Other streams available at: http://www.okgo.net/video.asp
I totally ‘stumbled upon‘ this video. Love it. I know that the band, OK Go, does the music for some NPR show that I sometimes hear in the car on the way to or from work, but know nothing else about them.
On ‘Stumble Upon’, you can rate the links. I wish that I could give this one two thumbs up! I can’t even see any edits in the video - looks like they do that all in one take!
Click here: http://www.helpwinthisbet.com/404/
Every night, after their bath, after Annie’s story (Shelby gets a chapter read to him/them, while laying in his bed), after PJs are on, drinks are had & everyone’s gone potty one more time, I tell the kids to say goodnight to whoever’s in the living room, before going to their bed.
Shelby just does a fast ‘Good Night’ shout out to the room.
Annie hugs everyone & draws the whole thing out into a big ritual like she does everything.
She & Allison, though, have created their own thing over the past few days & I hope they keep it up (although I’m not sure how they’ll revise it as Annie gets bigger, but they’ll have to). Allison’s usually sitting at the computer at that time of night. First, Annie will go over for a regular hug, then ask me if she can have just one more. Then, she goes over on the beanbag chairs (which are by the TV, across the room) & runs into Allison’s arms. Allison picks her up & cuddles with her & says goodnight.
They both seem to love it.
It’s a novel in the form of a found journal, or a series of found journals
It starts with an 8-yo, writing in her first journal. She’ll have lots of starts, but not much follow-through. Lots of ‘Dear Diary, I suppose I should start by introducing myself, since you are going to be my best friend for the rest of my life’ kind of entries, across a series of journals. Some will have a few days worth of entries, some will only have the introduction. Every time a new journal starts, there will be a photo/drawing of the cover of the journal…
It will continue like this throughout her life. Some journals will have only a couple of entries. Some will have a lot of entries, followed by months/years of no entries, then fitful bursts of journaling. So, it will be this sporadic, but soul-searching look at a life, all the way through to the end.
Still have to color it in.
Then, have to do R2-D2 for Shelby 
For the past 8 years, whenever Allison was here, it was either a weekend, a holiday or it was summer.
So, now that she’s here every day, every day feels like summer
I don’t think my husband is an exception. I think he’s just a man who somehow found the strength and self-confidence to fight his way out of the stereotype.
I, personally, think that gender stereotypes are just as limiting, just as damaging, just as ridiculous as racial stereotypes. 100 years ago, everyone, men -and- women, for the most part, agreed that it would be a complete waste of time, money and resources for a woman to attend medical school. Women weren’t believed to have the mental capacity or fortitude for that kind of work.
But, we fought it. For years & years & years. And, now, it’s not at all surprising to see women doctors.
And, just yesterday at soccer practice, one of the mom’s told me that she’d heard that girls were now scoring higher than boys, across the board, on standardized testing. That would have been thought to have been impossible 100 years ago.
Some of the gender stereotypes that were believed to be simple facts at that time in history have been disproven. That’s a good thing. But, obviously, some live on.
Saying that men are, by nature, not nurturers, puts limits on them. Not just on ‘men’ generically, but on my own son. Your own sons, too. It also puts limits on your daughters. It perpetuates the myth that there are some things that they will not be able to achieve, unless they are bold enough to stand up and be counted among the ‘exceptions’. It discourages them from even trying.
I also think that saying women are nurturers by nature leaves women who aren’t nurturers (or, who aren’t at a point in their lives where they are able to nurture) feeling like somehow less of a woman if they admit their ’shortcomings’.
I suppose before I can even begin to believe that a person, by virtue of their physical makeup, is going to behave in a particular way, I would need to see some studies that prove that the behavior is linked to the physical features. For example, if we could find a man who was, somehow, never exposed to societal pressures that tell him what his gender was ’supposed to’ do, then give him a baby to raise, I wonder how he would do. If it’s just wired into men’s nature to be unable to properly nurture, then I guess he wouldn’t have a clue how to care for the child. I like to think that he’d do just as well in that situation as a woman who was also raised with no societal cues.
So, I’m going to do the best I can to question all of the beliefs that I was raised with, all of the the limits that I learned to accept for myself and for men. I’m going to try to teach the next generation that the preceding generations (including ours) might be wrong about some of these things.
When Annie plays with dolls, I’m going to tell her how proud I am of her & that, maybe, she’s going to be a great mommy some day. When she does experiments in the kitchen, I’m going to tell her how proud I am of her & that, maybe, she’s going to be a great scientist some day.
When Shelby plays with dolls, I’m going to tell him how proud I am of him & that, maybe, he’s going to be a great daddy some day. When he does experiments in the kitchen, I’m going to tell him how proud I am of him & that, maybe, he’s going to be a great scientist some day.
Sorry if this whole post doesn’t make much sense & seems so impassioned. This is a hot button issue for me. Really makes me see red. And, well, you know how it is, women aren’t that good at making organized, rational arguments.
At soccer practice tonight, one of the moms said that she had heard that girls were now surpassing boys in standardized testing, across the board.
So, we’ve won! Somewhere between the time when educating a girl was thought to be a waste of time and now, women have got the confidence to make sure that our girls are given every opportunity to get a full education, one that, perhaps, even caters to the way that girls learn. Now, of course, this leads to the premise that girls learn differently from boys. I tend to believe that that in itself is a generalization that does not apply to all girls and all boys, but, perhaps, applies to the majorities in each group. I also believe that society has taught each group that they have different expectations for each of them, and, therefore, they learn different behaviors and attitudes.
But, somewhere along the line, our boys lost. Not just the men that we are, individually and as a group, in competition with, but the boys who are our sons and brothers. In our mad dash to get equal rights for ourselves, we somehow left our men and boys behind. And, rather than equality, we have a competition that we are determined to win.
I hope that wasn’t the intention of the women’s rights movement. I hope it wasn’t to ‘win’ or to get retaliation on the men, because those men are all some mother’s son. Instead, I hope, that we were striving for equality, for the removal of gender limits for everyone.
Some say that women are born to be nurturers. I say that women are taught to be nurturers by society, from our births. There are historical precedents for this. We do have functioning breasts. And, men are physically more prepared for the hunt. So, as a general rule, due to these physical features, things tended to fall along those lines - physically. But, these days, a mom can nurse & still get out. Dad can bottle-feed, too. And, anyone can do the ‘hunting’ at their workplace and at the grocery store.
But, nature or nurture , women are supposed to be nurturers. It’s something we’re proud of in ourselves. We think it’s a great thing about women. But, do we only nurture other females? Do we only want other women to know that they can live without limits? Don’t we also nurture our boy children and want them to know the all of the joy that is available to them? Don’t we want our boy children to be able to make choices based on their own desires and strengths, rather than being limited in their choices to only things ‘male’?
Women have worked hard to earn the right to choose to be nurturers or providers. With each passing generation, there is less and less stigma attached to a woman who chooses non-traditional paths. In fact, her strength is celebrated; even more so if she chooses to be both, to live her life without gender limits.
But, still, to this day, if a man shows a more ‘feminine’ side to himself, he is ostracized, laughed at, considered to be unusual and somehow defective as a man. And, still, to this day, men are expected to cede all of their more ‘feminine’ desires to women.
To this day, a boy is gently nudged into believing that women are nurturers and men are providers. They may know in their hearts that this is wrong, but surely feel all alone in those beliefs, and feel that that notion would be hard to prove wrong. I’m guessing they probably feel about as overwhelmed and frightened about fighting for their rights to nurture as the first woman did who fought for her right to go to medical school. How ridiculous! You can’t do that! You’ll never be able to fight all the stereotypes and be taken seriously.
I think the time has come to stop talking about women’s rights, and, instead, to start working for all human’s rights to follow their own hearts and to live without gender limits. And, we, as the nurturers, need to start giving our children, all of them, boys and girls, the strength to fight the stereotypes and find happiness in their lives, wherever their hearts take them.
Before I go to bed, I usually do a little mental inventory of the house. Are the doors locked? Fish fed? Maggie in her crate? Has Charlie gone out? Bird covered?
Then, I check the kids.
Usually, at that point, I think about how I’m alone in the house with just me & the kids. And, I always ask myself if Allison is there, that night.
Used to be, most nights, I’d have a little sad moment, where I’d remember that she wasn’t there.
Summers, I’d have little happy moments, thinking how she was there, but they would be tinged with a melancholy reminder of how many more days were left.
Now, every night when I hit that part of the evening, I have a happy moment where I remember she’s here and she’s here all of the time.
(followed by just the tiniest sad moment thinking how fragmented & disjointed the whole situation is that brought her here)
But, it’s nice all the same. It feels whole and right.
DH tells a story about how when SD was little, she used to like playing with the dimmer switch on the lights at his parent’s house (where he lived after the lease ended, after the divorce).
One night, when she was 2 or 3, he was cajoling her to finish her dinner. He said “If you finish your green beans, then you can turn off the lights!”
He thought, at the time, that there was no way he would ever have imagined himself or anyone else ever using that particular combination of words. He imagined that he was the first person ever to say that, and might, very well, be the last.
Just this morning, I was laying in bed, thinking about the day ahead of me and, at one point, the words ‘Litterbox Festival’ put themselves together in my head.
I’ll be no one’s ever thought of those words in that way before, either
Dropped Shelby off at school this morning & was talking to one of the dad’s on the walk back to our cars.
I’d talked to him (and his wife) briefly before, from time to time. He’s on his 2nd marriage. His son from his first marriage moved in with him, long after the divorce, after he was already married to 2nd wife (and they had already adopted some kids).
I hadn’t told him about Allison moving in with us, yet. But, he started the conversation with me by asking what grade my stepdaughter was in, so I’m wondering, now, if his older kids had seen her around school & he had put 2 & 2 together (matching up last names).
Anyway, we talked for too long about step-life, custody, father’s rights, fathers as parents & not babysitters, counseling, moms who use their kids instead of parenting them, etc.
When I got back into the car & started driving, the radio was on & they had just started playing ‘Naive Melody (This must be the place)’.
Cool.
Allison linked to this guy’s website from her blog. I love this one. It is perfect.
I’d like to be able to go to a website, type in my zipcode and a date, and get a list of everywhere where I can see fireworks on that day, in my area.
Seems like it would be really easy to set up & you could get people to enter their own info, wiki-style.
We love going to the fireworks in the summer. Wish I could do it every weekend…
