katie allison granju

republicans before lee atwater November 30, 2005

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired
signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are
not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. The world in arms is not
spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the
genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children….This is not a
way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening
war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

– Gen. Dwight Eisenhower

poem of the day

“What Do Women Want?”

by Kim Addonizio

I want a red dress.

I want it flimsy and cheap,

I want it too tight, I want to wear it

until someone tears it off me.

I want it sleeveless and backless,

this dress, so no one has to guess

what’s underneath. I want to walk down

the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store

with all those keys glittering in the window,

past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old

donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers

slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,

hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.

I want to walk like I’m the only

woman on earth and I can have my pick.

I want that red dress bad.

I want it to confirm

your worst fears about me,

to show you how little I care about you

or anything except what

I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment

from its hanger like I’m choosing a body

to carry me into this world, through

the birth-cries and the love-cries too,

and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,

it’ll be the goddamned

dress they bury me in.

creative people have more sex…

….or so says this study

early weaning in sub-sharan africa

This is an interesting article on why early weaning (defined as cessation of breastfeeding before a baby’s second birthday) puts children at risk in Senegal.

listening to today…

elliot reads

Via Elliot’s teacher today, a photo of Elliot reading to Sabrina, their classroom’s HABIT dog. I am loving E at this age.

ouch November 29, 2005

Last night I fell down my basement stairs late at night, going down to turn off my dryer, which doesn’t turn off on its own. My leg got caught in the stairs and all twisted at the knee. Last night my shin bone hurt like hell, but today my knee hurts even worse. I seriously think I almost broke my leg. So I’m grateful I didn’t.

My body has been rather battered by various things in the past week. I feel like I need a day or two in bed.

celiac disease

Breastfeeding may protect against celiac disease (gluten intolerance).

when the glass ceiling is at home November 28, 2005

This is the most interesting article on the whole “why are so many smart, educated women staying home with their kids” debate I’ve read in ages.

It’s like I said last week (see post below on “dating down” and then discussion that followed), the real issue most women face is finding someone to help at home. Most married or partnered couples with kids find that life runs more smoothly if one partner focuses more on earning money and the other focuses more on domestic life. This just makes good logistical sense. Or it can work when you have enough money to hire someone to truly handle the domestic stuff while both partners focus on earning money.

The problem is that too often, women are assumed to be the ones who will handle the domestic front. And now, we are also expected to earn money.

I love being a mother and I’m pretty good at it, but I am TERRIBLE at housekeeping, cooking, etc. I am far better at the work I do at my job - at earning money. For this reason, if I lived with an adult guy, it might make good sense for that person to focus more on the home front, despite his gender.

parenting November 27, 2005

I’m reading an advance copy of my friend Adrienne Martini’s forthcoming memoir, “Hillbilly Gothic.” It’s to be published next summer by The Free Press and it’s just amazingly good. The core of the story is her bout with postpartum depression and as I read about how inept and clumsy and unworthy she felt as the mother of a newborn baby, I’m struck by how much I feel like that sometimes now, parenting my 7,10 and 14 year old children.

Parenting babies came very easily to me. I immediately felt comfortable with them and never suffered any baby blues or feelings of inadequacy like so many new mothers. In fact, I would describe the waay I felt during the early months of my children’s lives as euphoric. I felt pretty great.

But nowadays, I more often feel like I am screwing up. My parenting anxiety is at an all time high. I have no evidence that I am screwing up — they all seem to be doing fine — but I have tremendous feelings of guilt about the fact that I wasn’t able to stay married to their father and thus, they have to shuffle between two households. I find myself second guessing my parenting decisions more often and feeling more defensive than usual about my mothering.

I think it’s just a rough patch. This too shall pass. Parenting is about keeping your eyes on the prize: the kind of people you turn out when your mothering job is complete. But I am struck by how much Adrienne’s descriptions of her feelings of inadequacy with her new baby parallel the way I’ve felt lately…

"AA - America’s Stealth Religion" November 26, 2005

An interesting article with this title

gay priests November 23, 2005

This is an excellent op-ed piece (by a priest) on why the Catholic Church’s sweeping new ban on gay men in the prisethood is a colossal mistake, and one that will create the very problems it is seemingly attempting to eliminate.

"I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way…

“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.” – Jon Stewart

for the girls

This site is thoroughly amusing

Well worth the relative hassle to mess around with it.

mamasink

Don’t forget to regularly check out the very cool MamasInk.