The Mindlessness of Privilege

Last night, I was taking a big-picture look at my blog.  In particular, I was thinking about categories.  It occurred to me that in the past month of posting, probably the only category I didn't post in was "How White I Am."

Somewhere between surprised and sad and embarrassed, I decided that this in and of itself is a signal of how white I am.  I think about race and its effects on my family most days. But there are days when I can easily not and rarely a day when race related issues are really up in my face. Heck, I can go 29 days without a post mentioning race.

The mindlessness of being white is a privilege most of us white folks probably never fully recognize or understand.

Side Effects

Taking prescription medicines almost always come with side effects.  Taking two of them both designed to mess with my hormones creates some really interesting side effects (I'm taking domperidone and a birth control pill).  There's the lactation, for one.  That is not what either of these drugs were designed to do. But since I and others are using these drugs in a way they weren't tested for, many of the less threatening side-effects are not reported on the drug sheet that comes with the prescription.

This post is for anyone else out there inducing lactation and feeling a little bit crazy and out of control of their bodies. Because really, we are.  But it is nice to know someone else understands.

Last time I took the domperidone, I noticed that I gained between 1/2 and 1 pound a month. Talking with others who've taken the drug verifies that is a normal side effect.  I'm certain experiencing that effect this time, too. Thankfully, the weight seems to come off easily after the medicine is stopped.

Using the two drugs together, I've found that my neck and upper back muscles react very strongly to stress or exhaustion. Which means if I don't get enough sleep or take care of myself in stressful times, I get these giant migraine headaches. Even intense exercise will bring on a headache. A visit with my integrative manual therapist (like craneo-sacrial for the whole body) revealed that women on in vitro fertilization (IVF) drugs often experience the same tightness and migraines.

Perhaps related to the weight gain, I find I'm often resistant to eating protein, even eggs and dairy.  Protein avoidance is definitely new to me as I've spent many of the past years eating very low carb.

Taking all of these hormones is perhaps crazy and weird.  It certainly makes my body crazy and weird.  And, the prospect of sharing the incredible bonding I enjoyed while nursing my other two babies with a third child makes it worth it.

Cooking in Denial

Long, long ago when Bill and I were married, Teflon cookware was the prized object of the kitchen.  Non-stick and health because it required little fat for cooking, all the books and magazines recommended it.  We dutifully listed the whole Calphalon Teflon series on our registry and received most of it.

Fast forward over a decade and it turns out Teflon kills small birds and poses respiratory and cancer risks to those who use it.  

I know about the dangers of polytetrafluoroethylene (that's what they call it when it isn't trademarked) - I've been hearing this information via my various quirky health newsletters for years.  Yet each night at dinner time, you'll find me pulling out my Teflon lined Everyday Pan with my fingers in my ears singing, "lalalalalala I can't hear you lalalalala."  

It's not that I don't think the stuff is dangerous.  I just don't know what else to do.  There's the aluminum option, but coming from a family with history of Alzheimer's that risk is too high for me.  There's stainless steel, but it turns out it leaches something like 23 other metals that have undetermined safety levels.  There's straight-up cast iron, but it is heavy, hard to care for and doesn't come in the happy array of pan styles I need.  There's anodized aluminum, which sounds like it might be safe but I over-cooked beets in my one anodized pot and it lost all its finish and color which seems totally freaky and compromising to me.

That leaves, as far as I can tell, two options.  Ceramic lined cast iron (think Le Creuset) or a rumored line called Safe Pans (I think).  

One of my friend raves about the Safe Pans, from Australia (?).  They are apparently, true to name, safe.  Also the seem to come in good sizes that are reasonably priced. But for the life of me I can't find them on the internet. Hey friend-who-I-happen-to-know-reads-this-blog, maybe you could post a link to them in the comments section?  

Now Le Creuset defines sexy in the cookware world - amazing variety of shapes and sizes and eye-candy colors.  Super high quality, it lasts forever and can be passed down from generation to generation. Nobody in on the internet registers any safety concerns.  But I balk for two reasons.  Mostly, the stuff is expensive.  My Everyday Pan now goes for $64.  The Le Creuset equivalent (the iron braiser) runs $200.  The cost of replacing my entire cookware set would be phenomenal.  Still a factor, though less shocking, is the weight of these pans.  Cast iron is heavy and I wonder how I and the kids would manage working with such heavy pieces.

And here I am back where I started.  A house full of hungry people and likely unsafe pots that are actually in my kitchen ready to use.  I guess they'll have to do for another meal or 100.

How about you? Do you cook in the land of denial, too?  If not, what pans do you use?  Anyone think the concerns are all  red-herrings raised by a jealous industry?

3 days left!!

Not that any of us are counting, but there are only 3 days left in September.  That's a lot of blogs posts from yours truly.  And I think I'm going to make it through the month.  Wheeee!

What Are Bicyclists Thinking?!

Usually I'm a pretty calm and sedate person.  But one of my very serious pet peeves comes out loud and clear when I'm driving.  Bicyclists who don't think they need to follow the rules of the road.

I saw it today.  Pulling up to a 4-way stop, I noticed a cyclist tailing the car in front of it through the intersection.  No stop.  Not even a pause.  Good thing the bus driver noticed him and didn't clip his back wheel as he slipped past.  I see people on bikes fly through yellow lights, weave in through heavy traffic to get to the front of the left turn line at a light, change lanes without signaling and regularly ignore stop signs.

All this cycling behavior really ticks me off.  Because I REALLY don't want to be the driver that hits them.  Traveling at 35 miles per hour, my minivan can do some serious damage to a person, especially one whose speed approaches 25 mph.  Being responsible for the death of another human being and living with the sadness and horror of such an atrocity is not something I care to experience.

Not surprisingly, I treat maneuvering two tons of metal through the streets at un-human speeds seriously.  I'm trained to be a careful driver. I had hours of driving under my belt driving with my dad by early puberty and a good high school drivers ed teacher.  As an adult, I scored high in a motorcycle safety course and graduated from a mini-truck driving course. All of these drilled safe car handling into my head.  I do my best to be attentive, present and aware of the entire driving scene around me.  But there is little I can do to help protect people who don't play by the rules of the road.

In case the idea that bicyclist are required to follow the same rules of the road as car drivers is a surprise to you, here is the City of Seattle regulation:

Section 11.44.020 RIGHTS AND DUTIES OF RIDER.  Every person operating a bicycle upon a roadway shall be granted all of the rights and shall be subject to all of the duties applicable to a driver of a vehicle, except as to the special regulation of this chapter and except as to those provisions of the Traffic Code which by their nature can have no application.

Carless people putting me at risk of endangering their lives tend to turn up my volume.  So, if you're out driving around town and hear some manic yelling, "My car can squash your head like a watermelon!!!", smile and wave.  It's just me expressing my safety concerns to a near-by cyclist.

How (some) Homeschool Parents Party

image from evergreenmoms.com

Last night, I hosted about a dozen other homeschool parents (sans kids) to a "Parents Night Out."  Besides the fun of sharing potluck dinner together, the purpose of our gathering was to create art!

Years ago in Florida at a similar gathering, I and a lovely bunch of mamas from the community at OneHotMama dyed playsilks.  Besides being fun, this was a very frugal move, considering that one can buy a silk scarf and the dye for about $4 when they usually cost about $12. My kids played daily with the silks for 5 years until the silk disintegrated.

With my ever-present "how hard can it be?" approach to new projects and a serious reluctance to overpay for new scarves, this summer I proposed the outing to our local homeschool yahoo group and got a huge response.  Many hours on DharmaTrading and plenty of phone calls to customer service later, I'd worked out that I really had no clue what I was doing.  Enter another mama who actually loved dying and knew what to do.  A short conversation with her lit my way and within the hour I'd ordered over 150 silk scarves and a rainbow of dye. Now the adventure was truly afoot.

Back to last night, we supped on the potluck feast and started our project.  Our start was a little slow while we worked out how to set up and what exactly to do with so many people, buckets, silks and dye choices.  And then people got comfortable with the project.  We saw beautiful designs, fun color combinations, people cheering successes and helping each other with problem solving.  Twelve people rinsing in only 2 sinks created little niches for chatting and those same 12 people trying to get at 7 buckets in a small space created plenty of intimacy.

At midnight the last friend left, having helped me finish cleaning up the kitchen.  I went to bed with a washing machine swirling with vinegar and over a dozen gloriously decorated silkies.  Better yet, the happy glow from a house full of laughing, learning, sharing friends.

Quiddler

Santa Claus brought me a new game for my stocking last Christmas.  Quiddler is sort of a combination of Scrabble and Rummy.  Bill and I love to play games together and for years had serious Scrabble competitions. Come kids, I lost the concentration required to actually beat Bill, so Scrabble had to go on hold. We've played other board, card and word games over the years, but I've always missed the word manipulations.

Quiddler requires short spurts of concentration and allows time for chatting or helping out a kid.  Because there are a set amount of hands, the length of the game is limited.  And I get to make random letters into words.  It is by far my new favorite.  Right now I'm ahead 76 to 49.  Hope my luck holds!