A whole different polar opposite

I clicked on a link, which sent me to another link, and I found this, which I am not going to hyperlink (you'll have to cut and paste if you want to read it).

http://20somethingmom.com/2009/07/having-children-is-it-really-a-choice/

Following up on my post the other day about "maybe one", this is a whole different kind of can of worms. After checking out the "Childless by Choice Project" website, the author writes:

Thankfully, [my husband and I] agree that not wanting to have children is virtually ignoring the duties of membership in the human race. We want to have a lot of kids because it feels right, regardless of whether they are convenient or affordable additions to our lives.

She goes on to say:

Another point of contention for me is the suggestion that people should arbitrarily limit the amount of kids they have or choose not to have any because an excessive birth rate kills the planet even more quickly. Trying to corroborate your belief with a haughty stance on environmental protection is just a dumb excuse. Maybe if we all found ways to use fewer of the earth’s resources, we wouldn’t have to worry about the strain that overpopulation places on rainforests and polar bears.

Among all of the other feelings this post generates, a commenter rightly points out that not everyone is fit to have children, and implies that it would be a pretty big travesty for someone who's not ready/willing/able to care for children to have them just because of some supposed debt to the human race. What does that even mean, anyway?

Sacrifice for the greater good?

I'm in an icky situation for the fall semester. I'm teaching a graduate seminar for the first time in 2 years, I think, and lots of students want to take it. In fact, all of the students in Mathematical and Quantitative Forestry who still have classwork left want to take it. Great! The problem is that one of my QF colleagues decided that he absolutely had to schedule his undergrad class at the exact same time as my seminar. This is a specialized upper-level class and he worked out a deal with the administration to get a TA even though classes that small don't usually have them.

At the time that scheduling was going on, the person he had in mind as a TA told him that the ONLY TIME he wouldn't be available was when my seminar was. Despite the fact that (1) my colleague's class was the last to be scheduled, (2) that my graduate class had to be when it was so that it didn't overlap with any other courses that the incoming students would need (this seminar is geared toward a mixed level of incoming and current students) and (3) he knew that all of his preferred TAs would be interested in taking my class, he nevertheless insisted that it be at the same time as my class. I was never given a final look at the schedule before it was sent off to the registrar, so I didn't know that had happened.

Now, of course, we can't find anyone to TA for his class since they all want to take my seminar. There is one possible person that could do it, but we're now in the process of figuring out whether or not it will be acceptable both to professor and student. But here's my real problem. Since so many people are taking my class, it will be nearly impossible to change the time. But I think I've identified a single slot that might be possible (though I haven't yet cross-checked all of the students' other schedules): Monday at 11. Now, I do NOT like teaching on Monday mornings, especially the grad class. I need time to prepare, and I highly resent being forced to spend weekend time to prepare. If I try to prepare too many days in advance, I usually forget what I was thinking about, so prepping on Thurs or Friday of the previous week is out. I don't really feel the need to switch my class since my colleague was well informed way in advance that most of the students who would be possible TAs for his specialized class would also want to take my seminar, but he purposely scheduled it then anyway. But if it turned out that the Monday time worked for the students, I could potentially diffuse this whole thing by moving my class. The alternatives would be to give my colleague a TA that is less ideal, or no TA at all (the class usually has around 10 students, but it's a lab class). I'm leaning toward the latter, and hoping that students' schedules don't make the switch possible anyway so that I don't even have to debate whether or not to move the class anymore.

Maybe one

It may not be fair to take on another blog without warning them that you're going to do it, but I'll try to be discreet here. I don't think the blogger reads here, anyway. This is actually a blog I like—a mommy blog, basically—and I usually enjoy reading it. Their kid is about a week older than Yo, but in a polar opposite move from how I'm feeling right now, they're thinking about trying for another kid very soon. The post, which I'm not going to link to, solicits her readers' opinions on two kids in diapers, so to speak.

Without wanting to close any doors for sure, I'm just going to say that right now, my feeling is that I want one kid. That's mostly because I can't imagine having two of these little ones (especially in New York City), even if they're a healthy distance apart, but it's also partially rooted in my belief in the environmental arguments for why families should have one child at most (see Bill McKibben's "Maybe One").

OK, but back to that other blogger. In musing about whether or not this is the right time to start again, she wrote:

our midwife said to us that there is never a perfect time to grow a family, and that if we always waited for it, the human race would become extinct. she is probably right.

Oh, how I wish this were a blog that I were a respected commenter on. Unfortunately, I only delurked once, and never wrote again. I suppose there are many reasons one could give for why it is the right time to have a second child, but this, oh, this is not one of them. I don't really think that there's any chance at all that the human race is going to go extinct any time soon. Can you say population of 9 billion by 2050?

A clarification (update): Following up on some of the comments, I just wanted to clarify? reiterate? that I'm perfectly comfortable with wanting only one child regardless of environmental issues. I guess that societal pressure is supposed to make people like me feel I'm a bad person for only wanting one, but I definitely don't. There are plenty of lifestyle reasons for wanting only one, which I'm not going to enumerate here. Anyway, a surprising number of people have actually said to me that having 2 is more than twice one child, and that's supposed to make me want another one? It just confirms what I've already been thinking.

More polls on food

About the dinner poll—I never said how often I cook, but then seadragon asked. I'm in the 5+ category. I have a few things that are standards in the rotation—some kind of pasta with vegetables, risotto of some variety, an Asian stir fry or noodles with tofu. Right now we're getting vegetables from the CSA every week, so I tend to be more creative in the summer in an effort to use up 3 heads of lettuce or 2 small beets and the avocado I bought for Yo (sometimes we get such small quantities of a particular item that it's very hard to figure out how to use it.) When I don't cook (usually, the day during the week that I'm home with Yo and one weekend night), we get take-out. Despite the many options available to us, Chipotle, pizza and falafel make regular appearances, mostly because they're cheap and take-out can be as expensive as going to a restaurant.

I like leftovers, so I try to make enough of any dish to take it for lunch later that week. I try not to get lunch out more than once a week, because I just don't think it makes sense to spend $8-$10 for lunch every day. If you were at work 250 days a year, that's $2000-$2500 a year! (Super G just reminded me that cooking costs too, but it can't possibly cost $8-$10 per meal beyond what you spent for dinner.)

What about you? When you're at work, what percent of the time do you bring lunch from home? This can include anything from leftovers to turkey or PB&J sandwiches to salads pulled together that morning. Be honest—the poll is anonymous after all!

Not eating out...wherever you are

I read this blog called "Not Eating Out in New York". For 2 years, the author didn't eat out at all despite living in New York City. She's done with that now, but she still has some good recipes and other tidbits about food, so I've continued reading it. Today she had a post called Reason for Not Eating Out #33: To Preserve a Dying Art, in which the author takes quotes from prominent food people like Michael Pollan note how no one cooks anymore. So I was kind of wondering. How often do you cook at home? That's covered by the poll, but I'm also curious what you do when you don't cook. Frozen dinners? Trader Joe's meal solutions? Restaurant take out? Feel free to comment below.

And the reason is?

Someone in my field, but who I don't know, emailed me to ask if I would be willing to send him/her a copy of my grant application. It's a sort of special grant, and it doesn't necessarily follow the typical grant template for this granting agency, so people like to see examples. I get that, but I also feel very uncomfortable sending my grant application to someone I don't know. Maybe if the grant were over it would be one thing, but it's still ongoing and I haven't done all of the studies yet. I'd like to come up with some way to tell this person I'm not sending it, but I don't know what the wording should be. Have any of you been in this situation before?

I take a moment to say, YES! Exactly!

Finally. Some journalist put into words what I've been thinking for a while.

GOP hypocrisy regarding the "culture war" that Newt Gingrich declared against Democrats a couple or three marriages ago is getting to be a very old story. It's hard keeping track of the virtual parade of naughty congressmen, philandering GOP mayors and governors, polymorphously perverse right-wing preachers and Republican senators variously soliciting undercover cops, patronizing prostitutes and sleeping with the help.

...

Some Republicans complain of a double standard. Nonsense. They're the ones that opened Pandora's box. Washington Monthly's Steve Benen put it best: "If you help run Mothers Against Drunk Driving and you're caught drunk driving, it's going to be a bigger deal than the typical DUI."

But no, I haven't forgotten the recent John and Elizabeth Edwards show. Nor the crass behavior of New York's Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Nobody will ever forget the adventures of President Clinton and that woman, Miss Lewinsky. The panting Washington media won't allow it. During last year's presidential contest, the New York Times ran a front-page article speculating how many nights Bill and Hillary Clinton spend together. (And another insinuating that Sen. John McCain's friendship with a blond lobbyist was more than professional.)

The difference is that while Democratic politicians are equally prone to using their families as stage props, they're less given to Sunday-school homilies about other people's intimate lives.

All of these people are power-hungry narcissists, but only the Republicans are characterized by their over-the-top devotion to "family values". I agree with that. Oddly, the article ends on a note I sort of disagree with. Lyons writes:

I also think we'd all be better off going back to pre-Clinton hypocrisy, when a politician had to end up drunk in the Tidal Basin with a stripper dubbed the "Argentine Firecracker" to make news. Alas, celebrity sex is a big circulation and ratings booster. Politicians are considered fair game.

We've become a nation of peeping Toms; it's a sadistic activity.

I have no problem hounding people for their hypocrisy, whatever it might be. Take Spitzer—as Attorney General, he went after prostitution rings. Then he was destroyed by one. Good. He's a hypocrite, so that's a fitting end. Instead, Republicans should simply shut up about family values and the sanctity of the family and that kind of crap, and then the rest of us should start ignoring their private dalliances. But as long as politicians are going to make these issues part of their political platforms, their transgressions are fair game.

I heard the best summary of the Mark Sanford affair on NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me this weekend: "Mark Sanford is another example of a social conservative who's ruining his own marriage before the gays can do it for him."

At this time last year I was eating mac n cheese & going into labor

Yesterday and today were spent commemorating my son's birth, although his actual birthday is tomorrow. Tomorrow, however, we're going to unceremoniously take him to daycare, because Sunday was much more convenient for the family party and Monday for the baby playdate party than tomorrow would be. It's OK—I don't think the little man will know the difference.

The family party went pretty well, although I was secretly a little pleased to discover that Yo was almost as disturbed by all the attention he was getting at the event as Super G and I usually are at these family gatherings. He's been getting a little clingy and attached-to-mom lately, but the tendency seemed to be on overdrive at the party. He used to love attention, but every time I crossed his field of view, he would wimper and hold his arms out for me. Beyond that, he was most happy when he discovered the doors and drawers in the kitchen. Super G and I aren't exactly anti-social,* but we both get a little overwhelmed by big gatherings, so it won't be surprising if Yo ends up that way too.

I was also happy about the gifts that Yo got. It's funny to see that we're rather typecast in our family, and that when it came to giving our son first birthday presents, it worked out beautifully. We got tons of books, classic wooden blocks, megabloks, a train toy, etc. In a brilliant move, Super G's sister got us a recycling truck made out recycled milk containers. (Super G's sister is so amazing at gift giving that the family thinks she should start a consulting business. You tell her all the interests and quirks your gift recipient, and she picks out the world's most perfect gift.) Nothing was big, and almost nothing squawked or was made of cheap plastic.

I was also happy about the baby playdate at the park today, because a lot of people who mentioned that they'd try to show up, which is usually code for not gonna happen actually showed up. It probably helped that the weather was nice, and I picked a day that I knew was the day off for a few of the working moms. Still, sometimes my inner 9th grader kicks in during these kinds of moments and I feel proud of myself for being able to get a bunch of people together.

Here's the baby man himself smooshing up his 1st birthday cake (a Martha Stewart adapted strawberry shortcake).


So, happy birthday Baby Man! I guess I have to stop calling him that, since he's officially a toddler now, right? But I think it's ok if Little Man sticks around.

---
*Unlike my father, who literally walked out of my mother-in-law's house at one point because there were too many people there that he didn't know and he couldn't handle it. My father is incapable of making small talk. If it were a small gathering and he could talk about politics or technology, he'd be fine, but that involves a time commitment that no one wants to get into at this kind of event. So in a combination of boredom and selfishness, my father left the party. My mother and sister had to go coax him back in, and eventually my aunt and uncle (his brother) talked to him for the rest of the time so that he didn't sulk by himself or walk out again.

Breaking news on Facebook

Yesterday, someone pointed out on someone else's FB status update about Michael Jackson that it was the first time they'd received breaking news through a social networking site. I'm sure there were previous incidents that I don't remember, but the first news event I know I heard about from Twitter was the crash of the US Airways plane in the Hudson River. And not even from a New Yorker.

Do you remember the first news that was broken to you on FB or Twitter or even a blog?

Also, someone had a snippy update yesterday saying that we should all stop updating about MJ and Farrah Fawcett, and think about Neda the Iranian instead, since she was "probably more like all of us". I hadn't yet had an update about MJ, and that person's comment annoyed me. I felt stifled. Stifled by Facebook! He did make me think twice about commenting on Jackson's death (satisfied?...actually, he doesn't read the blog), but I decided to go ahead and do it anyway. Meh. I didn't know either of them, but there's just a lot more the average person can say about Michael Jackson. I have nothing new to add about the situation in Iran.

This post comes to you courtesy of Yo's nap, which is now over 2.5 hours. This weirds me out, and I hope that he's OK. (Maybe it's just because he didn't nap at all in the afternoon at daycare yesterday.)

Interesting things I've seen in the past few days

I guess this is a linkfest.

1. The background of David Kestenbaum, NPR's science correspondent.
2. Barn swallows like it when humans or cars come by and disturb insects, because it makes them easier to catch.
   
3. This post about parenting in the city by Megnut.
4. Let us never forget Magical Trevor and Kenya.
5. Let's Panic About Babies! "Infant stressing you out? 1-800-DINGOES"
6. I don't know who's more icky: S.C. governor Mark Sanford or the NYS senate.
7. Also, the US beat Spain in the Confederations Cup. I don't really follow soccer very much, but the hyperbole about the US performance in the NY Times blog amuses me a lot.