I think it's time for me to really start owning the fact that I'm not (and never will be) like most other women.


There always been a fair number of clues.

I never dreamed about having a wedding. I think expensive weddings dresses, diamond rings and huge, complicated events that cost more than the down payment for a house are lovely. For other people. Please feel free to invite me to yours - I love tasty food, enjoy dancing to 80s music and I buy generous gifts.

I don't particularly like babies. I liked my kid as a baby just fine but I'm enjoying her more now. I'll say your baby is cute (if they actually are, otherwise I'll say nothing because I'm crap at lying about stuff like that) but I don't need to hold it. I can admire the delicious chubby thighs from a distance thanks.

I hate having long hair. I never knew what to do with it. I resented the time it took to make it seem even remotely "styled". I dreaded going to the hairdresser and paying for a cut I knew I'd loath.

Don't even get me started on understanding how to accessorize. When I try to put on a scarf, I'm pretty sure that I look more like a novice trying their hand at auto-erotic asphyxiation than Coco Chanel.

And then there's the latest evidence: as much as I was a gushing loser puberty-re-enactor for the Twilight series, I couldn't get into the 50 Shades of Grey series at all.

Frankly, I just thought it was lame and boring. Insipid even. After I read the end of the second book, I couldn't even muster enough interest to bother starting the third. I didn't care at all how the series ended. And I'm normally someone who needs some closure from their reading.

It just felt like something was missing. Maybe I'm just jaded. Or spoiled.

For me, the Twilight series perfectly captured that hormone-filled, sexually-repressed roller coaster thrill ride of adolescence. With the addition of some cool vampire/werewolf action to keep it from being essentially a rehash of every Dawson's Creek episode ever.

I've also read and really enjoyed all of Anne Rice's old stuff like the Sleeping Beauty series. I thought her take on kink and love in "Exit to Eden" was both erotically entertaining and intellectually interesting. For me, Rice's books all did a nice job of capturing a more advanced take on hormones and sex. Titillating and readable at the same time.

50 Shades of Grey, not so much. A bit too much Danielle Steel meets "Story of O". A bit too canned (note: not "caned" - ha! get it?) and formulaic.

Ah well, I guess I'll just add this item to the list of reasons I find it impossible to enjoy going to "mommies" groups. Right up there next to the fact that I refused to use a shopping cart cover (it would have gotten in the way of her joyful chewing/drooling on the cart key) and frequently let random strangers touch my baby.

If Elvis were my elevator repair man...

Ok Ottawa, I have to admit that some days in May, you almost make up for most of the rest of the entire year.


Keep up the good work.

"In the cases of freedom from racial discrimination and freedom from sexual repression, American conservatives have been solidly on the side of government repression of the powerless and unprivileged. The same is true with respect to workers’ rights, debtors’ rights and criminal rights." ~ Michael Lind, "Why Do Conservatives Hate Freedom?"


I love it when some very smart, super-articulate person writes something that manages to capture many of the rage-filled, half-formed thoughts I've had about the contractions inherent in Conservative ideologies. And not just the American ones.

His next piece should be about economic hypocrisy and health care.

Having just completed my first (2k) run totally barefoot, I now feel highly qualified to share the bounty of my amateur expertise on the topic of barefoot running with the interwebs.


Man, it was awesome. Seriously. You people have got to try it.

I've been running in Vibram FiveFingers KSOs for a year now (with a break during the -30C hell of winter when I switched to the awesome Merrell Pace Gloves coupled with SmartWool socks).

I've actually been so happy with the Vibrams that I hadn't given much thought about going all Full Monty on the running front (foot-wise that is - me, the girls and the sports bra + jane strap are not quitting each other any time soon) but two things convinced me to go for it.

First, this weekend, my kid happily ditched her terribly cute minimalist footwear (water shoes, Joe Fresh, $8) to tear barefoot all over the playgrounds at Brewer Park. Observing the other kids (all of whom were fully-shod) slip and trip on the play structures while my kid nimbly navigated herself about, was yet more proof that shoes are generally a crappy, crappy idea. Especially for developing feet/minds/bodies.

Then I read this post on Naturally Engineered, which pointed out that running barefoot on concrete might actually be a good idea (you know, if you don't have easy access to beautiful beaches to sprint on). I figured why not take my own (equally-amateur) child-rearing advice and apply it to myself. Having spent a year in Vibrams, I feel I've managed to develop a solid, consistent forefoot strike (I no longer have any issues with sore calf muscles). So now I just need to (slowly and gently) break in my tender, tender tootsies.

Although I didn't really plan it, I think a transition from standard running shoes, to Vibrams (or another minimalist shoe like the Merrells) and then to barefoot is not a bad one. This approach has allowed me to slowly build up my weak foot muscles and then work on toughening-up the bottoms of my feet. Another good approach is the one outlined by this site.

So far, the only drawback I've found to the barefoot running is that if you enjoy a quiet, anonymous jog, I can guarantee that Vibrams and bare feet are not the way to go. I'd estimate that every second person I passed on the busy path at lunch today had something to say about my naked toes.

Ah well, let your freak flag fly eh?

FYI: same deal but now with more "special".


They're really busting out the effort these days.

"Most of my married friends now have children, the rewards of which appear to be exclusively intangible and, like the mysteries of some gnostic sect, incommunicable to outsiders. In fact it seems from the outside as if these people have joined a dubious cult: they claim to be much happier and more fulfilled than ever before, even though they live in conditions of appalling filth and degradation, deprived of the most basic freedoms and dignity, and owe unquestioning obedience to a capricious and demented master." ~ Tim Krieder, "The Referendum", NYTimes (via The Last Word on Nothing)


I had an amazing Mother's Day, thanks for asking.

Amidst all the oppressive grey skies we've had lately, I needed this.

Because we're bad, bad people whose post-retirement plans include burning in a warm spot in hell, this texted pic and accompanying caption from my wonderful husband made me laugh my ass off today: 

"And she'll say: "Father, why sometimes was there only one set of footprints?" "

"Oh my child, that was when I was neglecting you." 


Maybe we can redeem our souls if we eat enough kale.

Shit, maybe I'm currently dealing with my fuck-frillionth cold in the last 3 months because I'm not massaging my kale for long enough:


"DAY 2: Many foods give up their charms all too easily. Not so of kale. In order to coax from it even the most basic edibility, kale must actually be massaged. Massaging breaks down the tough kale leaves and tempers their off-putting taste and texture (i.e. their "kaleness"). Most chefs massage their kale for 5 to 10 minutes in a mixing bowl. I went longer than that for my first kale salad—an hour and a half total—mostly because that's what I'd want if the kale were massaging me." ~  Scott Jacobson, "Kale of Duty" (via The Hairpin)


Oh, and no matter how much anyone tries to convince me otherwise, kale chips taste like crap.

The same but different:


"I believe that the U.S. might one day have supervised injection sites. The only thing holding communities back from opening their own is conservative ideologies. All of the evidence supports these facilities, in that they save lives, reduce harm to the users, increase public order and help people get off of drugs by increasing their access to services." ~ Tim Gauthier via Paul Hiebert, "Vancouver's Supervised Drug Injection Center: How Does It Work?" for The Awl


"There have been approximately 60 chemical-endangerment prosecutions of new mothers in Alabama since 2006, the year the statute was enacted. Originally created to protect children from potentially explosive meth labs, Alabama’s chemical-endangerment law prohibits a “responsible person” from “exposing a child to an environment in which he or she . . . knowingly, recklessly or intentionally causes or permits a child to be exposed to, to ingest or inhale, or to have contact with a controlled substance, chemical substance or drug paraphernalia.”" ~ Ada Calhoun, "The Criminalization of Bad Mothers" for the NYTimes

It's been a while since I've asserted my self-experimenting, minimalist, hippy street cred around this blog.


Thus, I bring you my experience with the Oil Cleansing Method (aka the "OCM").

Like anything I undertake, I read a bunch of stuff first. This article and this one seem to be the most-referenced on the interwebs but they also both made the whole thing seem much more complicated than I was hoping for. And I was surprised that the first site says that coconut oil "is a known comedogenic [sic] and may possibly clog your pores and exacerbate blackheads", especially since science seems to think that coconut oil is the antifungal, antibacterial, moisturizing, pre-term baby-growing bomb.

And for me, science (and simple) always wins.

So I decided to start rubbing coconut oil on my face every couple of nights, followed by a quick steam-and-wipe with a hot washcloth. It's been a couple of weeks and so far I'm loving it. My face feels clean, not oily and never tight/dry like when I use other cleansers.

I'm not going to claim miracles have occurred and all my zits/blackheads/pores/fine lines have disappeared but I think generally my skin looks and feels better than it ever has before.

I will however be curious about how my skin deals with the humid summer months. I'm thinking I may have to alternate between the oil and using some diluted apple cider vinegar as a toner.

Next up, stay tuned for my attempt to homebrew yogurt in a cooler bag.

Pray for Mojo.

Just in case someone reading this blog still thinks that swapping animal fats for something "vegan" is natural and healthy:


"An issue of Popular Science from the era sums up the evolution of cottonseed nicely: "What was garbage in 1860 was fertilizer in 1870, cattle feed in 1880, and table food and many things else in 1890." But it entered our food supply slowly. It wasn't until a new food-processing invention of hydrogenation that cottonseed oil found its way into the kitchens of America's restaurants and homes."  ~ Drew Ramsey and Tyler Graham, "How Vegetable Oils Replaced Animal Fats in the American Diet" (The Atlantic)

"You end up at Grady for four main reasons. It could happen because you have no insurance and are denied care at a private hospital, or because you are unconscious when you arrive by ambulance. When your lights are out, you are in no position to ask to be taken to a cleaner, better-lit, suburban palace of medicine. A third, small contingent are older black folks with insurance, who could go anywhere but have retained a dim memory of Grady as the only Atlanta hospital that accepted us. The fourth category, injured cops and firemen, know that we see a lot of shock and trauma and are good at it. We are their ER of choice." ~ Otis Webb Brawley, excerpt from "How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America" (Atlanta Magazine via Dooce)