Pansy: November 2003 Archives

If I May

| | Comments (6)

Michelle wonders "....why anyone would need to breastfeed in a public restaurant anyway. Certainly doing so is going to hinder your own eating, which is the point of restaurants. Couldn't you feed the baby before going out to forage in fast-food establishments for your own nourishment?"

This is where many people get confused, nursing is not entirely about nutrition. Nutrition is definately one of the side effects of nursing, but nursing is about bonding and comfort too. Children do not nurse the same way they bottle feed, they nurse and stop, nurse and stop. I often think that once a baby leaves the womb, there is still a long process of the child separating themselves from their mother physically because babies really do not seem to understand right away that they are separate people. Nursing and weaning are a part of that process. People often confuse the two-bottle feeding and nursing while bottle feeding really is a horse of an entirely different colour. It is entirely about nutrition. I think if you never had children or are not in a profession such as a lactation consultant, this is not entirely obvious.

As for going out and being able to put the baby down while you eat-BWAHAHAHA!!!! Good luck! On the other hand I am quite adept at pretending to be an octupus. I amazed ladies at Weight Watchers with my ability to hold Gorbulas on my hip, and put on my high heel zip up boots with one hand and balancing on one foot. Nursing while eating is small potatoes.

Lastly, if you have ever tried to not nurse a baby or toddler who wanted to be nursed, this would cause a much bigger disturbance and commotion than nursing a child in public ever will. If a baby is colicky and screams all the time, a breast maybe the only way to soothe the child. Let's not even talk about stubborn toddlers. Of course, does Mom really need to go to a restaurant once in a while she still has a nursling? Kyeah! Stressed out Mommies are not a pretty sight.

Frustrated!

| | Comments (2)

I am a little frustrated with Weight Watchers because I am really not sure how many points I should eat. I can eat 30 points a day and lose. I can actually eat a little bit more than 30 and lose more , but I am not sure how much more before it is too much more. I am also not sure how much under 30 points I can eat and still lose. The 20 points my Weight Watchers leader-person insists I am supposed to eat because my nursling does not nurse exclusively is unrealistic unless I pass out. For example, if I do not lumberack it up at breakfast, by 10:30 AM, I am shakey, sweaty and seeing stars. An example of my "lumberjack" breakfast is one bowl of oatmeal made with half a cup of oats, 1 tablespoon of blackstrap molasses (iron) and two tablespoons of flax (omega fatty acids and fiber). That is four points, One orange, another point. Maybe a piece of light bread toast and margarine and a cup of coffee simply for pleasure, another 3 points. That would leave me with 12 points for the rest of the day, which I think is too low for a nursing Mom.

I asked my WW person again about this, and she really thinks I am trying to sneak a few extra points in there. She is very nice, but is oblivious to the concept of a nursing two year old who really takes calories from you. Anyway, I would like to have some extra points for Thanksgiving, but not sure how low is too low to bank or how high I can go on Thursday. My normal pre-nursing course of action is to starve all day on Thanksgiving until dinner, but again, I would be passed out if I attempted that now.

So Jacko is in Trouble Again

| | Comments (1)

I am not sure what the situation is here, but the thing I cannot understand (molestation allegations aside) is why any parent in there right mind would let their children hang out with this guy after that bizarro interview last winter.

Finally, an Episode I can sink my teeth into

|

First, why don't they just change the name of the show to Spike instead of Angel? I am wondering how we are supposed to feel about Spike and Angel because Angel is so annoying. Spike however is kinda cool. Gone are the days of Angel the Champion, Helper of the Helpless sacrificing himself for pregnant women whose demon champions he accidently killed, and the greater good. Now he is a Fat Cat who sits behond his desk at Wolfram and Hart. Boring...

Now the good part was the end when they brought Lindsay back. Yes, Lindsay, true to form and recognizable because the boy needs a haircut. What they are up to, no one knows, but we do know this, he is a dead man walking. Angel told him in Season Two to leave town and of he comes back, he will kill him.

Yep, That is Me Alright! Too Funny!

| | Comments (2)

Anne Rice
Anne Rice is writing your life. Go you goth girl, go.



Which Author's Fiction are You?

brought to you by Quizilla

Little Boys

|

They are running around outside with ski masks, gloves and their coats on but wide open and unzippered.

Spirituality, song meet in church

| | Comments (3)
...The jubilant music, clapping, shouting and swaying -- more commonly affiliated with a service at a Baptist church -- are a regular part of St. George's worship service.

"Our black folks find it difficult to go to white parishes because they're laid back. Here we try to touch our African roots," said Martin Amissah, musical director at the Arbor Hill church and brother of the pastor, the Rev. Kofi Ntsiful-Amissah...

It is the year 1977. My family just moved from New York City to Trenton, New Jersey because of my father's new job with the New Jersey State Department of Education. Since we have only lived in the community one day, my parents are unfamiliar with the community and attend Sunday Mass at the closest, most visible Church. The name of the parish is St. Hedwig's. The Church is filled with marble, statues, the faint smell of incense and the life sized crucifix that looks as if you can actually see Our Lord's blood dripping down. The Church is also packed. While the Mass is clearly recognizable as the Mass, my parents are a bit embarressed about not responding because they did not realise the Mass would be said in Polish. After Mass I present my parents with a five dollar bill. My parents who are absolutely surprised ask where I got it from and I point to an elderly gentleman walking down the street who sat next to me in Church. They apologise to the man and try to return his five dollar bill. He refuses and states it was a present for me because I was such a sweet little girl. Even though St.Hedwig's ministered to the Polish community of Trenton, there was no sense that being Polish took precedence over Catholicism here. On the contrary my father said he has not stepped foot in such a catholic Church since his childhood.

Fast forward to the year 1989. I am sixteen and ticked off because my parents whisked me half way around the world to the Fiji Islands in the South Pacific. The past few days have been eventful, flying from Newark, to Hawaii, to Fiji. Then driving three hours around a volcanic island (in other words-hilly) to have a breakfast of curried vegetables. That was two days ago. Now we we had to find Mass in the middle of a Fijian village of all places. When we found it, Mass was being said by an Irish missionary priest. The villagers were dressed in their Sunday best-meaning shoes and pocket sulus. But I take notice because they do the oddest thing before Communion, they genuflect. After Mass the priest who we never laid on eyes on ever before stops my mother and says "I saw you come in. I was wondering what an Anglican is doing in our midst?" What did he say? How could he possibly have known my mother was Episcopalian?

A few months and some crash catechism lessons involving Peter Kreeft books assigned by the Colomban Father, my mother would receive her first Communion in LoMary, the place where the first Columban missionaries would set foot on Fiji. The Mass would be in Fijian and my mother would reply "Amen" when the Irish priest offers her The Bula Modrai, or roughly translated "Bread of Life" pronounced mm-BOO-luh MON-dry.

Jump ahead again to 2001, Diocese of Albany. I am sitting in a parish council meeting. Tonight are to discuss social justice and reaching out to the community in a Christian manner. Laughter is just dying down because that witty pastor made a remark (again) "and the Italians here all know what stubborn is because they are all married to Irish people. Ha ha!" No we are not. My father is organising a baby shower at the Church for people to donate to Community Maternity Services. One lady states that even though she knows what the Church teaches about contraception, we really need to teach these black people about safe sex because they just keep having babies in poverty. Other topics addressed are how we will no longer kneel during the Consecration as "we are waiting for Rome to catch up with the rest of the Church...", and reaching out to the Community. Sister states she wishes she knew Spanish so she could attract some of the Jamaican immigrants to the Food Pantry. Um, Jamiacans speak English. Someone else comes up with the great idea that we should publish the names of the families we help at the food pantry in the weekly bulletin.

The previous Sunday I am sitting downstairs with my neighbor. She is like me half black half white with a Puerto Rican significant other. Our children could be siblings. She is adopted though. Her mother is white and after she adopted her daughter, decided her mission in life would be to teach her about all things black. One of ways is to attend "The Black Catholic Apostolate" Sunday Service. It used to be called St. George's. She shows me pictures of the procession where they blow horns and beat on drums. My neighbor rolls her eyes because even though she is not a practicing Catholic, there is nothing about this Church that "seems real" to her, so she does not go. Her mother tells me I should go because "it is better" there. They learn lessons about black history for Sunday school. I suppose my family would feel right at home there because since I am black, I raised to beat drums and blow horns to announce the daily rosary. Get real.

I have heard of this Church. I have also heard of the Spanish Church because it seems everytime I am introduced to someone, they usually say "you know there is a Spanish Church. They have Mass in Spanish there and everything, you should check it out." I had to tell one priest four times "But I do not speak Spanish!!!" It would be so affectatious and pretentious to start fabricating ethnic customs that truly do not exist in my family in order to feel accepted in a parish on the other side of town.

My problem with ethnicty in a parish community is not when the community is simply of a certain ethnicity and that is reflected, as long as the focus of the Parish is to bring the Sacraments. My problem is when ethnicity overrides the Catholicism. In a diocese such as mine where formation is minimal and people really have no idea why they are at Church (or at least that is what someone said at an Parish Council meeting "I do not know why I am here, it is part of my culture or something I guess.") many Churches start to become meeting areas for people of similar ethnicities. I can pull out more stories, such as one where people looked at my family and said "what are they doing here, don't they know this is a private Mass?" Or the time I my family was sitting in the same Church, where I was on Parish Council and some middle aged women sat next to us and said to each other "oh look, a LA-TEEN-O family" and when we knelt during the Consecration they said "it's because thay have a language barrier." but I am hoping I illustrated the contrast and difference between the two.

Eat Bagels At Your Own Risk

| | Comments (12)

So I was watching my new favourite TV show (since Angel has gotten so dorky and boring) Mythbusters
on the Discovery Channel. It is a show in which these two smart, geeky guys attempt to prove or dissprove urban legends by recreating them. In last's nights epsiode they ate a whole bunch of poppy seed bagels and lemon poppy seed cake to see if it would cause a false positive on urine sample drug tests. To everyone's surprise (at least mine) it did.

OK, now if this is true, I find this scary. My husband works a job that administers random urine drug tests, and according to their findings, he may very well eat one of my yummy homeade lemon poppy seed shortbread cookies, come out positive and get fired. This really seems not right.

I am curious if companies who rely on random drug testing realise the potential for false positives and if the concept is truly to deter drug use rather than to prove drug use?

In the meantime, this is a recipe for Lemon Poppy Seed Shortbread Cookies which I cannot eat anymore because of my diet. Bummer. This is not my exact recipe which is still packed away somewhere, but very similar. Enjoy and stay away from random drug tests.

I want to thank Pansy Moss for her first-hand example of racial attitudes in America. To address Mr. De Nunzio's point further, there was no question in the comments on this Blog of ignoring or trivializing racial differences. Indeed, as Pansy says, they are deeply entrenched. The question is, why do these differences exist and to what extent are they exacerbated by centuries-long non-Catholic attitudes. This is exactly what Pansy alluded to. To bring us back to the original topic, Jeff and I voiced concern over racialist views being touted as “traditionalist” (in both the political and religious sense). I completely agree that the “anti-racist” crusade is generally so much leftist agitprop. I’m not concerned that Nazism is going to take over the U.S. But that doesn’t change that fact that in a small community like traditional Catholicism, which liberalism seeks to marginalize, that fringe views can make themselves more strongly felt, whether they are promoting false apparations, errroneous theology or political error. Jeff’s concern with the ideas of Jim Kalb (or mine with Sam Francis) is the idea that ethnicity should be a fundamental factor in formulating political ethics and Catholic social policy. Nor is this some vague paranoia. None of us would care in the least except that there are more explicit examples, like the “Legion of St. Louis,” which claims to promote Catholic Action yet sells works by anti-Semites, racists and extremists. The deeper danger is that the spiritual struggle is reduced to an ideological one in which “holiness” is equated with arcane or even dangerous political preferences. These groups do exist, and where their presence is felt, dissension and confusion follow.

First, I would like to give a shout out to Jeff because he is a fellow Trad that doesn't buy into any of this BS, and that is why I am one of his biggest fans.

One of the reasons why I love the Traditional Latin Mass is the culture that is held in esteem above others is Catholic, not Spanish, not Irish, not black or Italian but Catholic. This is hard to find in many Novus Ordo Masses around here. That is why this racist attitude that seems to permeating the Traditional movement is so heartbreaking. The Catholic Church is Universal and all men are created in the image and likeness of God. If a person wants to stick to the true traditions of the Church Christ established, then we need to look at a person as a human and not as simply someone of some race.

The notion that since liberals promote "diversity" and "tolerance" (which are also buzz words for racism) it is also OK to support some type of white supremecy such as The Caucasian Club or whatever is stupid, reactive and nothing more than an excuse to get Catholicism to fit someone's own racist agenda. And last I checked, when you try to change the Church to support what you believe rather than what the Church teaches, that is called Protestantism.

Someone told me once that the notion of "integration" is nothing more than black people wanting pity for their dark skin? What the? No, integration is what happens when people stop being afraid of each other simply on the basis of race.

Two Inches of Snow

| | Comments (2)

Yep. And since we are city folk gone country, we did not purchase our pick-up truck snow plow combo yet, and we need to hire someone to plow our drive-way. For whatever reason we cannot seem to get people to return our calls. We think it is because we have not "established" ourselves yet in the community. Or a different sense of what "calling back" means.

The Mysterious Mind of A Four Year Old

| | Comments (7)

Posco(8) and Fastolph (4) were in the backyard raking leaves. In the backyard we have a pond and on occasion what looks like herons (I am not an orinthologist, so I am not sure exactly) come to do whatever it is that they do at the pond. I have no idea what it is, but it looks like they stand there and look at the water.

Now, when the rest of us see the herons there we look out the window, ooh and ah and say "oh, look at that pretty big bird". Not Fastolph. He snuck behind the bushes quietly so he could jump out in front of it and make faces at it. I bet the bird had no idea it was involved in some strange prepetual game of tag. With that, the bird (who was the same height as Fastolph) spread it's wings and flew away.

Now here the part I do not understand, what on earth would perpetuate Fastolph to jump in front of a bird the size of him and make faces at it? That would be the farthest thing from my mind.

This is kind of an interesting saga. When we lived in NJ, we lived not too far from "The Tiger Lady". My husband was required to deliver to her on occasion and noted she had an assortment of what seemed like wild (acting) dogs and tigers.

When the first tiger escaped, it was thought it escaped from the Wild Safari at Great Adventure. Later everyone found out it was from the Tiger Lady. Imagine, two places that house tigers in Central NJ-who woulda thunk?

The escaped tiger precipitated discussions on the requirements for exotic pets. I think Central NJ borders on an almost surreal place to live because we had escaped tigers and in a house around the corner they had a pet wolf they would bring for walks on a huge chain.

Finally Got Out to See Matrix:Revolutions Last Night

|

I am not sure what I thought of it. It was not like Return of the Jedi in the sense that it had it's own story, but it was nothing more than a "Part Two" conclusion to Matrix Reloaded. It had lots of neat sci fi special effects, but not enough martial arts in neat black costumes for my own taste. Also, more long speeches that put me to sleep. Mercifully, none of them were from Morpheus because he had enough monologues ion the last movie to fill Lawrence Fishburn's career...and um, someone else's.

I really cannot say too much about the plot because the movie was sort of plot free and just the conclusion to the story with lots of specail effects, so if I say anything, I may spoil the ending.

I will say that many of the holes in the last movie will still be evident in this one if you did not play Enter the Matrix(or sat to watch while your husband played) and watch The Animatrix. It sets up the characters better and the background. You have

I do think if you saw the first two, you need to see this one to satisfy your curiosity, but it can wait until it comes out on video.

More on Inclusive Language

|
The very fact that Jesus was a male is a stumbling block to you, and we must smooth it over. The very fact that He told us to call God Father -- 'Abba', 'Daddy' -- was an error; the only-begotten reproduced Son Offspring of God, who comes to make all things new, was a prisoner of His own time. (Jesus was not as enlightened as we moderns, of course.)"

And it denies that the Church is Bride and the Motherhood of Our Lady.

Cartoon Network-8 PM Tonight-I am So There!

|

Current Projects

| | Comments (5)

I have been working on
Butterick Pattern # 3218, views B and D
for Rosey Posey in a blue knit top and a matching striped skirt (made that today), Butterick Pattern # 3192, view B (center) for myself in a small whale beige corduroy, and Butterick Pattern #6286 (the jumper and little jacket) for Rosey Posey in a black large whale corduroy.

I hate taking forever to get projects done, I like to sit down and finish them so I am not thinking "oh dear, I have never finished that." Also, because there is a good chance it might not get done, and I hate the cluttered fabric pieces in my sewing things cubicles. Not too mention then I have to hear my husband complain "you spent all the money on that fabric a didn't even use it." I don't think he uses the word "fabric" though. Maybe it's more like "you spent all that money on that material and didn't even use it."

Posco is a little curious as to why I only sew for his sister and not for him. I told him boys clothes are too complicated. For the effort of sewing anything for a boy, it is pretty much worth it to go and purchase khaki pants, jeans and long sleeved rugby shirts.

What I really want to make myself is Butterick # 6057 but I need more practical attire at the moment. This is a problem I have had with clothes shopping for the last ten years since I became a Mom. I am not a comfortable casual kind of clothes person. But when Rosey Posey was a baby and the first time she spit up on me, I started wearing sweats. I hate sweats unless I am in a strange "not get dressed" mood, but not for every day. It has taken a concerted effort and even skill to figure how to dress practically enough and look nice and feminine even though I will spend a day homebound with perhaps a baby spitting up on me (not at the moment though). think it has taken literally like 9 out of 10 years of motherhood to figure it out.

Weekly Angel Update

|

I do not know, I fell asleep and did not wake up until it was over.

Second, Martin is someone who, like so many of us, grew up with conflicted identity, a foot in both the colonial Spanish world and the world of the black servants and slaves. His identity in Christ both enabled him to transcend his beginnings and to extend the deep love of Christ to all - even some animals, like rats which are widely considered vermin.

Martin de Porres is special to me because of this reason. I am not sure what challenges being biracial in Peru at that time posed, but like many saints their experiences are timeless personal accounts for those of us who need a helping hand in different walks of life.

I joined Weight Watchers again

| | Comments (5)

I have had a bit of a mortality check recently becauseI have been experiencing chest pains. I went to the doctor on Friday and he told me they are intercostal muscle spasms brought on by stress. Deo Gratias. He told me I need to "destress", which unfortunately is not happening anytime soon. So before I went to the doctor, I figured I need to buckle down on my diet again. I could stand to drop a size and keep check of what I eat.

Ok, so Weight Watchers works by like this point system. I am not sure how you define a point because it is measured by calories, grams of fat and grams of fiber. For example, 1/4 cup of rolled oats is 1 point, one glass of skim milk is 2 points, one orange is 1 point. You get the picture. For someone my weight, I would be allotted 20 points a day, plus 35 of what they call "Flex-Points" for the week to use as you wish. However a nursing mother gets 30 points. This is mainly for a nursing newborn, not a 22 month old. I decided to try 30 points to start because I have a real problem with becoming lightheaded and dizzy between meals. To be honest, I am not sure how to survive on 20 points at this stage of my life without being lightheaded and dizzy all day long (no "dizzy" comments please). I lost .4 of a pound, so my husband thinks I should stick with the 30 points as long as I am losing and do not have much to lose. (I have no idea how much I should lose because I refused to look at my weight. I let my husband see and he said it was not much.)

I really wish the program was tailored a bit better to extended nursing Moms though. I think the concept is for Mom's who nurse little babies, and then stop early. It is hard to gauge how many calories or "points" a mother of a toddler who nurses constantly should be taking in.


Di Fattura Caslinga: Pansy's Etsy Shop
The Sleepy Mommy Shoppe: Stuff we Like
(Disclaimer: We aren't being compensated to like this stuff.
Any loose change in referral fees goes to the Feed Pansy's Ravenous Teens Fund.)


Pansy and Peony: The Two Sleepy Mommies



Archives