Apt. 11D

Midweek Journal

This week, my mom has been babysitting Ian in the morning, and I've been hanging out with him in the afternoons. It has been perfect. It has been enough time to feel like I have made progress on my project. And you don't really need more time than that. After about four hours of solid work in front of a computer, you're really just playing around. It's best to be very efficient for a few hours, then walk away and have fun. Here are some of the fun things that we've been doing:

Media Whiplash

Last week, I twittered that I suffered from media whiplash as we careened from Iran to Sanford to Farrah to Jackson. The Pew Foundation has the summary of last week's media coverage.

Spreadin' Love

I would totally make this pasta salad.

A supposedly fun blog -- major political bloggers do a book club blog.

Changing attitudes towards homosexuality.

What is Burger King saying here?

How unpredictable are Supreme Court appointments?

Political Wives: What Do They Get Out It?

Ta-Nehisi Coates responds to a Double X post, which says that Jenny Sanford's efforts to raise her kids and support her husband's career was mis-directed energy. Sanford is apparently an extremely bright woman who had a major job in finance before she started her family. Coates says there has to be something more to Sanford's decisions than simply being a doormat.

Coates isn't buying the simplistic and judgmental reasoning of Double X, but he still doesn't understand Sanford and others. He asks,

My question is why would a woman so willingly throw herself into her husband's life work? There must have been some sort of light there, something that she got out of it. I don't say that to be caustic, or mean. But the narrative of put-upon housewife always leaves me unsatisfied, because while it says a lot about the husband, his proclivities, and his selfishness, it really says nothing about the wife. Who is she? Why would she enter into such an arrangement? What is the trade-off? Where is her agency in it all?

I don't know Jenny, but I can throw out some guesses on why she quit her job and supported his career.

She probably hated her job. I know, who would believe it? Most people hate their jobs and would quit as soon as the balls fell the right way on Lotto. Finance jobs, in particular, aren't that fun. People do it for the money and quit as soon as they feel that they have enough money. Of course, having enough money varies from person to person. When Steve goes to work, he sometimes hears the stock brokers puking in the bathroom from the stress. Steve would quit his job the moment I made enough money to cover the mortgage. For us, enough money = paying the mortgage.

She probably loved her kids and wanted to raise them herself. She has four young boys. I bet that they had a nanny, but still, managing four kids is a lot of work.

He probably worked 16 hour days and traveled a lot. Jobs in finance are 12 hour jobs. I'm sure she thought it would be nice if her kids saw one parent once in a while.

High end jobs assume that there is a stay at home parent. Steve can never take off for sick days or parent-teacher conferences or for school holidays. They assume that I'll take care of it. It is assumed that he can work after hours whenever he is needed. He came home at 9:00 last night without worrying about the babysitter or the daycare. It is highly annoying that his job makes that assumption, but that's a rant for another day.

But political jobs are even weirder. Not only do they assume that there's a full time parent at home, but they also expect that the spouse will show up at events and give speeches. People give Michelle Obama a hard time about quitting her job, but as far as I can tell, she's working a lot. She's in front of the camera every day giving speeches and reading to school kids. That looks like a job to me. Political office is the only job that employs the whole family.

Also, Jenny probably believed in her husband's political message. She ran his political campaign because she liked his platform. Whatever.

Marriages involve trust and compromises. The Sanfords probably made a series of decisions based on who loved their career more, who really wanted to care for the kids, and a host of other factors. She probably didn't look at her role as mom and political wife as a sacrifice. Maybe that was an error, but if a marriage is going to work, you have to somewhat trust the other person.

UPDATE: BitchPhD has a good response.

Who Gets the Kids?

I admit to watching a lot of coverage of Michael Jackson's death. Though his songs were always in the background when I was growing up, I was never a huge fan. So, I'm skipping all the life retrospectives and zeroing in on the sycophants drugging him up and his stomach pumpings.

The child custody angle led to some discussions among friends this weekend. All of them had worries about who would get their kids, if they should push off unexpectedly. Which relatives would be able to handle a disruption in their lives? Who would gladly welcome new kids, and who would perceive it as a burden? One friend was bypassing all the relatives, because they were either crazy, sick, or too involved in sports. Our solution is to be heavily insured; enough money and even the most rigid relative will loosen up. 

Predictable Affairs

When I first moved to NYC after college, I sought out friendships with goths and relationships with tortured artists. I figured that if they looked interesting, they must be interesting. Turned out that the vintage dressed people were actually boring and dumb. And the tortured artists were just big drunks. It took me a distressingly long time to learn that lesson.

Ross Douthat covers most of the articles and issues that we discussed last week. I'm not sure what Douthat's point is, but he does match up Kate Gosselin with Sandra Tsing Loh's husband. A thoughtful combo.

Last week's chatterers wondered if we are thirsting for something more exciting than middle American conformity. I was at a suburban swim club yesterday, so I get this. But the very public affairs of last week don't seem to be the way to go. There's nothing more predictable than an affair. It's been done so many times. Sanford's love letters are cliche ridden and pathetic. 

So, what are thrill seekers, adrenaline junkies, and those with a very short attention span to do?

Weekend Journal

It was a perfectly lovely weekend, so Steve and I went in different directions.

I met my friends in the city with no plans other than roaming about. We managed to eat a terrible meal at the Heartland Brewery on 34th Street. There are so many fantastic pubs and restaurants in the city that it takes real skill to have a bad meal, but we were starving and we ran into the first place we came across.

We bopped into the stores on 34th Street, which are basically suburban mall stores. The one standout is Zara, which is Madrid's equivalent of the Gap. When I would visit my sister in Spain, I would come back with shopping bags of sundresses and little sweaters.

Once we broke free of the mall strip, we walked through a street fair on 6th Avenue. The street fair was all about the great smells. Grilled corn, sausage and onions, unnamed meat on the stick. Should have had street food rather than the nasty, salty mac n' cheese at the Heartland.

The other stand out on the trip was an antique shop on 24th Street. Check out the framed, tin ceiling tiles.

While I was roaming through the streets of Manhattan, Steve was roaming through Harriman State Park with the boys. His destination was the remains of a mansion that had belonged to a man who made his fortune from KARO Syrup. 

 

 

On Sunday morning, I wrestled with our complicated summer calendar. We have to balance our explorations with work and camp, so the calendar needed to be anal-ized. It looks like we'll have several day trips in July and, in August, we'll be going to Lake George, Portsmouth, NH, and Toronto. I mapped out our restless ways for the summer on iCal. 

Jonah's camp bus should be here any minute. He is so excited about the first day of camp that he woke up three hours early.

Spreadin' Love

Sam Crane continues to make fine parallels between Iran and China.

Flashback -- This post was one of the best "Questions of the Day" that we've had on 11D.

"Determine never to be idle." (Except when Lost is on.) Check out rooms like this and more. I need that paint color. It's the perfect grey.

Sanford's wife is no Silda.

BLTs

The kids and I went to the local farmer's market yesterday and scored fresh tomatoes, lettuce, garlic, radishes, mozzarella, and pickles. 

Question of the Day -- Michael Jackson

Question of the Day -- What was your favorite Michael Jackson song?