I thought about applying for a credit card as I don’t have one. I decided to talk to a personal banker for information. I’ve worked part-time for years but have no credit, not bad credit, just no credit, except for the whopping student loan I paid off (which doesn’t count by the way towards getting credit because it’s not revolving credit, but a loan). Anyway, he said that I would not be able to get a card without credit. So I say, how am I supposed to build credit without a credit card? He says I have to either have a co-signer or a secured card. So, I say to him, how come students with part-time jobs without credit can get a credit card? He says because they are starting out so they can build credit. OHHH. What the F___? So, you’re telling me that if a woman let’s say gets divorced and has been working fulltime for years and all the credit cards, etc. were in her husband’s name and she has no credit history, that she can’t get a credit card? That’s right he says. That a stay at home mom with a part-time job can’t get a credit card without a credit history right? Right he says. Ok then tell me again why a student can get a card without a history? He says it’s set up to give them a chance. Isn’t that discrimination? That a student is more trustworthy financially than the situations I mentioned? Doesn’t a woman deserve a chance? He starts to stutter. Finally I let him off the hook and say hey I’m not trying to give you a hard time, I just want to show you how the balance of power is shifted. He’s glad to hang up.

I just finished reading Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth and it was amazing. I think I liked it better than Spiritual Midwifery. The stories are vibrant and real. There are great tips for labour and the best part is the evidence based midwifery practices that I wish everyone knew about. It makes me think how nice it would be have the Farm here in NB. We may be losing our one practising midwife next year and with c-section rates the highest in Canada and episiotomy rates at the Saint John hospital in the 70% range, it makes me cringe about our options for childbirth.

Ina May talks about how we don’t portray normal healthy birth in the media enough and she is right about that. The stories women tell are horror stories based on a traumatic birth. She encourages talking about birth in a positive light and not focus on the pain. I agree with her but I also think we need to say that for a lot of women birth *is* painful but in a good way, empowering, life changing, life affirming, not run away and hide, never ending pain. I find a lot of midwifery, natural birth books talk about the esctasy of birth and the painless birth which is good but I think it hurts too for a lot of women. I labored with an 11lb 2 oz baby trying to work it’s way down my birth canal, transition lasted hours because of his size. I pushed him out powerfully without tearing or drugs at home but by god it hurt. I’d do it again in a second and welcome the pain.

Now I’m reading Woman, An intimate Geography by Natalie Angier. Anyone read it yet?

I’ve started a ring called Blogging MUUMS for blogging Unitarian Universalist Moms. I searched and couldn’t find one so here’s one for us. I know you’re out there, so come on in and join:-)

This week during World Breastfeeding Week in the US a woman was asked to stop breastfeeding at McDonalds. As usual it seems that it is an employee who makes the decision to ask the mother to stop and then after the big outcry, head office comes back and says they do allow breastfeeding and apologizes for their employee. There is a poll at the bottom of the news article about breastfeeding in public. Go vote!

I’m wondering if I’m suffering from a strange sort of nostalgia. This summer I’ve really had a chance to observe what it is like living in a subdivision with lots of kids. What I’ve seen is evidence of a pack effect, no actually more of a swarming effect. These 5, 6 and 7 year olds wander around the subdivision stopping here and there at people’s houses to play with kids. These swarms have come to my house to play with Alec. I don’t know some of these kids, they come in our yard and start playing with the toys. I’m in the kitchen and I see this 9 or 10 year old call his mother on a cell phone and ask to get in our pool. Did anyone ask me? Did anyone ask Alec or ask if he should ask him mom? Nooo. I look out the window again and I see kids taking buckets of water out of the pool and dumping it in the sandbox. I say please don’t put any more water in the sandbox, it has enough water in it. Alec calls to me that people are putting water in the sandbox, I look out the window a while later and the sandbox is now a pool of water. I tell everyone to stop putting water in the sandbox or they will have to leave. They look at me annoyed. Later I see kids flipping over the kiddie picnic table on the yard, I tell them to stop. And so on, it seems like everyday I have to tell kids to not do this and not do that. Is it just me but when I was a kid if a grown up who wasn’t my parent (especially at that age) told me not to do something, I listened. I seem to remember all my friends listening when my parents told them something. Granted we didn’t listen to our own parents very well but we sure listened to someone else. These kids don’t seem to listen to anyone. I hate it because I’m starting to feel more like the neighborhood cop than June Cleaver. It’s not just one group of kids either, it seems to be kids everywhere in the subdivision. I wonder if it’s from them being allowed to wander at will without any supervision. Some of these 5 year olds aren’t even sure where their house is, they just to know to follow the bigger kids to get back home. Alec gets frustrated because he’s not allowed to wander like they are but no way is he ready for that kind of responsibility or maybe rather that kind of chaos. It’s a strange experiment in child behaviour as I listen to the kids out the kitchen window. They don’t know I’m there and so I hear all kinds of interesting tidbits. I’ve heard from one of Alec’s friends that I’m mean because I don’t let Alec do all the things they want to. Then a few minutes later, I hear that friend saying to another friend, “gimme that bucket, gimme that bucket” and then I hear Alec say to her, “say please”. These help reinforce that I am making the right choice homeschooling.

I think kids today (ack I’m sounding like an old fogie complaining about today’s generation) need some accountability. Neighborhoods should have close connections so that way kids might think twice about their actions because it might make its way back home. Then maybe Officer Mom wouldn’t seem so strange to these kids, we’d all be “regular moms”.