Our oldest daughter, Edie, is heading to New York City in a few weeks to take in a show and see the sights. Times Square is on her must see and experience list, so when I learned about the failed car bombing of the area this last weekend, I immediately went into worry mode.
“I’ve been through that area at that hour and it is choked with beautiful, happy tourists. Those wonderful people who come to New York and help to feed, and feed off of, its greatness.”
Hundreds of people could have been caught in the explosion. People like Edie, and I know that Doug Stanhope’s theory flies in the face of my worries, but it’s when you assume that you will be one of the people who glide through life sans the Chinese curse of “interesting” that you become a freak statistic.
The car bomb was discovered around 6:30 P.M. on Saturday, May 1st by a T-shirt street vendor who spotted smoke wafting from Nissan Pathfinder parked at 45th and Broadway. He alerted a mounted police officer who noticed the smell of gunpowder. The area was evacuated. A bomb squad discovered the SUV was loaded with propane tanks, gasoline and firecrackers.
Although officials say that Shahzad has claimed he acted alone, officials in Pakistan have detained several others in connection with Saturday’s failed attempt.
Vigilance on the part of an ordinary citizen and the swift action of the New York City police averted a tragedy. An equally on the ball FBI appears to have the perpetrator in custody. Although the latter, and the fact that Homeland Security actually made good use of the no-fly list for a change, should be a given rather than something to marvel at in my opinion.
So why am I not breathing a bit easier about Edie heading off to the Big Apple?
And why, as Matthew Yglesias asks at Think Progress, is this terrorist bombing attempt not provoking the same over the top response that the Christmas Undie Bomber did?
Perhaps spending the last couple of evenings listening to and/or watching Zeitgeist has stirred up my inner Mulder, but I find that “terrorist” incidents like this have a distinctly non-random, distraction factor going on.
Homeland Security got its man? Sherlock Holmes is spinning in his grave with pride.
I have been an American too long to not be a tad cynical and suspicious.
With the Jillian Michaels post behind me and things settling back to a boring ho-hum around here, I thought I’d share a link to a board forum where my piece on Michaels was shared.
Well, not shared so much as lifted in its entirety via cut and paste though I appreciated the link back to my blog. That was nice of whoever scraped me*.
The poster actually liked my article until the last line, which inspired her to physical violence which she admits probably made my point, but it was the first few commenters who pegged me for a Carol Brady**.
What they seized on was a throw away line I just put in to see if anyone would notice and they did, but they didn’t find it funny.
I should just give up on the humor thing.
Any time you stretch the lower half of your body to accommodate a small person and then squeeze it out of an opening that normally only just manages to accommodate a … tampon … for example, it’s going to change things.
Some of the women seemed to think that I was referencing vaginal intercourse and the fact that things can get a little loosey goosey in the old vagina after a natural birth. Natural birth being a relative term that in reality means pretty much anything in terms of the circumstances under which babies emerge from the womb.
Okay, so they caught me on that one. I was in fact referring to what it reads like I am referring to in a way too cute to be tolerated from a feminist anyway.
However, I did not mean to imply that I thought women should forgo child-bearing to keep their “love-holes” tight. There is a lot of muscle in the pelvic floor. Loose or tight is more a matter of a woman’s fitness level than the number of children she’s born. Kegels, ladies. And yoga. But not for your partner, for you. A weak pelvic floor means that all manner of internal organs are going to start sagging and dropping out your opening when the aging process – aided by gravity – kicks it into high gear.
Here’s my favorite comment and a fave of others too judging from how many of them cut/pasted it into their own replies (or it was their reply),
I don’t think I agree with a single thing this blogger is writing especially that pregnancy is a negative for a woman’s body. Um, ever heard of aging? Your body is going to change over time, period. Aging serves no purpose but pregnancy brings a life into this world.
As for being “less tight” – are we really as women going to allow a man’s pleasure to determine whether we have a baby? Is that feminism? Men should just DEAL. It’s not as if their stamina and ability to get it up doesn’t change over time…what’s their excuse?
To address the aging, I won’t. I don’t think the OP had any idea of how old I really am. This forum is at The Knot, which is a bridal site, but is in their Nest forum, young marrieds mostly. I imagine there are middle-aged brides there but the board read young to me.
Age is a given. Sag is a given. No one escapes.
Pregnancy is a choice. Um, in the West, it is primarily a choice. Hmmm, among the privileged it is a choice. Probably.
It’s a choice with a roulette element because going in, one has no idea how the hormones and gestating are going to affect one physically or emotionally. Some people simply don’t want to go there – male as well as female. It will change you. No shame, nor should there be, in declining, and points should be given for being honest about your doubts and reasons.
Here’s one that gave me a giggle or two:
XXXXX said it far better than I could. I really disliked this article. Perhaps that’s because I haven’t yet had and really want kids, and have just now gotten comfortable with my body, so I’d like to keep that. But I think it is also the exaggeration of the difficulties of pregnancy and raising infants: yes, sleeplessness impedes workouts, but that impossible phase passes in a couple of months. Law school sometimes impeded workouts, too, but I didn’t drop out just because finals would make me skip the gym.
And re: the “tightness” issue, I imagine we were all tightest in our teens and early twenties. I’ll speak only for myself in saying that I don’t think that’s exactly the best sex ever. Experience counts a lot more than a few millimeters in diameter.
Soo boo to this article! Not slamming the op in that. I love to read things I can disagree with. 🙂
I remember being childlessly naive. She brings it all back. Sigh.
We all think that we will have the easy pregnancy. Gain ten pounds and jog right up to the hospital door. Our baby will not be discolored, have a misshapen head or monkey hair. And she’ll sleep through the night in no time at all.
Sure. Taking care of a newborn is not equivalent in any way to going to law school. If you fall asleep over a textbook, you won’t suffocate it, and sleeplessness during finals is finite – a kid will be keeping you up nights for the rest of your life.
Life has its own ideas, just as babies do. When Dee was two weeks old her father was already losing his mind due to his yet to be diagnosed terminal illness. Needless to say, my fantasies about getting back into shape were just that. Good intentions sometimes play out and just as often, they come to nothing.
Like the non-hating on me – the “op” in her last sentence. Unexpected sweetness of spirit on the Internet should be applauded loudly whenever it is chanced upon.
Loved this one too:
As far as tightness, that doesn’t just go to a man’s pleasure.
Sing it, Sista!
I am an inconsistent warrior in the feminist trenches at best. That I will admit to, but I don’t think taking the Jillian haters to task or pointing out that the female gender is more divided than the male makes me Phyllis Schlafly.
Let me leave you with a classic episode of Maude – a make believe woman who was more feminist than I am.
*That comes off as ungrateful, I know, but cut/pasting excerpts is okay while plastering someone else’s post on your space isn’t kosher. Even on message boards, it’s a dicey practice.
**Let’s face it, even with the pants suits and the shag hair cut, she was so not a bra-burner.
First piece I am lamenting my ability to hold the line with the daughter on proper school footwear. As I wrote this for the mommy blog, it reminded me of a middle school friend whose mother made her wear winter boots until May every year.
While the rest of us were splashing about in the April showers in our Adidas (the height of cool in 1977) runners and track jackets, she was shod in grandma boots with the zipper up the front and a mid-calf ringed with fake furry fabric that pilled and her winter jacket from Sears.
“Was she scarred for life?” Rob asked as I related the woeful tale of my old buddy.
“Well,” I said, “the last I heard of her she was a teacher at a community college somewhere in Florida and working on her third husband.”
True. By the time we were thirty, she’d run through two husbands and her potential third was about eight years younger than we were. I don’t know for sure he was a student, but the evidence was damning.
However, in case you missed Rob’s point – I didn’t – the boots were not the likely cause. She had the misfortune of being the catalyst behind her parents marriage, and her mother felt that her great potential had been cut down before it could bloom by my friend’s untimely arrival. Seriously. Even though we were all very young, it was evident to us that she was flogging her daughter with her thwarted ambitions rather than asking herself why she simply hadn’t used a more reliable method of birth control – like abstinence perhaps? Jae was the family go-to in a Cinderella way while her younger brother, an obnoxious cry baby, was the second coming.
“You are going to cave on the shoes,” Rob told me.
“I told her only as treat,” I conceded.
“You totally caved,” he confirmed.
I have not. Dee only gets to wear the flip flops on the last day of school, which is still months off.
The other posts are about racism in Mississippi schools (hardly worthy of a stop the presses but reprehensible never the less) and bribing kids (in some instances it works beautifully).
anniegirl1138 