MotherPie

Ramble: Thoughts from a Mom...

Off to visit two daughters in Texas as of '07. Dallas was one of the three cities (along with Houston and NYC) to gain in population last year. 

How to Train a Husband is a top 10 article on Newsweek  reviewing a just-released book, What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage and I bet it becomes a top gift for brides-to-be! In 2006 Amy Sutherland wrote an article for the NYTimes which became the most e-mailed story of the year. I may go out w/ my  newlywed daughter in Dallas to pick this up.

Feminism All Mixed Up? I ran a story on Fashion and High Heels that got a lot of traffic (high heels equate to Chinese foot binding, imo) at the same time that a study came out in Italy that high heels promoted good pelvic muscles (for women, it said) at the same time that Boing Boing highlighted an article about how high heels were not good.  I read the comments on the articles and these ways that women are dressing for men at risk to their own (foot) health made me go over to check out Morton's Neuroma, one side effect of heels, from which I suffer from time-to-time.  My NYC podiatrist, foot doctor to the big sports teams, had articles all over his walls quoting him regarding damage women in heels suffer from, foot-health wise. Then there is the trend to waifish, anorexic-looking androngynous male models.  My husband and I have had discussions about these  trends. Seems things are mixed up in ways that aren't good for women? Or men?  I don't think a book would ever come out by a man on How To Train a Wife.  That was so 50's, wasn't it?   Matthew Kahn brings up lastest research about how love puts blinders on people.  This truism is why we should work to keep romance alive. Being in love increases the ability to resist temptation.  Romance.  Right.  Young kids don't date anymore.

Final thoughts: Republicans are happier than Democrats (link via Jill); "after 40, it's just patch, patch, patch," says Allison's mother; feeling lonely can make you sick by desensitizing glucocorticoid receptors, cutting off the immune control and anti-inflammatory effects of cortisol, a stress-related hormone that also helps regulate the conversion of carbohydrates to energy; and additives in food products really do make children hyperactive. 

And, to conclude my long ramble, if I could go back and work harder to change some things as mom, I'd work for more recess and art, music and language studies in lower grades and later school beginnings (10:00 - 6:00) for high school students with mandatory sports and healthy food and media studies courses available. I wouldn't have had such conniption fits about the decline of cursive handwriting.

There. That is what I think is important to ramble about. Today. Texas, Here I Come. Yee Haw Cheers.

Roosters in the Kitchen, Being Chicken about Food...

There is a folk art rooster/chicken theme that has been going for quite awhile in my kitchen, starting at our Texas country place awhile back.  Gallos y gallinas. 

Awhile back I was bemoaning the demise of the apron when lo and behold I came across this cute one, below right, with two big front pockets, at the Santa Fe Farmer's market.  It has a cute red rooster fabric coated with plastic. You know in NYC I spelled cooking: TAKE OUT or DELI. Not here.  The apron was $16, is made in Mexico by Gloveables, Inc. (gloveables@aol.com).

I don't want the cooking chez nous to become mute or mutant (yes, with Los Alamos not too far away, I've been reading up on atomic food).  I'm also concerned with transgenic food, franken food and all of those freaky food things.  They are about as appetizing to me as cheez whiz casseroles.  I also like discovering new food issue blogs like Law for Food. After watching the NYC transfat ban happen and the activists that led it to happen, it makes me very cautious about what and how I eat in our country.  Eating out can be risky.  Have you seen the colleges that are now serving fast food on campus?  You can't be a chicken about food things and health.  You have to have gallina (courage) to live food-smart.  I'm not as cocky as my dad is about being smart about food stuff.  He will hen-peck you if you let him.  He's a real Food Policeman.

My Navajo chickie collection has grown over the years.  If you want one, you can find them at Wind River Trading in Santa Fe (505) 989-7062. That is where I found the two up top, left, that sit above my kitchen cabinets. Tell them MotherPie sent you and they might give you a discount.

Just thought I'd cock-a-doodle do about these things...

Birth Moms & Donor Dads...

Popular Mechanics lists the 25 things men need to know and of course fatherhood isn't even on the list. I guess they do that by instinct?

The agony of the broken connection of birth mothers and children would be different than sperm dads who purposly set out to be fathers without connections. Or is it? Technology is making things more complicated in other ways. Stories of parents learning on the playground that their children are related - they share the same sperm donor and tales of grown children trying to track down sperm fathers to figure out their personal identity puzzle.  An article defining sperm fathers asks,"For at least a decade, there has been growing national concern about the trend of "father absence." Men who abandon their biological children are now subject to DNA testing, child support orders, even jail time. They are stigmatized as "dead-beat dads." How then can we explain the glorification of the "donor dad"--the most absent of all absent fathers?"

I think we all need to know what makes us....us.

How Do I Tell You I Love You?

I do thumb love with my youngest daughter. xoxoxo.  Txting is her form of communication.  To my husband's blackberry I send ((hugs)).  My son does cell and txt but won't do email.  My oldest gets my love via email and cell.  My mom? Landlines and email.  My brother? emails but he only reads the first line on his treo.

Love is complicated.  I'm excited for parent's weekend to give mother love in-person.  ;)    Live love is best.  My latest oft-repeated phrase to my husband, "Have I told you today that I love you?"

I used to sign my personal letter closings (when I wrote them) -- Love,  (me).
Here I just say Cheers and if I love ya, I'll link.

Uneven Expressions, Neurology & Politics...

As mothers, we learn to read the faces and expressions of our children.  We also learn to understand the facial expressions of others.

Presidential Candidate John Edwards presents an uneven expression, leading to distrust.  Neuroscience can show us that true emotions play on one side of the face and masking on the other.  I forget which side is which for the "real" emotions but this is why Bush's smirk makes us uncomfortable.

Reason and logic are sometimes not used as much as gut feelings and emotions, especially with politics. 

The role of semantics and neurology in politics is something I'm interested in. Drew Westen, a professor of psychology at Emory University, has a book, “The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation,” and it is one that might make for good reading.

Yummers: Kudzu or Chile or Nutria?

Feeding our families and feeding ourselves... can you do it locally? There is a new magazine gearing up regional editions to help promote local eating.  When in Rome, you know...  but even the Romans might have shunned Kudzu or Nutria.  Maybe when I lived in the South I might have ventured out and cooked up kudzu had I had some recipes.  I've heard it is good against alcoholism but eating it? Hmmm.  Create a market and they will come?  Didn't work for nutria (unless nutria meat is being exported to places where they eat shark fins or dogs or horses or such things we won't nibble here?).

Chefs in New Orleans tried to promote recipes to use Nutria, those awful little critters that have taken over the bayous and have no natural enemies.  The South American native rat-like animals escaped from cages on the  salt dome island near Lafayette, Louisiana where Tabasco is made during a hurricane quite awhile back and, like kudzu, they have become terrifically invasive.

Well, New Mexico chiles are a local food you can eat up, eat up and eat up.  In fact, they are addictive. Northern New Mexico cuisine features both red and green chile... in restaurants you are asked if you want "red, green or Christmas" with the latter option giving you both.  Eating local... a hot idea.

Gross: Dirty Plates...

How ick is it when you pick up plates for a buffet when you eat out and they are NOT CLEAN?  You have to pick through the silverware to find a clean fork or knife and you wonder, "how well are these things being washed?"

Makes you think what is under the food when you eat out. 

On the road...

A Dripping Scare...

Big kids do dumb things. Mothers pray for protection.

Further down this river where the water rushes and churns in the rocky narrows,  I read and watch my family play. My husband fishes in a spot I found around the bend behind me.  My son tries to catch another trout with his new fly-fishing rod just below me.  My 18 year-old daughter  pulls up her jeans, wades out into the stream with the water above her thighs, headed towards a large rock in the middle of the very fast moving water, right on the crest of a big drop-off.   The  stream is loud with roaring, churning water right here.

All my years around water make me sit up straight as I watch her with a sense of dread and horror.  All of my lifeguarding instincts went on high alert.  This wasn't safe.  How often do I tell my nearly grown up kids to be careful, drive more slowly, watch out... Before I can call out to her to come back, she slips and falls feet first.  The water pulls her under and I can't see where she is.

Seeing Double: Twins...

The stroller crowd is out and about  on the sidewalks now that spring has really sprung in Manhattan. There are a ton of twins here and it is because, I would say, that people postpone childbearing until they are set in their careers.  Polly Morrice reviews Liza Mundy's book, Everything Conceivable - How Assisted Reproduction is Changing the World, in this week's NYTimes Book Review and writes that technology has impacted the number of twins born in the U.S. - up 75% since 1980.  A Manhattan sidewalk dance: dodging double strollers -- pushed by nannies in the daytime and Dads on Sundays. 

Sixty percent of married mothers of preschool children are now in the work force and maybe the trends are changing, author Linda Hirshman writes. Maybe theThe NYU students and young 20-something young women tell me that no guys get serious until after 30 and no one "dates".  Is global warming altering our cycles?  Regardless, young women - freeze your eggs.  Expecting mothers - bank that cord blood.

Earth Day and it is Warm...

Everyone is outside enjoying the warm spring weather and the jonquils and forsythia are in full bloom.  Central Park is crowded... I played there all yesterday afternoon on assignment and will head back out later this afternoon.  Lola and Pale Male fans are watching for signs of viable eggs, like this guy, above, looking through the telescope set up for just that purpose. I sat on a bench next to the toy boat pond and a woman told me her theory: Lola's eggs can't be kept warm because the building ledge where the nest has been built has little metal spikey things so that the air circulates under the nest.  ok.  Sounds logical to me.  Another person watching the red-tailed hawk pair thinks that global warming has disrupted their cycles.

"Oh, I just can relate to Lola. I know what it is like to put so much effort into something and then just have it never amount to anything," the woman next to me said as we talked of Lola's eggs.  She is in the finance business and works on commission.   I care about mothers on the ledge of things, so I nod.  All of New York cares about Lola, it seems, as I watch these Lola-gazers with binoculars on the benches peer at Pale Male peeking out of the nest. 

Well Google, the $150 billion juggernaut, hasn't let all its profits take the play away but the seriousness of Google's Earth Day graphic today is worth noting. 

In all seriousness, attention needs to be given to this year's farm bill, up for the next cycle of congressional approval.  Its influence on the environment, immigration, our collective health and well-being makes it an issue for all of us to heed.  What is happening with agricultural subsidies and policies is just wrong. A good article,  You Are What You Grow, by food author and journalist Michael Pollan on the subject when I can get it.  When I was a new mother and shopping for the family, someone told me to shop the perimeter of the grocery store and to buy local when I could.  Mothers should be acting on this issue - for the health of our families, our farms and the earth.