My favorite internet misogynist is at it again....

....this time over the "Pants at Church" kerfuffle.

Here's the post, and you can read my comment there:
http://goodstrongmen.blogspot.com/2012/12/pants-at-church.html

The thing that I find funniest is "Wow, you pants-wearing, short-haired girls....I'm not attracted to you, and you better be careful or no one else will be either!" seems to be his biggest threat.  I think I can speak for a majority of Mormon feminists when I say "I think I can handle that a man like you won't be interested in me."  And wave him on his way while I marry Ben instead. 

My Bishop made interesting remarks in sacrament meeting today in conjunction with the age change for sister missionaries.  He pointed out that women who serve missions will have a higher bar of expectations for their future husbands.  He said "They'll look for men who will be better, more attentive, more engaged husbands and fathers."  I leaned to Ben and said "Yeah, I didn't just LOOK for that, I GOT it."

Cause I did.  And I'm grateful for it every single day.

Timing

End-of-semester madness is bad enough....wrapping up grades, tracking down missing assignments, dealing with last-minute medical leaves/incompletes, the sudden flood of interest (completely lacking up to this point) in office hours....it's just yucky.

Puking for two days in the middle of that - yeah.  Let me tell you about how my life's timing is just seriously awesome.

Fun!

Just because I need my brain rot just as much as the average person....

I've been making things like this in the last few weeks!

They make me happy.  One is for J, the other one is for his little friend.  Bet you can't guess which is which.  The happy yarn just made me think of him, I could hardly stand it....and the flower is the most complex thing I've crocheted.  Ever.

So now that I've busied my hands with some fluff, I guess it's time to get writing again.

Progress, and lack thereof

So, next time someone points out to me that 3 years seems like WAY too long for me to have been in the list/exam/proposal/writing phase, I'll be sorely tempted to point out things like the following:

During that stretch I birthed and nursed an infant.

I left my PhD institution and have been teaching a 4-4 load at another for the past two years.

In addition to work, I have ballet lessons, art classes, and camping trips to think of.

Unlike my male counterparts with children, no one does the shopping, cooks my food, does my laundry, cleans my house, or watches my children while I write.  I do those things.  And write.

I did seven loads of laundry in 24 hours Thursday/Friday in a (so far successful) attempt to limit the stomach flu flying around out extended family, to just J.

And I'm going to graduate along with my entering PhD cohort (well, barring catastrophe I will).


It's funny, the folks in my ward don't say anything to the male students with young families about being in school for ages.  They just assume that the men are on track.  Then they hear me say something that allows them to mentally calculate "Whoa, she's been working on the dissertation for three years?" and assume that I'm behind schedule.

For what it's worth, I'm not.

/end rant.

I didn't post a "thankful" post....

I guess that oversight speaks to the chaos of my existence at the moment.

I spent Thanksgiving helping Ben clean up J's puke - though I have to admit that Ben really outdid himself in terms of stepping up so that I could still get work done. 

So today (and in the spirit of Thanksgiving), I'm grateful that I wrote my requisite pages, got to eat all my favorite comfort foods (soooooo many carbohydrates, I was in heaven!!), and now get to go choose and decorate a Christmas tree.

As chaotic, stressed, rushed, and full as my life generally seems to be, all of my problems are very first-world: finding ways to fit all the fresh produce into the fridge, getting the puked-on clothes immediately into the washing machine's sanitize cycle to attempt to contain the germs, worrying about whether or not the tree will stay strapped atop the Chevy or not....

I sometimes feel guilty that my life is so blessed when there is such poverty and suffering around the world. 

Today I'm trying to eliminate the guilt and just be thankful.

Talk about intimidating

Finished two chapters to circulate to committee.  This pace means May defense and graduation.

Turning in job letters tomorrow.

Terrified at the prospect of failure on both counts.

To all the people who ask me...

....when I'm having another baby:

I'm doing everything I can.  In fact, until I changed it this morning out of sheer frustration, my passphrase for my IU account had been like salt in a wound because it required me to, nearly every day (and more than once sometimes) for over two years type in "Em wants three kids".  Even though I don't have them.

People see fit to judge me based on my fertility and their assumptions that I'm somehow putting off having more children because of my academic ambitions.

To those people: go take it up with God.  He's the one who isn't sending me any babies.  And until you get an answer from Him, leave me the hell alone.

The "a" word issue

I'm firmly convinced that because of partisan politics we will never be able to get to a good solution for the issue of abortion.

I believe that killing babies is sad.  And bad.  And morally wrong.

I also believe that the rights of disenfranchised, disadvantaged, abused and voiceless people should be protected by the majority.

Unfortunately, there's an intersection between those two issues that leads members of one party to call the other "baby killers" and the members of the latter to accuse the former of ignorance and backward thinking.

When a child (yes, CHILD, it happens.  Let's not pretend it doesn't) gets pregnant because her father (or another authoritative man in her life) uses his superior strength, life experience, and selfishness to sexually exploit her, I believe that it is in no one's best interest to force that pregnancy to continue to term.

Numerous studies go into the details of the trauma that teen mothers experience when they go through birth, the higher potential for preterm babies and birth defects and other risk factors for the babies born to these mothers, and the impact on poverty and quality of life for these mothers and their babies.  This is NOT the best course of action for anyone involved.

For those of you who will beat me with my LDS-ness, the church even defines circumstances where abortion is permissible, which indicates to me some doctrinal "wiggle room" about when life begins.

That's as far as I'll go here into citing my sources or defending my position on the issue.

My point in this post is simply to state this: until we can get over the ideological divide of black-and-white political thinking, we'll never solve this very nuanced, complicated, and emotionally charged problem.

I'm sure that if the top minds we have in this brilliant country of ours could sit down together, we could come up with a way to legislate abortion in a way that would still provide for exceptions, and allow those "exceptions" to reasonably pursue a forward course of action (rather than depending on a judicial system so overburdened that the fetus in question would become a baby and be born before the process ran its course).  But they haven't, and show no inclination to do so.

Until then, I'm grateful for those politicians, activists, advocates, and healthcare providers who are brave enough to let others call them "baby killers."  They are willing to admit their inability to find a ready legal solution right now, and recognize the primacy of individual agency and accountability in the meantime.

Reminds me of a certain " you can choose for yourself" plan that spirit selves are said to have accepted over a "just do what I say and I'll get you back to God" plan.

What one kid-free day can do

And not even a whole day at that.  Today my marvelous and lovely Aunt T took J from 11 til 4:30 while I worked at home.

They raced golf balls down the treehouse slide, watered flowers, and wandered the fall meadow, among other things.  He had much more fun than he would have at home, I'm sure.

I got all of the housework done that I needed to (I will not bore you with a list), plus I am now within 3 editing pages of having another chapter draft ready to go for review.

I'm so glad to have supportive family to make this process more bearable!

Oh no he did not....

.....well, then again, he did.

Governor Romney just said that the way he would equalize pay between men and women would be to make sure women had enough flexibility to get home early and make dinner.

For one thing, he didn't answer the question.  He didn't say "This is what I will do," he spun some un-fact-checkable story aimed at making himself more likeable in the eyes of women voters.

For another, I don't need a flexible schedule.  I got home after a full work day today, and within 15 minutes had dinner on the table.  The days that I don't do that, my husband makes dinner.  Yeah, cause he can do that.  That's how families with two working parents need to function if everyone's going to survive.  Partnerships.  Valuing both contributors.  Recognizing that there's no such thing as "women's work," just work that needs done.  Apparently Governor Romney can't see that.  Based on his telling of it, you should only hire a woman if you're willing to let her leave work whenever she feels like it - but you should do that, because women deserve special treatment?  I wasn't clear on why he seemed to think it was okay to create a reverse double standard for women.  Thank you very much, Governor, but I want the same pay as the men in my department because I do the same job they do, put in the same hours.  The fact that I still manage to keep up with my family responsibilities has no bearing on the matter (other than for me to be able to say that working doesn't keep me from being a kickass mom).

For yet another, women who DON'T work the same hours as men ought not to make the same amount of money.  And vice versa.  I know of no woman who is asking to make the same salary for less work, only one who wants reasonable accommodation (like maternity leave - not even paid, just the assurance of having a job post-baby).

Don't get me started on the objectification of women - apparently we talk about men who are applicants but have binders full of women.  Not resumes. 

Geesh.

Well, that's tons of fun....

Just realized that my choices for the House race in my district are Boehner and this guy.  Talk about NOT being excited to vote.

I especially loved the "defense of dead baby pictures" statement from the wife of the guy he's endorsing.....maybe your kid is so blindly believing that she'll accept "people who hate Jesus hurt babies" as an answer; my six-year-old is much more inquisitive than that.

And those "big words" .....I'm a practicing Mormon, devout in my belief in God, but I still wouldn't insult my child's right to building a framework for understanding her world by saying that God magically puts a baby in mom's tummy.  She knows that we're made up of tiny pieces that we can't see called cells, and that they have stuff in them called DNA and that it takes DNA from two people to make a new baby person.

I imagine that my undertaking to explain  God as a grand architect rather than as some imaginary magical fairy-being will help her maintain an adult faith while living in a disbelieving world.

But maybe that's just me.

Free the children!

Today after I dropped J off and was on the way to my class, I saw a mom with one of those kid leashes that she had attached to her probably-if-I-had-to-guess four-year-old.

This wasn't a small child, or a crowded public place, or one woman with multiple kids.  Mom and four-year-old.  On a leash.

You know, the way you do with a disobedient dog.

I'm all for safety, and I'm all for attachment parenting.....we did a variety of co-sleeping and I used slings to carry both my kids around.

I'm also all for teaching children to listen to you, behave appropriately, and develop a sense of accountability and consequences for their own actions.

Leashes for kids undermine all of those things.....if they're tied to you a kid doesn't have any motivation to listen, they don't learn to behave but rather are physically restrained, and have no consequences for running away because, well, they can't do it.
I'm working toward our DOG being an off-leash entity even in public.  I don't know why it would be a good idea to not treat my CHILD with at least the same autonomy and respect.

Let's free the leashed children!!!

I need a nap

Over the last four days or so I've done some things I'm proud of.

I made Bee a layered ruffle skirt using things we had laying around the house (hooray for hand-me-down fabric collections!) - she had outgrown all her church dresses and we had no budget for new ones.  The modesty police were on her for not-near-enough-the-knee-for-Primary skirt lengths.  I think it's ridiculous for them to criticize her, but I'm too tired to fight that battle so I made a cute pink slashed skirt.  That hits below her 6-year-old knees.

This weekend the kids and I made "smoothie popsicles".  My aunt gave me some old rubbermaid popsicle molds and we do layer yogurt popsicles.  My kids love them....they're yogurt on the bottom, strawberry puree in the middle, blackberry puree with soy milk on top.  The different densities stay separate, and this means when they come out of the mold they're white on top, pink in the middle, and dark purple/magenta on bottom.  And they have very little added sugar - just fruit.  Always a good thing!

We camped out at Gran's and I caved and let Mollie sleep in the tent so that the (nearer than I've ever heard them at Gran's) coyotes wouldn't get her.....I was proud for being selfless.  I love my dog, a lot.  But not so much that I enjoy sleeping with her.

Yesterday I healed two vomiting children.  Ben cleaned the car seats, thank heaven.

Last night I got 6 pairs of pants and 4 button-down shirts on clearance at the thrift store for $15.  Hooray for not breaking the clothing budget while keeping my ever-growing offspring in pants that cover their ankles!

Today I overcame a pee emergency.  No big deal, right?  Kids pee, it happens.  Well today it was all about timing.  At 10:50 J decided it would be funny to pee on me out of spite when I left him at the childcare center.  My class starts at 11:15.  I ran to the university bookstore, found a parking spot, found a polo on clearance, found ANOTHER spot near my building and parked the car, changed shirts in the parking lot and made it to class with 3 minutes to spare.

And just now, about 6 minutes ago, I sent two complete chapter drafts off for review.

I'm so ready to fall into bed, I'm glad that this isn't what my life looks like all the time.  Or maybe it does and I only realize it on days that I feel like this...

Life's too short....

....to carefully fold fitted sheets into the same sized bundle as a flat sheet.

I'm taking J to the zoo with his cousins instead.

Dieting

I have never dieted before. Ever. I recently joined Ben in a diet experiment. My mom and her husband have had good success with the South Beach diet. So we tried it.

After the first week of phase one, Ben was down 3 pounds. I was up the same 3. So the second week, Ben stuck to the diet and I did what I wanted - which, since I was at a conference in Portland, involved pupusas, sopes, Lebanese food, beef chow mein, and curry over rice. (Note the preponderance of rice and cornmeal there)

He continued to lose, I lost what I had gained.

Conclusion: eliminating sugars was good. I'll keep that. And Ben is happy with what South Beach is doing for him, so he's gonna stick with it a while longer.

Apparently, though, I'm a carb-processing machine. Turns out that by choosing whole foods and grains and generally not eating huge portions (with the occasional exception for corn tortillas and chocolate cake), I feed my body in away that's healthier for it than a diet.

Funny how that works.

Grrrrrrrrr

So apparently Romney thinks that producing a film that mocks Muslims is something that deserves support as being part of "our values"? Grow up, quit using a man's death to further your own agenda, and focus on issues that are actually important...like where to get the money we need to keep ourselves afloat, how to deal with crop shortages and the food prices that will result, and how to keep QUALIFIED teachers in the classroom when all we do is complain about things they can't control. Also, early flight departures are wonderful. Late ones not so much. That's all.

NOT supermom

I'm not.  And never will be.

I see these posts around various social media outlets about oh-how-much moms got done in a day - 12 loads of laundry and dinners frozen for later and errands run.

I just don't operate like that.

And you know what?  I'm glad I don't have to.

I teach two days a week, so those days we're doing pretty well to all get dressed and to our different educational facilities on time and not missing any pieces.

I run errands one Saturday a month, all in one morning.  We don't have a lot of non-grocery errands.  I grocery shop for two weeks at a time, occasionally doing a fill-in trip on the way home from work.

Laundry happens when it  happens.  As often as not, Ben helps me fold over an episode of West Wing, NCIS, or Downton Abbey (whatever the current brain rot we have going is).  He cooks the night that Bee has ballet and Thursday - for no good reason other than I'm tired after doing my work week.

He lets me sleep in on Saturday because I love and need the extra hour and he loves and needs the time with the kids that he doesn't get because of his five-day work week.

I will never be able to post a "look how productiveI was with homemaking today"post, because that's just not how my life works.  And frankly, I'm not all that impressed with myself for simply making my own life choices work for our family.

We do what we do, because we've chosen for our life to look like it does.

And I'm okay with that.  It works for us.

Paul Ryan's sub-three marathon

I was skeptical but almost impressed when I heard Ryan's claim.

Now I'm just proud of myself for being skeptical......and the fact that I could keep pace with the man.

Which, given that he's a man, makes his marathon bragging all that less impressive.

Several runner-types have mentioned that runners din't lie about their times.  My experience is consistent with this....people know what they run and they don't lie about it.  Or stretch the truth.  Or forget after years and years (I, for example, still remember my best times in each of my high school events 20:18 5k, 5:57 1600m and 2:29.8 800m....and I graduated 14 years ago).

So maybe the lesson learned is to not brag about things that you don't do any more, particularly about something whose adherents/participants are quick to call "liar, liar, pants on fire" when the situation calls for it.

Just so Mormon that I HAVE to comment

I was interested to see what Ann Romney's speech at the RNC would look and sound like.

I thought she did great, she obviously wanted to support her husband by humanizing him/making him more accessible, the crowd seemed to love her.

There were a few sentences that were just grammatically weird or flat-out incomprehensible. ("We're too smart to know there aren't easy answers" - wait.  So we're so smart that we don't/can't know that???  I listened to that part three times and finally just let it go).  But that's her speech writer's fault, or their assumption that the juxtaposition that followed it would help people get what she MEANT (even if it wasn't what they had her SAY).

 Those things aside....

It was just so SO Mormon-y, I can't get over it!

There was the teary-bleary-I'm-holding-my-tears-in-which-means-what-I'm-saying-is-true stuff.  (Now, I understand that the Spirit can be tear-inducing, but come on, it doesn't HAVE to be ALL the time)

Then there was the "You women are so awesome" stuff.  Over at Exponent II they've already commented on the parallel between the LDS church's (mis)treatment of women with that of the RNC, so I"ll just direct you there.  In a nutshell I just think it's amazing how two very powerful, far-reaching organizations do sexist and discriminatory things and then tell women how AWESOME or INCREDIBLE they are in some sort of attempt to make up for it.

(Can I just point out, most of us can see through that?  LDS leaders and RNC big-wigs, we'll still be mad that in many cases you don't listen to us, and think we're not capable of leading or making difficult decisions, and want to force us to have transvaginal ultrasounds.  Your actions give me a much clearer indication of what you think of me.)

But here's the big thing.

I resent the implication that my husband doesn't work every bit as hard as I do to support our family, or understand our family's needs as well as I do, or is less awesome than me.

Maybe women are great, but you don't have to tear down our husbands, fathers, brothers, and colleagues, in order to help us understand that.  Either we already know it, or nothing you can say will convince us of it.

Modesty (some more)

I sometimes engage in (usually pointless) discussions on a blog.  The author's stated purpose is to encourage LDS men to be more manly and what he thinks of as fulfilling their "divine roles" as men.

Usually he says things that are downright misogynistic, and on more than one occasion has stuck to his opinion despite being presented with facts to the contrary.

The most recent exchange has been about modesty, where he takes the typical "I can't control the biological response I have to a woman's body....women shouldn't dress like sluts if they don't want attention from bums".  (Those classifications of men and women are his word choice, not mine).

I'm afraid a comment I posted will hang out in moderation (cause he does that when he doesn't like my argument), so I wanted to post it somewhere:

Given Jesus' example of welcoming sinners, shouldn't we cultivate an atmosphere where we teach young people not to judge based on appearance?

So instead of saying "of course young men are going to see that immodest girl and think she's easy" would a better approach not be to say "we fallible humans judge people, often, wrongly, and that's a shame.  Why don't we teach that modesty is about appropriateness instead of inches of fabric?"

Taunting a gang member....did you really compare the sexual urges of teenaged boys to gang members who beat people up?  That's unfortunate.  But I guess it explains the difference in our approaches.

You say, and I agree with, the following:
Taunting a gang member is likely to get you beat up.

Dressing like a slut will probably get you unwelcome attention.

You say:
So don't taunt a gang member.

So don't dress like a slut.

I would offer:
So let's encourage community members to implement community action programs, create community centers, and emphasize education.  Let's offer education initiatives to try to break this cycle.

So let's teach the YM that sexual responses are normal and learning to control them and respond only in appropriate ways to them is part of growing up.  But let's also teach them that a person's appearance does not always correspond to their level of personal righteousness, because teenagers often have a variety of obstacles (lack of parental support, poverty, insecurity or self-esteem issues) in their way that prevent them from looking like a Mormon fashion plate.


I'll grant that your solution is quicker, easier, and more succinct than mine.  But ease does not necessarily equate with correctness.

This is why I could never be a Republican...

This guy is moronic.

Usually I try to do better than name calling, but in this case, the shoe fits.

I get that this mentality still exists.  There are TONS of old ideas that just won't die.  And he's not alone (well, in a sense he is).  I mean, LOTS of people have bad ideas.

But in this case people have elected this guy to public office.  And we all know what happens when the people choose to be led by corrupt officials.  And normalize violence against women.



Now, contrary to any indications in the title, this post does NOT imply any party affiliation.  But it IS a reasonable beginning of explaining why I won't let myself affiliate (though in perfect frankness, I lean left by Mormon standards....can't help it, all that liberal education I guess).  I simply refuse to be identified by/with people whose most outspoken representatives don't have a basic grasp of junior-high biology.  Or people who don't want me to own a gun if I'm not part of a militia.

Like in so many other areas of my life, I don't fit squarely anywhere.  Because where would the fun be in that??

I'll make my own decisions, thanks.

She did win!

Well, almost.

I LOVE the 800m run.  Love love love it.  It's absolutely a grueling event even though it's only half a mile.  The thing is that you have to run really, REALLY fast, for longer than it feels like you ought to be able to maintain such a pace.

A couple of months ago I wrote a little bit about Caster Semenya.  I've been fascinated by her story, cultural differences in the perception of intersex individuals, official regulation of being man/woman enough....all sorts of gender-questioning issues that I think deserve consideration and dialogue.

I really wanted her to win.  Because it's my favorite race, and she's my favorite kind of person (a "this is who I am, I'm sorry if I don't conform to your expectations buy I love myself" kind of person).

So Saturday night, late, I watched the women's 800m.  I had already reveled in the amazing capacity of the Kenyan and Ethiopian distance runners to play with everyone else's pace/mind: something along the lines of "Yeah, you've led the race for 3/4 of it....I think I'm done letting you win, now, so we're going to pass you over the next 75 meters".  And the winner of the 10K with her celebratory thanks put me in mind of Teresa de Cartagena.  So I was happy.

The gun went off and I sat on the edge of my chair and watched Caster Semenya keep last place.  I was willing her to go faster but she just hung out....for 650 meters.

And then all of a sudden she was blazing.  She overtook all but the gold medalist in a little over 70 meters.  I couldn't believe it, I haven't seen that kind of come-from-behind in an 800.  I'm sure there has been one, but I've never seen it, and I was awestruck by it.

I'm glad that women get to do things like this these days.  I'm glad that my daughter can grow up to be a diver if she wants (that's what she was enthralled by.....and the 5K runners, who she ran along with in circles in the living room for the whole 15 minutes of their race), without the stereotypes of "get in the kitchen, woman, sports are for boys" or "we better not have an Olympic marathon competition....it will make the women who do it unfit for childbearing."  (The official reason for not including a women's marathon event in the Olympics until 1984!  Even though numerous women lobbied for it).

Oh, my kids

Overheard at our house in the last couple of days:

Me: (reading) Sugar and spice and everything nice, that's what little girls are made of!"
Bee: No it's not!
Me: Why not?
Bee: I don't have to be nice ALL the time.  And I'm a girl.


Me: (seeing J jumping off the toy box) Careful bud, you can get hurt!
J: No, I not.  I'm bein' TAREFUL!

Well then.

Wisdom from flower gardening

This summer's drought has had me doing my darnedest to keep my plants alive.  I religiously water them twice a day....a good long soak once a day has not been able to cut it in the Ohio heat.

My plants are still alive, still producing, but I wouldn't go so far as to call them thriving.  They're just too stressed from the heat and the dry and the root shock of being parched most of the time and suddenly needing to wake up for a drink.  My techniques that produced golf-ball-sized cherry  and sunsugar tomatoes last year have given us marbles (though still sweet and lots of them) this year.  And the foliage on my flowers gets wilty every day.

I was pondering on my frustrations in all of this when I walked past a grocery-store manager's special rose on my counter (if there are roses on the rack for under $3 in the checkout, I buy them for us to enjoy so they don't go to waste...there are few things I dislike more than a wasted blossom....anyway).

And I realized that my flowers were giving me an analogy for dating/marriage partners.

Growing roses is like having a high-maintenance girlfriend.  The blooms are really pretty, and some varieties have an intoxicating effect because of their color and fragrance.  And people will admire them and compliment you on them.

For the two weeks in early summer that they bloom.

Get what I'm getting at here?

Roses are labor-intensive.  They'll LIVE if you leave them alone, but  if you want the best results they require time, and some research and expertise.  You have to monitor soil pH and fix it when needed, water them in multiple short doses, prune them enough but not too much, and heaven forbid at the wrong time.  Plus fertilizing.  And the best varieties for appearance and scent are often not disease or pest-resistant.  Typically with roses you get one or MAYBE two positives there - pretty or hardy or strong-smelling - but not all.

Personally, I'm more a zinnia, aster, snapdragon, sunflower girl.  The MOST labor-intensive I get is gladiolus bulbs (here you have to dig them out in fall and re-plant them in spring because the winters are too cold).

When you plant zinnias and asters, every single seed grows.  You can transplant the extras and they come right back.  If they get dried out, you give them a good soak and they'll perk up within the hour.

Snapdragons are great because the more you hack off of them, the more blossoms they produce.  I have blooms on my plants from April (I buy those) to October (ones I start myself).  And they come in all sorts of flamboyant colors!

Sunflowers love harsh conditions....in this heat and dry and in the sandy soil of my yard where nothing else will grow, the big ones got 12 feet tall this year.  The other, shorter and more colorful varieties I planted to act as trellises and some shade for my glads and tall snapdragons.  In this heat they've really needed something to lean on, and my sunflowers have done the trick.  They took care of themselves and kept my other plants alive.

So it all depends on what you're after.  If you want marvelous, exceptional, stand-out beauty that everyone will comment on and be jealous of, go for the roses (or the girls like them).  If you want a flower patch (or marriage) that will be colorful and varied and survive awful conditions that are outside of your control, go for the hardy-but-not-so-flashy flowers (or the girls like them).

Personally, I only have roses because my Uncle John gave them to me.  And I want to keep them alive just for the challenge.  I'm totally a sunflower-and-zinnia girl.

This is what you get when we stop teaching English/literature

"Seeing as how Dick – excuse me, Vice President Cheney – never misfires, then evidently he's quite convinced that what he had evidently read about me by the lamestream media, having been written, what I believe is a false narrative over the last four years, evidently Dick Cheney believed that stuff and that's a shame."

No guesses who's whining in this pitiful excuse for something like a sentence.

And I get it that it's not a prepared speech.

But seriously, try to divide this even on a subject/predicate level.  Not to mention the repeated problems with tense (well, I guess I mentioned them).

 I find it worrisome that audiences accept and even expect this type of speech as reasonable on a program that purports to provide insightful commentary.

And I wonder why I never get anything done

Story of my life...

right here.

And it's not even that my kids BOTHER me, really.  Just that they have a knack for knowing when I'm up to something that's not completely centered around them.

Make hairbows?  Perfect peace.  Fix them lunch?  Self-contained.  Laundry?  Building train systems.

Writing a dissertation?  Suddenly in desperate need of....a.....HUG!  That's it!  Or drink of water.  Or help finding a lost shoe (that they won't need to wear anytime soon).  Or...or...or....

You get the idea.

Misconceptions

I've been wandering around the internet a lot lately. In my wanderings I've stumbled across a lot of vitriolic statements condemning feminists for their stupidity, promiscuity, unrealistic expectations, physical unattractiveness, and manhating.

So in an effort to provide an alternative perspective, I offer the following:

I worked my way through college as an undergraduate. I cleaned offices, toilets and stadiums, then chased shoplifters around the university bookstore. In graduate school (master's and PhD) I earned academic merit-based funding that was identical to that of my male peers.

I have only had one sexual partner, and we did not sleep together until after we were married. At the RIPE old ages of 23 and 22.

I expect to find employment in my field. If I don't, I'll do whatever work I can get (barring illegal or immoral professions) to help support my family. I expect that if circumstances necessitate it, my husband will do likewise. Because we are partners.

This with a grain of salt: I don't think that my attractiveness or lack thereof is relevant to my value as a person, or the worth of my opinions. But just because a counterclaim needs to be made...I'm 5' 1" and weigh 115 pounds. I regularly complete races that are 10 miles or longer, most recently a 50K. I care about my appearance and stalk clothes until they are on final sale so that I can dress nicely on a small budget.

I do not hate men, individually or as a group. I try to not hate people in general.

And I am a feminist.

Now, I know I know, one case does not represent a whole group. Anecdotes do not a scientific study make....all that. I know.

I just have this radical idea: how about we just start valuing each other as individuals rather than lumping people into easy-to-target-and-hate groups?

Talk about messing with gender construction

I'm writing again.  And reading again.  Which always makes me wonder why I stop doing it because I enjoy it so much.  In a nutshell, progress is good.

Here's my mind-blowing idea, though.  For one of my chapters I'm talking about cross-dressing in theater (shocking, I know, I never talk about costumes or disguises or gender, and couldn't possibly be interested in something that's ALL THREE!) and how it works across the Comedia.

I'm using Stephanie Merrim's commentary on Juan Huarte de San Juan (a 16th-century intellectual/philosopher/humanist/physician....you know, one of those guys who did EVERYTHING, like Copernicus) and his evaluation of biological sex.  He basically goes with the Aristotelian concept of things, with "woman is an imperfectly formed man" but takes it one step further: given a little internal "heat" (not like boiling her, this is a more nebulous old concept), a woman could BECOME a man.  He establishes a continuum of gender ranging from "pure" man to "pure" woman and allows people to fall anywhere in-between.

My commentary on this centers on how fascinating it is that despite this flexibility/variability, socially constructed gender (as opposed to biological sex and the characteristics/personality traits viewed as inherent to it) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Spain was still SO RIGID.

So last night as I was writing this up, I got to thinking about how we're sort of on the opposite of that theses days.  We know that in terms of biological sex we're pretty different (ie, a woman isn't just a man with the same plumbing only inside), more complementary;  but along with that, we don't ascribe personality traits/characteristics so universally as inherent to one sex.  We accept a range of behaviors for both genders.

Then I got to thinking about how in many ways the LDS church is still stuck in the 16th-century....we're all children of God, all valued, doctrinally we accept things like women being intelligent and men being nurturing etc - sort of a one-sex model with some variation....but there are still RIGIDLY constructed cultural roles for men (breadwinner) versus women (homemaker).

And (here's the point of the post!)

last night I dreamed that President Packer (of COURSE it was him) used Huarte de San Juan and Juan de Mariana (the "you women best not be talking in public!" early modern Spanish moralist) to justify gender roles in a talk, and people believed it.

If only a dissertation chapter could have the same tone as a blog post.  I need a break.

More revisions....

Or, the "I'm never going to finish so I'm just giving up now" post. I just got revisions back on a chapter just prior to sending off a second. These were to be minor just-pre-final things to wrap up. My advisor had already been through this chapter once and I made the big changes and sent it to her for final-approval things, which this feedback ought to have been. Except it's not. These suggestions are huge and consuming and will precipitate changes in the draft I thought I was ready to send off. Which means more revisions and then sending the two away together and never seeing them again (well, or for six months, but you know). I'm feeling frustrated and incapable and stupid. I think I need to sleep and work on it tomorrow. Hopefully things will look better in the morning, but somehow I doubt it.

No more babies

My babies aren't babies any more. That combined with the frustration I mentioned a couple of posts ago has me about ready to have some sort of emotional breakdown. Maybe that's an exaggeration. I do miss having a tiny one to snuggle. Those things in mind though I have two J stories that warmed my heart.

First, the other day we were at my dad and stepmom's house for Sunday dinner. I got to hold my new little nephew (he really is darling). Bee came over to see him and pat his head and tickle his toes, so of course J followed. I was nervous because he can be rough sometimes...not intentionally, just because he doesn't know how strong he is. He very softly patted the baby's head and then said "Momma, weeoo dust tate it?". As in, will you just take it. Like home. I had to explain that the baby was NOT ours and would have to go home with his momma. J was disappointed.

Second, today when I was snuggling him in for naps he rubbed my shoulder for a minute and then said "dat's bedder, momma? I just wuv eeoo.". I don't know how he could tell I was having a day of it but I almot cried that he wanted to make me feel better.

I'm so glad that he's a sweet boy. And I'm so glad that he came to our little family where we won't feel a need to teach him that that sweet sensitivity is somehow equivalent to weakness or girliness and something he needs to remove from his personality.

Funny of the day

"There is no better way to dispel the myth that Romney is detached patrician elite than...competitive horse prancing!"

Stephen Colbert, for the win.

Much ado about nothing

I've read a lot of hype about an article in the Atlantic by Anne Marie Slaughter.

Yes, I know it's in a major paper and therefore lots of people will comment on it - but why all of the "you quitter"/"you whiner"/"suck it up"/"you just THINK you're a good mother" comments???  That's what I don't get.  Judging from the responses coming from many people, I imagine they didn't read the entire article but are instead basing their conclusions off the title she gives it.  After all, it's a full seven internet pages, which in internet terms makes it about as finish-able for most people as, say, the Quijote. 

I slogged through it, and found much to agree with and much to disagree with.  Overall, I liked it because it wasn't another "go get-em, girls, you can do it all if you're just willing to be sleep-deprived enough!" (because as any woman who has tried to have children and a career knows, the success you have at both often depends on how well you can survive sacrificing sleep).  One important note that contradicts what many of her critics are saying about her article, she is NOT saying "women can't have it all but should be able to!  Whah, whah, life is so unfair to women!"

My favorite of her conclusions is this line:
"Having it all, at least for me, depended almost entirely on what type of job I had. The flip side is the harder truth: having it all was not possible in many types of jobs, including high government office—at least not for very long."

Read: if you choose to have children, you will have to make hard choices and many professional options will be closed to you.  Be ye warned.

I think it's a perfectly reasonable statement/warning/conclusion.

The statement I quote above sums up why I chose to pursue a career as a professor rather than as a high school teacher (the original plan - and I would have been a miserable failure at it, might I add!).  Or a prosecutor (the next option I happened upon - there I would have been a miserable example of burnout, I think).  I wanted the flexibility that would allow me to do both, and do them both well. 

I have to work hard to do both, and I'm certainly no Melveena McKendrick or Linda Eyre.  But I am raising kids who are (so far) reasonably-behaved, respectful, healthy, intelligent, and happy.  And I produce students who do things like give  me flowers at the end of a term (I almost cried at that, gotta admit), and decide to pursue Spanish minors when I'm done with them.

It makes me happy.

Done!

I think it's funny that I repeatedly post "done!" without ever really being it.

But another term has come and gone.  Graded the finals in less than 5 hours.  Once the university system opens rosters I'll be able to enter final grades (yeah, I've never been so on top of grading as to BEAT THE REGISTRAR TO READINESS!) and truly be done.

We're celebrating with the Fenwick festival tomorrow....we've been living on dreams of roast corn and funnel cakes for weeks now.  Or at least I have.

Ideally in the six remaining weeks of summer I'll finish two dissertation chapters.  I'd love if I did more than that, but I'm trying to keep my expectations reasonable.

So much for being done, I guess....at least I got to be done with SOMETHING, even if it was only for a few hours.

I hope she wins

On my way home from work today I caught the edge of a piece on NPR discussing Caster Semenya.  I was fascinated by their discussion of how testosterone levels affect (or don't) different people, given that some are more sensitive to low levels and others are less sensitive to high levels; how there's no particularly good cutoff for what's a "male" level versus a "female" level, leading to some male athletes with very LOW testosterone levels; and how it's interesting that you're not born with a specific testosterone level that then stays relatively constant, but rather that the activities that you engage in can make you produce more/less of it.

FASCINATING!

Here's a good piece on it.  And another.  And another.

So I'm reeling with a brain soup of the unfairness in this violation of a woman's right to her body (different though it may be from some imagined "normal"), frustration that they're regulating (here read: making them undergo hormone therapy to lower their levels if they want to continue to compete) what is a NATURALLY OCCURRING level for these women simply because of the commonly-held belief that testosterone is a "man thing,"  and anger at the assumption that if a woman is good at something physical, it must be that she's trying to be like a man and therefore shouldn't be allowed to compete with other women.

In all of that, I googled her.  She's an 800 runner.  Which of course makes me like her.  Of all the track and field races, I think the 800 is particularly brutal, and if you've ever run it, you know why.  It's short enough that you're supposed to run freaking fast.  And long enough that it hurts like hell to do that.

Which is why it was the only track race I ever enjoyed (though I did the 1600m, the 3200m, and anchored the 4x8, often in the same meet....yeah, 4 miles per meet running track).  Go figure.  Me and my gluttony for punishment.

Watch some beautiful, powerful, focused running.  And hope with me that she wins this summer.

We're going to the zoo.....zoo.....zoo.....

How about you.....you......you?  You can come too.....too.....too.  We're going to the zoo!

Actually, the kids and I already went to the zoo today, so you won't be able to come.  Sorry.  Maybe next time.

True testament of what a terrible mother I am, we have no pictures to prove it.  I'm not one of those moms who photographs their child's every move (or even every milestone).  Maybe I should feel guilty about that (or at least more guilty than I do....enough to make me take more pictures).

Anyway.

This last year I've fought off feelings of dissatisfaction that my life didn't unfold the way I intended when it came to adding the next baby to our family.  In my ideal world, I'd have a 6-week-old right now.  And I don't.  Not only that, but I'm not even pregnant.....the only time in the last two years I thought I might have been, I was quickly and unexpectedly proved wrong....and then ran a half marathon the next day out of spite.  I guess sometimes even despite our own best-laid plans and efforts, life just doesn't work how we want it to.

When that happens I do my best to reassure myself with the typical LDS rhetoric about how Heavenly Father knows better and must have a plan.  And then I invariably degenerate into frustration that God's will = suffering, which doesn't match what I think I know of God.....and I just try to shut it off.  Better that than get seethingly mad, right?

Anyway.

Today was a moment that I could truly appreciate that my life (at least for now) didn't go the way I wanted, and I don't have a nursing infant right now.

Friday's a work-free day for me in the summer, so we slept in late this morning, the kids and I got ourselves together finally at about 10, and we trucked off to the zoo.  The kids each have a mini-mule Camelbak backpack.  They wore their hats, carried their backpacks with their lunch and water, and didn't complain.  Walked on their own feet with only an occasional hand-hold or on-my-shoulders-for-up-a-hill for J.  No strollers, no diapers, no snacks I had to be in charge of.  And we stayed at the zoo for very nearly 6 hours.  They both had specific things they wanted to see, didn't whine when exhibits they wanted to see were closed (baby red river hogs, of all things), made amusing comments that were understandable not only to me but to passersby, and when we got ice cream as a huge splurge treat (who buys ice cream when it has at-the-zoo prices?!?!  Never me) they ate it without making any mess.  Not a big mess, any mess at all.

It was amazing.  And fun.  And remarkably easy.  I felt like I was in some sort of alternate universe from my normal one.

And though I'm still sad that I don't have the baby I want, I did get to have a moment of "life is so much easier with this plan than it would have been with mine."

Strawberries

Every year we pick strawberries that I then freeze or process into jam.  Someday I'd love to have a strawberry patch - it's definitely on the "dreaming about it" list for the mini-farm someday.  And we have enough plants that my kids snack on an ever-bearing variety most of the summer.  But for now we have to go elsewhere for real quantity (and quality, in all honesty).

This year we had to find a new place because the drive to Indiana just seemed a bit much, even though we really liked the farm we used to go to when we lived there.

So I found a new place, and we picked 23 pounds of strawberries this morning.  Well, Ben and Bee and I picked, J mostly wandered and said "Daddy, wee-ewww hold me fah why-dull?"

Now, price-wise I'm sure we're no better off than what we'd be buying them from the supermarket.  It's either an even match or just a tiny bit cheaper, which the gas to make the drive will offset.

But there are things that make it worth it:

1) They are TINY, very red berries that are all sweetness and no genetically-altered white puffiness in their inside flesh.

2) They use no pesticides or organophosphates on their plants - which means I'm not stockpiling chemicals into my kids' systems.

3) We did some hard work with our own two hands.  NEVER a bad thing.



4) My children observed things like "This is a hard job!  I think I want to be an animal doctor instead so I don't have to be in the sun all day!" and "I'm glad there are people who work picking berries so I don't have to pick my own every day!  They work hard."

All in all, a worthwhile, yummy, and fun morning.

Paying it forward

Were it not for the confidence, wisdom, and encouragement of a phenomenal woman who has profoundly influenced my life, I never would have applied for a PhD program. 

After all, it wasn't something that was on the checklist I was taught from Sunbeams on....you know, the "get baptized, get my YW recognition award, go on a mission (but only if I wasn't married!), go to the temple to get married, have babies and be happy forever" list.  That one.  The "I've completed the checklist, now I get to be righteous!" list.

I started my MA program simply because Ben wasn't done with school yet and I needed something to do.  And then my worldview totally shifted.  And I started to think that maybe I could do something other than the "checklist" approach with the rest of my life.

My dear mentor and friend (you know who you are!!) encouraged me to believe I could do it.  Not just to go through the motions, but to recognize the qualities in myself that made me fit for academic work.  She still reminds me of it sometimes, on my bad days.  And I'm really thankful to her for that.

Today I got a voicemail message from a young woman who's finishing college and considering a graduate program.  My memories of her are of a really cute hairbow-wearing 6-year-old, the much younger sister of my younger sister's friend.  The message was something along the lines of "My mom said I should call you because you've done the graduate school process and might have advice for me."

I hope that I didn't overwhelm her!  :-)

I just spent over an hour talking to her.....it's funny how you find a kindred spirit in someone you never expected to.  I heard myself asking questions about her plans and what she's done so far, then saying things that have been said to me, words of encouragement and validation.  She's obviously done her homework and is very serious about making sure that she's following the path that God has for her....and that is what makes me so sure that she's going to be just fine.

It felt good to pay the favor forward, and especially good to help her feel confident and capable.  Especially when she said that growing up in the Church had kept her from seeing the grad school path as an option. 

I've been there, and felt that dichotomy.  Fortunately for me, I recognized its falsity.  It was good to be able to discuss it and re-affirm my knowledge that you can manage both; I would hate for her to feel like she had to choose between the two.

Progress

It's amazing what can happen in a few hours.

I worked like a crazy person on teaching stuff yesterday, then Ben cleaned up the house and finished folding the laundry (I like Valerie's "one basket per kid and off they go to their rooms" approach more and more now that I NEVER get it all done and put away).

I weeded the garden early this morning, fed the kids and tidied up then took them to T's.

No excuses or distractions and alone in the house!

I've been writing for all of an hour, and have 4 pages of outline that's solid.

It makes me think that if I had the luxury of a stay-at-home spouse who did all the housework and childcare, I'd have finished this sucker in like 3 months.

Oh well.  I'm progressing finally, and that's all that matters.

Maybe I'll get this job after all.

Flying

I haven't traveled by plane alone with my kids for some time.  We've done mostly driving for the last several years.  This summer we'll be going to see Mom in Texas (poor Ben has to stay home and work - hooray for my teaching job!!), and I'm pretty excited about it.

I don't know if it's because my kids are pretty self-contained or some other reason, but I've never dreaded flying or felt the need to tell horror stories about how awful a traveling day was.  I like the fact that we can travel quickly and easily and in relative comfort over long distances.

This guy's perspective makes me smile, and I largely agree with it.

So I was really surprised by the reaction to United Airlines' decision to end pre-boarding.  People are all up-in-arms about the fact that families with small children won't get extra time to board.  Like "Oh, well, we won't be flying with THEM, then" kind of upset.

Personally, I've never "taken advantage of" (read: allowed myself to be corralled into) getting on the plane before everyone else.  When I've traveled with my kids, we've brought one bag that I've carried and one bag that Bee carried (this upcoming trip the kids will each have their own bag since J is big enough to not topple over from carrying his).  We don't bring carseats and strollers and all of the paraphernalia, or if we do we pay to check them.  Just the kids, me, one bag of stuff to keep them busy (Bee's bag) and snacks/diapers/one change of clothes necessities in the other (mine).  They get settled quickly, we don't hold people up.

I've never seen the sense in making small children, the most likely to get antsy from being cooped up over the duration of a flight, sit on the plane FOR LONGER THAN EVERYONE ELSE!  It seems to me like a recipe for disaster.

So I'm glad that now there's no "hey, you incapable folks with children, get on the plane first so that your kids can get restless and start fidgeting and making everyone else dread the rest of the flight" announcement that will make everyone around me say "You know, they said you can get on with your kids" and me need to reply "No thanks, we're going to board with our zone" and have them look at me like I'm an idiot.

I know there's a big rush to be the first one on the plane, the first one settled, the first one off the plane....I've just never understood it or felt the need to be part of it.

Watermelon

Every time I cover a cut watermelon with plastic wrap and stick it in the fridge to use later, I apologize to Papaw.

Papaw died while I was on my mission - he's been gone a long time.  But I can't help but think of what the look would be on his face if he saw me doing it.  And I shake my head and say "I'm sorry, but I'm too poor to waste half a melon!!"

When I was little we would go to the farm (where he and Mamaw lived til I was 9 or so) or the lake (where they lived the rest of their lives) to visit.  Most of my memories are of summertime, though I know we went during the rest of the year too.  Memorial Day and Fourth of July and Labor Day specifically I remember big family picnics and trips to the lake's swimming beach.  When we left in the afternoon to swim, Papaw would always say "Now don't get wet!"  Which confused us all thoroughly, which confusion made Mamaw smile and say something along the lines of "Honey, you have fun and get wet if you want to!"

We always did.  And when we came back dripping wet and wrapped in over-sized towels, our little bare feet slapping the hot black driveway, we knew there would be watermelon.  Because there always was.  At some point while we were swimming Papaw would go out to the cooler in the garage and pull out watermelons that had gotten cold enough to make your teeth ache when you bit into a slice of them.  He'd cut through the rind with a huge knife and hand slices around and we'd take them out into the yard and spit the seeds at each other.  We all knew that Papaw's belly was because of a watermelon that grew there after he swallowed a seed!  The table always had a collection of salt shakers on it because, as everyone knows, watermelon tastes better with salt on it.

Anything that didn't get eaten within a few hours got tossed in the compost heap.  I still don't know, despite having asked all of my "grown-up" relatives, why Papaw insisted that watermelon won't keep.  But he wouldn't hear of us eating it in the evening, let alone the next day!

Every time I bite into a slice of watermelon, I think of Papaw.  And then by extension Mamaw.  And I hear the sound of the bullfrogs' low groan floating in through the window of the room where Hannah and I would sleep when we stayed with Mamaw and Papaw for a week in the summer.

And it makes me happy.

*phew*

 Finished up loose ends just now.

Course sites set, syllabi in place, first-day plans made, and 1st chapter of assignments laid out. After the marathon technology workshop and finally receiving course materials on Friday, I am READY for summer term.


At least I think I am.

Excited!

HA!  I just bought my iPad.

Let me preface this by saying that despite Ben's techie-ness, we've not bought any portable devices (laptops, smartphones, iPads, etc) since before Bee was born.  That was a laptop Ben needed for the business school at BYU.

Needless to say, we've been lagging behind the trend of having the next latest-and-greatest gadgets.

I submitted a proposal for integrating technology in my classes - that proposal allowed me to participate in a workshop where we talked a lot about what technology is out there, how some people integrate it into university class settings, and what the implications are for balancing traditional education with new technology trends.  And they showed us A LOT of Real Cool Stuff (tm).  Completing the workshop qualified me for a (very small) grant.

Which allowed me to buy my very own iPad.

I'm excited!

And I thought my day was bad...

Overheard at UDF (where I was buying my very yummy swiss chocolate almond ice cream):

Man: Yeah, my mom's gonna come visit for a month.
Woman: Really?  What's she...
Man: Well, she's watchin' my house.  I'm goin' on vacation.
Woman: Where ya goin'?
Man: The ________ county jail.
Woman: Are you for rill?
Man: Yeah, I gotta do 10 days.
Woman: Well that's not bad...


Seriously??  What's life coming to?

I dood it!

To quote J.

I ran 32 miles today.  And when I say ran, I mean ran.  Not terribly fast (about a 10-minute pace for half, about a 13 minute pace for the other half) - finished in 6 hours.  But I didn't walk.  At all.

And now I am tired.  I'll change this post to a race report here in a while after all the results come in.  But for now, know that I did it and am still alive.

*UPDATE: Race report below*

The weather was questionable when I rolled out of bed at 4:45 Saturday morning to pull on some clothes and drive the more-than-an-hour trip up to Yellow Springs for the race.  I packed a bag that allowed for just about every possible weather condition, and multiple changes for some.  I did NOT want a clothing issue to be the reason for a DNF.  I was a little scared that I wouldn't manage the distance, I felt like I'd be faking it at best, so I considered not starting.

But that's just not how I function.  I said I would do it, so I set out to do it or die trying.

Let me just say that John Bryan state park is awesome in any case, but in early spring - and with this one having been so warm - it was BEAUTIFULLY green and flowery.  The trail system is really well maintained, and the race director did an awesome job of routing us on it - you'd have had to try pretty hard to get lost.  The rain held off for almost the whole race (I got rained on for about 5 miles of it - which, considering the percentage, is not bad), and we even got peeks of blue sky.

The aid stations were spaced perfectly - for me, at least.  The life squad guys were never more than 3 miles from us at any point on the loop.  And as to food, water, etc., I didn't need to carry anything with me, they had them manned to a T and stocked with more variety than I would have tried to eat.  I used mostly pretzel rods, gels, gatorade, and water - though I did try some fruit snacks (disastrously - my throat closed up on them) and even had a couple bites of an apple.  I know that they say ultramarathoners have stomachs of steel, but I just don't.  I mean, I think I probably handle taking food in while running better than the average joe runner, but I've got nothing on the guys that eat pizza and chili and stuff while they're trucking along.  The only picture of me this race shows just how hard it is for me to make myself eat on the trail - check out my face!  Almost suffering to get that gel down.  :-)

The course being a loop was a nice security blanket for me, it made me feel less like I was going to die out in the woods without anyone knowing it.  And I could swap out clothes and shoes.  In true runner-craziness fashion, the loop was this lolling, gently-rolling and gradually downward-sloping path that dropped down to the river at just over halfway through.  Then a stretch of REALLY TECHNICAL (here read: lots of roots, big boulder-y rocks sticking up like the earth's bones were trying to reach through, cliff faces, gravelly riverbed that at one point was within inches of the river itself, thank-goodness-it's-flat-cause-there's-no-running-fast-on-this, obstacle course-like running) trail.  I was grateful for it, because the lateral motion gave my muscles a break from my robotic running form.  The back-and-forth felt super nice every time through.  And it made the trail different each loop because I looked up at different points - which was nice.  And finish off with two really steep climbs - a set of old stone steps and a hill, both of which had their fair share of fallen trees to navigate.  True distance runner mentality to go "Yes!  The hill!  Bust up it then I'm DONE!", right?

I ran part of the first loop with a lady named Holly - I recognized her because I'd read her race report online.  I was trying to not go out too fast and kill myself (I train at shorter distances at about a 9- or 9:30 pace; nothing doing me trying for THAT for 32 miles), she helped me get off to a good start.  We had a nice chat and then either she dropped back or I stepped up.  Then I chatted in the rocky section with a guy who told me that by his GPS we were keeping a 9:40 pace.  Right.  I slowed down, I knew there'd be no keeping it up.

As I came out of the first loop I ditched my jacket.  At the shelter I saw this guy with some awesome huaraches, and said something to him about them - we struck up a conversation about everything from barefoot running to raw foods and veganism to natural childbirth and non-traditional/non-gender-based parenting arrangements.  Needless to say, the second loop FLEW by!  I liked Randy a lot.  I was planning on using my Vibrams for the last loop, he convinced me to go for it for the last half.  When we got to the shelter I switched shoes, but I took off before he was ready to get moving again.

Going into the third loop I was SO GLAD I listened to Randy's advice - the foot pain I was wrestling with went away completely.  I ran most of the loop alone, though there were Boy Scouts (one of whom was serenading runners with a ukelele) all along the trail, which made for some fun banter.  I did sort of leapfrog through the end of the third loop with a lady named Linda.  I thought she was inspiring, the 50k was a training run for her - she runs 100-mile races.  *sigh*  Someday when my kids are big, maybe.  She and I were built similarly (petite and short) - but she was probably 5-10 pounds lighter than me.  My thick thighs and runner butt, mostly.  At the end of the race in the parking lot, she complimented me for my methodical pace.  I liked the compliment.

The last loop I ran in almost complete solitude - leapfrogged with Linda a tiny bit and then talked with another lady (whose name I didn't catch, she was just running two of the loops to run with her husband so I can't even take a guess from the results), but by the time we went through the aid station Linda was away and gone and I had left the other lady behind.  The rain that had been threatening finally let loose, and I had to talk myself into not going back the mile to the aid station.  Once I got back into the woods I was chilled to the point of having cold hands, but I talked myself into keeping moving.  The mental battle was something fierce - I've not talked myself through something like that since childbirth.  I was methodically counting steps, keeping my breathing measured and regular, calculating distances and times out in my head.  By the time I got to the climbs the last two times I was ready to walk - but I made myself keep to at least a shuffle because I knew the end was around the corner, literally.

I expected to be in serious pain at the end of the race - I was after Tecumseh.  This race, not so much.  I WAS freezing (the rain was in loop 4), but I bounced over to my bag, stripped off wet layers in favor of dry socks (NO SHOES over them) and T-shirt, and huddled by the fire that the WONDERFUL volunteers had going in the shelter.  I've never been so glad to see a heat source.  I can also say the only time I was more glad to see my Dad was when I got home from my mission - then cause I missed him, this time because he had my kids and a bag with dry sweats and sports bra and a hooded sweatshirt and some converse in it.

All told, I was okay!  At mile 24 I was on pace to beat my previous marathon best by about 15 minutes - and then I kept going for another 6 miles, ha ha!  I was the 6th woman to finish, the other four women under 30 who even attempted the race, I beat.

No major stiffness (though some minor ankle pains in BOTH ankles next day), just some aches in my back and shoulders.  I also felt pretty unbalanced stomach-wise, but some of the other runners suggested caffeinated pop and sodium would fix it.  So on the way home I grabbed a Dr. Pepper and a bag of pretzel rods.  I was in fine shape by the time we got home, even ate some pizza before bed.

It was a great race.  And now I might have to run another one.

But that's no surprise, is it?

Favorite thing

At the moment, my very favorite thing is when J says
"Because....uuummm......ah-ow know." 
It makes me happy.

My little boy is three today!  And I'm so glad that he was born.  On my kids' birthdays I find myself re-living their births.  I mean, as much as you can without all the pain and intense focus.  Seriously, though, I think back to how overwhelmingly joyful it felt to hold them the first time, and how rewarding it made all the struggle to get them. 

I love my babies, even though they're not babies any more!

Who can find a virtuous woman?

I've been mulling Proverbs 31 over in my head for a while. I've been devoting a lot of my personal scripture study time to my (somewhat vain) attempts to reconcile scripture and recent conference addresses with the cultural practices of the LDS church.

Honestly, I feel acutely torn by the fact that official rhetoric puts me up on some sort of pedestal (Women are so great - better than men even! I love my wife and am so glad she supports me! Aren't we glad for the righteous mothers in Zion! I could go on, but all of this bothers me for various reasons - not least of which being the idea that men are somehow less capable of spirituality than women) while in reality women are relegated to a marginal role in the church. Some of them are even unlucky enough to have a husband who insists on acting as THE intermediary between God and the family, and they find them selves marginalized even within their own families. Is it any wonder that with the lip-service-only value given to women in the church, the LDS church has such a high rate of women with depression? Talk is cheap. Show me a man who actually supports women and actually values them by actively supporting them. You know, with actions. Like being a capable parent and sharing the burden of making a home comfortable.

But that's not what this post is about. Others have already dissected those issues with beautiful skill and rhetoric that impresses me. I only mention it to explain why I'm studying Proverbs 31 the way I am.


And I'm going to leave verses 10 for last. So there.


I've been thinking about the list (the very LONG list) of the things that the virtuous woman does - there's a whole host of things listed in verses 11 - 27.

My first thought is a reminder that it is impossible to do all things at every moment. If you're looking for the virtuous woman in Proverbs and expect her to be continually doing ALL of those things ALL of the time, well.....good luck with that. Probably not going to happen. I repeatedly remind my children that they are the most important thing I have, but that their immediate wants are not always the most important thing; this resembles that condition. At different stages in our lives we'll worship God in different ways and give emphasis to different commandments.

Right now the things that resonated with me personally the most are these:

Verse 13: worketh willingly with her hands

Verse 15: riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household

Verse 16: considereth a field and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard

Verse 17: girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms


I work willingly with my mind. My hands are part of the equation (hard to write on a chalkboard or type or grade papers without them), but the thing that really benefits me these days is the knowledge that I worked so hard to accrue over time (and oh such a long time it seemed....and is still not over). I'm so grateful that I didn't go the "get married at 19 and have babies as soon has humanly possible" route - I know several women who, while they accept that they chose this route, feel like cultural pressure indoctrinated them into it. For me in my headstrong ways, it's nice to know that I'm staying because I choose to - not because it's my only alternative.

Working outside my home means that I often rise while it's yet night - to finish some grading, some laundry or mending, and to get dinner into the crock pot so that we can eat when I get home. I'm willing to sacrifice the extra sleep because I value the things I do, and don't want to neglect any of them.

We recently purchased fruit trees and planted them; I finally got the raised beds into shape, too. Last year's garden was good, this year's should be great. And I can't wait for the trees to bear.....the years are going to drag, but it will be fun to teach the kids about the process and watch the trees grow and change. We're also going to buy chickens to sort of co-op with my cousin (who has space but no money). With all of these things, we'll be largely self-sufficient for 1/4 of the year. Awesome.

I'm strengthening my legs mostly these days. Though there's some core and arm strength involved in running (looking at most any runner will demonstrate this). I'm at the point that I can run for about 3 hours before I start to feel sluggish. It's amazing - I have more energy (even though I'm expending a ton of it), I'm nicer to the kids and more patient, and just feel more healthy overall. It's nice to feel capable and confident in my body's abilities. This weekend's 50K should be quite the adventure. We'll see how it goes.

I feel like I have serious room for improvement in my helping of the poor - fast offerings, storehouse assignments, and even donations to local thrift-stores-with-causes seem insufficient to me. I can and should do better.



So now for verse 10.



The word "virtuous" has me fascinated, because the shared root with the Latin "vir" (as in virile - manly) makes me think of the 16th-century Spanish "one-sex" model of gender - which holds that men and women are just at different points along some sort of gender continuum (no guessing who's farther along toward perfection under said model, of course). Being virtuous means being manly? Being "varonil" for a female protagonist in a Golden Age play is NOT an insult (the way calling a woman "butch" these days might be). It's a compliment. But I decided that as much as I liked the idea that the scriptures encourage women in their striving to have characteristics typically associated with men (working, industry, protecting the people in the home, etc), I still wanted and needed to dig deeper.

The Hebrew word in the verse, normally translated as "virtuous," is "chayil." In the Tanakh this version of the word is used almost exclusively to refer to warfare. So women should be strong, forceful, mighty. And those things are not necessarily "manly," they're just desirable traits. I like this explanation.

I'm striving to work on the "to-do" list in Proverbs 31 because I feel like those are things Christ did. And I want to follow His example. But in the meantime, it's nice to know that I don't have to be some sort of shrinking violet in order to accomplish some invented female variation on discipleship.

Poop

This morning has not been a great one.  Bee lolled in bed until one second too late and just missed the toilet with some runny poop.  Then J (who is potty training) had a blowout in his first pair of undies for the day....the kind of blowout that goes up his back and into all the crannies of his miniature manly bits.

To top it off, Ben didn't warn me that the dog hadn't done her business this morning, so I came home from the school run to set J down on the landing step and say "Mollie!  GO to BED!  J, don't move, I have to clean this up," which I did while he said "Wadee pooped.  It's weedie tow tinky!"


I love my kids, and my dog, and cleaning up after them is the least of my worries.   After all, what if Bee turns into a mean girl, or J never learns to read, or the dog never learns to behave off-leash?  Any number of worries in my life are much more problematic than a little poop.

But cleaning up three types of poop from three different sources before 9 o'clock on a Monday morning is the reason I am SO GRATEFUL that I do out-of-the-home-type work a couple of days a week - it reminds me that I'm a capable human being.  I'd be inclined to forget this, otherwise.  Being a stay at home parent might be a great gig for some people, but for me personally it would be quite difficult and suck the living spirit out of me most days!

As for today, I at least have the consolation now that there remains no one in the house to have a poop issue.

Running in the rain

Apparently I need to do better about checking the weather radar before I leave home.  At about mile 2 and a half of my 8-mile run today, the wind picked up, a bright lightning flash lit up the woods and the clouds opened up.  There was no dripping drizzling build up, this little tiny storm-cell-that-could hit me full force out of the blue.

I did something I haven't done since I was a teenager - stripped down to shorts and a sports bra and ran with shirt and shoes in hand looking up with my mouth open to catch raindrops.

Take that, modesty police!

The volume of water in such a short amount of time made for sliding along the river bottom (mud an inch deep for about 2 miles) and really cautious downhills (I'm still balky about my recovering ankle), but I still finished the 8 miles in 1:18:and some.

Lemons

Distance running has given me yet another analogy for life.

When life gives you lemons make lemonade, right?

Or not.

Today after I finished my short run (5 miles!) and came into the kitchen to get some water, I saw a bag of lemons on the counter. I had set them out to make lemonade. My body had other ideas, though....apparently I'm vitamin C deficient at the moment.

I grabbed a lemon, sliced it, cut the slices in half (so I had little half moon shapes) and ate it. All but the peel.

The weirdest thing was that at first they tasted like lemons, but then in between slices the aftertaste was super sweet.

So when life gives you lemons, cut them to pieces and suck the life out of them to rebuild you and make you stronger!

Yet another trail race

These are getting frequent....I guess because it's not winter any more. And there are more races. Because you don't have to be crazy to run in the weather we're having. So people actually show up! Imagine.

Anyway.

Today was my absolute favorite running weather. 65 degrees (but windy so it felt just a little cooler) and raining (but not pouring). The medium-but-not-heavy rain factor is important because if it's raining TOO hard, you feel a little like you're drowning. But I LOVE to run in the rain. Don't know why, I just do. It was perfect!

I've been trying to re-up my mileage in hopes of still managing the 50K in two weeks. I took two weeks off (well, as "off" as I ever am from running these days - I still tested the ankle three times for 4, 5, and 6 miles) for the ankle injury. I still feel a little gimpy, and running long distances makes it swell a teeny bit and ache. But no pain that's truly worth the word. So this morning I rolled out of bed at 7:30, grabbed the first running clothes I could find, and set out to the 7-mile loop I train on.

During that run the rain started. That made the trail a little slick, and I was feeling sissy-ish with the ankle, so I reined back a bit in hopes of not putting too much strain on it from sideways motion. I finished in an hour and 15 minutes, wishing I had checked the weather before I left home so that I wouldn't have worn a white shirt. I only had 35 minutes to get to the race start at 10, so there was no way I could go home for a change of clothes. I rooted around in the car and found a lightweight sweatshirt that I use sometimes, and switched into it. I wasn't terribly excited about that because it's not cold...if it's over 50 degrees I always run in short sleeves because it's just more comfortable. But I decided that between the stopping and subsequent getting cold, the sweatshirt would be better than being a complete exhibitionist and running the risk of cooling down too much.

I made it to the start with enough time to register and hang out for 5 minutes or so, then they did announcements and we were off. This course was interesting because it was varied. There was a lot of flat or very barely rolling meadow, a pond, a good mile along a large creek (out west it'd be a river, here not so much), forest, and LOTS of hills. And lots of mud. Like this much mud:


Early in the race I passed several people (men and women) who seemed really concerned with keeping their shoes dry/mud-free. On a rainy day and a 6-mile course, you just have to get over that. I'm more tortoise than hare anyway, and the added miles from the morning took their toll on me. I ran about 40 seconds per mile slower than usual for this distance, but managed to run all but about 100 yards up a very slick muddy hill. I told myself that the walk was because I was babying my ankle, just to make me feel better, but I was grateful for the rest. Even though I was slow, I consistently passed people. From the "okay now we're settled into pace groups" point at the start of the race to the end, only one person passed me, and I stopped counting how many I passed.

Downhills were tricky because of the mud....it was clay-y dirt, so it was really slide-y. So not a lot of "let it all go, careen down like a crazy person"-type running. And I was okay with that, for today.

The end was hilarious because it was this monster hill....not TERRIBLY steep (okay, pretty steep), but just endless. You could see the finish for a full 5 minutes or so, and it didn't get any closer until the last 100 yards. Fortunately I'm sort of a glutton for punishment when it comes to hills, so I had a great time. Passed two guys....which is lame and I try not to do at the end of a race, especially if the people I'm passing have led me the whole time. But alas. Today I had to just run. Because it was a hill. And I was not going to walk.

I finished the 6.5 miles in 1:10:18, was second in my age group and just barely into a bottom half finish (yuck, I HATE that). The 10th woman overall, so there must've been more short-distance men at this race than the normal crowd (which I guess you'd expect for a 10K - well a 10K plus a bit, but you know....do what you can with trails).

It was a good day - 13 miles logged. If I can do 20 next weekend, I'll believe that I can do the ultra.

Dancing

Today while I was sitting in my office listening to Yo-Yo Ma and editing a paper (hopefully for a conference) I overheard J, standing at the closed door of his big sis's room, say this:

"Sissie, wid eeoo tum dance wif me din da office?"

A minute later they both came into the office in tutus (J's is turquoise and pink, Bee's is white) and tiny bare feet. They're spinning around and J is doing his best to match his sis's pointed toes. In a year he'll be old enough to go to dance class, we'll see if he still wants to!

They are now dancing, and I am enjoying watching them much more than I was enjoying editing.

And I wonder why I never get any work done?

Love this quote

One of my favorite permas (don't know her personally but basically always love her comments and posts) over at Exponent II recently left a reply to another commenter in which she said the following:

"It is an old anti-feminist canard to claim that what feminists mean when they claim equality is that they want to be “like men on men’s terms.” I want nothing of the sort. I’m perfectly happy being a woman. I would not want to be a man. I don’t want to be like men, whatever the hell that means. I want to be myself. And I am absolutely the equal of every other human being out there, regardless of their gender or sex. Claiming equality is about worth, opportunity, access, etc. It has absolutely nothing to do with trying to turn myself into the exact same thing men are. And I personally do not know of any feminist that claims that “equal” means being “like men on men’s terms.”

... I get so very tired of people (whether overtly and actively anti-feminist or not) attributing to feminists the desire to be just like men and dressing up that notion in the “equal” means “same” mischaracterization."


I agree wholeheartedly with this sentiment. I get flustered at the idea that somehow my enjoying "man" things makes me less "feminine", when in reality I'm just a person who loves to do things.

I love to sew things for my kids, run through the rain and mud, keep my house tidy and welcoming, drive my huge truck with the dog hanging her nose out the back window, pick big bunches of lilacs to make my office and kitchen smell good, dig in the garden and stack heavy timbers to make raised beds, read books, take apart and reassemble small machines to make them work again, drink tea, go backpacking, cook fun food, eat good food, work/write/teach/publish, come home to my kids and snuggle them while we read stories or watch a movie, budget money and manage it, dream big about a house in the country....lots and lots of things.

Negotiating these things only becomes a problem when we assign each of them to some sort of realm with invented boundaries, and then establish one or the other of the sexes as somehow being the inherent steward of each realm. Why can't we just accept that there's a vastly diverse variety of interest and talent across the spectrum of humanity, and then (in the event that we desire relationships) value complementarity and its benefits within those relationships??

Life would be so much easier, and people would probably be much nicer to one another.

Injured?!?

What if I told you that in 18+ years of running, I'd never twisted my ankle badly enough to consider it an injury?

Today I did. That was sort of traumatizing, especially since the course today was in the trail system I regularly train on....like I run it 8 times a month or so. And it wasn't on part of the trail that I would have expected to roll an ankle (flat! No roots, no mud, no nothing!). At first I thought I'd broken it because I heard a loud pop sound. My next thought was "Oh, no, I'm not gonna be THAT person that the life squad has to hike in 2 miles for and then carry back out!"

I've never had a "did not finish," and even though twisting it happened 2 miles into a 10-mile run, I still haven't. I ran another 8 miles post-"oh crap" moment. At first I couldn't bear weight on it at all. After about 5 steps I started to gingerly walk on it, and 200 yards after that I was doing a hobble shuffle. About 1/4 mile later I was going strong....not as fast as I'd planned, but still respectable.

I finished around an hour and 40 minutes, the 7th woman to finish the race and well into the top half of the overall finishers.

I've spent the afternoon sleeping with a bag of ice in an ACE bandage strapped around my ankle. And I'm actually taking medicine! At times like these I'm really glad that I don't medicate myself often (in fact almost never - I usually prefer to "mind over matter" it), because now that I truly need it the ibuprofen is working very effectively. The ankle feels stiff but not too bad and only hurts (and even then only slightly) when I go down stairs.

My main concern is how the potential disruption in training (I'm not going to run until Wednesday at the very earliest, though I think I'll still walk) will affect my 50K. Of course, my only major running injury happens less than a month before I'm planning to run the longest run I've ever done.

I guess that's life! I'm just glad it wasn't worse.

Michal

I've been working on this post for a while - it's been stewing in my head as a post ever since we hiked Mt. Mitchell, but I've been fascinated by the story for longer than that. Michal is one of my favorite scriptural women, and I'm pretty sure no matter how long I work on this I won't do her justice, so I'm going to go ahead and do the best I can.

I love Michal because she's strong - stands up to her very powerful father to protect the man she loves, and attempts to correct what she sees as pride in her husband. I mourn for her loneliness. Her husband's spitefulness toward her makes me feel sad. It has always struck me as profoundly unfair, and this unfairness is exacerbated in the LDS church's take on her. I always say I'd like to take a poll and see how many people know the name of David's first wife; my guess is that it would be anything from 5-10%. She deserves better, because she's just plain cool.

The story

In my words, it basically goes like this (my mission companions used to call this kind of rambling summary the Hermana Schaffner translation of the scriptures - this part of the story is in the end of 1 Samuel and beginning of 2 Samuel):

David is in the midst of all the court drama with Saul and Jonathan. Saul knows that the Lord wants David to be the king, but he's just not quite ready to give up the power and repeatedly tries to kill David. In the midst of this, Saul gives his daughter Michal (who loves David) to David as a wife, probably in hopes of pacifying the volatile situation. It doesn't really work, at least for Saul's benefit (go figure). At different points Jonathan and Michal both save David's life while he stays within Saul's kingdom, but he still eventually has to hide in exile. While exiled he takes various other wives (not very nice of him!), and Saul re-gifts Michal to another man (also not very nice of him! We only learn about it later - imagine, real-time updates of David's sexual escapades, but only information about Michal's when she becomes relevant to David again); that had to have been fun for her. Once Saul and Jonathan are killed (NOT by David), David insists that he'll only consider peace after his enemies bring Michal back to him, which they do even though it means removing her from her second husband - he wept over her, we don't have a scriptural record of how she felt about it (again, go figure).

Up to this point, it seems almost like an epic love story, right? Young lovers, united in the midst of conflict, forced to separate by more powerful influences, managed to reunite after said powerful folks are eliminated and they don't even have to bloody their hands! It's all so romantic!

Except it's not. After some time together after their reunion (we don't know how long, it's only a few chapters in 2 Samuel, though - from chapter 3 to chapter 6), Michal has the nerve to correct David for vanity and irreverence, and David gets all moody and offended and refuses to speak to/sleep with Michal ever again. How's that for a letdown from a great love story?!?


My thoughts

I really wish that the whole epic love story thing had continued - I'd be a lot less disillusioned, and Michal certainly deserves a happy ending as far as I'm concerned.

Several things about the story of Michal and how we present it in the LDS church really frustrate me.

First: the injustice of the men in the story using Michal as some sort of pawn creates obvious problems. She really rises above the situation, though. David loves her enough to kill 100 Philistines and then cut off their foreskins and give them to Saul (apparently that was Michal's brideprice?). After she marries David, she stands up for him and saves him. When her father gifts her to another man (maybe to spite David? Maybe as a political alliance?) she treats him well enough that when she leaves him to return to David, he weeps and follows after her - David's messenger has to make him go home. Even though she makes the best of it, no one deserves to be treated as moveable property. It makes me hope that she was happy in spite of it.

Second: we focus SO MUCH on the whole Jonathan/David thing and almost ignore Michal. There's a WHOLE LESSON on their friendship, and only a few side references to Michal. She's almost a footnote to the lessons and the story. And yes, it was a special thing, and Jonathan was a pretty amazing man (how many princes do you know who would be willing to say "Wow, I'm the son of the birthright and heir to the throne. I have all the political and military support. But Samuel anointed you, and God wants you to be the king, so I'll save you from my slightly deranged father."). In some ways I think he's a better man than David. Michal saved David's life, too. She got a better deal that Jonathan in the end, at least in terms of social status (moving from princess to queen isn't an awful deal, especially compared to being killed for being an heir to the throne). But David doesn't treat her nearly as well as he treated Jonathan. Scripturally there's more volume devoted to Jonathan, but I think we can safely credit that to the time of writing. Wouldn't it be nice if we could overcome that textual imbalance and focus on Michal's contributions, too?

Third: The only lengthy treatment of Michal in the LDS church curriculum basically says that when she scolds David in the situation in 2 Samuel 6:12-23, she's angry because of an affront to her dignity and therefore completely out of line. The way the manual presents it is almost paradoxical - they head the section "Our reverence for the Lord should influence our behavior in sacred settings." Based on the section heading, I would expect something along the lines of "David was carried away in his joy and, though he did offer sacrifice and bless the people, acted in a way that was not reverent or appropriate for the setting." Instead, they say that Michal is upset with David "for setting aside his royal robes and dancing with joy before the Lord. Evidently she felt this behavior was beneath the dignity of his position as king." What does that have to do with reverence or sabbath/worship behavior??

If I may, I would like to offer a different textual analysis of that bit of scripture.

Earlier verses say that David wore an ephod for the occasion of bringing the ark of the covenant back to Jerusalem. He performed sacrifices and blessed the people, all quite appropriate. He also danced and leaped. Now, I wasn't there, so I don't know if David was wearing only an ephod or not. But if he was, he was certainly not covered in a way that would allow for modesty while dancing and leaping. When Michal criticizes David, she doesn't say anything about his behavior being unbecoming of a king, or that he wasn't dressed royally. She simply refers to David as the king, and mentions his uncovering himself in front of women as a sign of vanity. She's upset by his pride, and maybe even (because, come on, she's only human) a little angry at his engagement with the other women.

I don't think that's out of line. The whole despising him in her heart? Maybe not the best reaction, but certainly not totally sinful. I've had moments of despising Ben because of some bad behavior or another....once we both repent, we mend the despising. Sort of how marriage is supposed to work.

And the manual doesn't even mention David's reaction in verse 22. He basically says "Oh, those handmaids that I showed off for? You don't like them? Well, at least they'll honor me! I'll go even further than I did today!" (Okay, that's a more true example of "Hermana Schaffner translation" - excuse my liberties in modernization....you'll find the threat there in the verse, though) He all but says he's going to go sleep with the handmaids, especially in light of verse 23 where it says that Michal did not have any children from that point forward.

So here's my different interpretation. Michal's reaction to David might not have been ideal, but in David's reaction to her criticism we see the beginning of his prideful downfall. Only five chapters later we read of him beginning to shirk his military duties as king, the Bathsheba incident, and his arrangement for the death of Uriah. These incidents work in tandem - I personally don't believe that any one of these sins is THE SINGLE problem for David. I think it's the general "I can do what I want because I'm the king" attitude that they demonstrate. In his reaction to Michal, we see the beginnings of that defiance.

Michal is one of my heroines. I hope that someday I can stick to my guns the way she did. And I hope I get to meet her.