Monster Faces

Today I tried to approximate this craft with the girls.  I almost bought the kit, but then realized that I could do it much cheaper with plain paper plates, finger paints, and sheets of uncut foam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The girls painted the plates themselves, then told me what body parts they wanted, how many of each, and placed them themselves (I did the cutting).  They also drew the pupils in the eyes themselves, and the line down the tongue.  So, how do you think they turned out?

A Short Story Apropos of Nothing

Last December my parents bought a dyson vacuum.  When we came over to visit a few days before Christmas, I asked how they were liking it — was it doing as good a job as they thought it would?  My mother gave a twisted smile.  ”Oh, it works,” she said, “why don’t you ask your father what happened to all the area rugs and tree skirts.”

I’d noticed that something was different when I came in, now I realized it was the absence of the rugs and the skirtless trees.

“That dyson’s got a powerful suction” was all my father said.

This was a whining “we are so broke” post.  And then we sat down and did a budget and realized that we make plenty of money… we’re just not so used to paying attention to where it goes.  So, 2 weeks and we’ll be back on track.  

Move along… nothing to see here…

And Then I Wonder if We’re Speaking the Same Language

Me: Sassa?  I see you ate all your chicken salad, would you like some more?

Sassa: What?  

Me: Would you like some more chicken salad?

Sassa: I ate it all.

Me: Yes, I know. Do you want some more?

Sassa: Are you going to eat it?

Me: No.  I’m full.  I’m asking you if YOU want to eat more?

Sassa: You can’t eat mine!  You have to get your own!

Me: I don’t want any chicken salad.  Do you want to eat more chicken salad?

Sassa: Why did you eat my chicken salad?

Me: I didn’t eat your chicken salad, you ate your chicken salad.  Are you still hungry?  Do you want more chicken salad?

Sassa: I don’t want chicken salad, I want pie.

Me: We don’t have any pie.  I guess you’re not hungry, I’ll just put this chicken salad away.

Sassa: why are you taking away my pie!  I need it! I need my pie!

Me: We never had any pie, this is chicken salad.

Sassa: well I want it.

Me: You do want more chicken salad?

Sassa: Well, I said so, didn’t I?

Why I Think I Like Parenting a Toddler More Than an Infant

Then:

Middle of the night.  Screaming.  More screaming.  Baby falls into a fitful sleep only to wake up screaming 5 minutes after you lay her down.  Pacing, rocking, bouncing, wondering: what is the problem?  What is hurting her?  She’s not running a fever, so is she sick or is she just trying to ruin my life?  Why won’t she let me sleep?  WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH HER?  Finally decide to try baby ibuprofen; infant finally falls asleep.  Doctor’s appointment later that day determines that the baby has an ear infection.

 

Now:  

Middle of the night.  Toddler comes and climbs into bed.  Kicking, twisting, turning, poking in the eye. Stern warnings from mamas to go to sleep or go back to her own bed.  Finally: Mom, my ear hurts, I need medicine.  Mom, bleary-eyed, gets up and digs out ibuprofen.  Toddler finally falls asleep letting moms get a little more sleep, too.  In the morning Mom makes doctor’s appointment for ear infection.

 

It’s so much easier when they can tell you what’s wrong.

Comment Policy: Why You’re Not Allowed to Tell Me That My Child Shouldn’t Have Been Born

I was nervous to post my little post about my friend G. I got a lot of people commenting on it, and a lot of people got kicked into moderation status either because they’d never commented before, or because they were commenting with a new configuration — new ip address, or nickname, or email address. Each time I logged in and saw that I had comments in for moderation my heart skipped a few beats. I do not live on conflict. In fact, in my ideal world everyone would be polite and kind and considerate and there would never be any conflicts ever.

I’m pretty close to that ideal: I live in Utah where everyone stuffs conflicts and arguments down and just simmer until they explode. So, you know, we’re almost there. I know that the Utah culture of “smile and try to get along - at least on the surface” drives people from more direct cultures nuts, but there you have it. I am a child of my environment.

I’ve had trolls before. I’ve had legitimate trolls whose only purpose was to be as vituperatively offensive as possible. I’ve had trolls who don’t get me or where I’m coming from, and who don’t want to get me because I’m WRONG WRONG WRONG and they’re here to show me what’s right. I’ve had trolls who really were genuinely angry and who had a legitimate point but an incredibly hurtful way of making it. And I’ve had trolls who are normally decent people stung into hurtful speech for some reason. I generally let the last two types of people comment. Because I allow people to disagree with me, and I allow people who’ve been hurt by me (intentionally or not) express that hurt. But after a few run-ins with the first two types of trolls, I don’t let them comment anymore. Their comments get deleted, because I refuse to let people talk to me like that in my own space. So, like I was saying, I was worried that I was going to get homophobic trolls. And, eventually, I did get one. I’ve decided to let this comment serve as an example of my comment policy and which comments will be getting deleted.

So, this person left the following comment on my post:

Wow, Really? What would’ve been best for the child is that he hadn’t have been brought into such a sad situation. This is why same sex couples shouldn’t have children and why heterosexuals shouldn’t get divorced. The kids are always the ones who suffer. Poor G??? Poor O!!!

Now, on one hand, I was tempted to let it through. Because in the middle of it is a nugget of truth. The truth is that the true victim of this situation is O, not G. My sympathy is all with G, because I see myself in her. But my outrage (that I was trying, albeit not completely successfully) is for O. No child should have a parent (or any loving, caring, respectful person to whom they’re bonded) forcibly taken from their lives. I worry about what this will do to him. I worry about his attachment to future caregivers. I worry about his ability to love without fear. And I worry for his relationship with J. I believe she’s shooting herself in the heart with this move and that her relationship with O will be the more constrained and limited because of the limits she’s placed on his ability to express love and the reactionary controls she’s exercising over him. So yes, Homophobic Reactionary Troll, you have a smidgen of a point.

But you moved into troll territory when you not only state that same-sex couples shouldn’t have kids* but that O’s real problem is that he was born to those women at all. Because (as I know the “reasoning” of this “argument” goes) this result is inevitable when two women decide to create a family. But for every case like this there are multitudes of cases that no one hears about because everyone behaves like adults and works everything out with grace and love. And in states where joint adoption and co-parent adoptions are allowed, it is far more likely that such workings-out take place, because there is a legal structure in place to encourage and enforce it. The problem isn’t that O (and, by extension, my daughter, and the children of my friends and most of the readers of this blog) was born to same-sex couples, the problem is that O was born in a culture that doesn’t value him, his relationships, the relationships of those around him, and the safety and security of his family and relations. He was born in the context of a larger society who worships at the altar of connectivity while simultaneously severing all ties and responsibilities to anyone and anything who differs (if you are connected to nothing that is different than you, then to what are you actually connected? Are you not just one bloated entity?) And when his parents (and me, and my wife, and a majority of the readers of this blog) choose to love and create relationships in the face of such appalling hypocrisy and opposition — in an attempt to bring more love into this word — the vulnerable are battered, beaten down, punished. And then, like all punished, are blamed for their condition and the condition of those in their care, and all other “collateral damages”.

So that, dear readers, is an example of a comment that was deleted, and why.

As an example of a comment that disagreed with something I said, and which I strongly disagree with in turn, but is not a flame and is not from a troll, I submit this comment which did not get deleted:

…That being said, I refuse to demonize J. I don’t know enough about her side of the story td to pass judgement on her. In the public’s eye all lawyers have a taint of fire and brimstone about them, unless they work for next to nothing defending the habitat of some cute and fluffy animal from being bulldozed by greedy developers.

There are a number of things I disagree with here, and I’m not going to get into them now, and I’m not posting this so that a bunch of you can leave comments on this post about how that comment is wrong, but rather to show that commenters are allowed to post things that disagree with me, or even flat out call me wrong. As long as it’s not insulting to anyone involved in the discussion, it gets through. Just so we’re clear on that.

*and let’s not even go into the whole no het couples should divorce… because, I mean, really? REALLY? Never? So a woman who’s being beaten, and whose kids are being beaten and/or sexually abused should stay with her husband because, you know, it’s better for the kids than divorce?!

New Year, New Look

Yesterday marked 3 years since I started blogging. In the land of lesbian parenting blogs… I am older than the hills and twice as dusty. I’m capable of telling blogging stories that start: in my day there were only a handful of lesbian parenting blogs and only 2 other blogs by non-bio moms and mom-to-be. And in my day every lesbian parenting blogger knew each other and commented on each other’s blogs and we were tight, TIGHT. We knew the value of a link back then, yessirreebob!

Of course, considering that I often forget to link, I never respond to memes, and my blogroll has been out of date for 2 years now, you can also call me a hypocrite when I tell such tales. Or perhaps my memory is just going. I keep meaning to meme and link and update the blogroll and then 14 months have passed and I realize that I never did.

To celebrate this anniversary, the lovely Calliope gave me a new look, and I treated myself to a new URL. Even though I’m terrible at my blogroll (but will be updating it this week! I promise! I tied a string around my finger and everything!) please change your blogrolls and bookmarks to Anaccidentofhope.com so my stats recover from the hit of changing urls. Thanks.

In a post a couple of days ago I mentioned that it feels like Klove and I have been recovering the path and life we were derailed from 3 years ago. Now, on one hand it feels like a betrayal of the love I have for my daughter for saying that — since her entire life fits in the derailed portion of mine. And yet, she was on her way here before we got sideswiped, so I don’t think it really is. But I do want to clarify that I have loved every moment of having her. SHE is not part of the derailment.

But in case you haven’t been reading me from the very beginning (there are a handful of the oldtimers who check in here), or aren’t as obsessive as Mrs. Bluemont and her printing out of complete blog archives, you might enjoy a peek at the pre-motherhood me — when Sassa was merely a bump in Klove’s belly, I hadn’t started the hell-job yet, and I was a newbie blogger seeking community and sister-hood, and thrilled to have anyone leave a comment — let alone link to me. I’ve opened my archives up — not all of the posts (lordie, I have over a thousand by now!) have our new pseudonyms on them, so please be kind and don’t refer to the fact that our underwear is showing, please.

I don’t know how long this “blogging” thing is going to last, but I’m here for the long haul.

Hard Lesson To Learn

yesterday Klove and I went to this place called NPS. Did anyone ever have a Pick’n Save around when you were a kid? NPS is like old Pick’n Save on crack. It’s the place where things that don’t sell, fall off the truck, get caught in a flood, or are just too weird to sell in real stores end up. The strangest stuff is there. And also really good stuff is there for cheap, just because the box is dented and dinged (or worse). It’s mostly all jumbled together in some loose sort of organization, but there’s this one sectioned off corner of the store where the “high end” stuff is put. In this section (you have to leave kids and carts outside) you’ll find thousand-dollar designer dolls, art bronzes, hand-carved carousel horses, solid silver coffee sets… and, yesterday, a stuffed octopus kid chair. This chair, to be exact (though I didn’t know about it before yesterday). It was a little dirty, from being in a dirty warehouse, perhaps, but nothing that couldn’t be cleaned. And it was only $30! It was perfect for Sassa’s room.

So, I picked it up (because it was so cute I was worried someone else would snatch it) and started carrying it around that section of the store. I should have paid for it immediately, but: Sassa’s room is small and I wasn’t 100% sure it would fit in there; Sassa’s outgrown a bunch of her toys recently and while she was in daycare most of the time it didn’t matter, but now that she’s home most of the time she needed new toys, so we’ve been buying her a lot of things lately; we alreayd have her birthday presents, and we spent a bit more than we’d planned on them; so if we were going to give her the chair for Christmas, that’s a long time to try and find a hiding place for something that size. So, while I really, REALLY, wanted the chair, I wasn’t sure I could justify buying it if the only reason to do so was my strong desire to have such a cute thing in my house (and Sassa’s delight in it as well).

So, I was wandering around that section of the store (you have to pay for the things in that section before you leave it for the rest of the store) waiting for Klove to finish browsing, trying to talk my practical side into being completely happy with my immanent purchase, when a man came up to me and asked me how much the chair was. I told him that it was $30. He remarked that that was a great deal and I told him it was and that my daughter was going to love it. He walked away. A few minutes later ANOTHER man, older and sweaty, approached me, and with a slightly desperate look in his eye, he offered to pay me $20 for the right to purchase the chair instead of me!

Now, that just seemed crazy to me. I mean, who does that? A desperate person does that. So I started telling him about my daughter and her undersea bedroom and how much she would love it and it was going to be her birthday present, but he just kept offering to pay me for it. He asked me to name a price, for god’s sake! And then Klove wandered up so I turned to her and told her what he was offering. Now, Klove had thought the chair was cute, but she’s more practical than me sometimes (which is why she wasn’t sharing the ‘hauling the chair around the store’ duties) so as I was pleading with my eyes to her for her to justify my telling this man no, and buying this chair that I wasn’t sure would fit in the room, for our daughter who already has a lot of stuff (but not an octopus chair, I should point out!), simply because I wanted it, she just laughed and said, “Take the money!”

Finally, I turned back to the man, and asked him what he wanted the chair for. He told me he was a collector of toys and that this chair was perfect for his collection — he’d been looking for something just like this. Now, I thought it was weird that an older man would have a toy collection, and the thought crossed my head that maybe he was one of those jolly perverts, I could understand the desire to own the chair as that was precisely why I wanted it. And the urge to accost a person and buy the damn toy TWICE seemed desperate to a point I couldn’t quite understand.

But the bottom line is that deep down I don’t think my own desires and wants are important enough to honor, and that in the face of someone else’s stated desires, I crumble and sell myself out. So I found myself saying, “you don’t have to pay me $20, if you want it that badly, you can have it” because it seemed the decent and kind thing to do. He responded with “at least let me give you $10″ and I did take the $10. And he walked off with my octopus chair and I nearly started to cry. I was so sad and felt so wronged — by myself.

Meanwhile, Klove had found a really cute shirt for Sassa, at a really cute price, so she followed the man to the check-out (where he met the other guy who’d originally approached me). When she rejoined me she told me that up at the counter she’d learned that the man was a toy dealer, that he had a shop in another part of town, and that he was planning on re-selling the toy for a great deal of money.

Which only made me feel worse. I can look back and see that he told me the truth, but it was certainly a twisted version of the truth designed to mask the fact that he was only wanting the toy because it was worth so much more than even the $50 he would have paid if I had insisted on the $20. I felt like he took advantage of my decency. But I mostly felt like I had sold myself out. I was so angry at myself. I need to fucking learn to SAY NO!

I moped through the rest of the store. Kicking myself up and down aisles. Klove bought me a cute pair of flip-flops with glasses of iced tea on the straps, but it didn’t make me feel better.

And then, as we left the store with our purchases, a man out there said “you were way too nice in there! I couldn’t believe that you let that man take your chair and didn’t even take the full $20!”
Which didn’t make me feel better.

I hope I learn the lesson this time. I’d hate to see what I let someone take from me next time.

knock the breath out of you

Almost 2 years ago, when Klove started grad school, she met another incoming student in the program who was also a lesbian.  They hit it off immediately, having much more in common than just a sexual orientation.  G was funny, acerbic, smart-as-hell, and a mom.  She and her partner, J, had an infant — O.  J is the mom who carried.

We got to know G and J and their son, O.  We liked them.  We considered them friends.  J seemed sweet, and she had a strong sense of social responsibility.  Though she was a lawyer, she was still working for a local social organization, managing their fledgling grocery co-op.  In fact, the co-op had been her baby from the beginning, while she was still in law school, and so even after she passed the bar and could have gotten a (much) higher-paying job, she stayed with the co-op to make sure it got firmly established, before leaving to start a career in law.  I really admired her.

J worked long hours.  Very long hours.  So G was the primary care-giver for their son.  G took him to work with her during the day, and cared for him in the evenings when J was working.  If O wasn’t with G, he was with G’s dad who lived in their basement.  They only needed daycare a few hours a week during G’s classes.  They were living our ideal.

And then they bought this fantastic house early last summer.  The house was so great, that even though Klove and I love our house, I found myself envying them their house.  And then, shortly after that, they dropped out of our lives for a few months.

When they resurfaced.  Or, rather, when G resurfaced, she and J and ended their relationship.  It took everyone by surprise.  And, of course, given that Jones v. Barlow was only a few months old, everyone was worried for G’s relationship with O.  But G assured us that J was being very reasonable.  And it made sense, given that J likes to work long hours, was about to start a new job, and with how bonded to G O was.  What loving mother wouldn’t be reasonable and fair in such a situation?

It didn’t last long.  Every couple of weeks or so J would shorten G’s time with O.  Within 3 months G, who had been the one caring for O nearly 24/7 was down to only seeing O 2 days a week, no overnight visits to G’s new place.  It wasn’t long after that that O was no longer allowed to refer to G as “mama”.  He calls her by her name now.  And it wasn’t long after that that G lost unsupervised visits with O. 

I can only guess at the what the depth of G’s pain feels like.  I know that merely to watch this happening and not be able to do anything to fix it has been hell.  And to not even be able to really tell people about it.  Anytime J knew that G was talking about the situation, suddenly O would be unavailable for the next few visits with G.  So, in the interest of G and O’s relationship, her friends have been keeping quiet about it.  Talking about it with people that we know already know, but not talking about it within the larger community.  J left the Unitarian church that they had attended as a family, and started attending the other Unitarian Church in town (the one Klove and I go to), saying only that she’s a single parent with the other parent out of the picture.  

A little over a month ago, G realized that she’s going to lose O either way.  Her strategy of trying to follow J’s rules is not working — at that point she was only seeing O a few hours a week.  So she contacted a lawyer.  Keri’s lawyer, to be exact.  The lawyer sent a letter requesting that J meet G in mediation to work out a fair and equitable visitation schedule in O’s best interest.  

That was a month ago.  G hasn’t seen her son since.

Let me just pause a moment to tell you what J’s current job is.  She’s an attorney who represents parents whose children have been taken into state custody, or whose children are otherwise under the supervision of the state.  She helps parents who have abused or neglected their children get visitation and even reunification with those children they have been accused of abusing.  Because it’s in the best interests of the children to maintain a relationship with their parents regardless of past abuse and neglect issues.  She fights for parents to maintain relationships with their children.  

Yesterday G was informed that J has retained F r a.n k M.y l a r — Barlow’s Alli.ance Defe.nse Fund Attorney.

J still goes to the Unitarian Church.  She took her son to Pride.  She lets her son visit G’s father.  But in response to a request to meet in mediation to work out a fair visitation schedule, she sinks as low as she can go.  She says that G has smeared her reputation by telling their mutual friends the facts of J’s behavior since they ended their relationship.  But what does this action say for itself?  What does it say of her integrity?

Before you start quibbling about how no one can really know the truth, I can tell you that G never abused or neglected her son.  But even if she did — J works to help such parents retain visitation and regain custody.  There is nothing that justifies what she is doing.  Not one thing.

I just can’t understand the mental processes in play here.  The disconnect between what she says and what she does.  The disconnect between what she does on one hand and what she does on the other.  And then I thought — well, maybe she justifies this behavior by saying that G isn’t really a parent because she didn’t give birth.  But I can tell you that even adoptive parents end up involved with the state Department of Child and Family Services.  And she helps them, too.  And if adoption were legal here in Utah, G would have adopted O, no doubt about it.  Does the fact that she couldn’t, that she was prevented from getting that piece of paper, despite her strong desire to do so, make her less a parent?  As it is, she has a joint guardianship that hasn’t been dissolved yet (but probably will be soon).

There’s no doubt that J has decided that G is not a parent anymore.  But on what grounds?  Does she feel that way about every lesbian and gay non-bio parent?  And yet she brought her son to Pride.  Did she smile, make small talk, enjoy the feeling of community, even as she was making plans to hire the man who was instrumental in stripping rights away from so many of the parents shepherding their children around the festival?

Making Sassa a Lesbian: part VII

Some friends of ours, also lesbian parents, once told us that the only way they toilet trained their oldest son was to buy him Dora panties and tell him not to pee on Dora.  Klove and I thought that was pretty funny, and also very smart, and while this particular couple and that particular boy were already willing to play with gender, and so the fact that Dora can only be found on girls’ underwear and not boys’ wasn’t a big deal for them, it made me think about how sad it would be for other boys who loved Dora and whose parents wouldn’t cop to buying them gender-crossing undies.  

This particular couple has gotten a lot of flack for allowing and making space for their son to play with gender markers.  Not just from straight people, but from what I remember they’ve told me, some of the most strident objections to their son’s gender play come from other queer folks.  Like this couple is giving the rest of us decent queer parents a bad name, or something.  Or that they’re proving the bigots right who say we’re only capable of raising queer kids, or only having kids to prove a political point.  That kind of attitude drives me nuts with its twin subconscious assumptions that all kids are straight until they’re proven not, and that there’s something with being queer that we wouldn’t want our kids to end up that way.  

And so we let Sassa play with gender.  But we get away with it for the most point where this other couple doesn’t, because it’s more acceptable for girls to embrace and “mimic” boys behavior.  Because really, who wouldn’t want to be masculine if they could?  We’re “making our daughter strong” through encouraging masculinity whereas they’re “making their son weak” though encouraging femininity.  

Although, we may have just crossed a line for some people.  Sassa loves Shrek.  Not Fiona.  Shrek and Donkey.  And also Spiderman.  So at the store last week guess what we found?  Shrek and Donkey and Spiderman underwear.  Boys’ underwear.  Because they don’t make girls’ underwear with spiderman and shrek and donkey on the ass.  And we bought them for her.  And she wears them all the time.  She’s excited to wear them, and she rarely has accidents in them because she doesn’t want to hurt their feelings.  

But it’s true.  Under her flower-embroidered capris are boxer-briefs with spiderman across the butt, and a working fly.  She’s happier in boys underwear just like a lot of butch dykes I know.  So that’s why I titled this post like this.  Because someone, somewhere, is now convinced that this is all part of the Gay Agenda to force little girls into being lesbians and have people praise us for doing so. 

I just thought I’d beat them to the punch.

Next lesson: how to wear a wallet-chain.