Leaving Town

It's been sporadic around here - and it's going to get even more so.

I am outa here for a few weeks beginning today. I'll be back in Indiana without computer access.

When parents get old it gets hard to know what's best for them. Being a thousand miles away doesn't make for good decisions, hence the trip home to see what can or should be done.

What should be done never happens, though, does it? Because someone's "should" is always someone else's "shouldn't."

I should move back home to care for her - but I can't or won't. Giving up my life seems too high of a price although I should be willing to do so.

It would mean leaving my husband, my home, my job, my future and while I thought for a while that I was capable of doing so I now realize I cannot do so without setting up a situation built on dread and resentment which will affect not only the rest of her life but the rest of mine and my husband and my children as well.

She will not come here and I cannot stay there.

So the question is - where do I go from here?

And where does she?

Rondeau Romp!!

Excellent new poetry site by the amazing Allison Joseph which contains a certain poetry form near and dear to my heart.

The rondeau is often overlooked and almost always underrated. Howver, one only needs to read In Flanders Field or We Wear the Mask to understand just how spine-tingling intense the form can be when mastered.

Marilyn Taylor's Old Woman With a Cat is pretty darn tingly, too, if you're looking for contemporary rondeau.

Read those three and tell me Rondeau is not amazing. I dare you!!

Hand-Me-Down Genes

Closed for Repairs

Perhaps I Can Get In Through the Roof

"45 Minutes X 8 Babies = 6 Hours" or "Not Enough Time In a Day For Octuplet Snuggling"

The mother of the octuplets recently stated in her first televised interview that "she holds each premature infant 45 minutes each day," and that she's sure that she'll be able to afford them when she's done with her schooling and she further states “I'm providing myself to my children. I'm loving them unconditionally, accepting them unconditionally. Everything I do, I'll stop my life for them and be present with them. And hold them. And be with them. And how many parents do that? I'm sure there are many that do, but many don't. And that's unfortunate. That is selfish.”

That's all well and ernestly meant and well articulated, I'm sure, but where's the reality?

The reality is - a baby needs far more than 45 minutes of attention daily - and 8 babies need 8 times as much attention daily as one does. Premature babies eat frequently - sometimes as often as every two hours - and generally it takes at least 30 minute to give a bottle. Small babies are slow babies - and they can't hold much more than 2 or 3 ounces at a time. Add another half hour for burping, changing and cuddling and you've lost yourself an hour already. One person couldn't even, logistically speaking, manage to feed 8 premature infants every two hours. The most she could manage would be two of them and it would be time to restart with the first as soon as she finished with the second - ad infinitum.

"45 minutes of daily holding" for 8 children fills 6 entire hours. From personal experience, 45 minutes of holding isn't even 1/4 of the amount of holding time a new infant needs, wants or demands. Going back to school to complete your Master's Degree is a full time job, as well. So now we've filled at least 12 to 14 hours of a 24 hour day with personal snuggle time and schooling. What about breakfast, lunch and dinner for 15 people on a daily basis? And shopping for 15? And laundry for 15? And housecleaning? My God, just think about the housekeeping and laundry!!

Plus, believe it or not, even super-moms need to sleep sometimes. (Yep, really, it's a fact, they do.)

Mom says that as a child, she missed a “Feeling of self and identity." She goes on to state that, “I didn't feel as though, when I was a child, I had much control of my environment. I felt powerless. And that gave me a sense of predictability. Reflecting back on my childhood, I know it wasn't functional. It was pretty dysfunctional, and whose isn't?”

Please, for the love of God, someone tell this woman that having 14 children in 8 years is not a good way to regain "control," nor is it behaving like a functional adult. In fact, it's so out-of-control and dysfunctional as to be truly depressing.

Plus, as a side point, it totally disses her parents who, from all acounts, have stuck by her like white on rice. They've financially and emotionally and physically supported her, they've housed her and her children and they've loved her and helped her navigate every bizarre step of her adult way.

Personally, if you ask me, this woman has controlled everyone around her for her entire lifetime. Ask yourself this - would your parents have supported you, would they have allowed you to live in their house (or bought you your own house) while you continued going to school well into your thirties AND watched your 6 illigitimate children while you did so or would they exercise a little "parental control" of their own and finally say, "Honey, we love you, but enough is enough?" Even now, Grandma and Grandpa are dealing with the media frenzy as well as providing for the daily needs of the six forgotten siblings while mom herself rests up at an undisclosed "safe" location.

Would you do the same for your children?

As for mom missing a "feeling of identity and self" as the result of being an only child, does she really think it's going to be easier for her own individual children, growing up with thirteen siblings and an overextended mother, to find either one those things for themselves? Does she even understand that they are as entitled to those things as she feels she is and that, as a single parent, it's now up to her and her alone to provide it not only for herself but for them, as well?

But that's assuming that, like most parents. she wants a better life for her children than she had herself and that she's willing and able to put the current and future needs of her children before her own.

From what I've read so far I don't think that's a safe assumption to make right now.

Add: From AP: Among other things, the documents reveal that Suleman collected more than $165,000 in disability payments between 2002 and 2008 for an injury she said left her in near-constant pain and helped end her marriage.

Well now don't that beat all? $27,000 a year in disability payments for a back injury and still capable of carrying roughly 1 pregnancy per year (not counting the octupulets in 2008 - which more than doubles the average pregnancy per year) to completion and no one questioned the true extent of the " near-constant and excruciating pain?"

I've been pregnant and I've had a back injury. Fortunately not at the same time. And I say fortunately because as anyone who's ever had either condition can attest to - they're just not compatible - nor would anyone but a total masochist attempt it more than once or twice. Were I her disability carrier I'd be looking into it. If your back can handle carrying a minimum of an extra 40 or 50 pounds of pregnancy around on a yearly basis I'm pretty sure it can handle a desk job without too much difficulty.

God Does Not "Plan" Octuplets - People Plan Octuplets

I'm sure everyone already knows about the woman in California who gave birth to octuplets the other day. More power to her, I guess. I'm unsure how anyone even raises 8 children of differing ages but they do and I'm sure these parents will find a way to raise eight children of the same age as well.

There is a mom with similar experience, a reality show TV mom named Kate Gosselin who had twins and then gave birth to sextuplets.

I figured that, regardless of what I think about her and her really strange reality show, she was probably the one to give the best advice until I read this little gem of pro-offered wisdom from the old experienced mother to the new inexperienced one:

"Trust God's plan -- He knows best!"

Huh?

Forgive me for pointing out the obvious but God doesn't plan for a woman to give birth to a litter which would exceed even a six-nippled animal's ability to nurture. I'm pretty sure it was never part of God's Plan for eight children to be the result of one pregnancy. The fact that it's never occured without medical intervention pretty much justifies my opinion.

I don't have a problem with in-virto fertilization. I do have a little more of a problem with large multiples of children being born as a result, though. It's dangeous to both mother and children and I don't much see the point of endangering anyone's life or health unnecessarily.

What I do have a problem with is calling it "God's will" or "God's plan" when (face it now) the reason people take fertility treatments or use in-virto fertilization in the first place is because the woman and her husband are unable to conceive naturally which would be the "God's plan" we're talking about here. Seems to me that He decided "no children at all" not "eight children at once" way back before humankind decided we could, and therefore should, make large amounts of newborn babies the new-fashioned way - in test tubes.

Call it science, call it a medical breakthrough, call it in-vitro, call it "fertility treatments," call it "Thank-God-I'm-Alive-In-The-21st-Century-and-I-Have-Money," call it whatever it really is, but don't call it "God's Plan" because it's not.

God's never planned anything as foolishly dangerous as human octupulets.

There's Something About Snow in DC.......

that makes it impossible for even experienced snow-drivers to navigate the streets. I think it's all the rolling hills - and the lack of preparation like salt and snowplows - or maybe it's just the rarity of it all. Or maybe we just move here and immediately forget what it's like to drive in less than stellar conditions. Whatever it is, it sucks.

It snowed this morning - first time this season. It was a rather pretty snow, as snows go, anyhow. Thick, white, fluffy and dry enough that the wipers took it off the windows of the car. No big deal, right? Barely an inch on the ground when I left the house.

An hour later - and a block and a half down the road - I began to feel quite differently about it. It was no longer pretty, it was a disaster waiting to happen. I was going downhill - no big deal - except the cars in front of me, for as far as the eye could see, weren't moving. Probably because they were trying to get UP the next hill. (I live on the top of a series of hills, up and down, up and down, up and down, all the way to work.) I glanced over at the traffic on the other side of the road and realized that there were only 3 or 4 cars headed the opposite way - and none of them were having any success getting there. In a 20 minute block of time I watched at least 4 cars slide right back down the hill and into a car behind them. Up ahead at the corner I watched a garbage truck slide down into the intersection and really make a mess there. I think I moved about 4 car lengths in 40 minutes. I hate that, can't go forward, can't turn around and go back because you're just stuck wherever you are.

I finally made it to the second light ( 2 blocks away) and the car in front of the car in front of me decided he'd had enough and he turned right, got half way up that hill and slid right back down into the passenger side of the the car in front of me.

At that point (an hour after I'd left home and roughly 2 1/2 blocks from home but with 2 miles left to go to work) I called work again and the good Doctor Young told me that everyone had cancelled for the day and I should go back home.

Easier said than done, of course, because now I have to figure out how to turn around and get back up the hill.

I made a left hand turn from the right hand lane (which didn't matter since everyone had already run into someone else already anyhow) and pulled a quick U-Turn and gunned my way up the hill.....don't stop don't stop don't STOP!!!

I had to avoid three stalled vehicles on my way up but somehow, through sheer determination, I managed to keep moving and not hit anyhow. I meant to stop at the light but skidded right through it. Fortunately I was the only one with enough momentum built up to be moving at that point - one more semi-illegal turn and I was in our parking lot.

Dan had given up waiting for the bus already and he was upstairs waiting for me.

And yes, it's supposed to snow again tonight. This time accompanied by freezing rain and sleet.

I think I'll not even try tomorrow.

Papal Revisions and How Infallible Can THIS Be?

A little Wiki background on the dude that The Pope has seen fit to reinstate.

Williamson is viewed as being at the hardline end of the traditionalist spectrum, though he does not go so far as to espouse sedevacantism. He opposes compromise with the Vatican, accusing it of deceit and of being under "the power of Satan" and judges reconciliation between the Society and the Holy See to be impossible, noting that some SSPX members might refuse to follow the Society even if an agreement were reached. Williamson holds that the SSPX is not schismatic but the body of genuine Catholics that keep the "complete faith".

Williamson holds strong views regarding gender roles and dress. He opposes the wearing of trousers or shorts by women and has urged more manliness in men.

Williamson supports conspiracy theories regarding the assassination of President Kennedy and the collapse of the Twin Towers, denying that the latter were terrorist attacks but were instead staged by the U.S. government.

Williamson has expressed controversial views about Jews. He called Jews "enemies of Christ" and urges their conversion to Catholicism. He claims that Jews and Freemasons have contributed to the "changes and corruption" in the Catholic Church. He has also stated that Jews aim at world dominion[3][44] and believes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to be authentic. Williamson has denied that he is antisemitic, stating that he goes against "adversaries of Our Lord Jesus Christ", that not all Jews are such, and that he also attacks other groups such as Communists and Freemasons.

Williamson has been charged with Holocaust denial. He has denied the existence of gas chambers and has claimed that not six million but 200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in Nazi concentration camps. Williamson has also praised Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel.

Now that you've got some background above and beyond the oft' mentioned Holocaust denying, what's up with this decision on the part of Pope Benedict XVI, anyhow, and does it make anyone besides myself not only extremely irate but more than a little bit nervous as well?

A Most Incredible Picture

Bird Chasing

Just out of camera range, sitting atop the fireplace mantle is, you guessed it, a very loud and very excited bird. Someone wants her.

Just Who's The Underdog?

Misc. Drive-By Views on the Way to Charlestown

I'm not sure what I enjoy more, the journey or the destination:

Shenandoah River + Bridge at Harper's Ferry


Harper's Ferry, West Va.

Blue Ridge Mountains in West Virginia - Seasonal views

Sunday Trip

Old Town Alexandria, Va.






Dangerfield Island

Saturday's Trip

Sunken Road in Fredricksburg, Va.

The Week In Pictures

My son is here for 2 weeks and we've been busy taking day trips in between my work schedule. It's been a great time so far and we've still got a whole week left!!

CHRISTMAS DAY IN ATLANTIC CITY



GREAT FALLS, Va.



MOUNT VERNON AT CHRISTMAS COMPLETE WITH CHRISTMAS CAMEL

What Banned Books Have You Read?

Look through this list of banned books. If you have read the whole book, bold it. If you have read part of the book, italicize it. If you own it but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet, *** it.

(And if you’re drawing a blank, skip it. At least I did.)

1. The Bible
2. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
3. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
4. The Koran
5. Arabian Nights
6. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
7. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
8. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
9. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
10. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
11. The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
12. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
13. Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
14. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
15. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
16. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
17. Dracula by Bram Stoker
18. Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
19. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
20. Essays by Michel de Montaigne
21. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
22. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
23. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
24. Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
25. Ulysses by James Joyce
26. Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
27. Animal Farm by George Orwell
28. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
29. Candide by Voltaire
30. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
31. Analects by Confucius
32. Dubliners by James Joyce
33. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
34. Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
35. Red and the Black by Stendhal
36. Das Capital by Karl Marx
37. Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
38. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

39. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence
40. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
41. Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
42. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
43. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
44. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
45. Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
46. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
47. Diary by Samuel Pepys
48. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
49. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
50. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
51. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
52. Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
53. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
54. Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
55. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
56. Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
57. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
58. Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
59. Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
60. Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
61. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
62. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
63. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
64. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
65. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
66. Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
67. Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
68. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
69. The Talmud
70. Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
71. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
72. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
73. American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
74. Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
75. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
76. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
77. Red Pony by John Steinbeck
78. Popol Vuh
79. Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
80. Satyricon by Petronius
81. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
82. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
83. Black Boy by Richard Wright
84. Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
85. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
86. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
87. Metaphysics by Aristotle
88. Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder89. Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
90. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
91. Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
92. Sanctuary by William Faulkner
93. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
94. Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
95. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
96. Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
97. General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
98. Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
99. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
100. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
101. Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
102. Émile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
103. Nana by Émile Zola
104. Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
105. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
106. Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
107. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
108. Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
109. Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
110. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
111. Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
112. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
113. The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
114. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle
115. The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Keatly Snyder

Sightseeing in Virginia - Great Falls

It was worth freezing our butts off for:

Hero of the Day - David Clowney

This dude's got my vote.

Sometimes

Sometimes she lies in bed and all
he sees are limbs, white-willow tall
and aspen thin. He doesn’t care
what's underneath her tousled hair.
He only sees the artful sprawl.

She has the power to enthrall -
to back him up against the wall
and pin him hanging, hopeless, there.
Sometimes she lies

In bed and orders him to crawl
across the floor and down the hall.
If he’s obedient she’ll swear
she loves him, stretch, and slowly bare
her breasts, secure he won't recall
sometimes she lies.

Whaaaat? I am NOT Fat!!! I'm Well-Padded