Dooce, carseats and false and dangerous logic...

Let me start off by saying that I really and truly like Heather B Armstrong, aka Dooce. I feel like she is a shining beacon of hope for moms, proving that noone is a perfect mother, noone is a perfect person and noone is a perfect wife and that's the way it's supposed to be. And, normally, Dooce and I end up on the exact same side of every issue, but she said something recently that didn't sit well with me.

On this page a number of people made comments about this photo in which an 11mo child is in a forward facing carseat and commented about carseat regulations in general.

After a little bourbon and a lack of patience, Dooce commented on the carseat posts and what she said made absolute sense. The child was very tall and 11 months old. As with most things, this mirrored my own experience exactly: Kieran was too tall to comfortably fit into his rear-facing seat, so at about 10.5 months, we turned him and his seat around. That in addition to the fact that we couldn't see over the fucking seat half of the time because it's so bloody high!

The regulation, which is slightly different from state to state and province to province, generally states that a child should face rearward in an appropriate carseat until 12 months AND 20lbs.

Here's the part of the whole thing that bothered me. Dooce finished her comment with one of the most disappointing remarks I've ever heard connected to any safety issue regarding children: "i distinctly remember standing up in the backseat of my father’s GTO when I was three-years-old." And while she goes on to say that her father hasn't yet been arrested, the implication is that "I did it and I'm fine".

I can't tell you how many times I've heard this and how much it bothers me.

I, too, am too old to have been taken home from the hospital in a carseat. I never sat in a carseat. Most of the vehicles I rode in as a child didn't even have seat belts! And I'm still here. Unfortunately, there are millions of babies and children who are no longer alive from that era to attest, with me and Dooce and you too, gentle reader, to the relative safety of riding in cars improperly secured. The fact that I survived my childhood's carrides alive and without injury is just lucky and I am thankful for that bit of luck.

I don't think Dooce is evil, I don't think she's stupid or anything degrading at all. I do, however, think she said something irresponsible after having already intelligently defending herself against the extremist hordes and unwittingly contributed power to the purveyers of false and dangerous logic.

My first comment!

I'm doing a little mental happy dance right now, because I've received my first comment! From someone whose genes I do not share, nor am I currently sleeping with them or going to their house for supper tomorrow.

Yay me!

Thank gawd it was a nice comment. I don't know if the hormones would've stayed at bay if someone had snarked me.

**Updating from yesterday's post: I arrived at daycare to find Kieran mostly suited up! I definately wouldn't have been able to handle doing it myself after being let off the bus into 15cm deep snow! I ran from the back door to the front and the snow was the same. Is the driver an idiot? Does she think it's acceptable to dump pregnant ladies off into the snow? I reigned in the tears but I swore and muttered quite a bit while feeling the snow melt into my shoes. Fucking Canadian Winter!!!

I need boots. I need a driver!

When the mask falls

I use the bus as transportation - I don't drive. Since using the bus involves walking around outside for up to 30 minutes at a time, Kieran needs to be very warmly dressed when I'm picking him up from daycare.

That means that every afternoon, I arrive at daycare, grab Kieran's hat, mittens, coat, snow pants and boots, and head into the living room where I get my fat ass down onto the carpet so that I can suit Kieran up for the trip home. And every day Kieran screams and cries and kicks me while I attempt to get him suited.

Well, yesterday, the constant being kicked and bitten and screamed at wore me down in a record 10 minutes and I, too, started crying.

It doesn't start out that way. Normally I'm pretty positive with Kieran. I started out talking to him happily. We talked about getting on the bus, because he loves buses, and we talked about getting home so we could have a snack, because he practically pees himself when I pull out the fruit leather and we talked about other stupid things that popped into my head - all in the hopes of distracting Kieran long enough to get one leg into his snowpants.

It didn't work.

Instead, the devil took possession of my normally sweet baby and made him kick me and bite me and scream.

Now, as a mom I am used to being maimed occassionally. But, well, I'm pregnant, so not only do I really not like being kicked in the stomach and groin over and over every damned afternoon, but I've got an extra person's worth of hormones running through me and no meds to dampen them.

The result is that I started bawling and barked at Kieran. Not a pretty moment from the outside. And the dcp's two kids and husband were all standing around watching me. "I've never seen him do that!" said Husband incredulously.

Kindly our dcp came to my aid, getting Kieran calmed and dressed and explaining that my boy did this everyday to me alone.

Now I'm the mom who started crying when her kid got fussy. I can't wait till winter is over.

A new look!

Whaddya think?

Lost post

That's what happens when you go with a free hosted solution: you lose long posts you worked on for an hour when something glitches up in the publishing process.

Must get off ass and do a podcast.

Note to self: Get off your damned ass!

Sign Me Up!

Does porn spam work? Who opens their email and sees those nuggets of nastiness and think, "hmm, that looks interesting!"

Porn spam reminds me of men who shout at women from their cars. No woman on the street has ever turned around and suddenly flagged down her harrasser and exclaimed "ooo! After you yelled at me about how hot my ass was, I suddenly want to f*ck you!".

Let's just call it a day with the porn spam. It's not that I find it disgusting or immoral or anything, I just hate having to spend ten minutes wading through 50 spam messages to get to the three legit emails I have in my Inbox.

Recent Porn Spam Subject Lines Taken From My Work Inbox:
Straw In Her Hair Means Orgy In The Barn
Get Laid Tonight !
lonely girls who are home
Lkemmler Increase your Cum by 500%
I also have dozens of emails alerting me to the fact that I can now get Viagra and its alternates via online pharmacies.

Go away spam!

The Junction

You know what, I'm not going to revisit the War on Words. Suffice it to say that one party is looking to dialogue and the other party is deeply threatened by the dialogue.

Elsewhere in the world of podcasting Madge-gate catches the Father of Syndication and the Prince of Pod with their pants down: Adam and Dave realise that Madge Weinstein is an act and instead of admitting that they'd had their naiive bubble burst, they publicly freaked out, declaring that Madge was dishonest, that s/he and all shouldn't use podcasts to publish fiction (because that's not what podcasting is about according to Dave) and that Madge is to apologise for lying about his/her identity. They signed off their podcast with a couple of ripe "f*** you"s.

These two incidents, of pioneers attempting to define this medium they've midwifed, alludes to the entire movement being at a junction, a jumping off stage where the the early pioneers and adopters are losing some of the control they once had to influence the form and function of the medium because it has simply gotten too large for them.

This junction is a special space, one where magic can happen, if you want it to. It's like a rift in the continuum where those who want to can slip through into a new universe.

Amy recognizes we are at this junction. When she urges women to make their voices heard, in her "Women In Podcasting" cast, she is telling us that we can jump through the rift if we want to and be part of the rebirth of the casting universe on the other side.

The Dogs lost, conversation postponed

Unfortunately, the Bulldogs got beat out by one point in a chippy game against division rivals the St. John's Maple Leafs (Aside: when they move to Toronto next year, what will they be called? The AHL's Toronto Maple Leafs, or, probably most commonly The Baby Leafs. Back...) It was an exciting game with a fistfull of great chances on the Leafs net in the last five minutes of the third, but alas, no luck for the Dogs.

I initmated that I would post after the game, but after last night's game, my wee neice Kaitlyn came over to hang out while her mother drank too much too quickly.

So, I will make notes about the War of the Word today in Port Dover, where we will be visiting the Dad-in-law. I will post tonight, in-depth, about this issue and the particular exchange between Dave Slusher and Amy Gahran.

Until then, may your child nap twice as long as usual, and may you not have to do housework during the nap.

The war of the words

I'm not going to be able to go into depth regarding this issue - I have to leave work in a moment to go get Kieran from daycare and then we're meeting Daddy for a fast food supper before going to see the Bulldogs hopefully kick the Grand Rapid Griffins' collective ass - but I have to make a note of it here so that you, my faithful readers (which would be Daddy and my bored little sister, I think) can get some background.

So, here is an outline: Amy Gahran of the esteemable blog Contentious (which I read daily if possible as part of my professional interest in internet communications) doesn't like the term "podcast" to describe, well, for current lack of a better term, "podcasts". Last year, she embarked on a sucessfull campaign to give "RSS Feeds" (or alternately "Atom Feeds" or any other syndication format name) a sexy makeover to strip away some of the techy connotation of the term so that it may be more easily digestible by the vastly non-techy world.

While she isn't dedicating herself to renaming the cast du pod, she has been vocal about not feeling that this name is the right term to use and wants to keep a dialogue open about possibly changing the term.

Dave Slusher of pioneering podcast Evil Genius Chronicles, takes umbrage with Amy's distake and bitches her out publicly on his podcast of January 1(?).

OK, I am getting too deep and the clock is running faster this close to my need for more time (which is roughly equivalent to the relativity of time with regards to travelling at great speeds, but I don't even have time to explain my stpid un-witticism) .

So, since I'm short on time, go and Google Dave and Amy and read/listen to what they have to say and I'll meet you back here after the hockey game tonight.

Go Dogs Go!!!

Getting ready to take over the universe

Yes, Dawn Micelli, I am finally getting off my butt and joining the revolution.

First step: switching from a handcoded blog to an automated blog because if I have to keep handcoding, I'll post once every quarter at the rate I'm working right now.

I evaluated the two biggies in blogging software but a review of my technological and financial circumstances meant that a) I didn't know any PERL to use Movable Type, b) I didn't have a credit card to purchase Radio and c) I don't have a normal host where you can upload files to bins and stuff for using either of these (or GreyMatter).

So, here we are at Blogger.

What should you expect? You should expect to see stories ripped from the bosom of my family, information benefitting moms and those who love them and the piece de resistance, a podcast, hence the blog name "momcast", for moms, by moms, that doesn't forget that you have a brain, a sense of humour and a heart. Is that too goofy sounding? Fuck it. I don't care.

Join us here: the revolution will take place in the kitchen.