Nobody Here

I'm a little irritated by this AP article about young children watching TV, not so much for its content as its tone. Another lament of the decline of civilization at the hands of selfish, lazy mothers, its basis is that toddlers are watching TV not because they want to, but because their incompetent mommies make them, just so these self-absorbed abdicators can engage in such frivolous activities as: showering, and making dinner. The torture! The horror!

A quote:

Those specialists sigh at the notion that parents could not get by without TV.

“People have made dinner for millenia, but we’ve only had television for 50 years,” said Dr. Dimitri Christakas of the University of Washington.

Yeah. So what you're saying is, before TV, these dinner-making supermommies were having high quality teaching-learning moments with their toddlers while cooking? They were teaching them to play the lute or recite "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" without ever once burning the risotto? The question here isn't whether there are times when you must attend to something other than your child(ren), because obviously there are. The question is how you choose to fill those times, particularly when your child is too young to read on their own or self-entertain. So how is having them sitting in a playpen staring at the wall or poking around the corner eating lint more developmentally advantageous than Elmo?

As I said, there is plenty of content here I agree with. I believe in moderating TV appropriately to leave ample time for other more engaging activities, and I wouldn't let a toddler watch CSI just because I wanted to see it. I kept the TV off when my daughter was a baby because I thought the ADD research had merit. Now that she's older she watches 1-2 hours of TV every day, and most days a lot closer to 2 than 1 (not when I'm making dinner though - that's dance around the kitchen time). That number is within the APA guidelines but, yes, I fully admit it seems pretty high. In a perfect world, I'd rather have her watching maybe 30-60 minutes with me by her side the whole time (I know lots of peeps would say none but I've never been one of those TV-is-the-devil people and I find value in the things I choose for her to watch).

But once in a while the guilt train needs to make a stop in Realitytown and you know what? The day Dr. Dimitri Christakas gave that quote, I bet he got to shower. And pee.

*Post title ripped off from the A-Ha song by the same name

1. You wake up in the morning, go into the bathroom, stare into the mirror and have an internal monologue about your features.

2. You refer to everyone by name and relationship: "My boyfriend, Bruce Willis, and I..."

3. You have frequent flashbacks.

4. You talk to yourself about things you already know: "Boy, I sure am going to be in financial trouble if I don't get that promotion."

5. People tend to call you or drop by just to give long, uninterrupted accounts of events you weren't present for.

6. You find yourself summing up the evidence a lot: "First the dagger, then the purple ink on the carpet, then the bogus alibi. I'm really becoming suspicious of Professor Plum."

7. You have an imaginary friend named "gentle reader."

8. You're confused, indecisive, and very preoccupied with the size of your ass.

9. You keep a diary.

10. You make elaborate meals just for yourself.

11. You never pee unless you a.) get interrupted in some comical way or b.) are taking a pregnancy test.

12. The boring parts of your life tend to go by really, really fast.

13. Men who are way better looking than you are interested in you anyway, just because you're quirky.

It happened again today. This is the third time in the last year. Not a good number. Not a good number at all. And I have nobody to blame but myself. Poor planning, too many errands, out for hours with no grown up snacks in the purse.

I swing into the parking lot.

“You want to stop for a happy meal?”
“Yeah! That’s a special treat, right Mama?”
“Right.”
“Because happy meals are not healthy for my body.”
“That’s right, it’s a once-in-a-while food.”

With that straightened out, we go in. I order my Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal and Diet Coke (and I am so sick of people recycling that old joke about eating a huge meal with a Diet Coke, because hello, regular Coke is disgusting), and a cheeseburger Happy Meal for her, even though I know she never touches meat, she’ll only eat a few fries and maybe a little of the bun and I’ll either toss the bulk of it or eat it myself. And even that little bit will add up to enough sodium for me to have to push water on her hard for the rest of the day and maybe into tomorrow.

I skulk over to a table, stealing a glance around to see how many judging stares I'm getting, hard looks that will say “Why don’t you just shoot that poor baby now, you unfit mother, it would be quicker.” But there aren’t any. Not a one. Maybe because half the people in there have young children themselves. And they don’t look nearly as ashamed as I do. I consider this as a possible angle for smugness. Sure, I too brought a defenseless kid to eat where no growing person should, but at least I have the sense to know it’s wrong and feel bad about it! I immediately abandon this line of thinking as I realize it only makes me worse.

Back in my skinny days when I felt nauseous a lot of the time, the GI specialist told me to choose meals with fairly high fat content when it got bad. Now that I’ve moved firmly into my notskinny days and fat is far from helpful physically, the only holdovers from that bygone era are that I still get nauseous when I’m hungry, and there’s still a placebo effect I get from grease that makes me feel instantly and completely better. So despite the guilt I feel walking out of McDonald’s with that tiny, trusting hand in mine, I am satisfied.

And she likes the toy. Win-win.

My dream office would have:

1. Orange walls the exact color I'm painting them now, except painted on by someone who can paint well
2. A fridge, and a little bread box for my cupcakes
3. About fifteen really fun clocks from Pottery Barn
4. Floor to ceiling bookshelves on one or two walls (need to keep the others orange, of course)
5. An enormous desk
6. A really comfortable chair
7. A sleeper sofa
8. A kickass stereo, and maybe
9. a TV
10. One of those roller ladder thingies (so I can reach the top of the huge bookshelves, or just roll around and freak people out)
11. A printer that would actually hook up to my laptop, so I didn't have to pull the old desktop out of the closet, hook it all up, and transfer files onto it via CD every time I want to print
12. A banker's lamp
13. A nanny

I'm moving my husband's desk into the guest room, in effect making "the" office "my" office. It's not really my fault. There was this thing about feng shui for writers in my last SCBWI newsletter and it says I have to have the desk in the middle of the room, and then there isn't room for both desks. Also it's his fault, because for my birthday he got me this mini-fridge for my office, except he doesn't want me to blog about that because he's embarrassed he bought his wife a fridge, but you know, I asked for it, right? And that got me into rearranging in the first place.

Oh, and then I'm going to buy some paint and one of those banker's lamps I'm so obsessed with and a few other things and basically spend some of his hard earned money to decorate the room I've booted him out of. Do you think that's mean? I figure that since he doesn't work from home anymore, so rarely uses the office, if it makes me nicer because I have a happy place, then he still wins? Right? Yeah.

Anyway, I'm very excited about my fabulous office upgrade. It's not the enormous maple desk and floor to ceiling bookshelves in my imagination's office, but still, it will be fabulous. And orange!

While I was in the supermarket I noted that People magazine's most beautiful peeps issue came out, inspiring today's thirteen:

Thirteen dreamiest fictional men/boys:
1. You know I'm going to say it, I know I'm going to say it, so let's just get Mr. Darcy out of the way right off. Book-Darcy is far and away the hottest fictional character ever, but also worthy of note is
2. Colin-Firth-Movie-Darcy
3. Atticus Finch as played by Gregory Peck in To Kill a Mockingbird , and while we're on black-and-white,
4. Mark McPherson as played by Dana Andrews in Laura
5. Jay Gatsby
6. Jack Traven as played by Keanu Reeves in Speed
7. Sydney Carton
8. Jake Ryan (not to be confused with Jack Ryan) and while we're on that teen thing
9. The Johnny-or-Ponyboy argument is eternal, but I was always partial to Sodapop myself
10. Captain Bluntschli
11. T.H. White's Arthur
12. Gilbert Blythe
13. Indiana Jones, mostly the first one

Number one fictional man who thinks he's hot but so isn't: Heathcliff