POISON PEN ENTRY: READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Okay, okay, I can�t lie about it any more. I feel like shit. After avoiding getting sick all winter with everyone around me dropping like flies, my students, my colleagues, my fellow Diarylanders, I admit that this cough has turned into a full-fledged something that has me croaking through phrases at my students, coughing croupily into my elbow, and now my head is pounding, my sinuses are burning and my ear aches off and on. It has caused all the built-up vitriol which I was being so good about not letting spill onto these pristine purple pages leak out over the keyboard and somehow find its way into people�s notes, and finally my own diary.

For example, harri3tspy sounds like the perfect mother, bar none. Seriously, I have the most sincere admiration for her. AJ sounds like a bloody handful, and if I were the mother writing in a public diary, I would probably be complaining constantly about how I was going crazy, not getting enough sleep or time to work on my dissertation, felt oppressed, and was a screaming meamie most of the time. In fact, I don�t remember really enjoying having small children at all. I was so anxious for them to get past the age of �cuteness� into something that I could communicate with on a meaningful level that I think I totally missed those stages of development. And I was a stay-at-home mom yet!

I asked my teenagers today what they remembered from when they were two and three years old. Not a helluvalot, that�s for sure. Buddy Boy doesn�t remember anything before pre-school at the age of three, and very little about his relationship with me. When I remind him of all the reading of books and painting of pictures, he remembers, but it�s not something that comes to mind right away. Little Princess remembers nothing before the age of two, barely remembers when her brother was born (she was one month shy of three) and doesn�t recall me being pregnant at all. She too recollects the hours of reading and drawing pictures, but only when reminded. They both remember that we tried spanking them for a while, but quit when we realized that it wasn�t producing the desired effect.

I was a product of corporal punishment, and I absolutely feared and hated my father until I was too old for him to hit me anymore. It was then that we started having a relationship of sorts. I didn�t want the same kind of thing to happen with my kids, so the corporal punishment didn�t get very far. But it was very difficult to punish them by depriving them of things, because they had so few privileges in the first place. No television, no video games, no outings. Boring! I do recall saying some really mean things to Little Princess, but I don�t think she ever really heard me, and she still filters me out. The horrible things I said just slid off her like water off a duck. No social misfit there on my account. I couldn�t even screw up my kids properly! What kind of mother am I?

In goddess class today we talked about Circe and the Amazons. Not at the same time, though. Circe was a very powerful goddess in her own right, and the mother of pharmacopeia. She got demoted too, and in late stories about her actually becomes mortal and is slain by her own son, fathered by Odysseus. The Amazons were most likely a society where the sexes lived separately for part of the year and women had developed technology and techniques for defending themselves while their menfolk were off herding the sheep, or whatever, and the ancient Greeks couldn�t handle the idea of women not needing men, so all the strange stories came about, including the one of self-mutilation, where the Amazons supposedly removed their right breasts in order to facilitate the shooting of a bow. Give me a break!

And then, pantasy reminded me of this group of (western) women here in Canada who have actually banded together into a quasi-political party and call themselves �Real Women� (you can get the link from her entry, I can�t be bothered), and believe that all the ills of society would be solved if we reverted to a 1950�s attitude where women stay home and make love nests for their husbands, and read Homemaking magazine and cut out casserole recipes. They are the biggest threat to feminism since the chastity belt and should be stopped. Seriously. Okay, fine, some women choose to work outside the home because they want to, and others do it because they have to. I am one of the few fortunates whose husband makes enough money that I don�t have to work if I don�t want to. And so I work part-time because I hate working the 9-to-5 shift (been there, done that; ask me about it sometime else) and I would rather set my own hours and do what I want. Okay, so I don�t make much money, but that�s not the issue. I get paid for what I enjoy doing, and I am not spending all my time vacuuming, dusting, polishing my floors and beating rugs on the clothesline. (Does anyone actually do that anymore?)

Okay, I�ve caused enough damage here. I�m gone.

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