I am amazed at how the spring has unfolded. Swiftly, miraculously our garden has suddenly filled with flowers and fruit and ants and bees and I've done pretty much nothing at all to help it along. I'd like to be able to say that it looks like crud, that not being able to get to all the pruning and weeding and plucking has turned our backyard into a jungle of briars and deadheads, but it is flourishing just fine without the weekly waterings and bushwacks. Nature unfolds whether you're looking or not, and sometimes does even better without well meaning hands and eyes. A lesson?
Thursday, May 24
Unfolding
I am amazed at how the spring has unfolded. Swiftly, miraculously our garden has suddenly filled with flowers and fruit and ants and bees and I've done pretty much nothing at all to help it along. I'd like to be able to say that it looks like crud, that not being able to get to all the pruning and weeding and plucking has turned our backyard into a jungle of briars and deadheads, but it is flourishing just fine without the weekly waterings and bushwacks. Nature unfolds whether you're looking or not, and sometimes does even better without well meaning hands and eyes. A lesson?
Friday, May 4
Pay the parents
Actually, re: my last post, I just realized that my last car cost $900.
Anyway, there's been all these headlines and hoopla today over the true value of a stay-at -home mom's work. Apparently, salary.com issued a press release yesterday clocking the job as comprising 10 positions and 91 hours a week, and deserving of a $138.095 annual salary (with overtime pay factored in). Is it just me,or does anyone else find it totally unflattering to have a mom's work broken into titles of "laundry machine operator", "van driver", and "housekeeper"?? Makes me wonder why I owe my liberal arts college so much money if all I ended up doing is an amalgamation of crappy jobs. Not that I want to label myself as a SAHM just yet. Yes, I have been staying around the house for the last month or so, but I find the titles pretty ridiculous. How about, "mom lucky enough to have a supportive partner and flexible employment"?
Another downer is that, though a stay-at-home dad's and a working mom's "at home" work was also calculated, no mention was made about the work that working dads do at home. I know that Nat has been doing the bulk of the real work around here since the baby came, first because of my surgery and now because of the incessant breastfeeding, but most of the parenting heterosexual couples I know also have fathers who cook, clean, take kids to classes and on outings, and aren't afraid of poopy diapers. Pay us all!
But, true value and true costs aren't really important here in the good ol' US of A, are they? Otherwise local organics would be way cheaper than monsanto engineered craziness and we'd be saving a heck of a lot more land and putting far fewer cars on the road.
Now for less reading and thinking and more staring at my giant baby...
Anyway, there's been all these headlines and hoopla today over the true value of a stay-at -home mom's work. Apparently, salary.com issued a press release yesterday clocking the job as comprising 10 positions and 91 hours a week, and deserving of a $138.095 annual salary (with overtime pay factored in). Is it just me,or does anyone else find it totally unflattering to have a mom's work broken into titles of "laundry machine operator", "van driver", and "housekeeper"?? Makes me wonder why I owe my liberal arts college so much money if all I ended up doing is an amalgamation of crappy jobs. Not that I want to label myself as a SAHM just yet. Yes, I have been staying around the house for the last month or so, but I find the titles pretty ridiculous. How about, "mom lucky enough to have a supportive partner and flexible employment"?
Another downer is that, though a stay-at-home dad's and a working mom's "at home" work was also calculated, no mention was made about the work that working dads do at home. I know that Nat has been doing the bulk of the real work around here since the baby came, first because of my surgery and now because of the incessant breastfeeding, but most of the parenting heterosexual couples I know also have fathers who cook, clean, take kids to classes and on outings, and aren't afraid of poopy diapers. Pay us all!
But, true value and true costs aren't really important here in the good ol' US of A, are they? Otherwise local organics would be way cheaper than monsanto engineered craziness and we'd be saving a heck of a lot more land and putting far fewer cars on the road.
Now for less reading and thinking and more staring at my giant baby...
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