Examined Lives

When political rhetoric goes awry

The healthcare debate is coming to a full boil, and intelligent, productive discourse is headed out the window. Wasn't it just 10 months ago when the nation appeared to be celebrating the arrival of change? Plus ca change, and all that, it seems. 

What I detest the most is the hypocrisy. Why resort to vitriol and name-calling when you claim to represent true concerns? Don't you know that just weakens your position and cheapens your approach? I'll leave it to CNN's Anderson Cooper, and David Gergen, in this clip from the Huffington Post, to make some sense out of this: 

 

—CityMom

And how was *your* day?

In the interests of having a sociological record, I thought I would chronicle a day in the life of one typically busy middle-class working mother, circa these days and located in a major metro area.

6:00 am - Slide out of bed. Only the thought of how quickly I'll be getting a Coffee People Jet Fuel K-Cup propels me.

6:15 am - After rejuvenating few sips, swing into action.  Feed cats, who are deviously trying to trip me until I do.  Furiously assemble lunch boxes (cheese sticks, water bottles, sliced ham, some crappy crunchy item, don't remember which). Wipe down counters, still filthy after last night's cooking. Lay out raincoats; check backpacks to make sure all items secure and ready for takeoff.

6:45 am - No time to shower.  Dampen hair and blow dry for three minutes in attempt to get that "finished look."  Results are limp and unconvincing.

7:00 am - Dab on some drugstore makeup.  (No time or money to shop for the good stuff.)  At least it's supposed to be organic. Throw on uniform:  Black pants, sweater and loafers.

7:05 am -- Wake up kids.  Kiss, kiss.  Brush hair, distribute granola bars, soothe the clingy one, shout last-minute instructions to The Dude (check and sign Reading Log.  Look for big trash bags at grocery story, as entire must now enclose their coats and backpacks -- the lice are back.  Again.)  Write out checks for school lunch tickets; tomorrow's Pizza Day. Lay out money and textbooks for Chinese class later in case I"m not back from the city in time.

7:17 am - Bolt for train to city.  Make it.

8:20 am - Squish into standing-room only second train to get to city in time to buy tea before meeting.  Somebody has bad breath.  At least I didn't waste a hair wash.

8:55 am - Take my place at big conference room table.  Check to make sure all buttons are buttoned and that I have appropriate paperwork.  I do!  Crumpled and stained by morning breakfast yogurt, but I do.

9:15 am - Please, please don't make me present our project list.  Oh, I'm not ready for this. I don't even remember what's on it. How unqualified am I??  I simply can't.  I won't. I want to sit here, quietly, and take notes, and nod.  Oh, please. Oh...whew. Oh, thank you.  What a splendid boss you are.

10:00 am - Ready to catch train home to continue the day's work from lovely basement office...but wait!  Emergency item needs editing pronto. In the office.  But first, another impromptu meeting. To go over that Project List. 

11:00 am - Bolt for train home.  Make it!

12:45 pm - Home.  First, send out flurry of e-mails resulting from morning meeting. Shove down lunch salad.  Solid couple of editing hours ensue.  Clean stinky litter box somewhere in there.

3:00 pm - Kids return, graciously chauffeured today by The Dude.  Riffle through backpacks.  Sort school paperwork piles:  To Pay, To Do, Ignore, and WTF. Hand out sliced apples and oversee homework, using whiteboard to illustrate intricacies of writing six-digit numbers.

3:30 pm - Cajole kids to sit down finish homework, already.

4:00 pm - Head out with kids to local store to purchase several birthday party gifts. Buy a Perfect Petzzz for some kid,whereby my own kid practically collapses in a fit of longing for one of the damned things. 

You have a real pet, I point out.  This thing just lays there and pretends to breathe, probably going through a couple batteries a day to go it. No matter; said child will raid her bank account for the animal.  What can I say?  It's her money.  I give up.  We buy it.  I suck at teaching them about delayed gratification and money management, I really do.  I'll worry about that another day.

5:00 pm - Dish out chicken nuggets for dinner.  I don't have any veggies left in the fridge.  I feel guilty, incredibly guilty, but at least they're the whole-wheat breaded, baked kind.  Feed cats.  Clean litter box.

5:30 pm - Prepare for magazine launch party, held locally, thank buddha.  Bathe, and try to push ragged cuticles back using sharp implements. Planned manicure did not transpire. Luckily, I did find a half-hour yesterday to visit SuperCuts (damp hair trim, no wash, 10 minutes, $14).

In preparation, have purchased dress on e-Bay in an ambitious size (J.Crew silk, black, NWT, $85).  Once pried out of its manila envelope and its resulting accordion wrinkles ironed to the best of my ability, dress is incredibly tight and pushes up my bosom practically to my ears. It will have to do. Feel like Scarlett O'Hara as The Dude zips and hooks me in, me gasping for breath. I sure won't be able to eat at the event. Fiddle dee dee! 

6:00 pm -- Design business cards, which The Dude helpfully prints using our handy-dandy Home Business Card Printing System. So they're one color and have five words...I'm a minimalist. 

6:30 pm - Reapply drugstore makeup, this time with a little five-year-old expensive eyeshadow thrown in.

6:45 pm - Issue last-minute instructions for The Dude: quiz spelling words, ensure kids do enforced daily reading.  By the way -- isn't he a great guy?  He is.

Another aside: Why do schools force kids to log or otherwise report on their reading?  Every day?  I can think of no better way to kill a love for reading than to make it homework. Anybody with me here?

6:50 pm - Console clingy child, who is crying because I won't be home to tuck her in. Her hair, wet from the bath, leaves a damp stain on the silk dress. Allow her to apply last-minute face powder (to me).  Put lipstick on myself and her, which thrills her no end.

7:00 pm  - Pop in car to go to magazine event. Car still stinks of sweat from Dude using it a half-hour ago to return from the gym.  Luckily I used my little perfume trick - just a dab in the general vicinity of the upper thigh area.  This ensures others will not choke on your perfume, but that you will release a nice smell when your plump thighs rub together under your dress.

7:15 pm -  Have panic attack. Dress bodice is way too tight. Barely able to breathe.

7:30 pm - Grab glass of wine like a shipwrecked sailor going for the lifeboat. 

7:45 pm - Talky, talky. Dispense homemade business cards. Editors and publisher are all younger than I. I'll be depressed about this later.

8:00 pm -- Wait -- is that one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey over there?  By jove, it is!  Wow, her lips are really, really plump. It is collagen? Silicone?  And what the hell am I doing in the same room as one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey?

8:15 pm - See a woman I know; a former fellow preschool mom (of two) who is also a network news anchor. She looks flawless and calm.  I do know, however, that she doesn't have to train it to work.  They send a limo for her. 

8:30 pm - Finally allow myself to eat an hors d'oeuvres. It tastes like cardboard; salmon salad runs down my chin, and a few bits of flaky pastry fall into my cleavage. It is such a bad idea to eat at these things.

8:45 pm - Bend over in the ladies' to clean out my cleavage, and my jugs pop almost all the way out.  Shove them back in frantically.  I simply cannot fathom why women would want to buy and surgically implant fake ones. Strap a half-bag of flour to your chest for a day instead, and see how it feels.  Still want 'em?

9:00 pm - Time to leave!

9:45 pm -- Safely at home. Ravenously devour big bowl of soup, which watching, glassy-eyed, The Girls Next Door.

10:30 pm - At long last, sleep.

~BurbMom

How big corporations are gouging us ...

I realize the headline's overselling my tiny post, but it's seriously what I thought after reading this little piece of news from the New York Times' David Pogue (aka big-time tech journalist). It seems At&T has caved into customers' demands to get rid of that anachronistic advice at the tail end of outgoing voicemail messages: “To page this person, press five now.” Apparently, it cuts that pitch down from 12-to-15 seconds to 8. 

On the face of it, one would wonder—okay, I wondered—what's the big deal? Then like a cartoon lightbulb switching on over dimwitted me, I realized: Wow, that extends the time a person spends on the phone, and given how many millions of subscribers they have, and how many calls they get that go into voicemail—AT&T must have raked in the bucks from that extra four-to-seven seconds!

Writes Pogue: "Wheels are turning at T-Mobile on this issue. Sprint already lets you eliminate the entire recording. Verizon, characteristically, refuses to respond."

It made me wonder, though: How else am I getting gouged?

How about:

• those extra charges that seem to pad every utility bill?

• those weighing scales for produce that, if you looked, appear to start at 1/4 pound?

• Metrocards that don't evenly give you a certain number of rides for a whole amount, so that you're left with cards that have extra an extra 25 cents on them when the fare is 10 times that? 

The things that make you go, hmm ...

—CityMom

Book Talk: Jared Diamond's scary Collapse

I just finished the weighty Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by the geologist/genius Jared Diamond.

This book should be required reading for every college student and book club out there. It's a brilliantly written and scholarly but digestible look at human society at critical turning points: Diamond examines and puts forth various theories on why flourishing ancient societies like the Maya and Anasazi vanished; and why others hung in there in the face of similar obstacles.

I hate to be a downer on a holiday weekend, but the takeaway is that basically, we're screwed. People keep having kids, way too many of them; agricultural production and other essential supplies inevitably fail to keep up. Very rarely do societies take stock of the natural resources they've got left and act either collectively or top-down to preserve them; the Easter Islanders chopped down their trees, to the very last stick, depriving themselves of fuel and native animals (potential food sources) of their living quarters. Whoops! Ended up dead!

Meanwhile, the elite of any society (and in the world) will fight hard to keep the lion's share of its wealth to themselves, come what may for the little people. (This puts so much into perspective, including our current wacko health care and environmental debacles.) Tribes on the Polynesian island Mangareva fought incessantly over one five-mile stretch of land -- the only cultivatable area left.

Anyway. The plebes, ignorantly, go right along with things until their very survival is threatened. Then we revolt, usually destructively. We'll tear down what we built with our own sweat and blood. But by then, it's usually too late.

Diamond offers a bit of hope as to how we might tackle our current environmental issues: Courageous leadership, long-term planning, the importance of maintaining a global economy, at the least.  But the prospects, given our innate stupidity as a race, seem gloomy. We're just gonna consume ourselves to death. While writing this, I noted this Houston Chronicle story about how large fish farming will commence in the Gulf of Mexico, despite huge environmental concerns. Why?  There's just no law on the books to stop it.

Take some antacids. Then read this book. 

~BurbMom

Paul Krugman on Ted Kennedy

A short-but-sweet remembrance of Ted Kennedy from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: 

I remember the days, several decades ago, when Ted Kennedy was treated — mainly, but not only, on the right — as a figure of derision... And now he’s remembered as a great man. The thing is, he didn’t change — he always was.

For more on the death of the legendary "Lion of the Senate," click here. For tributes, see below:

Five top life lessons learned by travelling

I'm back from our month-long adventure in China and Tibet, and I must say -- if there's anything you can do to give your soul and mind a good shaking and airing out, it's travel. Ditch the self-help books, step classes and yoga. A generous trip shakes you out of your daily rut, gets you physically on track and strips your chaotic mind to bare essentials (food, bed and amusements). Plus, it generates family bonds and memories like nothing else.

But this post isn't about those big lessons learned.  Rather, I'm dishing out other odd bits of know-how garnered along the way, as my brain is too jet-lagged to sum up anything important. Here, instead, are the top five oddball nuggets of great travel lessons I picked up en route:

1. Reading is one of the very best ways to engage and still your mind. Books keep you sane and amused,unlike frenetic T.V., which makes you crazy. I brought three huge tomes on my trip, including the fact-laden Collapse by Jared Diamond, about how societies annihilate themselves by abusing their natural environments (One scary read, I might add, and one which made me keep my souvenir purchasing to the minimum.  I'll review soon.).  I read them all. I feel calmer and, well, whole again. I can talk somewhat knowledgeably about important topics. I don't have annoying jingles running through my mind. Looking forward to Mad Men on Sunday, but other than that, I'll pass on the tube.

2. The results are finally, indubitably in: Carbs make you fat. I'm sorry. It's true. A month limited to small amounts of white rice (of which I quickly tired, and skipped) and without alcohol = a weight loss of seven pounds. Came home and had two glasses of wine and a few bites of bread and, Presto!  a pound gained by morning. 

3. Whoever invented ripstop nylon is a genius, and items made with it are by far and most wearable and sink-washable travel items available. I wish they made cute dresses out of it, though.

4. Getting up at 5 a.m. and sleeping at 9 p.m., as dictated by gradually lessening jet lag, is actually a great time table for humans.  You can make the most of those still, serene wee morning hours -- and natural daylight -- and are able to cut out the late-night frippery of noshing and that dastardly t.v.

5. Kids are malleable little creatures and can adapt to most anything over time. Sure, there will be whining and such, but eventually, realizing that choices are limited, they'll eat what parents say to and sleep when we tell them to. Come to think of it, we adults are malleable, too. There is so little that we are actually tethered to, in terms of habits, preconceptions and accoutriment. We can fly, and be free. Give it a try -- break on through to the other side!

~BurbMom

Photo: Happy Tibetan horseman.

Go, Barney Frank!

I don't always agree with Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank, but the way he took on one woman at a contentious town hall meeting on the thorny subject of universal health care was admirable. When someone refuses to discuss with logic, how can one respond with anything but this?

Just as it was about pretty much any issue during the election, we can't seem to have a facts-only conversation about this topic. Eye on the ball, people. Eye on the ball. 

—CityMom

Where is the world is BurbMom?

Here. I'm here. As in the photo below. In Tibet, on the top of the world, as it were. This is why my posts have been so relatively sparse; hopefully their lucidity compensates some.

I'm writing this pre-trip, so I can't tell you what it's really like in Tibet yet. I promise I will when I return.  I hear it's the kind of place upon which people superimpose their own unique presuppositions and conceptions, hence very hard to describe for all. For me the place has a lure of otherworldly spirituality, and mind boggling beauty. For The Dude it's just exotic. For the kids, as yet it's just a name of a place, nothing more. I hope they'll form impressions at their tender age that will last a lifetime.  

All I can tell you is I've been wanting to visit for decades. The place is just darned hard to get to, not so much because it's inaccessible any more but because there are various barriers of approvals and price to hurdle. Thankfully we found a bunch of very kind and cheerful local Tibetans to hire as travel agents and tour guides. Hopefully, we will have made it by the time you read this, and I'll fill you in when we get back.

~BurbMom

Molly Ringwald on John Hughes

Molly Ringwald—she of Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club (aka John Hughes' ultimate cool-but-not-too-cool teen protagonist—wrote a beautiful op-ed piece in the New York Times about the heartache she feels now that her mentor has passed away. Turns out, they had had a falling-out of sorts, largely due to her not wanting to work with him again as a way to "grow out" of being the pink-loving Andie, so to speak. Later, Hughes became a recluse, and he stayed that way until his death, pretty much. But the two managed to mend fences. 

This passage struck me, for its heart and for the truth in it. Sometimes, people find something wonderful in us that we don't see ourselves. Sadly, we don't believe them. And we are the poorer for it:

"John saw something in me that I didn’t even see in myself. He had complete confidence in me as an actor, which was an extraordinary and heady sensation for anyone, let alone a 16-year-old girl. I did some of my best work with him. How could I not? He continually told me that I was the best, and because of my undying respect for him and his judgment, how could I have not believed him?"

It's part of growing into our own skin, believing it when someone says to us: You are amazing. I hardly ever hear it. And when I do, it doesn't stick. And I'm the poorer for it. 

After all these years, John Hughes and Molly Ringwald can still teach us a lesson about being ourselves. Who knew?

—CityMom

Waste or Want: American (line-caught) Tuna

Oh, la, another dreary grocery shopping trip at my local A&P. Same place, same items, just like yesterday.  But wait!  What's that I spy? Something new!  Something...environmentally responsible!  Cans of line-caught tuna from American Tuna, a brand I haven't seen before. I pick up a can.

"Small, surface caught albacore are low in mercury," the can claims, and who am I to argue with the director of the Oregon State University Seafood Laboratory? 

I buy the can. At home, I dig a little more and find that American Tuna is actually six fishing families. This just gets better and better.

At $4.99 for six ounces, this better be good. But actually, $5 to feed two kids with possibly the most nutritional protein available isn't bad.  Even the mystery nuggets at school cost $1.85 per kid, and here we have 42 grams of pure protein, the body's building block, and more than 10,000 milligrams of and brain-boosting omega-3 fatty acids (tuna is a major source).  There are no additives here; no broth or water.

And given the preciousness of line-caught fish, $5 is about the right price. As writers like Michael Pollan and Mark Bittman have pointed out, fish just can't be your everyday cheap-o food; thinking that it was is what has depleted fisheries and led to environment killing, toxin-filled fish farms.  Grocery sushi!  Shrimp poppers for everyone! We eat fish by the pound, but they're not cows, pigs or buffalo (which should probably also be consumed in small-ounce servings. 

Now for the taste test. I'm happy to say that this is indeed the best-tasting canned tuna. There's more tuna than water in the package, which is a rarity, and the meat is firmer and more fresh tasting, wholly unlike the usual greyish stuff you pry out of a can.  The can itself is a bit of a sticking point, since it's undoubtedly lined with bisphenol A, but at these prices we won't be eating a lot of this stuff.  Then again, I doubt I'll go back to my old tuna.

(Another nice item is when I mentioned to the A&P fish manager how much I liked the American Tuna, he told me the entire A&P is truly trying to do the right thing and stock only sustainable fish. Sounds too good to be true, right?  But I'll be checking up on them.)

The Verdict:  A great catch!

~BurbMom

Photo: American Tuna