Calloo callay, oh frabjous day! my favorite pre-pregnancy jeans fit.

ok, so there is some spandex involved but only like 3%.

red elephant

calling out the (red) elephant in the room.

i was beginning to feel like i was the only one that remembers that white suffragettes successfully campaigned to get the vote to maintain white supremacy after black men were enfranchised.

Belle Kearney, “The South and Woman Suffrage,” Woman’s Journal, 4 April 1903

"The enfranchisement of women would insure immediate and durable white supremacy . . .The South is slow to grasp the great fact that the enfranchisement of women would settle the race question in politics. The civilization of the North is threatened by the influx of foreigners with their imported customs; by the greed of monopolistic wealth, and the unrest among the working classes; by the strength of the liquor traffic, and by encroachments upon religious belief. Some day the North will be compelled to look to the South for redemption from these evils, on account of the purity of its Anglo-Saxon blood, the simplicity of its social and economic structure, the great advance in prohibitory law, and the maintenance of the sanctity of its faith, which has been kept inviolate. Just as surely as the North will be forced to turn to the South for the nation’s salvation, just so surely will the South be compelled to look to its Anglo-Saxon women as the medium through which to retain the supremacy of the white race over the African. . . ."

one hundred years later, the narrative doesn't sound much different.

diaper-free redux

btw, when i mentioned to Dì 6|aunty 6, our nanny, (more on nannies later, the post is mostly done) that VL has been going diaper-free on the weekends, evenings, and with her Bà Nội, Dì 6 confessed that she wanted to let VL go without diapers too but was afraid of being reproached by me for acculturating the baby to naked butt, cuz once they have a taste of freedom, they don't want to be straight-jacketed anymore. Dì 6 sez VL doesnt pee randomly but after naps, and hourly, etc. so she's been doing her own empirical observation which makes me happy for the care that VL gets. anyways synchronous with this happy convening of observation & values, VL discovered how to pull open the velcro on her wool diaper cover. so it's just as well.

and we are diaperless at night. she was only able to pull off the hold-in-the-pee-all-nite feat twice. but that's not why. i just would rather she was comfortable in her sleep. so i have our wool puddle pad beneath her (thanks, anh Hy!) and put a prefold diaper flat on top of that. so if she pees, the diaper soaks up most of it, and what it doesn't get, weo the wool turns into soap yadda yadda. she does have the unerring ability to scoot backwards off the wool mat and pee directly on the bed. luckily, we have a wool mattress topper on our organic wool & cotton rubber bed. it's been the case that when she's uncomfortable whether from wet diaper of full bladder, she wriggles and grunts in her sleep and refuses to bú (weo, could you eat were that the case for you?). so i sit up, foist her up on the potty between my legs and hug her while gently rubbing her bladder and making the tsssssssssshhhhhh sound. sometimes she does that funny little i've-been-holding-it-in-too-long-shiver before she pees. and then i gently wipe her off and put her down to the bed. so no diapers at nite and only 2-3 cloth wipes. and she doesn't even cry in protest anymore.

so now we are down to a handful of diapers a week. thank the stars because regardless of what cloth diaper zealots tell you, it does stink. urine becomes ammonia which cannot be contained. maybe we should do as Dì 6 suggests and stop trying to contain it and just let it air dry in a basket. is it always the case that the more you fight something, the more it persists?

crystal vulva

so the new roman catholic cathedral in my city just got dedicated yesterday. no, that's not me in the red ao dai or the nun frock. during the taking of this photo and the dedication of the cathedral , i was 100 feet away walking along the lake on my way to the cathedral to bourgeois green living--Whole Foods.

i think its interesting in this era of populist evangelical born-again undo-the-constitutional-separation-between-church-and-state, that the roman catholic church chooses to name their newest Cathedral "Christ the Light" rather than the usual array of saints and the ever popular Mary of the Sacred Bleeding Heart and its various iterations. (and let's not even get into how they got the $190 million to build after it shelled out hundreds of millions to pay the victims of priest child molestation). i guess they're not immune to the X-n zeitgeist and wanted to assert their own affiliation to christianity... but then the cathedral looks like a vulva.

see, i called it years ago that the cathedral design was vulvular. i say it on a near daily basis when we pass by on the way to and from home. and here's the proof to my puddin'.

ah you say, but it looks like a fish. not just any fish but the tilapia that christ himself ate and that has become the symbol of christianity. indeed, this article about the cathedral explains the design concept thusly:

More than 1,000 sheets of glass will cloak a skeleton of Douglas fir, forming a luminous 12-story dome inspired by the fish shape known as the vesica piscis, an ancient symbol of Christianity. (LA Times 9.2.2007)

ah, i say, and there it is--a Vulva. an exalted yoni in glass & wood. and there ain't no contradiction in that. for those of you who aren't familiar with the symbology of the sacred feminine in the pre-christian mother goddess multi-millineal timespan, the diamond or marquise shape is an ancient symbol of you guessed it, the Vulva--the true origins of human Life. when christianity sought to convert the masses of goddess-lovin' pagans, it co-opted many of the holy days & symbols along the way. and in time, the symbol of the Mother Goddess' yoni became the fish symbol of Christ, and the Mother Goddess herself became Mary, mother of god.

there you have it oaklanders, a lakeside, monumental, sacred crystal vulva nestled amongst the steel & concrete phalluses of downtown commerce.

and can i tell you, that's the biggest yoni i have ever seen! true story!

p.s. while i'm on the topic of female genitalia, may i just say for those of you fond of binary analogies, the female equivalent of the penis (which is a sexual and urinary organ) is not the vagina (internal muscular canal, no urine passeth this way). that is just anatomically incomparable. but, you protest, we like to be reductive and teach our children to say "a boy has a penis and a girl has a [singular noun]". nope you are wrong. if you are speaking of external genitalia the anatomically correct term is vulva. if you are speaking to reproductive ability, that would be uterus or ovaries as the case may be.

p.p.s. and while i'm talking about catholics, (the now Monseigneur) Father Dennis is a racist! While the presiding priest at Holy Spirit, he hated the vietnamese parishoners and called me and my friend Ha "you barbarians!" when he caught us trying to sneak into the hall with the secret method passed down kid-to-kid to use the phone (no vandalism, honest).

politics

and now for some perspective...

Time for Some Campaignin' | Funny Jokes at JibJab

baby Kate is here!

my sis just had her baby 20 minutes ago. the little bugger came face first so pushing took 3 hours and lots of different positions til she she turned the right way.
9 lbs 4 oz!

a pig is a pig

so lipstick on a pig is the major presidential campaign concern.

Riiiiight. Because cheating on and then abandoning your crippled-no-longer-hot former model wife after she stood by you & single-handedly raised your three brats for seven years while you were in the hole, with a younger, tighter, and richer woman is somehow NOBLE.

Question: What do you call someone who marries a trust fund baby and gets thrown a $450,000 face-saving bone annually from the father-in-law?

Answer: Apparently, you call him a Feminist.

ain't that some self-serving pork in a barrel? those with lipstick on their... ahem, collar, shouldn't be casting stones. it's like the 21st century and name-calling and out & out lying is really the most important issue in a presidential election? so asinine. can we get back to the real fracking issues?

people are dying under this economy. literally, dying. consumed as pearls before swine. it would behoove us to remember, All Animals are Equal, but Some Are More Equal Than Others.

this little piggy had none, and this little piggy
cried whaaawhaawhaa all the way---
biloxi in 2005. not much has changed.

oh weo, there a bunch of new casinos via where
these homes used to stand built via the eminent domain
of tragic circumstance. where are the people?
working for minimum wage in the casino.
what govt relief has been done for them?
weo, the govt subsidized the casinos. duh.

we've been sold a pig in a poke. the American economy is a house of cards built on trillions and trillions of debt and we've been dealt two ace of spades. it's like [warning stupid power analogize coming up], it's like the higgledy-piggledy house made out of straw; it's like the economy is a HOG being gavage-fattened* with cannabalistic swill comprised of putrefying animal by-products marinated in lard and cardboard filler derived from GMO corn-syrup which is itself over-produced and subsidized by the govt. oh, it turns out that porkbelly of debt has been carved up by the rest of the world. America is bringin' home the GNP bacon for China and like, every Western nation. aw, it so nice to know that my consumer debt is going to such humanitarian uses. i might just go finish up that PhD and contribute more interest points to world congeniality after all.

lament the death of "the true, wise friend called Piggy". with or without lipstick, any presidential candidate who cannot offer some real solutions is leading us down the real Bridge to Nowhere.

I-90 bridge in Mississippi destroyed by Hurricane Katrina (2005)

you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. all the name-calling in the world doesn't change that at all.

*pigs, left to their own innate farrowing nature would prefer to eat acorns & truffles, however a starving pig will eat whatever is in front of it, no matter how unhealthy to their constitution, given no other choice. kinda like american children and processed food. end result is the same too--obesity and imminent death. true story.

grief has no language

diaper free!

we've been doing elimination communication with VL consistently since she was 3.5 months old. within a few days she was happily pooing almost exclusively on the potty (only misses were when we were in the car or when we were making dinner/doing chores & not paying attention). thing is she doesn't want to soil herself, so she'll hold out and try to get attention as long as she can before resignedly & involuntarily going in her diaper. so because she was offered the potty for pooing she went all at once instead of pooping herself a little and then holding in the rest, to be repeated 2-3 times a day.

this last month or so at the encouragement of her Bà Nội|paternal grandmother, we've been giving her diaper-free time as long as we're home & around her. it helps that its summer and being naked butt isnt too big of a deal. (though i did i finally break down & bought baby leg warmers when i accepted that i wasn't going to knit any anytime soon in spite of my purty stash). we just put her on the potty before & after napping, before & after nursing, and when ever she's squirmy and every 20-30 minutes or so. yes, there have been misses. she's peed on me twice, on her padded play area, on her Bà Nội. but y'know, it's only pee. Mr. Darcy did not break up with me; the world did not come crashing down. we change her and change ourselves and live to tell the tale.

at nighttime, we leave the diaper on and she's been down to three then two pees a night. and sometimes when i'm too tired to even wake up when she attaches herself to my boob, i let her sleep the night with a wet diaper. i tried pottying her at night and it was exhausting. i was 3am clumsy. she cried at some new routine being introduced to her sleeptime, being somewhat woken up by the naked butt, ceiling fan breeze (heatwave) and sitting up on the potty bit. so i haven't tried that again, though if her eyes pop open and she smiles, i may try it if i have the energy. its better than changing a diaper on the other side of it.

the nice thing about being naked butt is that her clothes fit better (though baggy on the bum) since most american baby clothes nowadays are designed for disposable diapers and cloth diapers are considerably bulkier even though the biobottoms bikini cut wool diaper covers that we use (and love!) are very trim. i met VL's doppelganger who is three days younger the other day and i was utterly fascinated that she was wearing fitted leggings that weren't rolled up on the cuffs or highwater waists (because they are a size or two up). i poked at her butt and asked her mom, is she wearing panties? no, she was wearing a disposable. i had to laugh at how skewed my perspective on baby bottoms has become. VL is my norm. though i will say in the last month, VL's little tush has become juicy, as has her thighs, arms, belly, cheeks, well all over really. she is just pure juicy-ness.

anyways we cancelled the diaper service a few weeks ago and go through about 30 cloth diapers a week. mostly during the day when the nanny has her. so we've finally achieved that zen balance of owning your own diapers. and its nice to know that next baby, we won't have to put in as much moola top start off.

so last night, big milestone, she didn't pee in her diaper all night! she held it, and my timing was on. as soon as she started to stir, i took off her diaper and put her on the potty and boy did she happily pee. she held it almost 12 hours! talk about supreme willpower. i can't even hold it at night anymore. anyways, as pleased as i am about this, this is her own achievement for herself. we try not to praise her for peeing & pooing because a) she doesn't need to be trained to be a people pleaser and b) bodily functions are utterly natural and not needing of praise anymore than breathing and blinking deserve praise.

i was reading meditations for new mothers and came across one that really resonated with me about children asserting their independence, sometimes defiantly. the gist is that you shouldn't let your own fears become the challenges & limits that your child has to surmount in order to lead her/his life. getting over the fear of her pooping or peeing on her clothes, on me, on the floor, wherever, was really a big barrier for me intially and why i didn't start pottying until three months in (though i've been cueing since birth), even though i was mentally committed to it. and now that we are on the other side of it, i can see how my fear held me back, held her back. why should she have to sit in pee or poo all this time because i am afraid of getting my clothes soiled? my clothes are washable, and are not so valuable that making my baby soil herself is more important. it helps of course that we have hardwood floors. as for the wool rug, well, wool absorbs pee & makes it into anti-bacterial soap. i think after having to deal with washing dirty cloth diapers with my amish washer and handscrubbing the diaper covers, it makes me a little more practical and less squeamish when it comes to what comes out of my baby. i say that now, before she has started solids.

next stop: tiny baby panties! go VL!