Pretty Pretty Princess

I confess.

I've caved.

I bought Disney Princess stuff for the Typo. And I *hate* Disney princess stuff. Love the movies. Hate the endless inescapable marketing. Hate the three year olds running around screeching "I'm a PRINCESS!! I'm a PRINCESS!"

But it's not my fault.

See, when the Typo started using the potty successfully, a good friend of mine and The Typo's celebrated her success with the highly awesome gift of sparkly gold glitter enhanced Disney Princess days of the week underwear. She went out of her head with excitement.

The exotic undies, combined with exposure to the Cinderella movie (courtesy of a princess-mad older cousin) turned my nearly three year old, almost overnight, into a princess freak.

(She has, by the way, no idea what princesses are or what they do. When asked, she said, "They're nice. And they spin." I have no idea what this means.)

So, for about a week now, her favorite bedtime story has been--brace yourself--the PACKAGE INSERT from her princess underwear. Yep. Picture it. There I am, cosily snuggled up at bedtime with my sweet little punkin, reading "100% combed cotton crotch. Size 2-3T. Hanes"

It was hilariously pathetic, in some bizarre Oliver Twist/Monty Python patheticon kind of way.

So now she has a set of 4 Disney Princess story books. They have no discernible plot, but the pictures are pretty. And the princesses are nice. And, apparently, they spin.

You'd have caved too.

Sarah Palin: Supermom?

So, as of 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 4th, when you Google "Sarah Palin" and "Supermom" you get 35,800 hits.

I expect that number to go up every day from now until the election.

All over the media, all across the political spectrum, people are astonished, amazed, and totally impressed that Palin can:

1. Parent multiple children
2. Hold down a demanding full time job
3. Nurse/pump breast milk while working
4. Travel for work while pregnant
5. Work all the way through her pregnancies
6. Cook for her family
7. Do laundry for her family
8. etc. etc. etc. etc.

And all without a staff.

I don't know about you guys, but most of the women I know don't call that being a Supermom.

We call it "Thursday."

Calling Names

I don't usually talk politics here. I have to talk politics too much for my job, and to be honest, my strongest political opinions go up to somewhere in the 17th century and then stop.

But this stuff in the news lately about Bill Cunningham introducing John McCain and taking the opportunity to emphasize Barack Obama's middle name--Hussein--several times during the introduction, while also accusing Obama of sympathizing with "world leaders who want to kill us" really bugs me. It bugs me because when I heard Cunningham defending his comments on NPR yesterday, I was suddenly, instantly, nauseatingly, back in Jr. High school.

My somewhat complicated family religious history is not that different from Obama's. He comes from a racially and religiously mixed family. I come from a religiously mixed one. We both, I suspect, spent a certain amount of time explaining ourselves to people who don't have that kind of complexity in their families.

What I remember of Jr. High school (aside from a few excruciating crushes and a set of even more excruciating dental torture devices) is how often I had this conversation.

"So you're Jewish, right?"

"No, I'm a Unitarian, but..."

"What's that?"

"Well, Unitarians believe that there's one god and no trinity, and that we should tolerate..."

"So you aren't a Christian, right?"

"No, I'm not."

"So you're Jewish, right?"

"No, but my grandparents are, and my Dad was raised Jewish and bar mitzvahed and then became and atheist and I'm a Unitarian, but I have a lot of respect for the tradition, and we do light candles for Chanukah and..."

"So you're Jewish, right?"

"...."

Now, the thing about this conversation, aside from the sheer annoyance I faced every time I was grilled about my beliefs and my family history just because I wasn't going to Confirmation class on Sundays, is that, in the Ohio town where I grew up, being asked "So, you're Jewish, right?" wasn't a way of saying, "Hey, do you happen to know when Purim is this year?" or "What'd you get for your bat mitzvah?" Or "Any chance you know the difference between a schlemiel and a schlmazle and a schmendrick?"

It was a way of saying, "So, you're different, right? And that means I should hate you and pick on you, and remind you of that difference every day, right?"

It was a way of saying, "So, I'll be justified when I draw swastikas on the posters you put up when you run for class office, because, you know, it's just *reminding* people that you're Jewish and different and weird and, you know, not like us."

It was a way of saying, "You don't belong here. And we're going to make sure you don't forget it. And we're going to make sure we won't, either."

When the kids I went to school with spent all that time trying to figure out whether to call me a Jew or not, they weren't trying to understand me. They weren't even trying to categorize me. They were trying to find a useful category for excusing their hatred of me.

And so, when Cunningham waves his hands in the air and says that Barack Hussein Obama should be proud of his name, that he's just stating the facts, and that it's those who take offense at Cunningham's use of Obama's full name who have a problem with Islam and with Obama's ethnicity, and his family's religious background, and his race...

all I hear is the kids in the cafeteria, calling me a Jew, just trying to get the facts straight, so they can decide how much to hate me.

Oh Dear. Oh Dear. Oh Dear.




Courtesy of the wonderful folks over at Judge a Book By its Cover

Fa-La-La-La-La

I don't knit socks.

I mean, I *have* knitted socks. I knit a pair for myself, and I knit slipper socks for the Typo and her two cousins last summer. But as a general rule, I don't knit socks.

These, however, are *stockings*, and I'm pretty pleased with them.



One for me, one for Mr. Print, one for the Typo, and the nameless one for Typo #2.

I lined the stockings with flannel to keep the fair isle floats from catching on fingers and on toys, and to control the stretching. The stockings are bigger than I'd anticipated, though, so I have to brave the Heart of Darkness that is the fabric store 4 days before Christmas to go buy more flannel to line the last stocking.

All in all, a successful project. And we're all feeling much better, too. Thanks!!

I Hab a Code

I have a head cold. My husband has a head cold. My kid has a head cold. The only one who doesn't have a head cold is the baby-to-be, who is currently preventing me from taking any *good* medicine for my head cold.

The house is filled with phlegm, tissues, cough medicine, alternative remedies that don't do squat, and a general air of malaise.

I am dealing with it all in approved fashion by complaining vociferously at work, reading The Moonstone (the situation isn't quite bad enough for me to have recourse to Jeeves and Wooster novels, but if the kid doesn't get better soon and stop waking herself and me up at 5 am, I may well be Bertie-bound), and knitting lace. Badly.

Because lace knitting and cold medicine don't really mix.

Metonymy

A while ago, I ordered a stash of books from the lovely folks at Persephone Press. All were great reads, and I gushed for a while about how gorgeous the books are.

They also sent me a free, plain burlap canvas tote bag, which I adore.

It is, however, crying out for some embellishment.

I've been vacillating for weeks about how to bedeck the thing. With the linguist's alphabet? The great quote from Winnie the Pooh about something being "a useful thing to put things in?"

Something more classic and less geeky, like flowers or birds or what have you?

Last night, it appeared to me, in letters of flame--the only possible thing for a book geek like myself to embroider on a tote bag: