The Vatican’s Anti-gay Stance

I have a bunch of old drafts of posts I started, but never completed…I am just going to start putting them up, because…why not?

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On the one hand it’s easy for me to roll my eyes at the Vatican’s latest messaging about LGBTQ+ marriages/unions. It’s eye-rolling because it’s just so ridiculous–like we are supposed to believe that God has a problem with two humans loving each other and joining together in some kind of union. Catechism 101 teaches us God loves all, and God loves love. But of course this isn’t catechism 101, and it’s more complicated (and political) than that. And ultimately, even though I know that God has no issue with me or my marriage (nor do any of the nuns or priests with whom I’ve regularly spent time with over my years of teaching at a College that was originally founded by a Catholic order of nuns), the Vatican’s word is far more powerful than mine in changing/or making up the minds of many.

My family is Catholic. Like so many other members of the LGBTQ+ community, I was raised Catholic. I went to Catholic elementary schools and I went to a Catholic College (where I thankfully learned that the Catholic educational tradition isn’t and need not be wed to the Catholic faith traditions). I know that for many Catholics and for members of my family the Vatican’s dogma is meaningful, and that this stance in particular causes an internal conflict for those who love me, but likely continue to feel uneasy with who I am and how I live my life because of this (I’m sorry…I know I could be struck down for this sacrilege…), to be frank, idiotic and hate-based statement from Pope Francis.

So on the micro-level this affects me personally, it affects my family personally.

More generally though we are seeing numerous examples of what happens in a society in which leaders promote hate. We witnessed the rise of the alt-right, which led to an increase in outward expressions of racism and ultimately to an insurrection in our country’s capitol, under the leadership of Donald Trump. We are also now seeing even more outwardly visible signs of racism and hate crimes directed toward Asians and Pacific Islanders. This is also due to leaders who have spent a year trying to place blame on China for the Corona virus and calling this things like Kung-flu and the China virus. This racism has always been with us, of course, however when leaders condone its existence and expression, then folks feel more free to act in especially malicious and violent ways toward people of color and other minority groups.

From this, I can only guess that with the Pope’s words will come a certain freedom for people to express their homophobia in more malicious and violent ways. So on this level, the Catholic church’s unfounded homophobia, affects all of us.

Pandemiversary

In general I’ve been avoiding a reflection back on the past year. Not sure why exactly. Reflecting back on things is a favorite pastime of mine. Maybe I’ve avoided it because everyone else is doing it.

The year, while certainly unprecedented and unique, was much like any other year in that it had its fill of both hard and glorious moments. Sure, maybe the highs were a bit lower and lows a bit lower too, but all in all, we fared better than most because we are white, middle class, and continued to be employed through the pandemic with one of us able to work from home.

That being said, I was inspired by Katrina Kenison’s reflection post and all of the tangible and intangible things she “made” during this pandemic year, and I thought I too would like a word and picture record of the personal things came out of the year that changed the world. I too wanted to shift my thinking about the idea of what was “made” away from simply a product.

And so here are some of the many things we “made” this past year (all of these are during March 2020):

Working from home look easy (not really…)

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Lots of driveway chalk art

Baths for our produce

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Puzzles

Fewer but more expensive trips to the grocery store

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Colorful food, comforting baked goods

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Our home look like preschool

Rainbows

Messes

Forts

Nature our playground

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Silly creations

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And peaceful moments too

How’d I do in 2020?

This post is not going to focus on the dumpster fire of a year that we all know 2020 to have been. Elements of that might come into play, but this post is meant to reflect on how I did with my 2020 resolutions despite the insanity of the year that just ended.

Let’s get started with the list of goals/resolutions from last year and reflections will be in purple:

2020 New Year’s Resolutions

• My number one (and most difficult) NYR this year: Listen to my body!  (If my body feels tired or sick or ornery, it’s okay to attend to that and do what I need in order to feel better.  It’s not going to be permanent (as is always my fear).  It’s not the end of the world to rest and not get something done that I wanted (or even needed) to get done.  Shockingly all the things do end up getting done somehow—even if I take a break sometimes.  This is all stating the obvious, but it’s an obvious that I need regularly pointed out—and you probably do too!)
  • All of the other goals and resolutions are contingent on this one.  I think of it like George Orwell’s advice in “Politics and the English Language” when he lays out his six rules for writing well, and the sixth rule is to break any of the rules before writing anything “outright barbarous.”  I’m trying to maintain these goals and resolutions, but I can drop any one of them if my body says no, it cannot do it.
    • How’d I do? Okay, but not great. I tend to get very mad at myself/my body when it doesn’t do what I want it to do. I get into this mode of believing that I’ll never have energy again, or I’m going to feel shitty forever, when there is simply no evidence to uphold that notion. In 2021: I need to continue to be kinder to myself when trying to listen to my body.
• Put away all my laundry before I go to sleep at night (I have serious doubts about upholding this one once the semester starts, but so far, so good).
  • How’d I do? Better than I imagined! This has been a great practice for me. Having laundry put away makes me feel like I have myself together more than I actually do. There are nights, when I’m trying to honor resolution #1 when the basket sits there, which is okay too. I’ve recently added no excuses to this one on Sundays. All laundry MUST be put away on Sundays and to avoid being too tired to feel like doing so, I try to allot time early in the evening to getting this task done. In 2021: Continue on with this feel good resolution.
• Get Levi to school on time
  • How’d I do? As I noted last year, this one barely lasted a day. However, Levi started kindergarten in September and elementary school is different than nursery school–you cannot just show up tardy every day. And so, not due to any resolution or even personal resolve, Levi started arriving (kind of) on time to school each day for the past few months. I say “kind of” because his school typically starts at 8; however, due to staggered drop off times because of Covid, we were blessed with an 8:15 drop off time (small pandemic blessings–we will take them…).
• No screen time after 9:30 (there are certain exceptions to this one related to TV viewing—like watching Jeopardy GOAT this week; in general this means stay off phone/iPad/computer after 9:30).
  • How’d I do? This is an important one, I feel like. Like many of us living in the 21st Century managing my screen time (and now my son’s!) is something I struggle with and have taken many approaches to. Limiting my time online at night (as well as banning news intake at night) is something I find relatively easy to do. For awhile I tried to make the cut-off 9pm, but Levi stays up so late these days, and I do like a little bit of scrolling time after we put him to bed, that it 9:30 is more realistic. Overall, I do great with this and continue to stick with it.
• Meditate regularly
  • How’d I do? Really I have a love/hate relationship with meditation. I understand its importance and the material effects it can have on managing my anxiety; however, I hate doing it. So I’m consistently falling off the wagon on this one, though I’m currently on and have tried to increase my time each day (encouraged to do so by reading the book, First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety): I aim for 10 minutes in the morning and 10 at night. Many days I miss, but that’s okay too.
• Stick to a budget (my life struggle)
  • Pay bills that aren’t auto-pay on time
  • How’d I do? I already mention this one is a life struggle, and it continues to be hard. I did a decent job though in the past year, which allowed me to pay off my car, which allows me to now have a slightly more expansive budget to stick to, so it should be easier in 2021 to meet this resolution.
• Better eating habits: What this means gets revised almost daily.  In the past I’ve been a big fan of various challenges/detoxes like Whole30, 21 day sugar detox, Gutbliss, etc.  I had planned to do another 10 day Gutbliss detox (no sugar, no alcohol, no dairy, no gluten, no artificial sweeteners, no soy) starting January 6^th, but then, well…Levi’s birthday cupcakes were still kicking around, and I never got started.  I’ve also started thinking about less restrictive (therefore, for me, more joyful) approaches to eating well.  I need to do more reading about intuitive eating, which I feel like I do pretty well in general, but would like to know more about.  For example, even though I love sweets (baked goods, in particular) nearly as much as I love my life and my family, my body also has serious sugar limitations and I know what those are (my brother has a video from a few years back of me after eating two desserts, and I can tell you, it has never happened since).  All of this is to say, that this year (or at least for now), I have settled on a gentler approach to my eating goals.
  • A not super-strict version of intermittent fasting. As with intuitive eating, this is something I could certainly afford to know more about, but in general the idea is to go 14-16 hours between dinner and breakfast.  We generally eat dinner around 5:30/6 (earlier is better according to IF research), so I eat breakfast around 7:30/8 the next day.  The big change in this for me is no after-dinner, pre-bed snacking.  I’ve been doing this for about a week now, and I’m almost to the point of not feeling like I’m starving before I go to sleep.  Also, I do start drinking coffee at 5:30am, and I’m not sure if this is “cheating” or not, but it’s not going to change, so there’s that.
  • One-treat-a-day (O-tad—I just made that up). Basically, this is an after-lunch treat, as this is when I generally crave something sweet.  The rest of the time (mid-morning and later afternoon), I can choose from a range of healthier treats like granola and yogurt, mixed nuts, fruit and crackers, crackers and hummus, rice cake and almond butter with honey, smoothie, hardboiled egg, apple with almond butter etc.  Again, essentially what this has done is eliminate any evening/night treats (and when I am at my worst I would sometimes have three treats a day: mid-morning, afternoon, and evening/night!).
  • How’d I do? More of the same on again/off again with this one, but mostly on with the no eating post-dinner/intermittent fasting. D and I both have done this for over a year now, and we both lost a few pounds, though that was never our intention–my goal was simply to give my belly more of a break. We have no idea what we could attribute that too other than the intermittent fasting/not eating post-dinner. My O-TAD plan is a little less consistent but still trying….

Parenting in the Time of Corona

I posted this Medium article, “The Parents Are Not All Right,” on Facebook, describing it as “spot on.”  And yet, I didn’t miss the irony that all of my Facebook posts documenting my family’s activities through this unusual time in history seem to show that we are quite all right–maybe even better than all right.  Aside from the occasional lighthearted mention of Levi crashing a zoom meeting or a quick meme about interrupted work time, my bulleted lists detailing our lives are filled with things like long walks, bike rides, yummy food (making and eating), kite flying, driveway chalk, puzzles, and legos.  And it’s true, in many ways I am so grateful for this unexpected and unprecedented time with my little family.  But as we all know, Facebook tends to showcase the delightful moments, the orchestrated ones, the ones we want to remember.

And, let’s be real, I cannot really photograph indigestion and nights lying awake with anxiety.  I don’t capture the all too many moments that I lose patience with Levi because I’m thinking about work (or trying to work), or because I’m still on a tight operating schedule (because I need to work) and he isn’t cooperating with my agenda.  How do I capture the fact that I haven’t had a weekend morning where I haven’t worked in over a month?  I could add those things to my bulleted Facebook lists.  After all, the goal of the posts is to maintain an accurate record of this time period–not just a shiny fun record.  And yet, Facebook is not the only record I am keeping.  I have this blog, and I have my journal(s).  These both tell a more nuanced and more fraught story of this time period.

The thing about these Facebook posts is that as far as a I can tell, they bring joy to people.  Far-flung relatives and friends who are no longer getting to see Levi on a regular basis have expressed their delight at seeing what we’ve been up to as a family.  I too enjoy curating moments focused on the good times we are creating–the three of us together.  I try to limit my Corona news intake, and though I spend a lot of time thinking over all angles of this global pandemic (political, spiritual, etc.), I don’t need these particular posts to highlight the challenges, but that’s not to say they aren’t there (obviously).  For me it is a matter of genre and audience.

And yet, I had to post that article that spoke so clearly to my life.  I actually told the writer (who I discovered afterward is part of the same Queer Parenting Facebook group that I’m in) that it was as if she were in my brain.  Because while I could  have it so much worse (see anecdote in paragraph to follow), I certainly could have it better.  How fun each day could be if I weren’t trying to work full time, while also worrying about the future of my employment given the certain (already happening) ginormous financial hit to all of higher education (and especially to SLACs like my own institution, which just furloughed 64 of its workers).  And certainly all of this would be especially wonderful if people weren’t dying, and if germaphobe ‘ole me weren’t entirely terrified about me or someone in my family contracting the virus.

Am I all right?  Am I not all right?  It depends on the moment, on the day, on my hormones (so much depends on damn hormones).  Most of the time, and I’m guessing this is the case for many people in my situation, I’m somewhere in between those things.

Last night I watched a video diary of an ER doctor in NYC.  A single/widowed mother, who works long, grueling shifts buried beneath PPE, trying to save the lives of Corona Virus patients.  I was lying in bed exhausted (it was a Tuesday night, so I was already done with the week) watching her take us through her day in the ER and describe her morning at home with her children.  The end of her shift came around 10 pm, at which point she was nearly in tears after hearing from her babysitter that her daughter was still awake, awaiting her arrival home.  This hero expressed that she had nothing left to give and had so hoped her daughter would be asleep, so that she would have just a few moments of her day to herself.  This is such a deeply familiar desire (need, I would say) for any parent.  That precious half hour, hour, few minutes, after our child is finally asleep and we can decompress before starting all over again the next day.  And yet, as much as I could relate to this bone weary mom, I also couldn’t.  After all, those curated Facebook pictures don’t lie–they just don’t tell the full story.

 

 

Corona Life Reflections

• How many times a day do we all think, “When this is over…”?
  • I admit that I am equally terrified of the mandates of self-isolation/quarantine ending, as I am of them going on for months.
    • How will we ever feel safe going back out into the world?  How will we ever feel comfortable sending our kids there?
    • What if we lose all that we’ve gained?
      • And then…I feel guilty asking that question because obviously the world has lost so much–so many lives taken, families unraveled, healthcare workers pushed to beyond exhaustion.  But in my safe little bubble here, I’ve gained invaluable time with my wife and son:  hours of mid-day, mid-week fun that we would never have had otherwise.  We’ve gained a slower pace of life.  We are free from some of the worries related to social pressures and what we “have” to do.
        • Admittedly, as two working (for now and thankfully) parents, there is still a lot we have to do.
• In my pre-Corona life, I’d usually make it to late Thursday before feeling like I was done with the week.  In a good week, I could make it all the way to Friday before surrendering to my exhaustion.
  • In my Corona life:  I come out the gates strong on Monday.  Stick to a schedule, early morning run, keep the house tidied, eat real food, meditate.  Tuesday I wake up with some verve left.  I set up “centers” for Levi, keep surfaces clear, get some work done, spend some time outside.  On Tuesdays during the day I’m feeling like, “I’ve got this.”  But by Tuesday night, I’m already at the “is it Friday yet?” point.  I’m done with the week.  I’ve lived five days in two.  From there things rapidly deteriorate from Wednesday through Sunday evening when I try to pull myself together again.
• As a compulsive planner, my top choice of Corona headlines always has to do with predictions about the future.  I need to know what’s next in order to plan, and yet, at this point there is no real life beyond Corona.  We won’t have a vaccine for more than a year; the virus will, with all likelihood, ramp up again next cold/flu season; summer might come with only little relief.  And it’s hard to imagine what we will all do and act like after months of reprioritizing and altering our daily lives.
• I recently asked this question via a Facebook post:  What will you miss most when this is all over?  (I’m using “all over” loosely here).  The responses ranged from silly to serious, but they were all quite telling, and they all held a sense of beauty and hope.
  • Some highlights:
    • The cleaner environment that’s occurring due to COVID-19 stopping the destruction caused by capitalism in its tracks.
    • Unhurried everything.
    • Sleeping in.
    • Seeing practically every human on our planet focused on the same problem. I hate that it takes a pandemic like this, but imagine if we were all united in fixing other problems…
    • My retirement account.
    • Having two parents home….
    • The sense of “community” that we are currently experiencing.
    • The shift in perspective and priorities. The need to be creative with our meals, time, activities, and finances. The community cooperation and global connection. The clarity of knowing what’s most important. The simplicity of more limited choices.
    • The clothes I was able to wear before all of this started. Stress eating is a bitch.
    • Being together as a family 24/7, despite them driving me nuts occasionally.

My Last “Normal” Day

Friday, March 13th was much like any other day for me.  Despite its association with bad luck, I am a Friday the 13th baby and, therefore, have always considered it to be a fortuitous day.  Though I had been closely following the rise of the global Coronavirus pandemic, and my institution had just announced its plans to move to fully online learning for the two weeks that would follow, I was still planning to live life as normally (though safely) as possible.

I spent the morning working, then went to a yoga class where everyone was talking about the Coronavirus (one regular attendee who is asthmatic said that she had just been to her asthma doctor that morning and he told her she had nothing to worry about; that Corona is like the flu, and we are all going to get it at some point.  I was deeply annoyed at this doctor for spreading the “it’s just like the flu” misinformation.  And his prediction felt both reassuring and terrifying at the same time), more work after this, then therapy, then to the co-op where I stocked up on frozen pizzas, and to the Price chopper where I stocked up on beer.

Despite the fact that shoppers at the coop were already wearing masks and gloves, I still felt jovial, as I chatted with the cashier and bagger about quarantine hoarding priorities. As well informed as I consider(ed) myself, the whole quarantine/haz mat suits/overwhelmed hospitals/lack of PPE/and so on scenario felt still like a distant reality in that moment.  Something that would happen someday but not quite yet.  Even though at this point we had Coronavirus in New York state and two confirmed cases in Albany County, it still felt to me like something that happened elsewhere to someone else.  I knew it was coming for us, and I took seriously the threats.  D and I had been slowly stocking up on medicines, chocolate chips, and other necessities for weeks prior.  I wasn’t unprepared, but I was in denial.  As I lugged my beer and frozen pizza into the house for a relaxing Friday evening at home, I had no idea that I had just lived my last typical day.  I had no idea that I had just seen that yoga instructor and that asthmatic yoga regular for the last time for the foreseeable future.  No idea that I wouldn’t see the inside of the co-op for another two weeks.  No idea that was my last therapy session for who knows how long.

By that afternoon they had canceled Levi’s school for at least a week, but we all knew that these week(s) long cancelations were simply placeholders–ways for folks to gently break the news without creating too much panic; ways to buy time for institutions and businesses to figure out longer term, more sustainable ways to survive closures.  I’ll admit that I welled up a bit when the nursery school director delivered the news to me that Friday afternoon almost three weeks ago, and yet I still didn’t quite “get it.”  It’s hard to wrap your head around an experience for which you have no frame of reference.

And so…the next day we woke up with plans to attend a birthday party for one of Levi’s classmates that afternoon.  By then I was smart enough to have decided that I would give up my Saturday morning Bfitt class at the gym and went for a run outdoors instead.  After that, we headed to a local bookstore for birthday gift shopping and, more importantly, wrapping.  Two more stops on the way back home:  Price Chopper (again…) and the local bakery.  Life felt fairly typical, until I stepped out of the shower that afternoon.

When I got out of my shower, I had a text from the birthday boy’s mom–they were canceling the party.  I felt it was a wise decision, and yet, I was deflated all the same.  Here we had a little boy, gift in hand, ready and excited to go to his friend’s birthday party.  To keep things fun and somewhat normal we made the quick decision to head to a maple sugaring open house at a nearby environmental education center.  We quickly threw the last minute invite out to our group of friends and some met us there.  We spent the afternoon walking trails and learning about maple syrup production, but unlike last year’s event there were no samples allowed, and while the parking lot was filled with cars, people weren’t in groups for the most part, altering the overall feel.  It was quiet and a bit eerie.  Upon parting ways with our friends that day, we made tentative plans to meet outside for another outdoor adventure the next day, but that night D and I made the decision that we needed to be more aggressive about physical distancing.  And so once again, without knowing it in the moment, we had spent our last (face-to-face) day with friends for the foreseeable future.

Sunday, March 15th (the Ides of March…) became our first day of self-isolation.  Like many folks the world over, we have been busy taking on the small learning curve of living in this new way:  figuring out ways to get groceries and necessary household amenities, scheduling FaceTime and zoom encounters for our kids, juggling working full time from home while having a five year old home full time as well, trying to find hope and laughter and light amidst fear and stress and panic.

Today marks day 21. In many ways it doesn’t feel like three weeks. Like pre-pandemic life, the days are long, but the weeks aren’t quite so much. But sometimes I think about the freedom of movement and the blissful ignorance I still carried on that Friday the 13th in March, and I am overcome with a range of emotions: loss, fear, disbelief, relief, hope. I cannot find a way to understand all that has happened in the interim three weeks, and I certainly cannot find my way back to the woman joking about frozen pizza and chocolate chips in the line at the co-op.

Feel the Bern (again)

I had already decided to compose a blog post on my thoughts regarding the 2020 election before the whole Warren/Sanders gender debacle during the January debate.  The upcoming election, of course, is a moment that I’ve been waiting for since that depressing moment in 2016 when I woke up to the ludicrous news that we had elected a reality show star to the presidency.  The news has only become more ludicrous since then. And the stakes feel incredibly high.

And before I really begin, let me just be clear that I am 100% #anyonebutTrump2020.  For this reason I enjoyed the cheeky WaPo endorsement of all 12 candidates versus the neither here nor there endorsement of Klobuchar and Warren by the NYT.  

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In 2016 I was an ardent Bernie supporter.  In fact, I have been a Bernie fan for all of my adult/voting life.  I have also spent most of my voting life voting blue but most often for a candidate that I didn’t feel good about.  I have a vivid memory of coming home in 2004, after casting my vote for the lackluster (in my opinion) John Kerry, sitting on my bed and dreaming up future democratic tickets–all of which included Bernie (one of which was Bernie/Gillibrand–so I clearly have reasonably good prediction skills…).  All of this is to say that seeing Bernie as President has been an adult-life-long dream of mine–one I felt certain had ended in 2016 (okay, so maybe my prediction skills aren’t that great after all…).  

Last year when Bernie first announced that he was running for President again, I immediately and publicly expressed my doubt that he could get the DNC nomination.  I figured he was too old and voters had moved on. His lack of getting the nomination in 2016 felt like too strong of an indicator. I honestly thought he was kind of a political “has been” (my prediction skills suck!).  As Warren and Gillibrand entered the race, I felt such hope and excitement. Along came Cory Booker too! I couldn’t believe how many of my political favorites were throwing their proverbial hat in the proverbial ring. As I watched this diverse and exciting field of candidates come together, I just found it hard to believe that a 77 year old white guy who lost the nomination in 2016 stood much of chance.  This is not to say that I didn’t personally still love Bernie.  I did. I do. I just didn’t think he could win the nomination. 

As the campaigns got rolling and the candidates began taking the debate stage, I was enamored with Warren.  She is whip-smart, and has such a solid grounding in and understanding of economics. I love her story and the reasons why she turned her attention to the economy and creating better, easier government access to programs that will benefit middle and working class families.  She has a plan–or plans rather, and anyone who knows me I like nothing better than a plan. She’s a passionate and creative thinker. She’s willing to dream big, and she’s, of course, willing to take on Wall Street. She’s a Green New Deal supporter. And she’s a woman.  

This last part for me has been especially important.  The thing for me that most firmly set her apart from Bernie is that she’s not a white dude.  And all things being equal between the two of them (which they almost are), I found myself pledging support to Warren based on her gender.  

However, my other obsession in all of this has simply been the all-important question of who can beat Trump.  And while ultimately I don’t feel overly confident that any of the candidates can beat Trump in 2020 (so I sit here with fingers crossed that he will be removed from office, while simultaneously knowing how unlikely that is.  Yes, if I thought that dawn on November 9th, 2016 was a sad and scary time for democrats, I can say now, that this worse), I do feel that out of my top two, Sanders stands a better chance than Warren. For this reason, if I had to walk into a voting booth today, I would cast my (second) vote for Bernie.  

Two primary reasons I feel this way:

1. The AOC, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib endorsement of Bernie is huge (in my mind).  This shows me that despite being a white guy, Bernie is seen positively by people of color (and women voters).  This is, of course, a large segment of the voting population, and a group whose needs and rights are extremely important to me personally.    
2. Bernie “tells it like is.”  This is something I hear continually from Trump supporters.  Trump fans like him because he “tells it like it is”–as frightening as Trump’s version of what “it is” is.  A recent video of Bernie put out by The People for Bernie Sanders circulated on the internet.  In it he talks about how he doesn’t do pleansantries and doesn’t tolerate bullshit.  A lot of Warren supporters and anti-Bernie folk reacted negatively to the video, describing Bernie’s attitude as self-important and generally unpleasant.  They have used it as proof that he is not a nice human being, and cannot even act civilly. Others have pointed out that Bernie doesn’t see his grumpiness as a privilege afforded by gender.  I see their points. Bernie isn’t warm and fuzzy, but I don’t think this makes him a narcissist. His ability to not be warm and fuzzy and still garner much support is incredibly gendered, but that’s about the fucked up system of patriarchy more than it is about the need for Bernie to stop being Bernie.  People should be allowed to be who they are regardless of gender and sadly for women–especially women in the spotlight of politics–this is not the case in the way it is for men, but this is about the need to dismantle the patriarchy.   
   1. Back to my original point.  Bernie tends to appeal to some of the same white males who feel disenfranchised (their feeling, not necessarily reality) for whom Trump was/is appealing.  If there exists (and I hope there does) a contingency of these kinds of voters who now see Trump for who/what he is (a fraud/a criminal/a horrible human/not presidential material), then we need those votes.  And while I may not like it, because it points out the system of continued patriarchal rule in which we all live, I think Bernie is better equipped to get those votes than the candidates.    

As an ardent feminist, I feel like voicing support for Bernie has become this incredibly loaded thing based on gender.  I’ve seen far too many other women attacked for making this same move.  And I admit that choosing a white dude over other women and minority candidates makes me feel like a traitor to my gender and not a good feminist, but, in the end, objectively Bernie appears to make more sense as the candidate to run against Trump at this historical moment, and then there’s that little piece of my heart…the part that will always be feminist and always be Bernie’s.      

 

New Year, Same Me (for the most part…)

I disappeared from this blog for awhile at the end of 2019.  This was on account of a finishing a big (academic) project that I had been working on for years of my life (since before Levi was born, in fact) and needed to be submitted by December.  I pressed send on December 20^th, and that “bippy” (as we call everything in our house) is off for peer review (big sigh of relief and elation).

Now, as we all know, it’s a new year (well, two weeks in…), and for me it’s a new year without this all-consuming project looming over me (at least for the time being).  So I have some time to focus on other things:  me, my family, other writing projects (like this blog, for instance), teaching, and so on.

Like many folks I’ve been making new year’s resolutions and choosing a word of the year (savor).  Some resolutions only lasted a day (getting Levi to school on time); others have yet to be broken (putting laundry away before I go to bed at night).  Like many folks I love the start of something new, the fresh slate—even if it is merely a construct (I mean really I could set resolutions on June 10^th or November 3^rd, if I was so inclined, which I never am).  Unlike many other folks I know, I haven’t actively reflected upon the past year.  This is in part because I struggle to remember what happened yesterday, so reflecting back on an entire year seems nearly impossible for my feeble old mom brain.  Each year I write highlights from the year that go on back of our family Christmas cards.  These highlights, of course, are all of the good things that happened.  I know that 2019 wasn’t all rainbows and puppy dogs, but all in all I cannot complain.  I’ve seen a lot of posts and memes in my social media memes about kicking 2019 to the curb, and good riddance to 2019 kinds of things (the same kinds of things I see every year, just with a different number on them).  I cannot say I feel the same, and yet I always want more and better.  I always want to keep improving myself and the world.

2020 New Year’s Resolutions

• My number one (and most difficult) NYR this year: Listen to my body!  (If my body feels tired or sick or ornery, it’s okay to attend to that and do what I need in order to feel better.  It’s not going to be permanent (as is always my fear).  It’s not the end of the world to rest and not get something done that I wanted (or even needed) to get done.  Shockingly all the things do end up getting done somehow—even if I take a break sometimes.  This is all stating the obvious, but it’s an obvious that I need regularly pointed out—and you probably do too!)
  • All of the other goals and resolutions are contingent on this one.  I think of it like George Orwell’s advice in “Politics and the English Language” when he lays out his six rules for writing well, and the sixth rule is to break any of the rules before writing anything “outright barbarous.”  I’m trying to maintain these goals and resolutions, but I can drop any one of them if my body says no, it cannot do it.
• Put away all my laundry before I go to sleep at night (I have serious doubts about upholding this one once the semester starts, but so far, so good).
• Get Levi to school on time
• No screen time after 9:30 (there are certain exceptions to this one related to TV viewing—like watching Jeopardy GOAT this week; in general this means stay off phone/iPad/computer after 9:30).
• Meditate regularly
• Stick to a budget (my life struggle)
  • Pay bills that aren’t auto-pay on time
• Better eating habits: What this means gets revised almost daily.  In the past I’ve been a big fan of various challenges/detoxes like Whole30, 21 day sugar detox, Gutbliss, etc.  I had planned to do another 10 day Gutbliss detox (no sugar, no alcohol, no dairy, no gluten, no artificial sweeteners, no soy) starting January 6^th, but then, well…Levi’s birthday cupcakes were still kicking around, and I never got started.  I’ve also started thinking about less restrictive (therefore, for me, more joyful) approaches to eating well.  I need to do more reading about intuitive eating, which I feel like I do pretty well in general, but would like to know more about.  For example, even though I love sweets (baked goods, in particular) nearly as much as I love my life and my family, my body also has serious sugar limitations and I know what those are (my brother has a video from a few years back of me after eating two desserts, and I can tell you, it has never happened since).  All of this is to say, that this year (or at least for now), I have settled on a gentler approach to my eating goals.
  • A not super-strict version of intermittent fasting. As with intuitive eating, this is something I could certainly afford to know more about, but in general the idea is to go 14-16 hours between dinner and breakfast.  We generally eat dinner around 5:30/6 (earlier is better according to IF research), so I eat breakfast around 7:30/8 the next day.  The big change in this for me is no after-dinner, pre-bed snacking.  I’ve been doing this for about a week now, and I’m almost to the point of not feeling like I’m starving before I go to sleep.  Also, I do start drinking coffee at 5:30am, and I’m not sure if this is “cheating” or not, but it’s not going to change, so there’s that.
  • One-treat-a-day (O-tad—I just made that up). Basically, this is an after-lunch treat, as this is when I generally crave something sweet.  The rest of the time (mid-morning and later afternoon), I can choose from a range of healthier treats like granola and yogurt, mixed nuts, fruit and crackers, crackers and hummus, rice cake and almond butter with honey, smoothie, hardboiled egg, apple with almond butter etc.  Again, essentially what this has done is eliminate any evening/night treats (and when I am at my worst I would sometimes have three treats a day: mid-morning, afternoon, and evening/night!).

These loose eating guidelines feel more doable than avoiding my passion for sugar.  In general, my main meals are healthy (lean protein, vegetables, complex carbs, numerous plant-based meals per week), so that comes pretty naturally to me.

This post has become super long.  I had planned to share a reflection back of the years of keeping this blog (focused on goals and resolutions I have set each year), my 2020 evening routine, my 2020 writing goals, and my plans for an academic project on slowductivity (a term coined by Kate Litterer at The Tending Year) and Jenny Odell’s book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy.  So while there isn’t room here to lay out all of these hopes and dreams for 2020, it looks like I’ve set myself up with topics for a number of blog posts to come (P.S. one of my writing goals for 2020 is to get back to this blog by posting at least weekly…).

 

 

Honest (unsolicited) review of Billie razors

As a girl growing up, buying packages of 10 pink disposable razors with little daisies imprinted on the plastic handle, I never could have imagined what the razor industry would look like today.  Razors that look like they were designed by NASA.  Razors with multiple levels of little razors built into them.  And, subscription razor services.

For anyone who doesn’t live in online spaces, there are a slew of subscription razor services:  Dollar Shave Club, Harry’s, Gillette (one for men and the Venus one for women), and specifically for women–Billie and Flamingo.  Essentially these companies offer you a starter kit with the razor itself and a replacement blade (some might include samples of shaving cream and other products for newly shaved skin, but generally these items are add-ons).  Billie’s starter kit also comes with a magnetic holder (more on this momentarily).  From there, based on how often you shave, these companies will send you replacement blades at regular intervals.  Generally these starter kits come in beautiful packaging that looks like it was designed by either Apple or Joanna Gaines.  Everything is easy open and visually appealing.

While razors aren’t specifically related to motherhood, moms do use razors, and I also feel like moms of a certain demographic who hang out on Instagram and Facebook get direct marketed with the same kind of products (still trying to figure out if I should try a pair of All Birds…).  Billie’s ads came to me at a time when I was thinking about razors (creeeepy….  #algorithms) because my wife refuses to change her razor blades for like years at a time (!).  She finds it wasteful, and they’re so expensive.  Bille’s ads are the kind that I’m a sucker for–in the guise of feminism and female empowerment–fun colors, representations of women of all shapes, sizes, and colors, exposed bikini hair and all.  On top of all this, the price seemed super reasonable.  For years now, D and I have used Gillette Fusion (men’s) razors.  Not surprisingly we found men’s razors to be less expensive than women’s and far superior in getting a close shave.  But here, now, Billie seemed to be promising that same great shave at a cheaper cost + a pretty handle in super fun colors (we were paying approximately $12 for four Fusion replacement blades, for Billie’s it is $9).  Since I had recently been trying to convince D to change her blades a bit more often than bi-yearly, and since it her birthday was coming up, I decided to order her a starter kit.

As promised, the kit arrived in enticing, easy-to-open packaging and included one (ergonomic) handle with blade, one replacement blade, and magnetic holder (which as all the rage in the reviews that I had read).  One thing that makes Billie razors unique is that they “are completely encased in 360° of charcoal shave soap designed to float over your skin for an extremely close shave.”  I also ordered a container of their shaving cream that I figured D and I could share.  I had initially considered ordering each of us a starter kit, but I could find no way of ordering two kits at the same time (I just tried this again and had no problem getting two starter kits in my cart…).  I figured maybe it was best to have her try it first, and if it lived up to all the positive reviews I had read, then I would order my own kit.  Billie razors have lots of positive reviews.

The long and short of it:  D tried using the razor a few times.  After the first time using it, she told me she felt like she was “getting slimed.”  Apparently the charcoal shave soap that I just mentioned does indeed create the kind of rich lather that they claim it will (in fact, somewhere on the site it mentions that the lather from the encasement on the blade is so thick, that some women don’t need to use shaving cream.  I thought this might hurt their sales of shaving cream then, but there you have it…).  At first we thought maybe she was just shocked by this in comparison to other razors, but by the third or fourth shave she simply couldn’t handle the “sliminess” of it anymore and re-gifted the razor to me.

My take:  I totally see what she means about feeling like she’s “getting slimed,”  but I don’t mind it as much.  I just make sure I shave before I wash, and it doesn’t feel yucky to me or anything.  So far I have only used the razor combined with the shaving cream.  As someone with super coarse stubble + sensitive skin, I have lots of experience with cuts, razor burn, and ingrown hairs from shaving.  So far, with Billie, I have not experienced any of those things.  Where Billie falls short for me is that with all the lather of the charcoal shave soap blade encasement and silky smoothness of the shaving cream, I do not get a close shave.  I have to press down with a fair amount of pressure to even get a clean shave, and that barely lasts a day.  So while I’d say you save money on replacement blades, you will probably need to shave more often, creating the need to replace blades more often.

I’m currently still using the razor (for going on a month).  I like that I don’t have to worry about nicks and burn–it glides easily over my skin and rough stubble.  However, I did cancel the subscription, because I’m not certain at this point that I will stick with Billie.

One more thing to mention:  The magnetic holder that everyone raves about in their reviews (some reviewers even say it makes them excited to shave, because they get the satisfying click of taking the razor in and out of the holder) is very cool and functional. And because of the thick (messy) lather on the blade itself, you really don’t want to have to set it down anywhere in your shower/tub.

 

FOMO leads to added sugar

Much of what I write about is what I struggle with in life, and what I struggle with is finding balance.  Anyone who has read this blog since its inception knows that it began as a record of my quest to “have it all,” despite being told that was impossible.  Without getting into the whole it all depends on how you define “all,” I will note that I shifted the quest a bit….

I love baked goods and ice cream.  Love them.  Cannot live without them.  Must have them daily.  In order to make room for such a love in my life without being completely unhealthy, I am vigilant about avoiding sugar in my main meals.  I refuse to eat things like bread, peanut butter, yogurt that have added sugar.  Anything that can be a part of healthy eating, but often isn’t because of added sugar, I will only consume after I’ve scrutinized the nutrition label for any sign of sugar.  I even try to avoid things like yogurt that have naturally occurring sugars.  I also tend to avoid simple carbs with my meals, opting for lean proteins plus veggies and whole grains.  I do this to create space for my daily afternoon (or evening or morning) treat.

Lately, I have started to apply a similar philosophy to living life.  I try to create space for the things I truly love by weeding out any unnecessary excess–the hidden sugars that may seem tempting (or even unavoidable), but that I know to actually be unhealthy and entirely avoidable with a little bit of attention.  Often FOMO drives the hidden sugar in my life.

For example: the International Food Festival at the Empire State Plaza.  They have it every year and out of the 17 years (holy crap!) that I’ve lived in the area, I’ve never once been.  But here’s the thing:  I am overwhelmed by decision making in the face of too many (food) options and I don’t like crowds.  I know these things about myself, and yet I felt strongly that I “should” go to the festival.  That’s what my friends on social media were doing, after all.  I love food.  I should go check it out.  What if I miss my chance at some kind of delicious delicacy?  And on and on went my thinking.  But in the end, I didn’t go.  I got work done instead.  I was happier doing that.  I freed up extra space and time to do the thing that I really loved doing, which then had the ripple effect of being more present with Levi when we came home from school/work because I was less distracted by thinking about my work.

FOMO is so often about the “should” factor, feeling like I should do something because “it’s the thing to do” even when it’s not something I would actually like to do.  But like keeping sugar out of the main meals of my life, I need to be vigilant about recognizing FOMO, calling it what it is, and weeding out the things that I don’t really need or want in my life in order to make room for the sweets that are truly worth it.