August 8th, 2010

The only freedom is choice

After working myself into a mini-rage, I’ve calmed down and decided not to expend many blog inches over Leah McLaren’s column in the Globe yesterday. It’s about a study she read on primary childcare. McLaren’s point, illustrated by this study plus “the overwhelming anecdotal evidence of [her] peers” that it is “absolutely not…good for the mental development and behaviour of most new mothers” to stay home with their children.

Of course, the study doesn’t say that–the study says the kids will probably be fine whether care is provided by mom or someone else, provided the family is pretty stable. What I might draw from this is that adults need to make the best decisions they can given the specifics of their own lives, be they financial, cultural, intellectual, whatever. What McLaren draws is that since mothering is “unpaid labour” and if you are home all day you are “[l]ess able to make small talk at a cocktail parties,” call the daycare centre and get yourself a job.

I guess I haven’t met them, but I doubt McLaren’s peers constitute a statistically sound sampling of all economic, geographic, social and cultural demographics. Many people want many things from their lives. A choice is a choice: in 2010, women don’t have the “freedom” to have careers; we have the freedom to do anything we want, provided we can make it work within the context of our own lives and loved ones. The quality of the entertainment we provide at cocktail parties never enters into it.

I don’t know exactly why this article made me see red; I don’t have kids and this isn’t an issue I’m dealing with. Maybe the idea that there is any one right answer for any aspect of life–hurrah for the pluralistic society! And then there’s the fact that my mom stayed home with me, after a fascinating career that involved, among other things, teaching a university course on the sociology of women. I am happy to think it was an educated choice. Both my grandmothers worked, as did at least two of my great-grandmothers. You can bet they didn’t do it so they’d have amusing anecdotes to tell at parties. We all make the best decisions we can with the lives we have.

August 7th, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews *The Book of Awesome*

I got The Book of Awesome as a gift, but I was already aware of it because Fred pointed it out as very similar to our penta-annual (that’s the word, right?) listing of 1000 Things We Like. I was happy to read the book to help fill the time until Fall 2012, when we do the third thousand!

Neil Pasricha’s book is based on his blog, which is very close to our concept except a) it’s all one guy, not a collective liking team (as far as I can tell), and b) he writes little blurbs about how the good thing works or, often, the bad thing that is avoided/thwarted by the good thing.

This is a happy-making project and it works: I smiled a lot remembering simple pleasures like the unsafe playground equipment of my youth, the chip crumbs in the bottom of the bag, and the cool side of the pillow. I was also fascinated by pleasures I’ve yet to experience: guess who’s going to be staying up for a while trying to catch someone laughing in their sleep?) Pasricha has a frat-boy prose style you don’t read very often (at least, I don’t), and it’s charming although repetitive and I don’t *really* think he had to manipulate each entry to end with the word AWESOME (yes, in caps!)

In truth, I probably went at this book wrong–I think it’s some sort of coffee-table or occasional book, something you are supposed to dip into, scan, flip around in. I did try to do this, sorta: I kept it by my bedside and tried to read one awesome thing before I went to sleep each night. This was actually an excellent idea, a really good way to go to sleep cheerful, though perhaps a little terrified of all the things that can be done with fast-food. But I am not a dip-in reader, and I would sometimes crack out and read 15 or 20 awesome things in a row, and get to a giggly hyper place not at all condusive to sleep. Finally I just gave up and started reading it on the bus, my ideal reading environment. Which led to it being my second-ever bus book conversation (the other was Special Topics in Calamity Physics).

So I wound up reading it pretty much straight through, and getting a little obsessive about stylistic quirks that probably should have been ignored. Like, Pasricha clearly has a persona of a goofy suburban everydude who likes to eat and commutes to an office job in a car. This comes out in his voice, and the things he chooses to write about: cars and food and childhood and…there’s a lot about food (which made me happy; I like food too and am actually eating curry while I type this). But someone (an editor?) seems to have made a rule that the book be for everyone, and that Pasricha not use too many examples from his personal life.

So all the entries are written in the second person (“You’re lovin it lots!”) and the gender of pronouns often flips back and forth within a paragraph, which made the author seem not inclusive but MPD. And even though he was clearly mocking those who relish finding the last of a particular item in their size at a clothing store and much more sincere in his love of the Man Couch (apparently, a couch in mall stores where women can leave their pouty partners while they shop), he keeps on trying to be all things to all people. There’s even an entry on getting into clean sheets with freshly shaved legs–yes, that is actually an amazing sensation, but how would *he* know?

The best of these entries are actually the most personal. There’s a really really really sweet one about halftime orange slices when you are a kid playing soccer, which isn’t about orange slices at all but about his awesome mom. I’m pretty sure it would be worth the purchase price to just photocopy this entry and give it to your mom for Mother’s Day. And an entry towards the end about a friend who had passed away sort of anchored the book and made clearer its purpose.

Of course, it goes without saying there are no intellectual pleasures on this list, not even ones like, “When a frustrated crossword doer mutters a clue out loud and you happen to know the answer.” This is about more basic, visceral stuff than that–when you get the nacho with the most toppings, when the batteries in the remote control work a little longer than they should, when someone gives you a really solid hug. Those things deserve to be celebrated, and the inclusiveness of this list does show how similar we all are in the end. And that made me feel pretty AWESOME!

August 5th, 2010

Great, just great

My apartment building’s basement, 8:34 this evening (click to enlarge):

Crazy basement note (and rebuttal)

Oh yeah, this won’t end well. I’m actually pretty worried–this is a ramp up on the crazy, even for this building. That’s not paper, by the way; it’s a 2×3 foot piece of bristol board, like you do a science project on in grade three. Worried (but still pleased by use of “signage”–the rebutter has clearly worked in retail!)

August 4th, 2010

Life–so much stuff!

So I went to Winnipeg! Did I mention everyone should go to Winnipeg? Oh yeah, I did! As it turns out, it’s equally fun the second time! Maybe even more so, because there was no work involved in this trip, just Olive Garden and old friends and new friends and a very pretty wedding with strawberry pie instead of wedding cake (genius!) and a very weird hotel with a two-story waterslide in the pool and fluorescent lights in the bedrooms. And Grand Beach at Lake Winnipeg and SO many kinds of ice cream, and hugs, and a very orderly airport (even though they confiscated my hair mousse). Oh, and cheap sushi. And a cat who could sit on command.

So, yes, I had a good weekend, though it kept me from blogging, which is ever sad. So I haven’t mentioned yet that my short story “Sweet” is now online at the Canadian Notes and Queries site. Or that my reading at Pivot at the Press Club is one week from tonight.

Or that that cartoon about never being a grownup that everyone is posting these days is very hilarious and yet nothing like me! Yes, I apparently am the only person in my age category who feels no solidarity with this woman. I *love* grocery shopping and going to the bank! I owe a few emails, it’s true, but they’re in my queue. I even occasionally look forward to cleaning stuff. Before i leave the house this morning, I’m going to scrub the sink and maybe the bathtub.

I’m totally not bragging–I’d be the first to admit that I use groceries and laundry as procrastinatory activities in order to escape doing, like, actual work on my writing. And I *still* find time to surf the internet like an attention-deficit squirrel on PCP. If my sink were dirtier and I had a less-full complement of groceries, I would get more/have to get more work done. And where’s the fun in that? I think this is an element those chore-avoiders haven’t caught onto yet!