Here are some of things I read this week that made me think. (These are just snippets – click on the title to read the whole thing).
Unreasonable from Claudia at My fascinating life
“They got angry and frustrated at me for cleaning cat vomit off the floor. They didn’t want me to get out the cleaning kit; they wanted food and they wanted it right then. My selfish insistence on getting the puke cleaned up rather than putting their highchairs in the middle of the goopy brown puddle was impinging on their Cheerio time and they did not like it, no they did not like it one bit. I cannot say just how crazy this drives me. If they were getting antsy because I was reading a book, or learning to make cake pops, or doing one of the twelve hundred other things I want to be doing and don’t have time for then okay, fair enough. Yell your little hearts out, kiddos. Mummy is being selfish; shout until she remembers her responsibilities. But seriously, children. Cat vomit? I can’t find any way to make them understand that I do not want to be cleaning up vomit. Do they really think I am choosing to do this because I don’t love them?”
The system in which we live from Tara Livesay
“I’ve long wanted to try to explain some of the way gender roles and power work in Haiti. I don’t think I can even begin to relay some of it. It is on the list of "topics to avoid while blogging." There is so much that is repulsive about it. I don’t want to make generalizations, but men hold the power and there is no real balance. Seeing that imbalance change seems unlikely to us for a variety of reasons. . .”
Kristine’s Guilty Pleasure: The Bachelorette from Mamapop
“(Describing Bentley): And here we have the middle-aged-looking Abercrombie-styled Douche of All Trades. Now, everyone hates the guy because he’s arrogant and super cool and really into his hair and doesn’t even LIKE Ashley but thinks it’s funny that he’s still winning and…OH! And he uses his daughter as a pawn. CUTE! But the thing is that Ashley got a heads up about this guy’s bad intentions before she even started filming. Then, after meeting the guy and falling for his Fierce Body Spray, figured that the tip came from a stupid, selfish bitch anyway. So, while we sit back and watch his super-awkward high-school smoothness wave warning flags all OVER the place, Ashley sits on his lap and giggles like an airhead, repeating only his name over and over because, apparently, she’s just been rendered an blubbering idiot by the dude’s lumberjack plaids.”
For the Claire Dunphy’s and not the Claire Huxtable’s from Megan at Millions of Miles
“I’m the mom who forgets to take snacks to the soccer game and the mom who forgets to send in a toy on toy day at school and all other matter of things that make my kids feel crummy. I’m the mom who looks at the floor with last nights dinner all over it where the kids dropped it and thinks, "I signed up to be a stay at home mom. Not a maid." I always envisioned myself spending hours reading books with my kids and making healthy lunches to send to school and doing craft projects all the time and somehow, after life has pulled me in all it’s other directions, those other things just don’t get done. And they are the ones that are most important.”
Grandmother, mother, daughter from Heather at Dooce
“My mother laughed knowingly and said she remembers those feelings of pride often. She said that I will have much more of that to look forward to, and welcome. Welcome to It Finally Paying Off. Years of sleepless nights and temper tantrums, and out of the tangled mess comes a human. Watching her learn to function on her own, my mom said, is the pinnacle of parenthood. It is the most satisfying part of sacrificing so much of yourself to this endeavor.”
A Mother’s Saturday Morning Serenity Prayer from Azucar at The Jet Set
“Although I have prayed in the past that I do not turn into my mother, I realize this is moot. Thank you for answering that prayer by granting me compassion for her Saturday morning ranting and raving, for now I understand.”
If this ain’t class warfare…from Love Isn’t Enough
“For the second time this year, a black mother has been arrested and charged with larceny – stealing education, defined in the simplest of terms as taking something that not only doesn’t belong to you, but rightfully belongs to someone else. For the second time, PUBLIC education has been defined as a proprietary right that only belongs to some children and not to others. For the second time, the law has allowed municipalities to decide what “public” is deserving, and what “public” is not. For the second time, the public-private distinction has absolutely dissolved.”
You think that’s not objective from Campbell at And other ideas and thoughts ….
“I’m glad I was in a closed adoption situation. I knew the score, who my family was. Yes, while growing up I didn’t know what had happened to land me in an adoption but I just can’t get my head around the alternative. To this day I’ve never felt abandoned but can’t honestly say I’d feel that way had I been exposed to a lifetime of observing a perfectly intact family who just didn’t want me, or weren’t allowed to get me back if they did.”
It is in the Stringing Together of Moments from Heather at Never a Dull Moment
“And all the crazy that they do, and all the crazy-making that they cause, and all the crazy work they create for me, and everything else that is crazy too— all of it suddenly held together strong in that moment with them on the stage looking to see if I saw and knowing that we were in it together. Nobody else in the room mattered, and nothing else amounted to knowing that we knew. All the crazy was folded in. And the center holds. And we knew it. And there it is: everyday things fall apart, but the center holds.”
Two other things:
Tara posted an update about the Harbor House and a matching grant that they could receive. They are doing amazing things restore young women’s lives in Haiti. Read about it here: Challenge Grant and Harbor House News. Check out the nominated list of bloggers at Circle of Moms for Top Adoption Blog. Some of my favorites are there. You can vote for Rage Against the Minivan here. (You can vote every day until June 21st and you can vote for more than one person, FYI.)
