Finding more time now that I’m a mom July 2, 2008

I spend a lot of the day reading blogs and articles and books to keep myself informed about what I can do to protect my family from dangers and to do something to stem the onslaught of global warming (and to protect the environment in other ways).  I am a member of nearly a dozen forums to discuss just these issues (how to do it the greenest, the cheapest, the biggest impact-est), and a member of several community groups which address some of these same issues.  I spend a lot of time on these matters, more than twice the amount of time I spent on them a year or two ago, despite the fact that I have less time to spend on anything now, because I am a mother.

I want the best for Elijah, and I am certain that he will want the same for his kids, and his kids will want the same for their kids.  Is there anyone out there who doesn’t want to give their children not only the best, but the opportunity to one day give their children the best?  If there is, they need to have their children taken away from them, because they are not fit parents.

I want to share everything I’ve learned with the world, its been a lot.  I’m learning still more every day.  Heres a quick run down of what I’ve learned today, for example.

Pesticides likely kill Y sperm, and exposure to vinyl (and other dioxin containing products) causes baby boys to have lower sperm counts for the rest of their lives

Sign a petition to eliminate BPA from baby bottles BPA leeches out of plastics and gets into our food (or is absorbed by our skin) and mimics estrogen in our bodies, leading to all sorts of nasty side effects, from uncontrolled weight gain and inability to lose weight, to cancer, infertility and genital deformation in your children.  It can also cause boys to grow breasts.  Yikes!

A kick ass, all electric car that can go over 100 miles on a single charge and 65 mph, is going to be sold in America as early as next year for under 25k.

Smog (the shit that comes out of the back of your car and the powerplant where you get your electricity from) will kill you.  Just like second hand smoke will.

 

Note:  I actually started writing this weeks ago!  I never found time to finish and publish.  So I’m publishing now.  I hope the links still work.  Enjoy!

Pregnancy Pact? July 2, 2008

My head has been swimming with thoughts of these 17 high school girls in Mass. who made a pact to get pregnant.  A friend of mine said I should be careful writing about it, because it is still just speculative, but last I heard several of the girls had admitted to there being a pact.  Has anyone heard for sure?

 

Anyway, what struck me as odd about the news story is that school officials are using this situation to bring up discussions about whether or not birth control should be offered at the school.  My first thought was, “What good would that have done?  These girls planned to get pregnant.  They simply would not have used birth control, no matter how available it was.”  Apparently, many other people thought the same thing.

 

Then I heard that there was a daycare facility at the school so that students who have children can finish up their high school education, at least.  My first thought about that was “Oh, how nice.  Well at least these girls have some sort of chance of raising their children under livable conditions,” because I can only imagine how hard it would be to be a single mother and not even have a high school education.  It’s hard enough for me and I have military training and some college.  But my reaction to the schools daycare facility was not the norm.

 

I was amazed at how many people felt the day care facility encouraged students to get pregnant.  As if giving girls who made a mistake a chance to make a descent life for themselves and their children was a bad thing.  Too many people look at children of unwed mothers as punishments to the mothers for being “slutty”.  Oh, should the pregnant woman or girl seek an abortion their tune is shockingly different.  From instant conception takes place it is a child, with rights and feelings, but the minute it’s born, it suddenly becomes a punishment, not a child, and it is not deserving of loving parents who are able to properly provide for it.  People with this attitude make me sick.

 

But I do try to be open minded, and the more I thought about it, the more I could kind of see how the day care facility might have played a hand in helping the girls to make this foolish choice (naturally, a lack of self respect and an abundance of stupidity played the primary roles).  I do not feel like it encourages children to get pregnant.  Obviously, unless it is a very small school, more girls do not get pregnant on purpose than who do.  But, by taking away some of the consequences of having a child young, you take away some of their reasons not to do it.  If you couple that with making absolutely no effort to discourage pregnancy (not offering birth control in school, for example) you get a double whammy.

 

So what should this school do in an attempt to keep this sort of thing from happening again?  I say keep the day care facility, because children deserve parents who can work and provide for them, but also, offer these children birth control.  Say to them, “This is here to help you if you screw up, but we’d prefer if you didn’t screw up in the first place, so here’s something to prevent it from happening.”  Discourage, but don’t exile those who make a mistake.

 

I think maybe every school in the country should consider something like that.

 

Of course, this does nothing to address the serious self respect issues these girls are facing, and their obvious lack of judgement, but I think I’ll tackle those subjects some other day.

Obama’s speech on dead beat dads June 17, 2008

I’m registered Green, but I’ve got no beef with Obama.  He has, I think we all have to admit, said some pretty kick ass stuff.  I don’t agree with him on everything, but he’s certainly not a bad guy.  I don’t think he’ll make a bad president (I just don’t think he’d be the best president either).  So when I heard some critical remarks about his Father’s Day speech at my Green Party meeting yesterday, I was a little curious as to what he actually said in his speech.

Here’s what all the fuss is about.  “You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled - doubled - since we were children. “  That’s what Obama said in his speech that struck a lot of people as racist.  I can see where people are coming from on this one, but really, if you read the whole speech, I think people calling it racist are just searching for something to dislike about it.

This is what I hate about politics and why I feel so jaded about it.  Lets just all refuse to take things in context so that we can find as many reasons to hate each other as possible.  Obama was speaking to a primarily black audience, and that one mention of African American single parent homes was obviously a “This is what this speech has to do with you” addition.

For example, I could make a speech about all the drawbacks of driving a Hummer to a bunch of white, upper middle class people.  The white people might be thinking “What does this have to do with me?  What does this have to do with us as a group?”, so it would be a good idea for me to site some sort of reason I’d be making this speech to this group by saying something like “This percentage of white, upper middle class Americans drive hummers, and it affects us in this way.”  Are white people the only ones who drive Hummers?  Of course not.  Are white people the only ones affected by driving Hummers?  Certainly not.  Does it make the speech more relevant to the listeners if I show them how my topic affects them specifically?  Yes it does.  Maybe I’m misinterpreting his speech, but that’s how I took his one comment about black single parent homes. 

Of course, the racism thing aside, thank God someone is finally saying something about men’s responsibilities to their children in a big, public forum.  There was a time in this country when, if a young boy came home and said “Mom, Dad, my girlfriend is pregnant” the parents said “Well, son, you know what you have to do.  You have to take responsibility and marry that girl.”  Now, the parent’s response is more like “You don’t have to marry her!  You don’t even know if that baby is yours!”

Now, while I’m no advocate of getting married just because of a pregnancy this shows a drastic change in attitude towards unplanned pregnancy.  Where as before society told men (or boys, as the case may be) they had to take responsibility, now society tells boys that an unplanned pregnancy is not their problem, and we dump the full burden of what was a joint decision to have sex on the woman, calling her promiscuous by making accusations and doubting paternity with or without cause.  Society is suffering from this change in attitude, and good for Barack Obama for saying so. 

Most politicians want to ignore the problem of males abanoning their responsibilities as fathers.  Most want to quietly ignore how the pattern tends to repeat itself, and how, as the number of children who grow up in forgotten and unsupported single parent households grows, society starts to change to mimic what the majority of us experience growing up.  Family, after all, is the first society we all are exposed to, and how it functions for us as children is how we function in larger society as adults.

Politicians ignore the repercussions of unsupported single parent households because they, like most parents, don’t want their sons to “make mistakes”.  Its easy for sons to walk away from an unplanned pregnancy, not so easy for daughters.  Society’s sons can go about their lives as if the “mistake” was never made, but it still was.  Not only does this harm society, but it actually hurts our sons more than it helps.  Rights exist only in conjunction with responsibility, and by taking away our sons responsibilities, we have taken away their rights as well.

Women are no more foolish than men are when sex results in a pregnancy.  Both parties can take responsibility for birth control or making the decision to abstain from sex.  We are doing our sons a great disservice by not teaching them how to take control of their own reproductive rights and making them responsible for their own birth control.  We treat our boys like they have no control over where their penis takes them, what a horrible way to dis empower our sons.

When we sweep single mothers under the rug and try to pretend that the problem doesn’t exist, we do even greater harm.  Children do not choose their parents, yet we forget and shame them the same way we do their mothers (as if the mothers are deserving of shame).  Single parents need support, from families, communities, and governments.  Not for their sake, but for the sake of their innocent children who, no matter what you may believe about thier parents, did not choose to be in the situation they are in.  If parents and children do not get the support they need, then society will most likely see their children repeating the exact same actions that their parents did.

So thank you, Obama, for bringing it up and not ignoring the problem like so many others do.

 

 

I’m home! June 13, 2008

Actually, I got home Tuesday night but I’ve been too lazy to write.  Making a 900 mile trip with a six month old is no small task.  I needed to rest up.

First off, I want to say how saddened I am to hear about the passing of Tim Russert.  I literally just heard, and I am seriously, seriously sad.  Sunday mornings are never going to be the same again.  Was he even sick?  My CNN Alert did not tell me how he passed on, so I don’t know.  It just all seems so very sudden.  My prayers are with his family.

Next, I want to say that I feel bad for Missouri bashing.  Its not cool to bash on other people’s states, I get really offended when people bash on Colorado.  But, come on, the place has no sidewalks.  Its baffling.  I know it gets really hot there in the summer time, but I did see people walking and biking, and they have to do that on the sides of narrow, windy, hilly streets that are more often than not surrounded by thick, forresty growth, and thats just plain not safe.  While there seem to be almost no sidewalks anywhere in the state, they do have mile markers every .2 miles on their highways.  I don’t know if I want to live in a place where money is spent putting in a mile marker every .2 miles on the highway, but not on putting sidewalks on streets to keep people safe.  Unbelievable. 

Do you live in Missouri or a place like it?  How do you feel about your sidewalk situation?  Your public transportation situation?  Your bike lane situation?  Your mile marker situation?  I am struggling to understand why people are not completely outraged by what seems to me to be a massive misspending of tax dollars.  When peak oil gets bad St. Louis, and cities like it, are massively screwed.

There are a ton of things I was inspired to write about while I was gone, but I need to get organized before I can write them.  I just feel so scattered.  I can promise up coming posts about natural childbirth, co sleeping, natural household cleaners, and a few book reviews, to name a few.  In the mean time, here are some interesting things to check out.

This is a post from the Organic Consumers Association I just got around to reading today.

SOUTH KOREA BANS U.S. MEAT:
The South Korean government has responded to a rally last week involving more than 60,000 citizens protesting American beef imports. Major Asian markets have upheld a ban on American beef since the discovery of new cases of Mad Cow Disease in the U.S. raised consumer health concerns. Despite international pressure on the Bush Administration, the U.S. continues to ignore food safety concerns and violate World Health Organization guidelines by feeding slaughterhouse waste to animals and refusing to test all animals at slaughter for Mad Cow Disease. http://www.organicconsumers.org/madcow.cfm

This is a cool website.  I’d love to do something like this around here.
http://www.guerrillagardening.org/

Decode eco labels here
http://www.greenerchoices.org/eco-labels/eco-home.cfm?redirect=1

Besides that, here are the weekend plans.

I’m going to an Earth Fair tomorrow at Magna Carta Park in Denver.  I was going to go to Wool Market up in Estes Park, but the friend I was going to go with had to cancel, and to be honest, after the trip to Missouri I don’t know if I can afford to be driving up to Estes Park, so Earth Fair it is.  On Sunday I am going to be sad, because Tim Russert is no longer on Meet the Press.  On Monday, Elijah and I are going to visit a Hindu Temple in our neighborhood.  I’ve always wanted to go in there and see what the Hindu religion is all about.  I know a very little bit, that I learned in a Humanities class the semester before last, but I think it would be awesome to learn first hand.

Thats it for me.  Hopefully I’ll be a better blogger next week.

The greatest fear of single mothers May 29, 2008

A couple of weeks after I left my ex, I found out he was dating again.  This news broke my heart, not because I wanted him back, but because I was jealous of how easy it was for him to move on.  I wanted to move on.  I wanted to date other people and forget about the awful mistake of a relationship I had just gotten out of.  Maybe I didn’t want to move as quickly as he was (he had professed his undying love to another girl literally two weeks after I left him), but I wanted to be able to, at least.

The problem was that I was already gaining weight.  I felt like crap most of the time, always exhausted or hungry.  I had terrible gas, my skin was a wreck.  I didn’t feel confident enough to go to work, let alone date.  And even if I had felt confident, I was certain no one would want me ever again because I had been stupid enough to get knocked up by such an obvious loser (they’re all obviously losers when the relationship ends, so much so that we forget how wonderful they made themselves seem in the beginning).  He could move on, sleep around, go about his merry day, but he had ruined me, and I would never be worth anything again.

I was a wreck.  Logic, had I been listening to it, would have told me that none of those thoughts were true.  I was not ruined, and even if I were a pizza face for the rest of my pregnancy, that was still only 9 months.  Truth be told, I probably would have stayed single during that whole period even if I hadn’t been pregnant, to heal from the abuse I suffered in the relationship and to evaluate my mistakes so that I wouldn’t make them again.  But the part of my brain that produces logic had either gone on vacation during my first and second trimester, or had been beaten into submission by my raging emotional side, so instead I had to turn to support groups.

The more time I spent in those groups, the more I heard other girls express the same fears I had.  The difference was that when I heard other people express those fears, it sounded irrational (though natural and legitimate).  Slowly, I came to believe that my fears, though natural and legitimate, were also irrational.  After I came to realize this, I was able to enjoy the rest of my pregnancy.

I am still involved in all those single mother support groups (most of them on line groups) and every time there is a new member, she expresses those same fears.  Who’s going to want me now?  My life is over.  Etc.  Worrying about being able to one day find a man who will love us and our children is perhaps the biggest fear of single pregnant women and single mothers (besides the obvious fear of something happening to our children).  But at the same time that this fear is widely shared by single women, there is a certain shame of expressing it anywhere but amongst other single mothers.

Society teaches us that we should be ashamed for having gotten pregnant out of wedlock.  We were, in whatever way, irresponsible, either by failing to use birth control, or choosing a bad partner, or by having premarital sex, and society says we deserve what we get.  Society ignores those who get away with this behavior, it is easy to pretend that they are still pure even though they participate in the same activities because they do not have the evidence of those activities protruding from their abdomen.  But those of us who got pregnant are dirty, foolish, even considered to be evil, and therefore society says that it is wrong and selfish of us to want the same thing every woman wants; to find a man who will love us and raise a family with us.

Oh, that bias is much more subtle now than it was 70 years ago, when unwed pregnant women were shuffled off to “homes”, but it still exists.  Somewhere along the line we were told that a single mother can never have a social life again, and shouldn’t want one because she is a foolish, disgusting, disgrace of a woman.  It is a lie, of course, but its easy to believe when all your friends slowly stop calling, none of them show up to your baby shower, and a sales clerk, noticing your lack of a wedding ring, has the gall to ask why the father hasn’t popped the question yet.

Too many single mothers believe this lie.  They allow themselves to be ashamed of their pasts and of their children.  They don’t go out and meet new people, they don’t make themselves look nice each day, they don’t attempt to excel at their careers or education.  They only thing they do is take care of their children as best as they can, children who society will probably also shun as bastards, so that it can ignore the incredible disservice it’s done to that child by handicapping his already struggling mother with lies.

I am here to remind you, in case your logic center has taken a vacation, that society is lying when it says that you have anything to be ashamed of.  I am here to remind you that society is lying when it claims that those who did not get pregnant, yet still had sex outside of wedlock, are any more pure than you.  I am here to remind you that you brought or are bringing a beautiful life into this world, and you are doing it all on your own, and that is certainly nothing to ever be ashamed of.  Its something to be DAMN PROUD OF!  I am here to tell you that you are still beautiful, you are still lovable, and as you grow as a mother, you will only become more so.

And most of all, I am here to tell you that you can still be a wonderful, caring, hard working and responsible mother, and date.  That’s right.  Single mothers, like all women, can balance dating and everything else in their lives.  You might not be able to date the same way you did when you were single, and you certainly can’t be dating the same kind of guys, but you can still date.  In fact, the kind of dating you can and should be doing now, will be vastly better than the kind of dating you were doing before.

Don’t let that false shame dictate how you shape the rest of your life, and certainly don’t pass that false shame onto your child.  You have the power to shape a happy and fufilling life for you and your family, whether that involves finding a partner to share your family with, or choosing to go it alone.  When you let yourself become handicapped by societies lies, you handicap your child as well.  Teach your child that you are capable of acheiving anything, and your child will believe the same thing about himself.  Let yourself get bogged down, and you bog your child down with you.

I know that every single mother posesses inside her the power to overcome the lies society tells us.  I hope that together, we can make ourselves heard as real, proud, beautiful women and wonderful heads of families.  I hope that by doing so, we can create a better world for our sons and daughters.

Happy long weekend! May 23, 2008

For those of you who don’t know, I work four tens (four days a week, ten hours a day), which means every weekend is a three day weekend for me. Because I work for the government, they also always give us an additional day off when there’s a government holiday, which means no work for me today! Woohoo! Four day weekend! Anyway, I thought I’d share my weekend plans with you all, in case any of you in Denver would like to attend.

First, I’m going to the Memorial Day Parade tomorrow morning. Ugh.  I’m actually going to be working while I’m there. I have to take photos of all the Guard events. Gen. Edwards is going to be doing a presentation after the parade to remember Maj. Perry Jefferson. He was the Colorado Guard’s last MIA, he went missing in Vietnam 30 years ago. His remains were found and identified last year, and he was laid to rest in Arlington in April. It was very moving, here’s a link to the article about it.

Then, tomorrow evening, I’m going to the Colorado Local First Kickoff Party in Old Town Arvada. It starts at 4 at The D Note (7519 Grandview Ave, Arvada, CO 80002). Its all ages, and looks like it will be loads of fun. I’ll be there with my mom and my aunt, as well as my son in a snuggly. I’ll probably be the only tall redhead with a baby there.  Here’s a link to Colorado Local First.

Then on Monday, I’m running the Boulder Boulder. I use the term “running” loosely. I’ve never been to the Boulder Creek Festival before, but I hear its fun.

That’s it. That’s all my plans. Unless my sister goes into labor, of course, then all bets are off. Have a super Memorial Day weekend, don’t drive to much, and remember to wear sunscreen! I’ll post pictures next week.

Eat less meat (and dairy) May 22, 2008

Americans eat too much meat.  This is a widely known fact.  Only a few nutbags from the high protein diet movement would dispute this fact.  I’m just talking food pyramid wise.  According to the food pyramid, we’re only supposed to be eating 3 servings of protein a day, but most Americans eat closer to ten servings.  This is thanks in part to the outrageously liberal idea most of us have of what constitutes a serving size, and part to the fact that most of us eat meat (or eggs) at every meal.

When I set out to limit the amount of meat I eat, I knew full well that I already ate less meat than the average American.  Of the meat I do eat, more of it is chicken and fish than the average American (not that their environmental impact is any less, but the health impact of those meats is certainly better).  But it wasn’t enough, so I decided to limit my meat consumption to one serving a day.  I did pretty well with this during the work week, but on the weekend (thanks to excessive eating out) all bets were off.  The goal was a work in progress.

The reasons I had for limiting meat were numerous.  First, conventional meat production is, by far, the largest contributor to green house gasses and therefore the biggest cause of global warming.  (On a side note, I hate when people say eating meat causes global warming.  No it does not.  Yes, conventional meat production causes global warming, but the act of eating meat does not.  When the cavemen killed a woolly mammoth and ate it, it did not release green house gasses into the atmosphere.  Sheesh!)  Animals, particularly cows, burp and fart large quantities of methane into the atmosphere, and since the American demand for meat is so ungodly high, there is an ungodly number of farm animals emitting ungodly amounts of methane into the air.  Not to mention the ungodly amount of space used up farming and slaughtering these animals (space that could have global warming reducing plants growing) and the ungodly amount of fuel used to power the ungodly huge facilities where meat is produced. 

Speaking of ungodly, it takes an ungodly amount of food to feed all these cows and chickens and pigs.  All of that food could be going to feed all the starving people in the world, or to bring down the rising costs of grains we are all suffering from now, but instead we are feeding it to cattle, then eating the cattle, and getting less net energy out of less net food.  Brilliant.  And all those crops that feed the meat also use petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides, which pollute our soil and water, an require energy to grow, maintain and harvest.

The final reason I wanted to eat less meat is because I’d like to avoid all the growth hormones and antibiotics found in meat.  Really, do you want to ingest something that’s designed to make a cow get fatter?  Do you think that growth hormones aren’t going to make you fatter too?  And we wonder why we have an obesity epidemic in this country.

So basically, meat is responsible on some level for global warming, world starvation, and the obesity epidemic.  Yeah, that sounds like something I’d like to limit in my life.  Of course, all of these issues would be addressed simply by eating only organic meat, but who can afford that?  Have you ever looked at the cost of organic meat?  There’s another fact about meat that is UNGODLY!

Now, after reading Skinny Bitch, which I wrote a review of yesterday, I have been confronted with even more reasons to forgo meat as much as I can.  For starters, I was completely and willfully ignoring the fact that dairy has the same environmental impacts as meat (I buy about half of my dairy organic, but still …).  I got slapped in the face with more health benefits of limiting, or down right eliminating, meat and dairy.  For example, another thing that is designed to fatten up cows is milk.  Seriously.  Calfs drink nothing but cows milk to grow from 90 to 2000 lbs over the course of 2 years.  Do we really want to be consuming a lot of something that is designed by nature to make anything that drinks it grow to 20 times its original size?  And I was horrified to read some of the treatments animals have to suffer in conventional meat production facilities.  I mean, deep down, I always knew it was bad, but being confronted with it really forced me to acknowledge it.  And finally, the issue of how meat is handled in those places (not to mention how the employees are treated, anyone ever read Fast Food Nation?) just disgusted me beyond belief.  Let me just say I will not be feeding my son meat baby food, and I don’t recommend you do either.

So now my goal is to eliminate as much meat and dairy from my diet as I can possibly stand.  This means I’ll pretty much only be eating meat at family and work functions, and even then I’ll do it in very small servings.  Dairy I will probably eat a little more often (because I love it!) but I am experimenting with vegan alternatives to foods I am willing to replace (pretty much everything but cheese and chocolate).  I am now using soy milk on my cereal, a soy based butter spread, soy mayonnaise, and yesterday I snacked on some wheat-free, dairy-free Newman-O’s (organic Oreos knock offs - the texture will take some getting used to, but it helps me keep my portion sizes in mind).  I’m also going to work at incorporating more vegetarian meals into my recipe book.  If anyone has a good vegetarian/vegan recipe, please send it to me, or post it in the comments of this blog.  I’d love to have them.

I will keep everyone posted on my progress becoming an almost-vegan (that’s what I’ve decided to call it).  Maybe one day it will evolve beyond this, but for now I think this is the most anyone is going to get out of me.

Book Review: Skinny Bitch May 21, 2008

On Monday I bought the book Skinny Bitch, by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin.  I had heard it might help encourage me in my goal of eating less meat.  Actually, I heard it made many a woman decide to go vegetarian in the name of being thin.  Since I knew I’d never go vegetarian (again … there were a few years in high school there), I figured it would just give me more motivation to cut meat out of my diet as much as I can.

I have not eaten any meat since I bought it.  I’ve also eaten limited amounts of dairy (some cheese and sour cream on last nights dinner, and a minuscule bit of cheese in some veggie patties today).  I still don’t think I’m going to go entirely vegetarian - its damn near impossible to avoid meat in my family and my line of work - and I’m certainly not going to ever reach vegan status, but it has convinced me to cut the amount of meat and dairy I’m eating even more than I had already planned to. 

The authors state very clearly on the cover that this is a no-nonsense, tough-love guide, and its not kidding around.  It sounds like a drill sergeant wrote this at points, so if you don’t like to be yelled at, this book is not for you.  I can go 50/50 with the yelling thing.  Sometimes I respond really well to it.  Other times I don’t.  I don’t know what the difference is, but I responded well to this book.

The authors also obviously have an agenda that has nothing to do with helping you to get thin.  It doesn’t even have anything to do with living green (although both those issues are addressed by their agenda).  Their agenda is animal rights, and let me tell you, they’ve got me pretty damn convinced.  As convinced as I think I ever will be, that’s for sure.  I’m not the kind who thinks its wrong to eat meat, but I do think its wrong how we produce meat and the amount we eat, and the authors just made those feelings larger and louder inside of me.  But if you are really, super duper opposed to vegetarianism or veganism, this book isn’t for  you.  Or maybe it is.  Maybe you need the info in this book so you can at least understand where vegetarians and vegans are coming from.  I don’t know.

Despite the alternative agenda, the book makes a lot of sense.  It says to give up processed sugar and simple carbohydrates (well duh), smoking (done and done!), beer (not bloody likely), dairy (more likely than beer, but that’s not saying much) and meat (more likely than dairy, but that’s not saying much either).  Even though I personally would advocate limiting meat and dairy, rather than eliminating entirely, they do make a good case for elimination and all the more power to you if you do it!

I’m a little skeptical of the fasting information still.  I don’t think fasting without solid food for more than a day is in any way physically beneficial.  Consult a doctor before jumping on that band wagon.

The book is a little harsh until the last chapter, which makes it all even more worth while.  After all the yelling and horrifying info in the book, that warm fuzzy in the last chapter was really needed. 

This book has really had an impact on my life, I think.  I went into it highly skeptical and came out really won over.  I would recommend it to anyone interested in vegetarianism or veganism, or anyone interested in the production of and effects of our food on ourselves, our children and our environment.

Feminism May 21, 2008

I know I said I was going to write in more detail about my responsible eating goals, but real quick first I want to touch on something else entirely.

Feminism.

I don’t know why this is perceived by so many as such a bad word.  I mean, I can kind of understand why men don’t like it (though not really, if they stopped to think about what it really means), but I cannot for the life of me fathom why women would be opposed to the concept.  I can only guess that its because of some gross misunderstanding of the word.

Let me lay a few things out.  First of all, feminism does not mean that I want to grow a dick and beat down the natural born men with it.  It does not mean that I hate men, or want to become like a man, or that I don’t want men around.  Feminism doesn’t mean any of these things, for your information I LOVE men, I LOVE being a woman, and if I grew a dick I’d be horrified (although it might be cool to be able to pee standing up while camping). 

All feminism really means is that I want equal pay for equal work.  It means that I want the right to vote, drive, get an education and anything else needed to provide for myself and my family.  It means that I should be able to marry who ever I want, and that I get to decide when, how and if I want to have children.  And it means that if someone beats me, rapes me, or in any other way abuses me (or my children) I should have a right to press charges, even if that person is my husband.

I don’t think there are many people left in the first world who are not feminists.  Even the people who use the term derogatorily are, for the most part, feminists.  Even Anne Coulter is a feminist.  If she weren’t, she wouldn’t be on TV blasting her bull horn or writing books.  She would be at home taking care of her children, whipping up a three course meal and blowing her husband.  She would do nothing else with her miserable, angry life.

Not that I’m saying that taking care of your children, whipping up a three course meal, and blowing your husband are bad things.  These are great things to do, things I enjoy doing (except for that last one, since I obviously don’t have a husband to blow).  But I choose to do them.  I do not allow anyone to force me to do these things.  That makes me a feminist.

Oh, I still love to dress up pretty, wear sexy lingerie, shave my legs (actually, I prefer to wax, but I just cant find the time since my son’s been born).  But I’m still a feminist.  I prefer a man who will take charge, take me out for dates (which means he pays), and opens doors for me.  But I’m still a feminist.  I expect to be treated like a princess - not property - and in return, I fully intend to treat any man I’m with like a king.

Because another thing that feminsim does not mean is that men no longer have to work.  Sorry boys, but if anything, it means you have to work more.  In a day when women can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan, men really aren’t worth much of anything unless they are contributing at least as much as we are to the household, either in money or in house work.  Frankly, since women these days are expected to contribute both financially and through housework, I expect a man to contribute to both as well.  Call me a traditionalist, but I prefer to stick to classic gender roles and my contribution can be heavier on the housework side if his is heavier on the finances side, but whatever way you want to swing it is fine, as long as both sides are contributing. (which makes me think of something I’d like to blog more about later, the priceless value of being a stay at home parent) 

Just like no man wants to marry a woman who doesn’t work or keep up the house (unless she’s really hot and horny) no woman wants to marry a man who doesn’t work or keep up the house (unless he’s really hot and horny.  What?  Women like sex with hot partners too).  Honestly, if we want to sleep with something that doesn’t bring in an income or take care of the house, we can sleep with a vibrator.  It will get us off more reliably and we don’t have to talk to it when we’re done with it.

Honestly, I don’t know why so many people have a problem with this “Lets help each other out” philosphy that is feminism.  Is there really a man out there that doesn’t want a wife who’s going to take over half of the work of living?  Isn’t that the whole point of getting into a long term relationship, to combine strengths in order to make living easier?  Its just that now, thanks to feminism, women have more options for how they want to contribute to the household.  There is nothing saying they have to do any of them, feminism just means we now have the right to choose between them.

 

PS  Seriously, does anyone even know who Anne Coulter’s husband is?  Man, that dude is pussy whipped, isn’t he?  I mean, maybe he’s famous too and I’m just not up on the conservative radical superstars, but who is at home taking care of her kids while she’s out being a loudmouth?  I can only assume its him.  That’s not very anti feminist of her, is it?

PPS  Wait a minute.  Does she even have kids?  I thought I heard that she does, but I don’t know.  I’ve got to confess that I don’t listen to her much.  But you’d think someone so anti feminist should be more submissive to her husband and would show up pregnant more often.  Theres a whole slew of insults I could get into on that one, but I’m going to let it go for today.

 

Responsible Eating May 17, 2008

Americans, they say, have no connection to their food anymore.  We go to the store, we buy it, and most of the time its processed crap that we don’t even know whats in it (mostly petroleum products, in case you’re wondering).  We don’t stop to think about where it comes from and everything that goes into producing it.  We buy it, we eat it, we throw the packaging away, and then we don’t think about it again.

There have been many a documentary that have phrased this problem and the implications of it far better than I ever will be able to.  For me, it just comes down to the fact that food is at the base of our hierarchy of needs, and I think its important that we all know how to maintain our base.  I read once of a family who plays a game before each meal in which they stop to recognize everyone responsible for getting their food onto their table.  The checkout kid at the grocery store, the guy who stocked the shelves, the truck driver who delivered the food, the butcher who slaughtered the meat, the guy who packaged the food, the farmer who planted and harvested it, the oil miner who mined the oil that was made into fertilizers for the farm and fuel for the trucks and plastics for the packaging, the chemist who invented the plastics and fertilizers.  They would even go so far as to include the mother who raised the farmer, the teacher who taught the mechanic who maintains the truck, the wife of the owner of the general store where the farmer shops, who helps keep paperwork for the store in order so that it stays up and running .  I thought this was a marvelous idea, and perhaps a game I would play with my son, particularly on Thanksgiving.

Its an amazing way to measure the impact not only of what you eat, but of the value each one of us adds to society through the work that we do.  Most of us don’t think of chemists and teachers as essential to putting food on our tables, but when we play this game we realize that we could very likely starve without the chemists, teachers and countless others that all fit into the vast perpetual motion machine that is a functioning society.  It reminds us that if there weren’t a purpose for a skill or a job, it would probably be eliminated from society (much the way evolution breeds out useless genetic traits).

It also shows us the vast impact of our food across the world.

Like many Americans, for a long time I wanted to ignore the way I eated and the implications it had on the world.  The deepest I wanted to think about food was whether or not it was going to make me fat.  But now I am a mom, and like many other parts of my life, my eating habits just did not seem as acceptable after I had a child.

For one thing, I want to live long enough to see my great grand children, so I want to be as healthy as possible (and that means I need to focus on a lot more than just my weight).  Furthermore, I want my son to have the privelidge of being able to live to see his great grand children, and I’m sure he’s going to want the same thing for his children, so I want to make sure he can give that same gift to his children.

More than this, I want to leave my son with a planet at least as nice as the one I was left with.  Hopefully a better one.  For that reason I am paying more attention to what I eat, and I am going to teach him to do the same.

Finally, food is expensive, and when you trace its sources its not hard to see why.  Food prices go up with gas prices, for example, because it takes gas to ship the food.  Companies aren’t swallowing the increased cost of gas, they’re passing those costs onto the consumer so that their profits don’t change.  Companies always pass increased cost of production on to the consumer so that their profits don’t change.  Always. 

So here are my goals for eating more responsibly.  I will tell you them, and then I will explain them.

1 - Eat less meat

2 - Grow as much of my own food as I can

3 - Eat at home as much as possible

4 - Buy organic when I can afford it

5 - If I can’t afford organic, buy local (naturally, if there’s a local organic food, get it!) or as close to home as you can

6 - Avoid buying foods that come from other countries

7 - Avoid food that comes in excess packaging

I will delve into each of these goals and the reasons behind them in future posts.