Pansy and Peony

(Psst, I have to edit some more, but my husband wants to take me to breakfast. If I don't save this now, it won't get posted. So you get the gist, right? I know, very unprofessional since I'm getting paid to rant...no wait. Eggs over easy! )

I've been trying not to let people piss me off because there is so much...loaded political crap out there these days. And I'm busy, super busy, BEYOND busy! Busy with what, Pansy? I went back to work a year ago as a CNA, but I quit a couple of months ago. It was too much. I have teenagers-THREE teenagers. One in college, one in high school who seems intent on packing every sport into his HS career possible, and a bunch of other rugrats ranging from activities to football, karate and grinding Play-do into our nasty-ass rug. My house is a mess. I admit it. Meals are friggin awesome at Casa Moss though, so you win some, you lose some. Oh yeah. in the midst of all that,everyone in my family kind of like died the past year. OK, not everyone-my Dad, my FIL, my grandmother, my great-uncle...Oh, and I started to train for a half marathon, and did a number on myself overtraining, so we're almost laying low in that department, but that would take another blog post.

So, in the midst of my busy-ness, I've been surviving and ignoring many an opinion on just about...everything. Not enough time to vent except the occasional tweet, FB status or virtual high five at Simcha.

Sigh. People wanna piss me off. So we come to this lovely Time Magazine cover: You've seen it, I've seen it, we've all seen it! The skinniest, most perfect looking, flat-chested Mom ever to birth a baby with the biggest-ass, corn fed, linebacking tree-year old I have ever laid eyes on, standing on a chair, breastfeeding. We see the mother, but this kid's Dad must be some hearty stock, I tell ya. The caption tells us this kid is three, but everyone looks at him and thinks five or six right away. I don't think the age matters, but this pair was picked for pure shock value. I know because it wouldn't have the same effect if they chose me and my Gabriel, who happens to be three right now. Here he is:

He's in a box that some Beach Body stuff came in. With Nutella on his face. He decided to make himself a make shift bed because he fit in there. I don't know. And he's angry because his siblings thought this was funny and won't let him fall asleep. They keep standing over him chanting "look, Gabriel fits in a box!" and poking him and taking pictures while the poor kid's trying to take a nap, in the living room. In a Beach Body box. Shut up! I'm Mother of the Year!! Anyway, if you replaced that other three-year old with mine, it wouldn't be as shocking.

So, getting back to the cover "Are You MOM ENOUGH? Why attachment parenting is driving some mothers to extremes-and how Dr. Sears became their guru". Dr. Sears is my guru? Whoa. Oddly, I have a bunch of his books, and read them years ago, but I can't remember much.

Getting back to the article, I unfortunately don't have a Time subscription. Darn. So I only read this excerpt:

The Man Who Remade Motherhood

Joanne Beauregard is nothing so much as she is a mother. When she and her husband had trouble conceiving, Joanne quit her job as an accountant to focus full time on getting pregnant. When she did, she chose to give birth at home, without pain medication. Then, for months, Beauregard sat on the couch in her Denver-area living room, nursing her infant from sunup to sundown. She nursed much of the night as well, since the baby slept in bed with Beauregard and her husband Daniel, a software engineer.

When Beauregard got pregnant with her second child, she continued breast-feeding her...

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2114427,00.html#ixzz1uYPAuXw5

Where shall we begin? Let's go backwards.I didn't get to read how Joanne's story ends, but she clearly is a nut with the home birthin' and picking a lifestyle that CHAINED her to her couch. I agree. Did her husband get those chains at Home Depot? The really strong ones? Does he padlock them before he goes to work? Oh yes, when you have a newborn nursling, your life changes and is pretty much about the baby, and nursing makes that harder, especially ecological breastfeeding. But isn't that life with a new baby? Child? It changes things. What exactly is supposed to happen in our lives, especially is we choose to have children? We stay 21 year old young adults forever? The imagery here is ridiculous.
All right, I'm going to skip ahead. The whole idea is that AP is extreme. I never found it to be that way, it was simply mothering. Of course I'm going to breastfeed, it's more convenient, cheaper, easier. I'm not even getting into the medical benefits etc, because we're talking about how it affects the mother and competing for the "who's the better Mom" nonsense award or some crap. It's just EASIER. Of course I'm going to co-sleep. You think I want to get out of my bed a bazillion times at night when I could just roll over, pop a boobie in the kid's mouth and everyone is happy? Of course I'm going to stay home and take care of my kids, that's my job. Every core of me being says so. They need me and I'm the only person who can do this for them. Of course I'm going o extended breastfeed because if you ever breastfed a baby, six months, one year or someone, jump in and tell me, what's is "normal" isn't that long. I think I said this. I have seven kids who all pretty much weaned themselves, except the last. I pushed that a bit. After 17 years straight, I was a bit sore. One was done at 7 months, one at 4 1/2 years. The rest, about 2 1/2. I will say this-you cannot force a child to breastfeed. Who would want to?

Home birth-better experience. Ecological breastfeeding-child spacing. Cloth diapers-cheaper. Baby wearing-getting dinner done. Not really a movement. Just going with the flow. Look, this Mom thing is hard. We do what we can to get by while doing our best to enjoy this experience, to love and nurture them, to get by, to try not to warp them too badly. I don't have much of an opinion how other mothers operate, because I know how rough this job is.

See, but these days we must redefine "normal". A healthy woman blessed with normal fertility taking poisons to destroy that gift. A mother having a child ripped from her womb. These are normal, and OK. Now we are labeling and rewriting normal mothering practices and saying some doctor "remade" it and calling it "extreme" "whacky" "bizarre". Whatever.

The perfect mother is one who isn't a mother, I think.

a nice little collection here.

Via.

This is genius: Mary Poppins as a symbol of the Blessed Virgin

via the Dark Lord

...I'd'a baked a cake!

The invaluable Simcha Fisher on keeping our peace as we fight the wickedness du jour.

"In the world you shall have distress: but have confidence, I have overcome the world." --John 16:33

Because to not answer is, itself, an answer

Ryan Gosling totally wants to hear all about your homeschool curriculum this year.

Dr Lucia Knoles, Assumption College: Commonplace Books: "a vital tool of erudition" (and why you're going to be assigned one for my survey class)

She quotes Confucius:

If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant;
if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone;
if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate;
if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion.
Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said.
This matters above everything.

Denise at Frugal Homeschooling: Keeping a Commonplace Book

She quotes:

A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial reason, that "great wits have short memories:" and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supplemental memory, or a record of what occurs remarkable in every day's reading or conversation. There you enter not only your own original thoughts, (which, a hundred to one, are few and insignificant) but such of other men as you think fit to make your own, by entering them there. For, take this for a rule, when an author is in your books, you have the same demand upon him for his wit, as a merchant has for your money, when you are in his.

--- Jonathan Swift
"A Letter of Advice to a Young Poet"

She links to a how-to-make-one article at DIY Planner.

Alan Jacobs in First Things comments on the physical act of writing versus the ol' Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.  "Wisdom that is not frequently revisited is wisdom wasted."

A black death row inmate, in 1940's Arkansas, meets the Blessed Virgin Mary:

While [Claude Newman] was in jail awaiting execution, he shared a cell-block with four other prisoners. One night, the five men were sitting around talking and eventually the conversation ran out. During this time, Claude noticed a medal on a string around one of the other prisoner's neck. Curious, he asked the other prisoner what the medal was. The young prisoner was a Catholic, but he apparently did not know (or did not want to talk) about the medal, and seemingly embarrassed, he appeared angry and suddenly took the medal off from around his own neck and threw it on the floor at Claude's feet with a curse and a cuss, telling him to "take the thing". Claude picked up the medal, and after looking it over, he placed it around his own neck, although he had no idea who's image it was on the medal; to him it was simply a trinket, but for some reason he felt attracted to it, and wanted to wear it.

During the night while sleeping on top of his cot, he was awakened with a touch upon his wrist. Awakening with a start, there stood, as Claude told Father O’Leary afterwards, ‘the most beautiful Woman that God ever Created’.

At first he was quite frightened, not knowing what to make of this extraordinary beautiful glowing Woman. The Lady soon calmed Claude down, and then said to
him, "If you would like Me to be your Mother, and you would like to be My child, send for a priest of the Catholic Church."

And after saying these words She suddenly disappeared.

Get a grip.

From Regnum Novum on the appalling mess that is the State of California:

We may be tempted to conclude that all of these folks, the union boss, the career politician are just congenital heels, incapable of thinking beyond themselves. To that I would just remind us that A) there but for the grace of God go I, and B) in this culture of ours sin is a stern and imposing mistress.

So there's a super-secret memo out there that outlines why the President can order an American citizen killed without due process.

Up to now I've taken comfort in the idea that our military would not obey an illegal order. But somebody fired those drones....