happy birthday elvis August 25, 2004
Today is Elvis Costello’s fiftieth birthday.
bill o’reilly on john kerry’s swift boat brouhaha August 16, 2004
I can’t believe I agree with Bill O’Reilly about this, but I do.
just say no to homework
In honor of my children’s first day of school, here are my thoughts on why homework is a bad idea.
jane turns nine August 15, 2004
My daughter, Jane is nine years old today. The time has passed so quickly that ike most parents, I can’t believe how old she is.
Jane is special because I contracted a dangerous virus, CMV, while I was pregnant with her. I was hospitalized for a week during my first trimester and was advised to get an abortion, which I almost did. This is because CMV is a leading cause of congenital mental retardation, deafness, blindness and other serious health and developmental problems. Two separate amnios revealed that my baby was indeed infected with CMV virus in utero. I was really scared.
On the evening Jane was born, the hospital room was full of doctors and nurses standing ready to rush the sick newborn off to the neonatal intensive care unit. Instead, the baby arrived weighing 6lb 14 ozs and with a head full of black hair. She was completely healthy but for some minor eye problems that quickly resolved themselves. She also had such a loud, hearty wail that I knew she would be okay.
Jane’s only lingering problem from the CMV is her teeth. She has gotten way more cavities than anyone else in her family because the high fevers I had in the first trimester weakened her enamel. Other than that, she is fine.
I adore having a daughter. She is a constant revelation to me. She looks absolutely nothing like me, with her dark skin, hair and eyes — compliments of her father’s French heritage. In fact, when she was a baby, people used to ask me if she was adopted. She’s gorgeous.
She’s a competitive equestrian, which is a joy to watch. I put her on a pony for the first time when she was five years old and haven’t been able to get her off since. She’s a driven athlete in her sport and works really hard at it.
She’s also a girl’s girl. She loves clothes, dolls, shoes, new hair-dos and Hilary Duff. She loves to read but would rather be riding or playacting some dramatic scenario she’s imagined, often bringing both her brothers into the game.
I am so blessed.
olympics
I wasn’t that excited about the Olympics but now that I’m watching them, I have to admit I’ve been sucked in. I’m one of those intensely patriotic types of liberals (
(the kind people like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter say don’t exist) and I got all teary watching Michael Phelps listening to the national anthem after he won the swimming gold.
Of course, as a horsey person, it’s the equestrian events I’m most excited about. One of the horses competing with the U.S. team this year was purchased for only $2500 a few years ago by his current rider (a firefighter near Seattle). The horse was formerly an unsuccessful racehorse and a pack horse.
These are the kinds of stories those of us without unlimited horse budgets like to hear 
nanny needed August 13, 2004
I am looking for a part-time nanny in Knoxville. Hours would be 2:30 pm until 7:00 pm three to five days per week. Must be able to drive own car and have great refs and clean driving record. Competitive pay + mileage.
The job will involve picking my three school age kids up and ferrying them around to their various afterschool activities, plus hanging out with them at home. We have a pretty active family, so the person who is right for this job will need to be energetic and mature. Must like animals, including dogs and horses.
This is a great job for a college or grad student.
Email me at katieallisongranju@yahoo.com if you are interested or know someone who might be.
mcgreevey’s resignation
I have a lot of compassion for New Jersey Governor McGreevey’s apparent lifelong struggle to deny the reality that he is gay. I agree that it took courage to come out on national television and he certainly did not blame anyone else for his problems in his rather moving resignation speech.
But the issue here isn’t homosexuality. It’s infidelity (he’s married) and dangerous political patronage in return for sex (hiring his unqualified boyfriend to head New Jersey’s homeland security efforts at a salary of 110K annually).
No matter what your sexual orientation, it’s wrong to cheat on your partner and children and it’s wrong to betray the people who elected you by hiring people to important positions because you are sleeping with them.
babies were born to be breastfed August 3, 2004
I finally saw one of the controversial Ad Council-produced billboards that I wrote about last winter — the ones that the infant formula industry continue to try to kill.
It was on a a small highway in rural South Carolina. It was completely black except for one line in white: “Babies were born to be breastfed.”
I was pleased to see it and I think the message is simple and to-the-point but it amazed me to see this incredibly unassuming and un-slick billboard because I know how hard the formula industry has worked to prevent these billboards from appearing.
tropical storm alex & pawley’s sland August 2, 2004
My children, my sister, my bro-in-law, and my niece and nephew are vacationing together this week at Pawley’s Island in South Carolina. We go to the beach every August but usually we go to the same house every year on Edisto Island. We waited too long to book our Edisto house this year so decided to try something different with Pawley’s.
It’s a very nice house and a very nice island but I still like our slightly less posh house on funky, southern goth old Edisto more than I do preppy Pawley’s. At Edisto, people really seem to live there (and they do) and the amusement for us consists of things like walking to the one and only store on the island — a smelly, cramped Piggly Wiggly — to buy sunscreen and fish bait. On Edisto, there are spooky old graveyards and lots of hanging moss and people sitting on mattresses in their yards eating boiled peanuts. There’s weird and random folk art in the marshes and I can go into Charleston — one of my very favorite cities in the world — for the day. Here at Pawley’s, the day trip would have to be “Pigeon Forge on the coast” — Myrtle Beach, my idea of hell on earth.
Still, the beach is always fun. This year my littlest child, Elliot, age 6, has suddenly decided he loves the water and today his Uncle Ray taught him to skimboard. Elliot is a very bold, athletic kid but for some reason, he has always been tentative around the water, unlike his siblings and cousins. But something changed since last summer and now I spend far more time trying to call him back closer to shore than urging him to get in.
Apparently there is a big tropical storm off the Carolinas but you would’t know it from the view out the window of our beach house. People keep calling us to ask if our vacation has been rained out, but honestly, the weather couldn’t be better. The only thing I’ve noticed is that the surf is pretty rough, but it’s been sunny, hot and gorgeous.
