nina turns 40

I just dropped the kidlet off at his daddy's house. Against his will. I watched the tears start rolling as the elevator doors closed. Then I went back to the car and cried some of my own. He's been especially clingy and needy of late, for reasons that I'm well aware of. Big changes loom ahead.

Mosaic

I've started looking at the labels on my clothes over the last few days, to see where they are made. My pajama bottoms were sewn in Bangladesh, my T-Shirt in Turkey, my pants in Honduras, and the shirt I have on right now, Vietnam. What are the lives of the people who make my clothes like? I had a roommate once who would only buy clothes at thrift stores and vintage boutiques because she didn't want to contribute her money to a system that exploited impoverished workers. Her family was from Jamaica, so she knew something about being poor, about the disparity of power. Big corporations always say that they are improving the lives of their workers, giving them a better standard of living, and I always always believe everything the big corporations tell me. Besides, as I used to tell my first husband the free market economist, if there is going to be freedom for corporations to manufacture and sell their goods internationally, then there should also be a labor market where workers can move freely between countries looking for the best jobs. Otherwise, it ain't no free market.

nina is well informed

Best thing that Teresa Heinz Kerry said last night at the DNC: "My only hope is that, one day soon, women, who have all earned their right to their opinions, instead of being labeled opinionated will be called smart and well-informed, just like men."

note to the weather gods and goddesses

This is Seattle, dammit! Make it rain!

new on the list

I added a fabulous new blog to my list called Time Goes By. The author, a former TV producer and recent Web consultant, does overtly and with purpose what I'd been rather subconsciously hoping to do by publishing a blog-- to talk about what life is really like for a woman over 40 (and in her case 60)--to remind people that the skewed view you get on other media about aging and motherhood (not to mention female sexuality) is all wrong, as a way to say, look: here is one life, draw your own conlcusions. Best thing about it is she writes so damn well that she raises the bar for bloggers everywhere.

no fun mommy

The kidlet and I had a date night last night after he mentioned again that I am a "no fun mommy!". He's been acting out at school a little bit, and his comment caused me to pause and realize that he's right, I spend way too much of my time with him either driving in the car, or on the computer, or simply doing chores, and that he gets darned little of my focused attention. So, I declared that we shall have kidlet and mommy date night every week, just he and I, with me fully present. We played tourist in our home town and went up the Space Needle. He was so excited, he's been wanting to go forever. We could pick out our house, which I thought was pretty cool, and the warm and clear--albeit smoggy--evening was perfect for viewing all the mountain ranges that surround us.

Last night I was in a hot bath reading the latest New Yorker (never mind that I have stacks of much older ones in a net bag on the floor next to me now), and was once again struck by how much in love I am with the writing of this man. I finished reading Tables for Two, thinking, that was an especially fine review, and was delighted to find his byline at the bottom. Then, in the same issue, in a piece on the new proliferation of pedicabs (bicycle taxis) in NY was this:

"The pedicab may merely suggest rather than entirely embody the new America of puller and pulled, but it is a sharp symbol of a new reality. It even evokes new metaphors. For instance, the thing about George W. Bush is not that he was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple. It is that he has been in a bicycle taxi all his life but has not yet bothered to to notice that someone else is pulling."

Yup. Adam Gopnik again.

He goes on to talk about how American society is becoming more feudal, "...a society run on the bargain of fear: in exchange for your labor and subservience, we will provide security." This depresses the hell out of me because it rings so true. And now I'm running late to go off and be subservient, but no, I don't buy into the belief that anyone has made me more secure.

don't tell Mac

Have you ever received an email from someone that you previously respected professionally, only to find it riddled with punctuation errors repeated so consistently as to confirm that they are not typos, but rather that this person has no friggin' clue how to use apostrophes properly? Did it make you want to scream? Or perhaps surreptitiously send them a copy of Grammar for Dummies? This email was not just sent to me to tell me to quit blogging and git back to work, no sir, this was an email that went out to the Regional VP, Regional VP of Sales, and a State Manager, from a management level person who should know better.

wake up little nina

Insomnia is so rare for me that I don't know quite what to do other than embrace it. C'mon over here and give me a big hug. I mean, usually I need massive amounts of caffeine just to stay awake, so not being able to sleep feels quite odd, though not entirely unpleasant. (The unpleasant part comes at work later.) I made the mistake of going here, where I began to laugh hysterically at this post which has to be one of the funniest single blog posts I've ever read. All that laughing and guffawing has woken me up even further.

ants gone wild

I learned a new word today: myrmecology. It's got a lovely sound and rhythm to it, now doesn't it? Major bonus points to anyone who has heard it before who's not an entomologist. I thought I knew a pretty wide range of "the study of" words but I'd never come across this one until now. The kidlet and I happened upon a seething mass of ants on the sidewalk, the likes of which I'd never seen before. I went Googling to see if my guess that the ants were having their own little Iraqi war might be a possibility. It turns out, that yes, ants do battle it out, even among same species from different colonies. Makes me wonder what else is going on right under my feet that I'm completely ignorant of.

I can't take credit for the gorgeous foto, thanks to Alex Wild for his kind permission.