentioned The Devil Wears Prada.

Your Mama Is

We have a rule here that if, when I am taking the child to the store, he should get separated from me, he should find a mommy and ask for help.

Today at the mall, he wandered off to look for toys and lost track of me. He found a mommy. She was of little help, as it turns out, but he shortly wandered back.

"I found a mommy!" he said.

"Great!" said I. "Did she help you?"

"Well," he said, "she asked me what you looked like. I said, sorta fat, with lotsa hair."

I kid you not - there were GASPS from behind me in line. I burst out laughing (what else could I do?) and got the hell out of there.

And if that's not humiliating enough, let me add that my child tells me I'm beautiful at least once a day, usually in a voice reserved for admiring fine art. "Mommy!" he will gush, "you're beeyouuuuuutiful!" Except for one day last week, when he informed me: "Mommy. I think you're a little bit ugly."

"What?" I said, surprised.

"Right here," he said, pointing to my tummy. "This part is ugly."

"That kind of hurts my feelings, sweetie," I said, giving him a hug.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mommy. Let's try that again: I love you."

***

But how, I ask, can one hold a grudge against a child who pulls down his pants during gymnastics class to show his teacher his The Incredibles underwear?

Indulgence

Sigh.

Bad enough I gained back the 10 or 15 pounds I lost last summer over the course of the spring semester (blame the students and their damn papers). Bad enough that I stopped going to the gym regularly during this time and have forfeited most of those gorgeous muscles it took me weeks to develop (they're not totally gone, and they're coming back, but still). Bad enough that I look all lumpy now in my not-even-cute-anyway workout clothes.

Did I really have to look up on my way from the car to the house after hitting the gym tonight to see several good-looking, muscly guys hanging out on the balcony, looking at me?!

Sigh.

Random Kid Tricks

"Hey, here's a tongue twister: One smart fellow, he felt smart. Say it three times fast."

"OK - one smart fellow, he felt smart. Three times. Fast."

"No no - say the whole thing. One smart fellow, he felt smart. Fast."

"OK - the whole thing. One smart fellow, he felt smart. Fast."

"No, sweetie, Mommy's trying to tell you: something very funny happens when you say the whole thing fast."

[Daddy helpfully begins saying it three times fast; child protests loudly.]

Finally:
"One smart fellow, he smelt...fart… HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

***

"Can you say, 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers?'"

"I can say some of that, Daddy. ...'Peter.'"

***

Stage whisper from behind me: "Daddy."
"What?" he replies.
"No, whisper!"
"Why are we whispering?"
"I want to talk to you without Mommy hearing."

***

In the back seat, a soft child’s voice quietly sings "Doe...a deer...a female deer..."

At which point I chime in with a song I once heard David Arquette sing on Letterman:
"Dough – with which to buy my beer
Ray – the guy I buy beer from
Me – the one I buy beer for
Far – too far to go back home
So – I guess I’ll have a beer
La – (drunkenly) la la la la la laaaaaa
Tea – thbthh (spit) I’d rather have a beer
And that brings us back to dough!"

Silence.

"What do you think of that?"

Beat.

"It’s good."

"Oh, good. I was worried."

"I wasn’t talking to you, Mommy!"

Blogging Slowdown

I started this blog almost six months ago because I really wanted to make writing a priority, and I wanted to write stuff that people would read. I found that it filled a creative need in me - and frankly, writing regularly made me a better writer. I spent all of what had been my television time on my blog, writing for a couple of hours a day (not everything made it to the site, obviously). When I wasn't working on my classes, I was working on my blog.

But now I find myself up to my eyeballs in writing projects, and my blogging seems to be taking me away from these projects (which I undertake for money, for goods, and for lines on my c.v.). And further, I'm tired - not of writing, but of the pace. It's summer, for gosh sakes, and I just want to lie out in the sun for a while.

So I need to slow down. You can see that I've slowly dropped off from my daily blog posts to a few a week. My plan now is to post at least a couple of times a week, with the hope of stepping it up in the future.

I'm making this announcement as I prepare to leave for Iowa City for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. In case anyone is interested, I will be attending the Braided Memoir workshop. Having never attended a writing workshop, I'm not entirely sure what to expect. I will either be written out and unable to post next week, or I will be energized and inspired and will post often. I just don't know. So if you don't hear from me, you know why.

I don't know whether to be just quietly wigged out...

...or vomit.

Because my husband just asked me, after thinking about it for a while, if maybe the guy was talking about sexual experience.

I mean, ew.

Watch it and draw your own conclusions.

South Dakota: The Hick State

I'm writing this from Oakland, CA, where I'm at the National Women's Studies Association Conference. And so far today, every time I've mentioned South Dakota, people have said, "Oh."
(beat) "OH. WOW." And then offered me a supportive comment or empathetic look.

So hear this, Unruh-ites. The rest of the country feels sorry for us because of you.

iPain

I should say first that I am a gal who dislikes the directions that come with anything. I will look at them if I am putting together a bookshelf or something and I don't want to put it together backwards, but I generally read just enough of the instructions so that I can fill in the blanks myself.

And, second, I should point out that I am in fact not a tech geek (not that there's anything wrong with that), so anyone who is and is reading this will have to excuse me as I stumble along in my discussion of the technology in my life.

Anyway, my impatience with instructions may contribute to my frustration with my new iRiver. But I doubt it.

I bought a iRiver IFP-795 last summer (512MB, or something like that). I didn't want to buy an iPod for several reasons. First, iPods are an annoying shape - the iRiver is much, much smaller and not a big, flat rectangle. And the older generation of iPods didn't have rechargeable batteries, whereas the iRiver runs on an AA or AAA. Also, the iRiver is non-proprietary, which means that I am not wedded to iTunes or to Apple for anything. And I can easily listen to files from iTunes (after converting them, which is a simple process) on my iRiver. However, the IFP-795 requires iRiver software in order to download anything onto it. Not a big deal - the software is free and somewhat simple to use, once you get the hang of it.

So, I liked my iRiver so much that I just bought a new, 1G one - the iRiver T30 - which is even smaller than the other one (yay!).

Now, I realize that iRiver is getting out of the MP3 player business and that this must affect their customer service. However - if the early generations of an MP3 player require a specialized music manager...wouldn't you think that the later generations would at least be compatible with that music manager, so that you could easily transfer your music onto the new player?

No. That would be too easy.

My new T30 only uses Windows Media Player. Now, almost all of my music is already on there, so that in itself is not a huge problem. What IS a huge problem is that I seem unable to download playlists without the playlists being taken apart in the process and reorganized by artist. That's fine, if what I want to do is listen to cds by different artists. If, however, what I want is a methodically ordered mix to listen to while I work out, then I am fucked.

I am fucked.

I like to think that I'm a smart person. I managed to get through a Ph.D. program (some would argue that that is no indication of intelligence). I know how to use a computer even if I'm not a tech geek. I can usually figure things out for myself.

I have tried eight times to sync these music files to the T30. I've looked in WMP "help" and I've read the directions many, many times.

I am now considering praying to whichever saint is the saint of computers (anyone?).

If you know how to do this so that the playlists remain playlists - you know, in a directory hierarchy - and don't get reordered by artist - for my "convenience" - please advise. But I have a feeling this is just one of those stupid things that happened when they were designing the thing. What must that conversation have sounded like?

"Hey, don't forget to fix it so that they can download playlists."
"Nah, it's lunchtime. Let's not bother."

I mean, seriously. What is the point? Would the thing have had to be bigger to recognize playlists?


Much, much later:
OK, I don't know how or why, but it at least downloaded my songs in the order I wanted. But no directory.

Sick of Abortion

I am so very tired of talking and thinking about abortion. My friends who work at Planned Parenthood tell me this ALL the TIME, and now I finally know what they mean.

I got up this morning, logged on, and continued a discussion I had been having since yesterday about whether or not EC is abortion. I got pretty upset by it, actually. It was partly just the fact that email can be a somewhat limited means for having complicated discussions. So often, when I'm emailing about something I care about, I find that I am unable to clearly articulate myself. In this case, I was confused by the terminology my friend used and led to think that she thought that EC was RU-486. Eventually, we got it sorted out, but not before I got my feelings hurt and got really frustrated - and not before she felt attacked and like her thoughts on the issue were unwelcome. And that was the second part of why I got upset - because I was going through, "oh, she really thinks I'm a big jerk! Oh, she really thinks I'm dissing her! Oh, what do I do? Should I try to apologize and explain that I wasn't doing what she thought I was doing? But what about the fact that now I'm pissed off and feeling hurt?" All very exhausting. And it wasn't even 9:30 yet.

At the same time, I received an email about a project I'm working on locally, over which there is a sort of mini-turf war taking place (of course, this project has to do with abortion rights).

Meanwhile, my son and I were getting into a crying argument (the tears were on his end) over whether or not he had to go to the bathroom (I said yes, he said no. Usually, this is *his* decision, but lately he's been refusing to go even when he has to go, and he can hold it a long time, which is not good for his bladder.). Anyway, I didn't handle it well because I was so distracted by all the email confrontations and serious discussions. (Note to self: do not check email until child and self are dressed and ready for the day.)

By the time I got my cup of coffee, it was already 11:30. Then I went to Weight Watchers. All I will say about that is that it was really depressing. At least there was no talk about abortion there.

Then I went to the gym for another blissful hour of no abortion talk.

Then I went to a meeting at which there was an impromptu discussion about abortion (read: *they* had a discussion about abortion; *I* sat silently, literally biting my tongue and waiting for an excuse to get the hell out of there, and trying not to lose it completely because the issue had come up in the context of something really difficult that a friend of theirs was going through, and it was not the time or place for me to launch into anything). I was stuck for an hour and a half.

Then I came home and wrote a letter to the editor about - guess what? Someone else's stupid letter about the effing abortion ban. Sigh.

I am WIPED.

Teen Beat for the New Millennium

Warning: Rant to follow.

I was just thinking today about how irritated I am by MySpace (and, ahem, Blogger) and all of these sites that ask you to list your favorite books, bands, movies, etc.

I mean, I can understand listing what you're listening to these days or what you're reading or what movies you've seen recently. These are things we probably all have something to say about and are interested in talking about with others. But how lame is it to list your favorite bands once you're out of high school? And for those people who list 20 gazillion bands - in case, god forbid, they should leave one out and then visitors to their page wouldn't really get their core essence and know what they were all about - you know, if you list 20 gazillion bands, not only will no one take the time to read the list, but you will end up just listing the same trendy, "alternative" bands everyone else lists. Way to look cool.

(And what's up with the "current mood" bullshit? Because I think we can all agree that the better writing is generally not found on blogs that look like somebody's 10th grade diary. Can we give each day a letter grade, too? Sheesh.)
/Rant

Three Cheers for SD Pastor

I was grumpy last night. I didn't get as much done yesterday as I would have liked, my summer class started today, we're out of Froz Fruit bars...yeah, I was grumpy.

But here's something that lifted my spirits - an affirmation of gay families by (gasp) a SD pastor. It's great to see people in this red state who "get it!"

Aberdeen American News, June 7, 2006

'Family' defined by people who form it
by Riedel, minister of United Church of Christ, Aberdeen

I've given a lot of thought to what my first column should be about. Surely I should tackle something soft and cuddly, something warm and fuzzy to endear the readers to me for ages to come. Surely I should, but those who know me best know that is never going to happen.

Please turn your attention to the political ad about every child having a mother and a father in the American News of May 31, page 6A. When turning to this page a couple of harsh assumptions jumped out from the ad: first that Sen. Tim Johnson doesn't care about children and second, that apparently if homosexuals are allowed to be married it will be the ruination of life as we know it.

The basis of the ad is fiction in regard to Johnson's personal beliefs, according to his staff. The ad, paid for by Focus on the Family and others, states that "a compassionate society would not deliberately deny a child a mother or a father." It goes on to assert that the only way to protect marriage, the only way to protect our children, is to discriminate against an entire group of people and ban gay marriages.

The obvious result of this ban would be what? Perhaps we can expect an instant decline in the divorce rate amongst heterosexual couples, which is currently nearing 50 percent. Surely once we amend our Constitution, once the politicians vote to ban gays from getting married, those percentages will drop.

Will we also be able to expect a drop in the rate of unmarried pregnancies?
According to the National Center for Health Statistics, 32 percent of all births are currently to unmarried women. Are gays to blame for this? Will gays being allowed to marry affect these numbers at all?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, there are at least 11.9 million single parents in the United States. Twenty million kids under 18 live with only one parent. Of these children who are living with one parent, 35 percent are living with a parent who was never married and 38 percent are the product of a divorce between their heterosexual parents.

The crisis in American families isn't about or caused by gay and lesbian partners who want the same status as their heterosexual neighbors.

I think that the Marriage Protection Amendment isn't so much about protecting our children as it is about protecting the homophobic from facing the reality that gay and lesbian partners seeking equal rights are not nearly the monsters they want them to be.

Before anyone starts screaming about how homosexuals will start molesting children should they be allowed to marry and adopt, let me say that they are already allowed to adopt and doing quite well as parents. According to an article in Pediatrics magazine, in a study of 269 cases of child sex abuse, only two offenders where found to be gay or lesbian. More relevant was the finding that of the cases involving molestation of a boy by a man, 74 percent of the men were or had been in a heterosexual relationship with the boy's mother or another female relative. The conclusion was that "a child's risk of being molested by his or her relative's heterosexual partner is over 100 times greater than by someone who might be identifiable as being homosexual."

What this writer finds more alarming than all of the rhetoric about gays and lesbians, is what ads like this say about children who are products of homes that the American Family Association don't find normal. In their zeal to stamp out homosexuals they are labeling children from single-parent families or what might be termed "non-traditional" families as something less than desirable.

Folks need to be careful that in their effort to make gays and lesbians second-class citizens they don't push 20 million children down with them.

What defines a family will never fit nicely in the box that the American Family Association has built for it. It will never be solely defined as one man and one woman with 2.3 children of the same race and appropriate gender identity. Rather it will be defined by those who choose to be a family. Every child understands how important family is; don't try to tell them what theirs should look like.

Rick Riedel

Lack of EC Causes Abortion

Just to reiterate: EC works the same way as the birth control pill. It's not an abortifacient. A woman who takes EC after unprotected intercourse is using birth control, not getting an abortion.

Read on.

From the Washington Post:

What Happens When There Is No Plan B?
By Dana L.
Sunday, June 4, 2006; Page B01

The conservative politics of the Bush administration forced me to have an abortion I didn't want. Well, not literally, but let me explain.

I am a 42-year-old happily married mother of two elementary-schoolers. My husband and I both work, and like many couples, we're starved for time together. One Thursday evening this past March, we managed to snag some rare couple time and, in a sudden rush of passion, I failed to insert my diaphragm.

The next morning, after getting my kids off to school, I called my ob/gyn to get a prescription for Plan B, the emergency contraceptive pill that can prevent a pregnancy -- but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. As we're both in our forties, my husband and I had considered our family complete, and we weren't planning to have another child, which is why, as a rule, we use contraception. I wanted to make sure that our momentary lapse didn't result in a pregnancy.

The receptionist, however, informed me that my doctor did not prescribe Plan B. No reason given. Neither did my internist. The midwifery practice I had used could prescribe it, but not over the phone, and there were no more open appointments for the day. The weekend -- and the end of the 72-hour window -- was approaching.

But I needed to meet my kids' school bus and, as I was pretty much out of options -- short of soliciting random Virginia doctors out of the phone book -- I figured I'd take my chances and hope for the best. After all, I'm 42. Isn't it likely my eggs are overripe, anyway? I thought so, especially since my best friend from college has been experiencing agonizing infertility problems at this age.

Weeks later, the two drugstore pregnancy tests I took told a different story. Positive. I couldn't believe it.

I'm still in good health, but unlike the last time I was pregnant, nearly a decade ago, I'm now taking three medications. One of them, for high cholesterol, is in the Food and Drug Administration's Pregnancy Category X -- meaning it's a drug you shouldn't take if you're expecting or even planning to get pregnant. I worried because the odds of having a high-risk pregnancy or a baby born with serious health issues rise significantly after age 40. And I thought of the emotional upheavals that an unplanned pregnancy would cause our family. My husband and I are involved in all aspects of our children's lives, but even so, we feel we don't get enough time to spend with them as it is.

I felt sick. Although I've always been in favor of abortion rights, this was a choice I had hoped never to have to make myself. When I realized the seriousness of my predicament, I became angry. I knew that Plan B, which could have prevented it, was supposed to have been available over the counter by now. But I also remembered hearing that conservative politics have held up its approval.

My anger propelled me to get to the bottom of the story. It turns out that in December 2003, an FDA advisory committee, whose suggestions the agency usually follows, recommended that the drug be made available over the counter, or without a prescription. Nonetheless, in May 2004, the FDA top brass overruled the advisory panel and gave the thumbs-down to over-the-counter sales of Plan B, requesting more data on how girls younger than 16 could use it safely without a doctor's supervision.

Apparently, one of the concerns is that ready availability of Plan B could lead teenage girls to have premarital sex. Yet this concern -- valid or not -- wound up penalizing an over-the-hill married woman for having sex with her husband. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.

By late August 2005, the slow action over Plan B led the director of the FDA's Office on Women's Health to resign her post. The agency's delay on the drug, she wrote in an e-mail to her colleagues, "runs contrary to my core commitment to improving and advancing women's health." As recently as April 7, Steven Galson, director of the FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said that the agency still needed time to work on the issue.

Unfortunately, time was the one thing I didn't have.

Meanwhile, I hadn't even been able to get Plan B with a prescription that Friday, because in Virginia, health-care practitioners apparently are allowed to refuse to prescribe any drug that goes against their beliefs. Although I had heard of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control on religious grounds, I was dumbfounded to find that doctors could do the same thing.

Moreover, they aren't even required to tell the patient why they won't provide the drug. Nor do they have to provide a list of alternative sources. I had asked the ob-gyn's receptionist if politics was the reason the doctor wouldn't prescribe Plan B for me. She refused to answer or offer any reason, no matter how much I pressed her. By the time I got on the phone with my internist's office and found that he would not fill a Plan B prescription either, I figured it was a waste of time to fight with the office staff. To this day, I don't know why my doctors wouldn't prescribe Plan B -- whether it was because of moral opposition to contraception or out of fear of political protesters or just because they preferred not to go there.

In any event, they were also partly responsible for why I was stuck that Friday, and why I was ultimately forced to confront the decision to terminate my third pregnancy.

After making the decision with my husband, I was plunged into an even murkier world -- that of finding an abortion provider. If information on Plan B was hard to come by, and practitioners were evasive on emergency contraception, trying to get information on how to abort a pregnancy in 2006 is an even more Byzantine experience.

On the Internet, most of what I found was political in nature or otherwise unhelpful: pictures of what your baby looks like in the womb from week one, and so on.

Calling doctors, I felt like a pariah when I asked whether they provided termination services. Finally, I decided to check the Planned Parenthood Web site to see whether its clinics performed abortions. They did, but I learned that if I had the abortion in Virginia, the procedure would take two days because of a mandatory 24-hour waiting period, which requires that you go in first for a day of counseling and then wait a day to think things over before returning to have the abortion. Because of work and the children, I couldn't afford two days off, so I opted to have the procedure done on a Saturday in downtown D.C. while my husband took the kids to the Smithsonian.

The hidden world of abortion services soon became even more subterranean. I called Planned Parenthood two days in advance to confirm the appointment. The receptionist politely informed me that the organization never confirms appointments, for "security reasons," and that I would have to just show up.

I arrived shortly before 10 a.m. in a bleak downpour, trusting that someone had recorded my appointment. I shuffled to the front door through a phalanx of umbrellaed protesters, who chanted loudly about Jesus and chided me not to go into that house of abortion.

All the while, I was thinking that if religion hadn't been allowed to seep into American politics the way it has, I wouldn't even be there. This all could have been stopped way before this baby was conceived if they had just let me have that damn pill.

After passing through the metal detector inside the building, I entered the Planned Parenthood waiting room; it was like the waiting room for a budget airline -- crammed full of people, of all races, and getting busier by the moment. I was by far the oldest person there (other than one girl's mom). The wait seemed endless. No one looked happy. We were told that the lone doctor was stuck in Cherry Blossom Parade traffic.

He finally arrived, an hour and a half late.

The procedure itself took about five minutes. I finally walked out of the building at 4:30, 6 1/2 hours after I had arrived.

It was a decision I am sorry I had to make. It was awful, painful, sickening. But I feel that this administration gave me practically no choice but to have an unwanted abortion because the way it has politicized religion made it well-nigh impossible for me to get emergency contraception that would have prevented the pregnancy in the first place.

And to think that, all these years after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land, this is what our children have to look forward to as they approach their reproductive years.

Dana L. is a lawyer and writer living in Virginia. Out of concern for her family's privacy, she requested that her last name not be published.

Who Gives a Flying....

For the record, I don't care what Brad and Angelina's baby is named, nor do I care what it looks like. I'm not interested in the pictures. I'm saddened that the pictures are worth an estimated $5-$7 million. What the hell does that say about us as a country? I'll bet more Americans know what little Shiloh's name is (see, I'm not even paying attention - I am STUDIOUSLY NOT PAYING ATTENTION - and I STILL KNOW) than know who their elected officials are. Or even what their own teacher's names are (as ridiculous as it sounds, I meet students every semester who do not know the names of their professors. How is that even possible?).

Nor do I care for the trying-to-be-clever nicknames "Brangelina," "TomKat," and "Bennifer." (Is this what we have to look forward to? Will every celebrity couple from now on have to be given a nickname? (And doesn't the press have more important matters to attend to?!))

And finally - whose business is it, really, what some couple you've never met chooses to name their baby? If you are self-righteous enough to ridicule Gwyneth Paltrow for naming her babies "Apple" and "Moses," you can bet your sweet bippy that karma is going to get you: right now, your friends and relatives secretly hate the baby name you've picked out. They think it is 1) pretentious, 2) inappropriate, and/or 3) horribly common.

(This is a general rant, not directed in particular at any of my friends who like to gossip about celebrity baby names. Your friends love your babies' names. Really.)

I Know, I Know, I Mentioned the Film Crews...

And several times, I started to blog about it, but the truth is, I just kind of feel sorry for the one director who pissed me off. The more I read about him, the more of an asshole everyone seems to think he is - I mean EVERYONE. Not one person has anything nice to say about this guy, and I'm thinking that it would suck to be a person that is so roundly disliked. So I'm just not going to add any further to his bad reputation by smearing his name here.

Besides, I already vented to one of the better-known movie sites...for which I now feel guilty. Hopefully, they won't use it.

Fetishes

I tend to fetishize things like office supplies, closet organizers, interestingly-shaped cleaning products - you know, those things that promise us better, tidier, fresher-smelling lives. Bonus if they make our environmental footprints smaller at the same time.

I love having an excuse to go to OfficeMax, and I will wander the aisles in search of the perfect pen or pencil, the one that will revolutionize my writing experience, or of the perfect calendar (the right size, shape, and subject), or of some desk organizing caddy that I have never seen before.

The pencil I've been using professionally (i.e., for grading papers) and for just about everything else for the last several years is the Papermate PhD, which is an incredible mechanical pencil experience. What I like about it is the way it feels in my hand - it's hefty enough that I can hold it comfortably without getting finger or hand cramps, even after hours of writing. But most importantly, unlike almost every other mechanical pencil I've tried, the PhD lead doesn't snap on me very often.

Plus, it's very stylish, as you can see.






But, although Office Max was my first love, lately, Target has become even more of a time and money sucking experience for me. Not that there aren't all kinds of reasons not to go to Target - for one thing, Target allows its pharmacists to decide for themselves whether or not to fill EC prescriptions.

Beginning of long tangent:
Though I sound like a broken record, it bears repeating: EC is emergency CONTRACEPTION. Not abortion. If there is an established pregnancy - which means that a fertilized egg has implanted itself in the wall of the uterus (which how the medical field defines "pregnancy," which is a medical condition, so it's not a definition that's up for grabs), EC will have absolutely no effect. So refusing to fill a prescription for EC is exactly the same as refusing to fill a prescription for birth control (which many pharmacists do, these days).

Here's what Target has to say about the matter (excerpted from AMERICAblog ):

From: Target.Response Target.Response@target.com
Date: Nov 14, 2005 11:14 AM
Subject: Filling Prescriptions

Dear Target Guest

In our ongoing effort to provide great service to our guests, Target consistently ensures that prescriptions for the emergency contraceptive Plan B are filled. As an Equal Opportunity Employer, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also requires us to accommodate our team members' sincerely held religious beliefs.

In the rare event that a pharmacist's beliefs conflict with filling a guest's prescription for the emergency contraceptive Plan B, our policy requires our pharmacists to take responsibility for ensuring that the guest's prescription is filled in a timely and respectful manner, either by another Target pharmacist or a different pharmacy.

The emergency contraceptive Plan B is the only medication for which this policy applies. Under no circumstances can the pharmacist prevent the prescription from being filled, make discourteous or judgmental remarks, or discuss his or her religious beliefs with the guest.

[snip]

We're committed to meeting the needs of our female guests and will continue to deliver upon that commitment.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Hanson
Target Executive Offices

I LOVE the - what is it - irony? Doublespeak? - of that last line, I have to say.

I just need to quote a little more for you from this blog, because Target's insanity may not be completely clear from the above email. In response to the above email, AMERICAblogger has this to say:

So let's ask Target if they also support the following Target employees:
- Check out clerks who verify how fat you are before selling you that package of potato chips?
- Pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions for Jewish customers who killed Christ.
- Pharmacists who don't want to help customers who worship a "Satanic counterfeit" (read: "The Pope," in fundie-speak).
- Pharmacists who only dispense HIV medicine to "innocent victims" of AIDS.
- Pharmacists who want proof that women seeking emergency contraception were really raped, and that they didn't "deserve it."
- Pharmacists (or cashiers) who are Christian Scientists - can they refuse to sell any medicine, even aspirin, to anyone?
- Pharmacists who won't sell birth control pills to unmarried women, condoms to unmarried men, or any birth control at all because God doesn't want people spilling their seed.
- Can fundamentalist Christian employees refuse to interact with gay people in any way, shape or form since gays are sinners, abominations, biological errors, and very likely pedophiles?

I'm still sort of surprised that Target doesn't get it. I'm still trying to get my head around how they can make the exception for EC and still make pharmacists fill birth control pills. It's all about what people think about how EC works, and not about how it actually works.

AND CHRIST, JESUS, WOULDN'T YOU EXPECT YOUR PHARMACIST TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE?!

So there are certainly reasons not to shop at Target.

But I do. And I've given up Wal-Mart and K-Mart is closed, so I. Don't. Want. To. Hear. It.

So - long tangent over - while I don't usually have very good luck with women's Target clothes (crappy quality - nothing I buy there lasts through the washing machine), I have wonderful luck with Target everything else - storage containers, furniture, picture frames, kids' clothes, and now...cleaning supplies.

I am obsessed with Method.

I have bought green cleaning products almost exclusively for the last decade or more - despite my reference to "Ajax" in that earlier post, which was mostly for effect (I used to clean with a green cleanser, and now I clean with baking soda, which is not really a problem on dishes, but still, it's the general principle, because in my mind, dish gunk and sink gunk are two different things, even if the dishes sit in the sink.). So when I first saw Method products on the shelf at Target a couple of years ago, I ignored them. I mean, sure, they were cheap, but so are commercial cleaning products in general, compared to Seventh Generation or Ecover or whatever green products I find at the co-op.

And I was so sure that Method was just another cleaning product that, last week, when I picked up some supplies, I was outraged that the ingredients were not listed on the bottles, and I came home ready to report them to the FDA.

It turns out that non-toxic products are not required to list their contents. Score one for Method (minus one for the FDA: if your kid drinks bio-safe cleaning products, doesn't Poison Control still want to know what's in them?!).

Method also uses biodegradable ingredients. And they don't test on animals (score about 100 for Method).

Plus, their products are so CUTE!!





















They are almost - almost - as cute as the Koziol products (such as Curly, below):



And there you have it. And we're back to office supplies. Sigh. Moan.

The Abortion Ban Makes NO EXCEPTIONS

Just to reiterate, that's N-O E-X-C-E-P-T-I-O-N-S for survivors (let's start saying "survivors" instead of "victims") of rape and incest. Here's one letter to the Argus Leader that got it right:

Michelle Wolf's letters [are] all basically saying the same thing: she believes HB1215 provides an exception for rape and incest. This is not true, no matter how many times she says it.

Her idea of an exception? Emergency contraception. Of course, the same legislators who passed the abortion ban also rejected bills that would have require[d] ERs to provide rape victims with EC, so many will never know it exists. If they do, they might be in a town with one pharmacist who refuses to fill the prescription (thanks again to the Legislature). Also, victims have to access EC within 72 hours for it to be effective. Not an easy task for a 13-year-old incest victim, even if you don't consider all the other barriers.

The people who passed HB1215 were not concerned about rape and incest victims when this bill was being discussed, and now that they realize how opposed the people of South Dakota are to it, they're trying to back-pedal. It's too late. We know this bill is extreme.

Caitlin Collier

If a grown woman I know who works at Planned Parenthood can't get EC on a Friday night, what's a 13-year-old gonna do? Better make sure to get raped during the work week. Thanks, SD Legislature, for your compassion. (And thanks, Kelsey, for the heads-up.)

Little Idiosyncracies

We all have them, right? One of mine is that I'm very particular about my kitchen and bathroom. I'm strictly a toilet-lid down person, and it bothers me no end when a guest leaves the lid up. There is something about an open toilet that just strikes me as unspeakably rude (though only in my own house - it doesn't bother me in other people's homes, though I will close the lid if I use your bathroom). But more to the point, we have cats, and when we got them, I didn't want them drinking out of the toilet as have the cats of some (pretty disgusting, actually) people I've known. And then we had a kid - ditto (um, that is, I didn't want the kid throwing toys in - I don't know anyone whose kid drinks out of the toilet, and if you do, please don't tell me about it). So the toilet lid rule has been in effect for over ten years.

And still, people who've been visiting us for that long and who know us well leave the lid up.

I also have a thing about the way my dishes are washed. Right now we have houseguests who drink tea. And tea, if you have noticed, leaves a stain on cups and the teapot. Now, it never fails to amaze me how a person can take a clean mug - sans tea stain - enjoy a cup of tea, wash the cup, and put it back away with a new tea stain and see nothing wrong with that. These particular house guests do this ALL THE TIME. And they do it to the teapot, too, which never gets used unless they are visiting, so I know that they are the tea stainers.

The thing is, the tea stains come out easily with a little scrubbing - if you get at them right away and don't let them sit. But, for whatever reason - and I've had occasion to spend plenty of time wondering what the reasons might be (they're losing their eyesight? they're so accustomed to the tea stains in their own dishes that they no longer see them? they don't realize that tea stains come out? they figure tea stains are just a part of life, so why not embrace them?) - they don't seem to notice the stains, and so I am left to sneak into the kitchen later and re-wash things so they are not permanently stained.

And then there's the matter of the dish scrubby. I have a whole dishwashing system. There's the dishrag, for actually washing the dishes. I knit these myself and wash them in the washing machine every so often. There's the scrubby, which I buy at the store, for scrubbing pots, but I use this sparingly and take time to get the bits of food out of it each time so that I won't have to keep replacing it. (I really, really hate filthy dish scrubbies - ick.) There's the steel wool, which I never use but which is there for the occasional steel wool emergency. And then there's the old, filthy and disgusting scrubby, which is used for cleaning the sink.

Guess which one guests always use on the dishes?

What boggles my mind is that they ALWAYS pick that one, and it's not just our current houseguests but others, too. And I always say, "please don't use that one, it's for cleaning the sink and counters," and they are perplexed as to why I'd be bothered by them washing my dishes with the same dirty-looking scrubby that probably has AJax or whatever still in it. And then next time, they use the wrong one, again.

Along similar lines, I rewash anything that comes into contact with the mat under the dish drying basket, just on principle. I'm surprised and revolted by how frequently people will put silverware flat on the mat - I mean, ick. Or maybe everyone but me scours their mat on a regular basis. Even so, my mat does not even *look* clean.

Furthermore, I have a very picky dishwasher, and it needs to be loaded a certain way. And everytime these house guests visit, we must go through it again - please let me or my partner load the dishwasher because it's really fussy and it won't wash the dishes if you don't stack exactly the right way. And yet, I find things like upside-down silverware in the silverware basket.

It's not that I'm especially clean. I am perfectly willing to let dishes rot in the sink until I can get to them, and every so often, that means a week. I know that's disgusting to many people. I'm not thrilled about it, but I'm used to it, and I can live with it. But if I'm going to clean, I do it right, and that means that I follow all of the above "rules" and that when I wash a dish, it has no food particles or anything left on it afterward. (Unlike SOME people.)

Now, I'll be honest. You caught the title of this post, right? These are MY little idiosyncracies. I know that. I know that the world won't end if the silverware is loaded upside-down or if the toilet lid is up. I know that, at bottom, this is Plainsfeminist being OCD and not entirely an issue of cleanliness. But then - it's my kitchen, isn't it, and my bathroom. And I suspect that, what's really going on is that our houseguests are trying, from time to time, to teach me a lesson, because we end up having the same discussions each visit about these things.

(You might be thinking that any host who would let her guest do the dishes deserves to be taught a lesson. But really, I implore them not to. The only way to prevent it is to always do the dishes immediately after using them, which is so totally not my style. But seriously, if you come over for a meal, please don't do the dishes. It will cause me enormous anxiety. If you feel you must do something, just bring some foodstuff to serve with dinner, and we'll call it even.)