10 Week Countdown

Scully and I got to hear the Bean's heartbeat yesterday. Everything is looking good, hamdillah, and we've got 10 weeks left to go.

I've already got $20 bucks riding on Jan. 7th, though, instead of the 14th.

But one way or the other we've got about 10 weeks to go. This demands some list making.

Goal for week 30 (next week)

• Clean my hole of an office. And for anyone I work with: I will not appreciate the humor in any cynical "when hell freezes over" comments
• Get my hair cut. Trimmed at least.
• Polish the kitchen cabinets. It is a small kitchen and I always complain that there's not enough cabinet space so this should be a snap!

Goal for week 31

• Back up the photos from our computer onto a flash drive.
• Clean out the door of the fridge. The fridge will be a more complicated cleaning project than my office so we best divide this up over a couple weeks.
• Purchase a new top that I can breastfeed in and wear comfortably in front of my father.

Goal for week 32

• Reevaluate the logic of publicly listing tasks like this that I am most likely to never, ever complete.
• Connect with other women about the value of getting through the day over the value of a completed to-do list.
• Go downstairs to back up the photos and spend the whole time shopping online for (but never purchasing) a top I can breastfeed in.

Goal for week 33

• Clean out the fridge for godssake. Just clean it out!!
• Decide that is enough for the week

Goal for week 34

• Sort through infant/newborn clothes
• Decide that this is enough for the week

Goal for week 35

• Resist the urge to go back in the blog and delete this post.

Send everything you've got!

Calling all good vibes.

Please send them this way. Slightly north of here, actually. For the family as a whole.

We are not in crisis. Everything will be fine. Khubz is amazing (hamdillah) We've got the bean (hamdillah again), Scully passed comps (hamdillah, again & again.) No matter what happens next we're having an incredible journey.

But if you've got extra vibes please send them this way.

Even more better femme fruit

You may recognize mi chiquita.

don't tell her i posted her pic, eh?

I unbelievably love her.

how was your weekend?

Khubz has strep throat. Poor girl. She also takes after Scully in her demeanor when ill. She is needy. And it is difficult to figure out where she may, in fact, be milking the situation. Everything was "Mommy holdyou?" with her arms up and tears streaming down her face. What kinds of infractions led her to such desperation?

• The seam of her sock had bunched up
• The Mommies were withholding "outside" just because it was cold and/or rainy
• Every single swallow hurts. Every single sip of juice, bite of banana or swallow of her own saliva

Strep throat does hurt. Even once the fever is gone and antibiotics are in full swing. I tried very, very hard to remember how much strep throat hurts.

Last night was better. Our good friends the Pairs came over and brought a great book, a great game and a fabulous good mood (all was good until the vomiting--not my story to tell.) Khubz was all tuckered out from playing with Funk & Noise. She went down in her own bed and slept solidly until about 11. I patted her down and put her back in her bed.

Sometime later Scully had joined me and we both woke up hearing Khubz cry next door. Scully gets her, gets the ibuprofin and gets back in to bed. Khubz fell right to sleep, sandwiched as she prefers, between the two mommies.

I'm anticipating a bit of an adjustment back to our regular sleeping arrangements once she's not sick. As Scully brought the girl to bed Friday night she looked pleadingly at me, "she asked to come to the mommies' bed so politely, I had to say yes!" And the girl is sick. And snuggles help when feeling so needy.

It wasn't all hard this weekend.

Scully & Khubz made collages with horse pictures. We had streaming video of elmo and bob construe. Ice cream was in continual supply. We did go outside a bit. Khubz and I "cooked." The girl stomped around in a frog costume most of the weekend. We put squirrel food out on the deck and got regular "AAAARDIA!!!" announcements whenever one approached.

Tonight we will low-key it with play doh and leftovers. Probably in that order.

femme fruit

s/t
Originally uploaded by Mellagi

I got a hit from someone searching for femme fruits. That deserves its own post, right?

On Strategy

Apologies for another ((sigh)) post. Anyway, here goes.

I saw a very good friend on Monday. She was living far away but is only 2 hours away now. I still haven't seen her much, largely because I suck & am curmudgeonly. But I was out there Monday and got to have coffee with her & really realized how much I miss her.

I told her this story I'd heard about a place we used to work together.


Our mutual sisterfriend (let's call her Fauzia Faidi, or FF for short) asked the receptionist to make some hotel arrangements at a hotel. The woman did and sent an email saying, "let me know if you get there & its unacceptable. If there's anything wrong with the place just call & I'll get you in someplace better!"

So FF goes up to get the paperwork and to inquire. "So, is there anything that's making you worry about the place? Like, did they say, yes I'm sure the exterminators will have lifted the quarantine by Monday night?"

And the woman says, "Well, I don't think of myself as racist or anything but some hotels are not well maintained."

Let's go with puzzled. It is more effective than pissed, right? The ff replies, "I think I'm confused. What does that have to do with race?"

"Oh, well, you know, its just that there's a certain group of people from a certain place" she looked around to avoid eye contact, "and they tend to buy up a lot of hotels and don't take care of them."

"Huh. Well, I've stayed in some really crappy hotels in Dodge that were all run by white people. Is that what you mean?"

"What? Er, oh, of course. It's just that on the phone, it was just, they sounded. . .i don't know"

"Is this about someone on a phone having an accent?"

"yes. yes. i'm so sorry! i don't know these things and i'm really not like that and its just that you hear people talking about these hotels and i don't know anything and you know so much and. . .and. . .and. . ."

So this whole conversation was low-level impact. No one was denied services, housing or healthcare. Our friend the FF was not worried about loss of her job, custody of her daughter blah blah blah. It was tiring, something to address & sigh about. The woman felt terrible and expressed every hour on the hour afterwards how terrible she felt. This only made the FF more tired.

So my good friend and I were parsing through this story.

"OMFG. You are making that up!" (I have been known to exaggerate, on occassion)

"In fact, I'm not."

"I just wish people would keep to the strategic racism. At least you don't have to deal with all their apologies afterwards."

Not the same thing at all.

There is something to be said for exposure and that some folks have simply not had much exposure to good information. There is something to being able to say "wow. that logic actually doesn't even make sense." Why waste energy on being surprised, shocked and outraged by what is logical consequence of the whiteness all around us? Respond, of course, but don't lose sleep over it.

And then I think about our last national election.
Fear and hatred of queers and arabs meant that more people voted for a hate-mongering, war-mongerer fuck than voted against him.

And then I think about where the above woman gets her information, who feeds it to her, who ensures it is the dominant cultural discourse, who maintains whiteness as we know it.

It's all strategy, isn't it?

on fabulousness & then on whiteness

Oh there is a lot going on in the world. A couple updates on our end:

scully passed comps!!! This is such wonderful news. I am totally, totally proud of her. Of course, she is on to the next thing: preparing for the oral exams. The order goes like this: coursework, comprehensive written exams (comps), an oral exam, dissertation proposal, research for dissertation, writing, writing, writing, writing, writing. . .

She is amazing.

We had an incredible date on Saturday where we decided to ditch the play and simply talk to each other for 4 hours. It was an unspeakable luxury. I don't think our friend Michelle had a similarly wondrous evening. She was treated to a Khubz who is thoroughly TWO and that starts with T and that stands for traviesa (mischief)

Though there was pizza and Bob-the-Builder there was also jumping on the couch and a time-out and a screaming protest of bed time. All this was happening while Scully was sipping her Mint Mojito and I was surveying the endless cheesecake options. We had such a good time.

Michelle claims not to have been scared off and has promised to come for dinner this week. Good thing. Khubz woke up happy as a lark the day after our date and reported the evening had been a success. Pizza. Bob the Builder. And what was the best part? Khubz grinned as she answered: "Michelle holdyou"

On a decidedly different note, it seems we need another electoral speech on race.

**********************************
From McCain gets boos at GOP rally for defending Obama

"Increasingly angry, supporters of McCain and running mate Sarah Palin have responded at rallies with loud cries of "terrorist" and "traitor."
At one such rally earlier this week in New Mexico, McCain visibly winced when his mention of Obama's name was greeted by the shout of "terrorist," but the candidate said nothing about it and went on with his speech.

Supporters at the Minnesota town hall meeting pressed McCain to get even tougher on Obama.
But when one man said he was scared to raise his unborn child in a country that might be led by a President Obama, McCain disagreed.

"I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared of as president of the United States," McCain said to boos and groans from his supporters.
"If you want a fight, we will fight," McCain said. "But we will be respectful. I admire Senator Obama and his accomplishments. . . . I don't mean that has to reduce your ferocity, I just mean to say you have to be respectful."

Later, another supporter told McCain, "I don't trust Obama.... He's an Arab."
McCain stood shaking his head as she spoke, then quickly took the microphone from her. "No, ma'am," he said. "He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with."

*****************************************

Okay, really? No, he's not an Arab. He's a decent, family man. I know this is no different than the "he's not muslim--look how much he loves his daughters" bullshit. I know none of this is new. But if McCain feels alarmed by the racism in his political base maybe it is time for him to host a speech on race in america.

Of course addressing race is Obama's job alone, right? He's the one who is "bringing" race & ethnicity into electoral politics, right? Because 200 years of white men were just a blank, neutral slate when it comes to race, RIGHT?

I am not saying anything new, I know. But does McCain/GOP have anything to say about race? Do white politicians have any responsibility for talking about race or more importantly, talking about whiteness??

" I don't trust Obama, he's an Arab." Attacking a Christian African-American politician by accusing him of being an Arab largely because of the Muslim roots to his name (and because you're supposed to cover up attacks at someone for "simply" being Black). . . This is not about definitions of Obama, or Arabs, or Muslims or Blacks. This is solidly about whiteness.

Allah made me live in Kansas

There's lots of buzz about Allah Made Me Funny.
I'd love to see it but Allah made me live in Kansas--surprisingly not one of the sites of the movie release. That's okay. I'm sure I'll catch it on video at the library in about 7 years.


A couple vids:



The first three minutes of this one about made me pee myself.

Caption Contest!

Scully has turned in a major, MASSIVE, life-changing project. Understandably, this means there's been some stress in the house. She turned it in yesterday with two minutes to spare. (I may have had something to do with this. She finished up her paper and asked me to email it to a friend for printing while she showered. I *may* have emailed an old draft accidentally. This was discovered when the friend, WHO SAVED OUR LIVES, called to report that the emailed copy had yellow highlighting all over it. We raced back to the house to resend. All this because there hadn't been enough drama, right?)

We both came home and broke into HOWLING SOBS.

All this is to say that I have nothing to contribute to the blogosphere except a caption contest. Another friend works at a religious hospital and gets emails with inspirational photos like this below. Um. . . Super Creepy, she says to me in an email. We can do better than that!

Got captions?

Eid Mubarak

I've started and deleted this post many times.

So Eid Mubarak.

A small, small glimmer of clarity

This interview on Fresh Air helped me out a bit. Especially coupled with the giant pool of money episode on TAL.

Moments of clarity include:

• Rather than investing in a basketball team, this is betting on whether the team will win or not

• Purposeful creation of a shadow market

• Phil Graham writing legislation around derivatives as "not insurance" so states cannot regulate them

• These were bets & someone has made money from these bets. Yes, there are winners in this. Should we have an economy based on whether people make good or bad bets? Or should it be based on sound investments and productivity. This economy is based on people sitting at their computers and making bets all day long.

• The undoing of depression-era legislation that protected people's savings accounts from risky investments by investment bank/depository institutions

• Ultimate irony: The more you argue for deregulation, the more you end up with government owned entities.

• Eliminate the ability for banks & lenders to make money even if the loan fails. It removes financial discipline from the market.

Also making me feel like this was helpful? It was recorded in April and foreshadows some of what's going on now. In plain language & he speaks slowly too, which I appreciate given the topic.

Some additional glimmers:

Feeling better about the rejection of the bailout bill on DN!

Don't let the market freak you out about the economy from Beat the Press

Where did the money go? from Planet Money

It is still pretty dark in here though. Send a glowstick, eh?