July 2006 Archives

This was the cover of BabyTalk magazine's last issue.

It made Yahoo news.

Women shredded the cover, refused to buy it, wrote letters, and generally protested. Some replied with gratitude and appreciation, lauding the magazine for challenging some of the conservative thinking that surrounds the issue. The fuss is over the sexual nature of women's breasts. This creates a HUGE barrier for women who are interested in breastfeeding in public. (Reminder: babies need to eat frequently. I've heard approximately every 2 hours. Reminder: the bathroom is a dirty place for anyone to eat in).

In my humble opinion, we could really benefit from some desexualizing of women's breasts. This image is one of the most wholesome and chaste images of a breast that I've ever seen. You can't even see a nipple, and who cares to look at the breast when there's a beautiful infant looking back at you? It just seems... odd.

The article

Lately, I've abandoned a few of my responsibilities in the name of mental health. I've put the senior honors thesis research on the back burner. After plowing through 15 books of scholarly jargon, I'm at a point where I can almost justify my thesis and put together my arsenal of psychological measures. This has left me time to (1) read the Dawnbreakers (because I really have zero knowledge about the beginnings of the Baha'i Faith outside of "lots of people were killed") and (2) knit.

2. Knitting. I'm almost finished with my version of Asana. I got rid of the velcro. Instead, I'll sew the top and bottom tabs together, and I'll use snaps on the middle tab. Additionally, I wrote out the overlap on the tabs, so I'll have only one layer of knitting across my back. Soon... soon. Once I finish it, I'm thinking of dying it.

3. Dying. The Yarn Harlot, about a month ago, suggested that her readers could knit and donate fruit and veg-themed baby hats before the end of July for the sake of an educational event to promote breastfeeding among low-income mothers at the beginning of August. In order to display the passionate zeal that I feel for the importance of breastfeeding and the significance of education in the lives of women everywhere, I accordingly started the project on the 25th, this past Tuesday night. And then I had to work all of Wednesday. And the package needed to reach Cal-li-forn-ya by Monday. Uh-huh. :) So, my patient husband humored my desire to knit the hat, dye the hat (because the only yarn around here is whatever I've purchased elsewhere) and add finishing touches for all of Wednesday night. I had to let the hat dry overnight (from the dying), and lucky me, it rained all of last night. Luckier me, I have a hair dryer, so the soaked hat wasn't a problem this morning. Anyways, here's all that really matters:

Complete brag:
We have the coolest neighbor! Jengli just moved in a few weeks back and we finally got around to saying hello and having cookies at the same time. She's going to teach me how to make sushi!! And, she has a wonderful sense of humor:
Mendon: Jengli?
Jengli: Yes, you have very good pronounciation.
Mendon: Jengli.
Jengli: See! Now you speak Chinese!

She left me with a small silk pouch as a gift, which has now become my prayer bead holder.

Prayer Beads:
I finally, finally, finally figured out what to do with the handmade beads that Jerry (my step-mommy) made from the roses from our wedding. They're very organic looking and do not work well with the ideas of elegant jewlery for which I was hoping. Rather than even suggest the effort that guessing would be (because I didn't title this section or anything so obvious as that), here's a picture of the finished product.

The funny thing is that I hemmed-and-hawwed over what to do with these rose beads for months, even doing some research along the way. I knew (the entire time) that rose beads were originally used in rosaries. How did I not makes this connection, again???

Moral of the story: none. Just silly brambles. I mean, rambles.

Last night in my sleep, I dreamt that I was in a cathedral in France. Its sounds were the grit of the floor, as it was rolled beneath feet, and a regular creaking of a pulley. It smelled like time, if time has a smell, and it was late at night. The hallway that I could see down was dark and lined with massive columns on the left. There was a man, presumably affiliated with the church, pulling on a rope and I could see him because of his candle on the floor. To the right of the man and the colums was a wall and a small alcove well above our heads near the ceiling. On the other end of a rope was a small child on a swing near the recess in the wall. I was with her, above the floor, I may have had my own swing, and she was small, about 3 or 4 years old, with short, wavy, dark blonde hair and a candle in her hand. She talked to a myriad of burning candles. I could hear her voice, but couldn't understand her words. Instead, I heard a woman's voice, one that I don't recognize, saying, "she used to talk to her mother like this when she was younger." I knew who the child was throughout the dream, it was Maman, but I was confused about her identity. A generational fog pervaded the church, and everything was without time or context. The girl, although Maman, had the potential to be anyone, including Mimi. Her identity was mysterious in that sense. I watched the girl for a while, wishing better for her, but resting in her peace and her faith.

I was an observer (even though I, too, could have been the girl). Now that I think about the dream, I feel overwhelmed by it, but such emotions were far from the dream itself - it was so tranquil. I liked the serenity of it. I don't know if it's available anymore, now that we're all awake, but I wanted to share it.

Mendon and I have a new standard. Homemade bread. Wheat bread is particularly wonderful.

Mendon and I have a new problem. Only one bread pan and a recipe and bellies that call for two loaves at a time.

To begin, it can be done.

Even if your second bread pan is more along the lines of an 11"x 7" pyrex pan than the simpler 9" x 5".

As the Lovely Mendon is modelling for us, it just takes an extra two inches to make those pans the same dimensions while your bread rises. The ziplocks don't take to the oven particularly well, but using them for rising has been sufficient. Rinse and repeat (next weekend).

Our model, rather kindly, calls the misshapen one the "artistic loaf." Regardless, it's edible, and I don't mistake it for biscotti.

On a side note, is there a trick to getting a scheduled post to actually publish? This one is two days late, and only because I manually published it.

If you look closely, you'll see two.