There's nothing more sad than a bit of slush at the bottom of the blender.

DO NOT LICK THE BOTTOM OF THE BLENDER!!!!

Unless you take the blade out first. Which I can do with my grandmother's blender.

Just caught Loki shredding a roll of paper towels, he's a menace.

That paper towel roll was about to charge.

Shifty-looking paper towel roll. Preemptive strike.

Those sneaky papertowel. Always plotting to sneak up on you and ...papertowel you.

He's got paper issues. See: [link]

Maybe he was going after the bear.

A topsy-turvy John H:

My sister is upset this morning about the David Boreanaz harassment claims. Sounds less than convincing to me. Mona is a fan and really doesn't want to see this.

Laura -- harassment or affair? I know about the affair claims, but not the harassment. Have a link?

If I cut your leg off and don't kill you, is it seriously less nasty than taking it off your dead body?

Are we controlling for freshness?

I think this is another brick in the cult of maternity, another way to make some moms feel superior and others to feel bad.

Kat, Jess and Amy, it is so heartening to me when I see young mothers acknowledge the Cult of Maternity. I hope this helps -- as time goes on, mothers tend to drop out of the Cult on their own, because they realize they can't keep up the charade. Time is, as always, the great equalizer.

To me, this:

I know a lot of freaky obnoxious earthier-than-thou in-your-face hippies. They certainly exist. They revel in being weirder or edgier or more out there than anyone around them and never seem to exhaust their incredibly loud theories on energies and crystals and supplements and sumdging-with-sage and sooth-saying and drinking-of-urine and aromatherapy and on and on and on. These people have been irritating me, up close, my entire life...

is the tomato, and this...

I also know a lot of people, however, who are continually seeking knowledge: of the earth and our relationship with it, of the intricacies of the human body and mind, of spiritual awareness and a sense of a larger picture. They can also be irritating in their vigor but they're the kids who brought us (back) breast feeding and organic farming and crazy notions like water should be clean by law...

is the tomahto.

I'm referring to Balik's quote:

in an e-mail Bialik sends after our meeting, she goes back to my idea that some women weren't meant to have babies the holistic way. "There are those among us who believe that if the baby can't survive a home labor, it is OK for it to pass peacefully," she writes. "I do not subscribe to this, but I know that some feel that … if a baby cannot make it through birth, it is not favored evolutionarily."

I want to punch her in the face.

It seems to me that those who eschew modern medicine in favor of evolution are ignoring that humanity's evolution isn't just biological, it's also intellectual and technological.

I'm not defending her; regardless of whether she's being stupid and tactless or being sanctimonious, that's not something you say to an expectant mother who had a traumatic first birth.

At any rate? Not a very special Blossom. At all.

Trudy, I am a vegetarian. When people ask me about eating meat, I do NOT say, "there are some of us who think, but I don't, that meat is murder and it's cruel no matter what and that people who eat meat deserve to be punished." And if I did, I'd completely deserve any crap I got for it, because it's IRRELEVENT if it isn't part of MY opinion. Which, is what I am being asked because I am not a professional and so it's just my opinion.

Bialik is not a doctor. She was asked her opinion, and she brought up some really ugly ideas. She did NOT have to bring them up to the mother in question. There was no fucking reason to except to make someone feel like a failure.

I don't really know what we did to deserve javachik, but we should do it early and often.

So she eschews one form of medical assistance and instead chooses a shot of Stadol which causes her hallucinations. I'm sure the doctor got her permission to administer that, although she doesn't implicitly say she agreed to it. And she places the blame firmly on the doctor by saying "he came up with a solution for the pain--the narcotic Stadol."

I'm fairly certain her contempt for her doctor is skewing the story--especially the part about breaking her water without saying a word to her. I just find it hard to swallow it all from her point of view.

I was, of course, only there for my own childrens' births. That (continued...)

( continues...) said, from my experiences, and from listening to other women's birth stories, I've come away with the impression that some patients are less able (willing, but mostly able, in the heat of battle) to either question things or stick up for themselves, and some doctors are less willing to listen to all but the most explicitly stompy expressed protests and questions, and even less willing to explain themselves. A not-that-assertive-patient and an extremely-assertive-doctor can yield all sorts of birthing experiences, depending on circumstance. I'm inclined to believe Akner's story and create a midrash for myself about how it happened. Sometimes it's a matter of personality, but other times, it's a matter of the circumstances at the moment: fear, pain, physical weakness and/or exhaustion, did I mention fear. Most times, it's a combo of all those things.

That, I think, is the cultural issue -- there is a lot of energy in our culture around feeling bad about whatever choice you make as a mother, from conception to college graduation.

I agree, and imo, that ties back to Kat's comments on the Cult of Maternity.

You don't have to eat what comes out of your cootch.

Self, just because you mostly lurk now, doesn't mean you're safe when you click on ita's links.

It's Friday! >[link]

Or Aimee's! Morally bankrupt and disruptive, indeed.

---

Oh man, what a teal dear.