Hey is that a soap box?: Sugar Babies and Daddies

Are you kidding me?

 

Did any one watch Good Morning America and the sugar daddies?  I wanted to write on their board, but I had just too much to say and I get a little PG-13 when I note the difference between sex and love making.

 

First off, we women need to make a pact.  If he’s married, we’re not interested.  Women are too competitive with each other, too leery of each other, to worry about some chick is going to take our man, even if we don’t want him.  Now if my husband found a cute little thing that makes him happy.  Fine.  Give me the divorce, half your stuff, and the kids and go have a nice life.  Spend as much money on her as you want, but don’t you dare think you can get away spending the family money to buy access to some nineteen-year-old’s twin bed.

 

Second, let’s be honest, little sugar babies.  You’re whores.  You are.  If you want a guy “to take care of you” and you fuck him (yes, fuck because it ain’t love making) to thank him or because you feel obligated, then you are a prostitute.  Now don’t feel too bad.  I know lots of girls who felt obligated to fuck a guy because he bought them a nice dinner or gave them something.  Granted, I was taught just to pay for the next meal, but I can see where you might get confused.  The difference between sugar babies and the ordinary girl is the ordinary girl isn’t looking for a guy “to take care of her.”  And if this is the road you girls choose, diamonds aren’t your best friends.  They don’t resell as well as you think.  Take a cue from your foremothers; the best courtesans received property and houses deeded to them.

 

 

Third, any woman, who had a good dad, would never ever call a guy a “Daddy” or a “Sugar Daddy.”  It turns my stomach just to think of it as I remember all the times I called my Dad, Daddy before I was cool enough and old enough to shorten it.  Once my husband joked about it after I had left my job to raise Evan.  The moment the word “daddy” left his mouth, his face contorted, and he said that it was a poor joke and one never to be mentioned again.  I looked over at the baby who would one day call my husband Daddy and quickly agreed with him.

 

Fourth, you girls who fuck as a thank you, you sugar babies, you all are making the rest of us look bad.  Most of us can’t be bought, not for a lobster dinner, not for a diamond ring, not for a vacation to the Bahamas.  But this will perpetuate the myth that all a girl wants is a guy’s wallet, and really, some guys aren’t even worth that.

 

And I promise I will make sure my boys aren’t the fools, who pay for love, that they aren’t the idiots who believe they can have it both ways, that aren’t the jerks who take advantage of the situation because that’s one of the many jobs of a mom, to raise the good guys.

The Responsible One: Or crap, I’m an idiot.

I am the responsible one.  I have always been the responsible one.  Even as a child I took responsibility for the stupid actions I committed.  Yes, I locked my brother out of the house.  It was stupid.  I’m an idiot, and I’m incredible sorry.  Yes, the other car backed into me.  The bronco stalled so I couldn’t reverse, and I was too frustrated and crazed to remember the horn.  I should have told you right away before my brother, but I was embarrassed.  I’m so sorry.  It was stupid not to tell you.

 

I was the responsible one in college.  As the designated driver, the straight edger, I took care of the driving making sure every one got back to their respective rooms safely.  No, sir, she really must be going; yeah, I know she’s hot, but she has a boyfriend, and she’s had too much to drink, and I’ll take the number, and no, you may not take her home.  I don’t care if you want to stay; he’s a creep, and you’re going to bed.  Yes, sir, my friend is a little drunk; just let him buy a sombrero for 25, and not the pink one.  No, you did not buy the pink one.  Yes, they’ve been drinking, and yes, they want twenty tacos, and no, I don’t know why.  Ok, we’re turning down the music, so I can have some hearing tomorrow, and we’re rolling up the windows because it’s f-ing freezing out there!

 

I was always the responsible one in college and in adulthood, taking my girlfriends to drugstores.  You’re an idiot, you know that?  How hard is it to get on the pill?  How hard is it to get a condom on?  I don’t care if it would have broken the mood.  The test is twelve bucks.  Fine, but you better pay me back because I only have 20.  See, it’s negative.  You’re damn lucky, you know that?  Here, I bought you condoms too.  You owe me 20.

 

So if I’m so responsible, why am I in this mess?  I’ll tell you why because I’m an idiot.  I can hear my mom now, asking why I went off the pill so soon in the first place.  Because I was having two periods, meaning I was bleeding for two f-ing weeks, woman!  And of course, my brother will have the I-told-you-so smirk.  Why does he even know?

 

Mom: Your brother thinks you’ll miss his wedding.

 

Me: Why does he think I’ll miss his wedding?  We’re planning on being there a month early, and Evan is the ring bearer.

 

Mom: He knows you’re off the pill.

 

Me: I’m the responsible one.  Wait.  Why does he know I’m off the pill?

 

My brother: (Walking into the room) Because Mom told me.  She said that you were off because you wanted to get pregnant in December, and I said you wouldn’t make it.

 

Me: Why did you tell him?

 

My baby brother (looking up from the football game on TV) You’re on the one with the commercial of flower fairy from Fantasia, right?

 

Me: How does he know what pill I’m on?  Is nothing sacred?  Dad, what do you know?

 

(At this time my husband escapes the room with the boys saying something about the backyard and a nice day.)

 

Dad: I don’t know anything (as he sternly pays attention to his game). 

 

Poor Dad, he found out I was taking the pill when I asked him to drive by the pharmacy for my prescription.  He didn’t know; my mom didn’t tell him.  At the time, it was for regulation of my cycle, but that’s just something no father wants to think.  He hated hearing my mom informing me that we share the same bust size in our early twenties.  My mom was buxom, and I was just his baby daughter.  Not to mention I shacked up with my husband, and my father always mumbling something how he’s the fastest draw on the department and how would my soon-to-be-husband like to go shooting out on the range because those tree huggers closed down the nice very PUBLIC shooting range, but he guesses he and the boys could take my husband to the very QUIET mountain pass.  Thanks, but no thanks.

 

So I fended off my husband for over a month, just like when we were dating.  I insisted he buy condoms, but he insisted they just didn’t feel right.  Do you really think you the first one to use that line on me or just the first one that will have success on that line?  Go buy condoms!

 

Then came Saturday.  Oh, it started innocently enough like every time.  But then I had dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, oxytocin running rampant in my system because when Mother Nature wants you to stay put, you stay put to make sure all that sperm doesn’t slide back out.  (Did I ever mention I did a huge research paper about attraction and sex in bio-psych?  Fascinating, remind me to tell you some time.)  Since my brain was under the influence of these drugs, I think I can plead temporary insanity.  As I tried to do the math in my drug-hazed brain, my husband went ahead with what he assumed was an ok, and I gave up doing math until the next evening.

 

During the rest of the day, we joked about child number three, until I realized that if I had to wait until late December to start than what is the due date now.  So the first calculator I found was an ovulation calendar where I plugged in all the information.  My husband is a dead man.  Apparently if I had a normal 28 day cycle, I just hit the jackpot.  You have got to be f-ing kidding me.  But let’s say I do my usual 30 to 32 day cycle, which would put me at the end of the week, which is much safer.  But I know how long sperm last, an average of 3 to 5 days in the body, and I know that some men produce a “super” sperm that can last up to a week.  A WEEK!  Seeing that we only have to think we want to be pregnant and we become pregnant and that it took twice for Evan and once (ONCE) for Sean, I think I can bet which sperm my husband has.  This is why the rhythm method (aka Vatican roulette) does not work for me or my husband.

 

Then I looked at the due date.  He is so f-ing dead!  The due date would be July 28^th, the very day of my brother’s wedding.  My brother is going to kill me!  Ok.  Ok.  Now both my boys came early.  Evan was five days early, and Sean was two weeks.  Everything will be fine.  My husband insisted that he would bribe our doctor to have everything happen all right.  Bribe the doctor, the best ob/gyn in the county?  Yeah, that’ll happen.  But my husband was pleased, and it really didn’t seem like there was that big of an obstacle to conquer.  We could do this.

 

Until I remembered that my health insurance does not cover maternity.  We decided to save some money and take this type because I’m the responsible one.  We were planning on switching this month.  And because insurance companies are very picky about pre-existing conditions, we would be screwed.  A kid costs about 20,000 when all is said and done.  I don’t believe God would just drop that kind of money in my lap, and I wasn’t going to give up my ob/gyn for some crappy Medicare if we could qualify, which we wouldn’t because we make too much money.  Oh f.  He’s a dead man. 

 

Now my best friend is laughing during this whole texting crisis because I’m acting like every other college girl accusing the guy of it being all his fault.  I know this, but I’m the responsible one.  Plan B?  Plan B.  Damnit!

 

I remember when I was given plan B before I had an ob/gyn and I used to go to Planned Parenthood for my annual paps and my prescription.  I always laughed at the idea of using Plan B.  I was the responsible one.  Brush my teeth, was my face, take my pill.  Every morning with out fail for years.  I never even had a pregnancy scare.  Plan B?  Hahahahahaha.  I’m an idiot.

 

After a brief consultation with my best friend, we decided that I should skip Planned Parenthood and go straight to the pharmacy because it was a Monday morning and I had to take the boys.  They would not have dealt with the wait.  Besides, I wasn’t sure that my church wasn’t holding a rosary outside the doors.  That would be a great way to meet other Catholics.  Excuse me; I saw you at mass yesterday; we discussed the benefits of me sending my son to school there.  Unfortunately the nearest pharmacy that carried the pill was in the very heart of the very conservative, Republican town.  The pharmacy in question had been there for about a hundred years as a pharmacy and soda shop.  Now it is a pharmacy and classic diner.  But it still is something straight out of Mayberry with the gentle grandfather-looking pharmacist.  Crap.  I’m the responsible one, so here I go.

 

I pack the boys up, promising Evan the Taco Bell he was asking for the last couple of days.  I checked to make sure I looked presentable with my wedding band firmly on my left ring finger.  As we walked through the door way, Evan became excited that we were going to get lunch and perhaps a chocolate milk shake.  Sorry, kid, next time.  Telling the boys not to touch any of the knick knacks for sale, I waited in line behind people who were paying their diner bill.  Then I asked the nice, grandfather-looking pharmacist for the emergency contraceptive pills.  When he came back with them, he asked if I had used them before and began an explanation, adding the friendly questions of how were the boys’ Halloween.  No, ok, all right, yes, yes, we were here for the town Halloween celebration, the older one was sick the next day, but we took him to a few houses, they enjoyed it, thank you, thank you very much. Then I raced out of the pharmacy to the car with boys in tow. 

 

To Taco Bell and home.  I would have gulped the pills right there in the car without water if the pharmacist didn’t caution me about the potential nausea and vomiting.  Since my stomach had become a little sensitive (from Evan’s bug) and that I am prone to nausea with periods, pregnancy, and prenatals, I figured I best wait and eat lunch first.

 

Now I wait.  The idiot.  The responsible one.

Flanagan vs working moms and housewives

The problem with Caitlin Flanagan’s The Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing your Inner Housewife is Flanagan demonizes both working and stay-at-home mothers.  She wants to be considered fulfilled and important by being a working mother, but she also wants to create a home atmosphere where she stays to cook dinners and be there for her family.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have it all.  The problem lies that she holds working mothers in contempt because they miss that close bond with their children and believes stay-at-home moms are selfishly demanding me-time from their families, not caring to do the housework or even the mother work.  She believes in a simpler time when housewives were competent, content women who knew how to make a house a home.  This time never existed.

 

Her first look at the culture of marriage is through the bridal magazines, and she sees a world of inflated dreams crushing the very union of marriage.  She’s right.  But she tends to blame feminism for killing the wedding ceremony, leaving the American culture without any understanding of what the ceremony actually means.  Feminism did not kill weddings.  Materialism did.  Watch just one episode of Bridezilla, and you’ll understand that there is something very wrong with the institute of marriage.  Flip through a bridal magazine, and it will whisper of elegant dresses, extravagant dishes, and exotic locals.  The wedding industry cajoles, seduces, pushes weddings to be ever bigger because that is their business, to make weddings a significant occasion with a very significant price tag.  It is the savvy marketing that appeals to the very selfish, self-centered, greedy part of our society.  It is the dream that every girl is a princess, and every bride should have her dream.  Flanagan is right is laughable to see these women walk down the aisle in white dresses, forgetting that this is to symbolize virginity, but Flanagan forgets the white wedding dress only came to popularity with Queen Victoria’s wedding, when before any beautiful dress would do.  We are losing our bridal rituals, but we aren’t losing it to feminism.

 

While I have already discussed Flanagan’s views on the sexless marriage, I will just touch on them briefly.  Flanagan believes women are refusing sex in a passive aggressive way because they are doing all the work.  Because it’s the women’s fault for doing all the work, it is her problem to fix and mend.  I don’t agree at all. I think it’s a two person problem; therefore, it should be fixed by two people.  Another problem with this chapter is her first mention that if men started doing the housework like we women would like (cleaning up the crumbs after the dishes, putting notes in with the kid’s lunches, ironing curtains), men would be demasculinized in our eyes.  Ha.  I know plenty of men that help out with the housework, and they are still very much men.  I would almost bet they are getting more sex than the men I know who don’t help around the house.  Not only can we not keep our men satisfies, we apparently can’t keep a clean, orderly house either.

 

While Flanagan assumed stay-at-home moms could satisfy their men more than working mothers, she believes both women fail miserably when it comes to making a house a home.  Working mothers just pass on these chores to cleaning women, and so does the average stay-at-home mom.  Well, that was news to me.  I can’t even think of another stay-at-home mom that hired a cleaning person (well, except me, for three months after Evan’s birth at the insistence of my husband and his administrative assistant.  I fired her as soon as I could figure out how to run the household with a baby).  It is here that I realized the Flanagan is not an average stay-at-home mom, but that she had the means to do more and that she didn’t actually understand the plight of ordinary women.  According the Flanagan, stay-at-home moms go to the movies, the spa, to book clubs, leaving the house work to others, not even knowing the price of milk.  I am certain that most women, especially those who stay at home, do their own house cleaning, do the shopping with a budget, mend shirts, and all the other day to day things that Flanagan loves but never does.  She doesn’t understand the tedium of housework because she never did it.  She NEVER did it.  At this point, Flanagan should be fired as a sage for housewives.

 

Then Flanagan moves on to discussing child rearing.  After a chapter discussing the use of nannies in Victorian England, she then has a chapter about her nanny hired to take care of her sons because all the other stay-at-home moms have one.  Really?  Another interesting fact.  From the look of the blogs out there, most of us can’t find a decent sitter for a measly night out with or without a husband much less another set of hands to take care of the children five days a week.  In this chapter she talks about how inadequate she feels with her babies, and thank god her nanny is so good.  The rest of us mothers out there have felt our moments of inadequacy deep to the soul, and we dealt with it and moved on.  We were the ones that took care of the sick child, changing the sheets, bathing the child, calming the child, not someone else.  Flanagan also mentions how she wanted someone in the house to make it loving and warm, like her mother used to do.  That’s your job now, Mrs. Housewife.  We all miss our mothers taking care of us.  We make the bed so that we can return to it feeling warm and clean.  We cook cookies to eat the dough and have the smell run through the house because it reminds us of home.  Flanagan does not understand the desperate act of mothering. 

 

 

Flanagan is looking for a reason why she feels incompetent.  She finds it in the fact the feminism robbed women of home ec and the knowledge that we would be homemakers, important and loved.  She sees that mothers run after their children, taking them to every activity that can be crammed into their children’s lives, paying homage to the domestic goddess of Martha Stewart, and becoming addicted to organizing and decluttering.  Again I see these as symptoms of materialism and advertising.  Nothing can sell a parent better than the threat that their children may not be using their full potential; hence why many kids have several activities on their plate.  But this has been happening for some time.  My brothers and I were in scouts, volleyball, basketball, softball or baseball, swimming lessons.  If we could have afforded it we would have had music lessons.  My father and his siblings all took various music lessons and did various sports.  The fact that Americans have raised this to a new level of fanaticism is just yet another marketing scheme, trying to take money from parents who are trying to make prodigies or at least make them well-rounded enough to get into a good college.  As long as these activities are done to moderation, then why not schlep a kid around because we are yearning for a better life for that child. 

 

As for Martha Stewart and organization, I feel that Flanagan is right to believe this is a call for a simpler time.  Martha Stewart shows off peace and beauty as unattainable as that is in a house full of kids.  We yearn for a more organized home that runs efficiently leaving us time to redecorate, bake, or just plain relax.  It just makes sense that a busy mother would want this.  But I doubt that every household in those bygone days looked like the Cleaver’s or the Nelson’s.  Kids back then were much like kids today, tornadoes.  I think we set the bar too high to expect a perfectly manicured house while raising sweet, smart, clean kids.  Even my grandma didn’t believe in keeping an immaculate house unless company demands it.  Really Flanagan is living in a different world than what the rest of us live in, one with hired help.

 

The vary essence of this book is Caitlin Flanagan not realizing that housewives back then felt the same way as stay-at-home mothers today.  She even quotes Erma Bombeck as saying she went to see Betty Friedan just to get out of the day’s house work, but Flanagan fails to realize what Bombeck said.  To get out of the house work.  In Flanagan’s mind those fifties and sixties were a time where women were competent and confident in their roles of housewife, not minding the tediousness of the chores that had to be done and redone every day.  Flanagan is looking to understand why she isn’t like that, and because she lost her mother before her boys were older than five, Flanagan never had the same talks that I had with my mom, where my mom admits to being just as confused and anxious as I am.  Flanagan wants to be like her mom but fails because she doesn’t understand her “inner housewife.”  Maybe she doesn’t understand it because she’s never done it.  She instead vilifies all women in what they are trying to do, encouraging them to give up on their dreams of having it all and sending their children to private universities.  I guess Susan Jane Gilman is right.  We’re all the fashion police.

 

Breaking a Promise On The Hell With All That

Ok.  Ok.  (I’m not sure if Evan got that from me; or I from him.)  I’m in the middle of reading The Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing Our Inner Housewives by Caitlin Flanagan.  I have realized I will probably have to hunt down and read most of the books that she quotes from, which might not be too bad, due to some sound interesting.  I promised you all that I would write when I’m done, but I HAVE to get this off my chest.  Really, I might be able to raise a flag and get some support here.

 

I just finish reading “The Wifely Duty,” this is the point where I actually flip the bird at the book.  I was with Flanagan during the preface as she mourns the death of her mother, who will not be immortalized in the way her writer of a father will be with an archive in a college somewhere.  I understood the heartache and the fear of not being remembered, but I believe the lessons of motherhood and fatherhood are passed down through the heart and memories.  (I follow my great-grandmother’s advice, though I never met her, because her daughter and granddaughters followed and taught it.)  In “The Virgin Bride,” I agreed with Flanagan that the wedding industry is CRAZY, and all you have to do is watch one episode of Bridezilla to know that.  But I think this phenomom is due to sauve marketing and advertising of the bridal industry feeding off of the greed and selfishness in modern American culture versus that feminism fatally wounded the white wedding as it was known.  (More on these subjects later)  But to say that it is MY duty, and my duty alone, to keep the passion alive in my marriage, is enough for me to want to burn the book and be thankful that I bought it second hand so that there is no record of me reading it.  Wait, I guess I screwed that up when I decided to write about the book on this blog.

 

Like many young wives and mothers, I work my ass off, just like many young husbands and fathers work their asses off.  I have even actually had this discussion with a marriage counselor who said that many couples in their twenties and early thirties have a diminished sex life.  The counselor maintained this was due to the hard work and stress both partners were dealing with.  Those years are crucial to people who are building their careers, and these are also the years that there are small children in the house, who are taking up a lot of time and energy.  Once the working partner(s) make some head way in their career and the children start doing things for themselves, the couple reinitiates their sex life.

 

To say that it is the wife’s duty to make the husband satisfied is insulting.  It takes two.  Without going too much into my own marriage (just in case my husband does read it, because you know he will now that I wrote about him), let’s just say he wants it on the days that there was no sleep the night before, teething, fighting, pressing buttons, peeing, vomiting, and of course chores.  It never fails that the day he comes home from a stressful day to fall asleep on the couch to the noise of Finding Nemo and couch sliding is the day I’ve been wistfully fantasizing about when the boys go to bed and it’s the two of us.  If I remember my human biology right or even the sex course, I believe it takes two people.  I have a hard time believing that all those sexless marriages are due to a working mother’s resistance to her husband not cleaning up after the kids, which is just as comical as Greek actors running around the stage with paper maché penises agreeing to peace.  Hell, if that’s all it took to get world peace, much less a husband to remember that you have to wash children’s hands and faces after ice cream, women would be refraining from sex all the time.  The fact is that is doesn’t work, and in the end, women just have too much to do than to add wear sex lingerie as you cook dinner so you can give your husband a BJ the moment you finished putting the children to bed.

 

Really, who wants chore sex?

 

The fact of the matter is that if the husband and wife help each other out, they will be more willing to jump enthusiastically in bed because they will have the energy.  While my husband wistfully remembers the time before the boys, he has to think even further back to a time before he was building a company from the ground up.  And I will look forward to the time I can drop the boys off at my mom’s.

Apologies

To my Beloved Readers,

        Especially Penelope, badmommymoments, and Lindsey,

 

I apologize for my rant yesterday.  It is one of my fatal flows to allow myself a short snapping fuse that explodes with a horrible rant, like a thunderstorm that comes in, destroys, and leaves.  I thank you for reading and responding.  (I can actually picture badmommymomments rolling her eyes.)  I told my father about my rant who told me I’m becoming too sensitive, which is probably true.  He listens to my rants quietly and then turns the mirror my way, so does my best friend.  Maybe I’m a little unbalanced because she’s away, yet again, for her work, and I think it just might be that time of the month.

 

But really you didn’t need to witness (or read) a whiney, angry rant with all bark and no bite, sort of.  What was I pissed about that some one wants to be June Clever?  I don’t, so why should I care?  And I really don’t understand how you do it Lindsey with everything you do around your house or you, Penelope, with a professorship and two boys.  I’m amazed.  I promise I will reread To Hell with All That and clarify myself better, and I think I might read a few other books on the subject as well, seeing that this hit some nerve that needs to be explored.

 

As I also explained my actions today to my husband as he fixed himself a plate, he didn’t see my problem with the word housewife as the book explains it.  So I casually asked if he wouldn’t mind be called a househusband*.  He said he preferred the term domestic economist.  Ha!

 

So in conclusion, I again thank you for your patience, and if I write about this weirdness of being a housewife as I come to terms with it, fill free to roll your eyes and move on to the next post.  And badmommymomments, you might have noticed I said a dozen cookies out of the refrigerated dough, which actually comes in 18 cookie packs.  I eat a half dozen raw.

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* My husband dreams of the day where he has retired with a large sum; while I go to work.   He believes he’ll be able to do a better job than me, even though he is allergic to house work. He has actually said, “I’ll have gourmet food on the table, the kids cleaned and not fighting, and the house will look so good Better Homes and Gardens will want take its picture.”  Granted this vision is several years away, and the said kids will be in school.

Housewife! Kill me!

I’m sorry; I was just planning on getting out of the blogging world and calling my parents when I happened on a couple of posts that made me go WHAT!  Now I tend not to argue with people on their own blog; it is their own opinion.  Who am I to say they’re crazy?  Then we come to Faemom’s House of Insanity, and I have complete editorial power.  (Though I don’t mind if you call me crazy; I believe I’m one foot there with the other on a banana peel.)   But I just read some one referring herself to June Clever because she had cookies and milk ready for her kids, which is awesome, but they were from refrigerated dough.  And another blogger was extolling the wonderfulness of the book The Hell With ALL That: Loving and Loathing Your Inner Housewife by Caitlin Flanagan.

 

Ok, first off, you’re not June Clever for baking refrigerated cookie dough.  You just aren’t.  You can use it to make people believe you are, especially guests, but don’t for a minute believe it.  I have bought the refrigerated cookie dough when I’m jonesing for chocolate chip cookies and only need a dozen to get through.  I’m freaked out because for a wholesome (yes, I actually used the adjective “wholesome”) activity the other night, the boys and I made cookies from scratch.  Add that to the “bone” necklaces I’m making them and some friends for Halloween and that I’m making costumes, I am seriously stepping towards Cleverism.  I prefer to be more like Harriet Nelson from Ozzie and Harriet; she had spunk. But I digress, I made cookies from scratch with my boys.  Mainly because I didn’t want to turn on the TV and my mom’s copy of Martha had an awesome recipe for cowboy cookies.  And they are heavenly.  Trust me, the irony of baking cookies from a Martha Stewart magazine is not lost on me.

 

Next.  To Hell With All That is a very bi-polar book, and I planned on making a better post on it because it needs to be written.  I haven’t read the book in six months, so I have to reread it to give you all a real gist of the matter.  But let me just say while I was nodding in agreement, I started getting angry with the book.  Apparently the author puts the everyday housewife crap on a pedestal.  I mean like taking out the garbage and vacuuming and taking care of sick kids.  Basically all the crap we hate to do, and usually the stuff our husbands take for granted (but I bet some of you have really sweet husbands that think you’re totally a goddess for doing it, that’s just not all of us).  Well, it turns out the writer had (and probably still has) a maid and used to have a nanny until her kids went to school.  Are you F-ING kidding me?  You’re going to tell me to embrace my inner housewife when you have a maid and a nanny?  You had some one else to clean up vomit and wax your floors.  And I shudder at the term housewife, and I’ll explain in the latter post why she loves it.

 

Ok, I promised I wouldn’t get in to it until I reread the book, but it is obvious that I need to.  So after I finish the one I’m working on, which may take a while because it’s around a thousand pages, give or take a hundred (don’t worry, amazing writer, page turner and all), I’ll reread To Hell with All That and give a full report.  I promise I’ll even admit I’m wrong if I like it the second time around.  And I have only admitted that twice in my marriage.

Hate Speech

Just a thought before I relieve Sean of crib duty, I was looking at the fastest rising blogs on WordPress, trying to figure out what makes them so popular.  Good writing?  Knowing people?  Better tags?  What?  And I came across “American Women Suck,” the third fastest rising blog.  I prefer that you don’t seek this guy out because he just wants attention, which he’s getting.  He’s whole blog was hate speech toward women.  Just nasty, cruel pictures and writing, making women look just like monsters.  Nothing made sense, pulling statistics and facts out of his ass.  And on one hand it’s really sad because obviously this guy has been hurt many times by “women.” (I have quotation marks because I know guys who swear they lost a job to a woman but have no proof.)  I mean this guy must have had a horrible mother and a horrible wife, but get over it and realize most women aren’t like that.  On the other hand, it really pisses me off that people have a place to spew their hatred.  What if my kid came across that?  Why would anyone want to read that garbage?  I really think that WordPress should make hate speech blogs private.  What a jerk.

Men’s chores: A Conversation

I bet you think it will be between my husband and I, and you would be wrong.  During my daily conversation with my mom, I mentioned how I asked my husband to fill up my SUV that he was borrowing.  Amazingly enough he didn’t forget, and I was very glad.  (Which in a way is kind of pathetic that I get excited that my husband does something I asked)  Any ways, the conversation:

Me: . . . So he actually filled the tank.

Mom: You know, Pauline’s (a friend of my mom’s) husband always fills up her tank. 

Me: I know, Mom.  (Can we feel a lecture coming on?)

Mom: And your dad fills up the Mustang about 95% of the time.

(And here I thought he did that just to get away and be on his own for a little bit.  My dad’s a lone wolf.)

Me: I know, Mom.  It’s just I feel that who ever is driving the car, when it hits an eighth of a tank, can go fill it up or at least replace the gas they use.  My problem is he has left the car on empty when I’ve had the kids.  So it’s nice that he filled up the tank.

Mom: Well, we just think it’s a husband’s chore.  (silence)  What are you thinking?  (Is it that obvious?)

Me: I was thinking that you raised me to believe that there were no men’s chores or women’s chores.  They were just chores that needed to be done.  If the dishes needed to be done, then someone would do it.  If the garbage needs to be taken out, someone will have to do it.  You taught me to do “guy” chores.

Mom: (pause) I was a good mother, wasn’t I?

Me: Yes.

Feminism and Motherhood

“Don’t call yourself a feminist.  I hate feminists,” said my college friend with disgusted horror.  A boy at the table said, “Yeah, call yourself an equalist, someone who stands for the rights of everyone.”  I was confused; did I not work my ass off for four years get scholarships and an entrance into an university?  And I find people like this here?  I looked over at my best friend, who shrugged and started bobbing his head to music only he could hear.  By the rhythm, I guessed it was Spice Girls and realized he was not going to come to my aid, not because he agreed with the other two people at the table but because he didn’t want to waste his time on petty arguments when he could think of something happy.  (Please don’t confuse this with stupidity.  My friend is wickedly smart, an environmental scientist, who could solve math equations that took three pages to solve.  He just finds political talk boring, except with me.)

I sigh and turn to the boy.  “You don’t believe in equal rights, so don’t get cocky.  You don’t believe in gay marriage or any gay rights because they’re ’special rights’ (Yes I did use my fingers for the quotes).  You’re homophobic and suppressing issues.  We all know it.”  With that said, I turned to my girl friend.  “I guess you’re right, feminists are pretty scary.  They’re women who think for themselves.  But isn’t it nice to go to college and have a career?  Isn’t great that we can have our own bank accounts and houses?  Gee, it’s swell that our husbands don’t have the right to beat us?  And I love wearing shorts and jeans, don’t you?  (yes, she was wearing jeans.)   So you might not like feminists for some crazy belief that they hate men or are dikes, but without them, we would not be here.  I gotta get to class.” 

I was reminded of this conversation as I read some blogs were women wrote that they didn’t consider themselves feminists but Sarah Palin motivates them.  Well, I’m glad they found some woman to motivate them.  Lucky for them, none of the liberals are going to be pissed off that Palin is a working mom, or that she had a child so late in life or that her teenage daughter is wrong to be pregnant and even keep the kid, or that Palin is a faminatzi.  Because that’s feminists have fought for those choices.  They keep fighting for choices for both men and women.  And also lucky for the newly realizing conservative feminists, no one is going to call them men-haters because they like a female politician.

But back to motherhood.  My mom was a feminist and her mom and her mom.  Actually, there hasn’t been a weak-willed woman in my mom’s side in living memory.  And my dad, well, he did marry my mom, but he was a feminist too.  And the stories I hear of my great-grandma, well, she was steal and silk.  My mom made sure us kids understood the value of choice and that we couldn’t judge anyone.  It wasn’t our job.  She raised us to love justice, hate injustice.  She was like every other mom out there, wanting her kids to be better than she and her husband.

As for me, I’m a mom of two boys (so far).  I, who taught her favorite babysitting charge that boys were bad.  I, who wouldn’t date in high school because “boys are like apes.”  I who claimed the only uses for a guy were killing spiders and sex.  What do I teach my boys of feminism?  Well, first I’ve got to stop making all those jokes about men.  But I grew up with brothers, so I know their inner workings.  Second, I have to show them what is expected of them as men.

I have to show them that it’s ok for guys to do work in the kitchen and go to dance class.  I have to show them that you can watch football and take care of children.  I have to show them that we respect people’s feelings and opinions.  I have to show them that it’s ok to cry, it’s ok to be strong. it’s ok to kick someone’s ass who’s being an asshole (when the need arises).  I have to be a strong woman, illustrating that women can fix a sink and dinner, wear make-up, or choose not to shave her legs.  I have to teach them to include everyone and not to make fun of someone who is different, whether she’s a girl or he’s a different religion.  I have to teach them that relationships are important and your partner’s feelings are just as important as theirs.  And finally, I plan to scare them with the thought of teenage marriage if they get a girl knocked up and she decided to keep the baby.  I have to teach them there is nothing they can’t do.  Every night I pray that they will be smart, strong, sweet, and the good guys.

I stay-at-home with them, and that is my choice.  One day I’ll probably go back to work, which most stay-at-home moms have to work at some point or another.  That will be my choice too.  That’s what feminism is really about: choice.  It’s working so everyone has a choice in their own lives, just like democracy. 

In the end, we’re all trying to make sure that our kids are better than we are.  My boys have dozens of various balls and a kitchen.  They have arrows and swords and baby dolls and stuff animals.  They play with my make-up brushes and my purses.  They were their father’s shoes and hats.  Granted Evan will climb into any heels he finds laying around.  They play with fairies, King Fu Panda, and cars.  We read them books about girls and boys.  So I think they’ll be pretty well rounded.  But if they think they’ll become sexist pigs, they learn they’re never too old for their mother to discipline them.