Nothing to see here. Move along.

I am way too distracted and much too tired to manage any profundity today. Sorry.

You can blame the boyfriend and the bloggers who have organized the very official and highly structured Maritime BlogHer in Halifax this weekend for my current state of mind. I'd love to write something meaningful but it's just not going to happen today.

Well, let's see what happens when I concentrate....

Yippee!

No, wait.

See, it's hopeless.

Maybe I can dredge my mind for a happy Frances story to tide you over.

...

She's cute! No, wait....

Frances says something adorable. This happens all the time, you'll just have to take my word for it. I say, "Frances, can I eat you?"

"No!"

"No? Oh... Can I nibble on you?"

"Nooooo!"

"Aww. How about, can I lick you?"

"No! I'm not a lollipop!" She laughs.

"Oh. OK. Uh, can I give you a kiss?"

"Yes." And she turns her cheek. I kiss her. She says, "You can hug and kiss me, but you can't eat, nibble or lick me."

"Oh?"

"Because I am not food. I am all covered with skin, and I have bones."

"That's true. I can feel them in your fingers."

"I am a person. Persons are not food."

"Can't argue with that."

There you have it, Dear Readers: the received wisdom of Frances. Persons are not food.

Posted by Andrea at 10:16 AM under Beanie Baby Brags , Friends and Others
| (4) Hippos Go Berserk

Neighbourly

We have new neighbours: a mother, her daughter and son, and their very big black dog who likes to bark loudly whenever anyone comes within his vision, which is often, seeing as they too live along the bike path in the back. I have yet to see or hear a father (and as everyone else makes themselves heard through the concrete wall on a daily basis, I'm inclined to think there isn't one). The daughter is somewhere around nine, I think; and the son about two years younger, both thin as cables.

Much of the shouting seems to be about homework. It has to be done inside; it has to be done at certain specified times; this is enforced, loudly, at least once each day. There is also much shouting at the dog, who likes to charge out the back door given any opportunity and then refuse to come to his name no matter how noisily given, his tail wagging. "Bad dog! M! Come here! Bad dog! Now!" they scream. M wags. They bluster and holler and wave their arms. M wags, and runs a bit farther away. It's a good thing he's a friendly dog because he's in our yard a lot.

"That M is a bad dog," Frances will say. "He doesn't come."

I haven't met their mother yet, though I hope to. I also hope she doesn't yell at me. (I'm sure she won't, it's just all I've heard her do so far.)

On my sick day earlier this week, I was not feeling up to making Frances dinner. I was also feeling guilty. I've been self-absorbed at home lately and not spending as much time interacting with Frances in the evenings as I normally would, or as I think she needs; it was mostly unavoidable but that doesn't mean that Frances likes it, of course. So I decided to make a new start and tell her that we'd be spending more active playtime together in the evenings over a cheeseburger and french fries.

We picked up dinner on our way home from school (and I also finally found a backpack small enough for her--it's Hello Kitty but it's blue and sparkly and tiny and she loves it, and is proud as punch to be having her own backpack, and when she woke up the next morning she could hardly wait to go to school and show it off. Plus, it was cheap) and decided that we would eat al fresco, in our yard area out back, since it was such a lovely day. I spread out our junk food on Frances's tiny picnic table, pulled up a small chair for her and a big one for me, and we dug in.

I don't think we'd been out there for even five minutes before C and our new neighbour kids (the daughter I can call A; the son's name I don't know) were there, too, talking about what they like to eat and what kinds of toys they like and where they went to school and who their teachers were and what they were like and their favourite colours (everything except the boy's name, I think). Frances chatted away too between dipping her french fries in ketchup and talking about how big her cheeseburger was (and it was, considering the size of Frances's hands).

This might sound like a strange thing to say about being interrupted in the middle of dinner, but it was nice. In all of my years living in suburbs and eating dinner on the back deck or patio, I can't say that neighbour children have ever scaled the back fence to congregate around shared childhood interests and make friends with my daughter. It's one of the things we all say we miss about the way communities used to be, isn't it? When people are outside where we live now, they're not alone for long.

Which isn't to say that I don't occasionally long for more privacy; say, when C comes knocking on the living room window to find out if Frances is home, and tries to peek around the blinds, and I am sitting on the couch in my pyjamas trying to write. I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to do a bit of gardening out back to at least reduce the visibility into my living space from the bike path as an alternative to keeping the blinds perpetually drawn. We'll see.

In the meantime, Frances can make friends just by going out the back door and playing with a stick in the dirt while I either read in a patio chair or tidy up and watch her through the window. It's a strange bit of nostalgia in the middle of a big city that's mostly let that kind of thing go.

If only M would stop barking.

Posted by Andrea at 8:54 AM under Friends and Others
| (10) Hippos Go Berserk

Announcements

1. This is something I've been meaning to do for a while: a couple of you asked for my facebook profile since I mentioned that's a good way to see pictures of the WBKE, BN (which won't ever be posted here), and then I didn't respond. And seeing as there are about five bazillion Andrea McDowells in the world, you were not able to track me down properly.

Here it is: This is me, even featuring some of Frances's lovely artworks.

I also wanted to say (and have been meaning to say for a while) that I'm sorry I couldn't respond to more requests to follow me to the 'other' blog than I did. I wish I could have said yes to everyone, but then that would have defeated the purpose--in any case, many of you mentioned that you wanted to follow along for specific reasons (you also are single moms, getting a divorce, dealing with health issues, and so on) and I wanted to say that all of those topics are staying here anyway, with the exception of specific divorce details that I can't make public.

I meant to respond to all of the emails and requests individually and I still might, but time management is running away on me and I didn't want to say nothing--so here is a hopefully temporary something.

2. If you go see the facebook profile you'll notice that I am listed as 'in a relationship.' I'm not trying to keep secrets or anything but I think it's still a bit too new to make as public as the internet makes things. So that's all you get to find out today.

Except that he reads the blog, so be good.

And: Yes, we met on the internet; no, I did not tell him about Frances before we met; yes, he did read that post a week or two back about how I think it's a bad idea to make it public in the dating profile; yes, he did agree with me; yes, I think it's safe to say that he's ok with dating mommies; so there.

3. Plus, I am going back to school in September.

Unless I chicken out and change my mind, but I don't think I will.

More details to come soon.

It's been a pretty big couple of weeks.

So, what's new with you?

Posted by Andrea at 9:08 AM under Me
| (11) Hippos Go Berserk

Tag, I'm It

The lovely Chris over at Mombie tagged me with a meme that (I think) she invented for Mother's Day; and you know me and memes, but I think this one is special. The instructions are simple: what are three things you do well as a mother? Unfortunately I'm sick today (who gets a flu in May?) so it's a challenge to corral my thoughts in a positive direction. Which probably means it's even more necessary. Here we go:

1. Not hovering. Frances plays outside by herself now that the weather is nice; she's been told to stay where I can see her and I pop out occasionally to make sure she's ok, but I figure if she wants to sit in the back yard area and play with a stick in the mud, that's great.

2. Pretending to be stupid. You know what I mean: when they hide somewhere you can totally see them, or put the surprise in the same hand and ask you to guess where it is again, or play a silly word game where they are obviously trying to trick you. "Hmm, where could Frances be? I could have sworn she was here just a minute ago.... I'll be so sad if I've lost her forever. Oh no! I can't find her anywhere!" All the while with gales of laughter escaping from behind the curtain, just above a pair of small white socks and two little pink shins.

3. TV. Most of the week will go by almost entirely TV-free. (Until she becomes fascinated with a new movie and wants to watch it all the time, but that does mean that when this happens I don't feel particularly bad about it--averaged out it's still Not Much.) Yet somehow she has still figured out who the Bratz are. I blame her classmates.

Although she has still to figure out that she can ask me for a particular toy--she's completely not acquisitive.

I won't tag, but only because I can't narrow it down to just a few people I'd want to see tackle it. How's this: are you reading this post? Yes? You're tagged.

Posted by Andrea at 8:29 AM under Friends and Others , Mothers and Anti-Mothers
| (5) Hippos Go Berserk

Carnival of Allies: Prologue

(Edited to add the link, which is working now.)

I don't have a lot of time to go into the detail I'd wanted to, so I'm hoping to come back and finish this one over the next few days. In the meantime, as ABW was planning on doing this this week, I wanted to get something up.

In the Scientific American Mind issue I mentioned in the Blog Against Disablism Day post, there was an interesting article on implicit (or unconscious) bias. (It looks like the article is supposed to be publically accessible, but the link was broken when I tried it this morning.) The basic idea is simple: implicit biases are all those prejudices that you learned without meaning to from a society full of biases of every kind, while also learning that biases and prejudices are wrong, so shoved them into your unconscious. The authors of one particular study looked at how implicit biases governed behaviour. They did this by administering implicit bias tests to hospital doctors and then looking at the care they gave to various patients. (Detail to be fleshed out later, when I have time and brain cells.)

Unsurprisingly (to me, anyway) those doctors who showed a large implicit bias against, say, black people also showed a significantly lower standard of care for black patients, and were less likely to give the appropriate treatment or medications to them. If the doctors were unaware of the purpose of the study.

This is where I think it gets really interesting:

If the doctors were made aware of the purpose of the study, those doctors with large implicit biases then provided more equal care to their patients--thus demonstrating that a conscious acknowledgement of previously unconscious prejudice can work to overcome it. Doctors with less implicit bias, presumably, assumed that their standard of care was already equitable and adequate and so did not work to overcome it, and ended up performing worse.

In one sense, it's bad news: implicit biases are meaningful, people act on them without intending to in ways that are harmful and wrong.

In another sense, it's good news: just by becoming aware of our implicit biases, we can change our behaviour for the better in significant ways.

In a third sense, then, each of us has a personal responsibility to become aware of our implicit biases instead of assuming that because we are good people, we must not have any; or if we do it can't possibly affect how we actually treat people.

You can find your own level of implicit bias in a range of areas by taking tests such as the ones at Harvard's Project Implicit.

Posted by Andrea at 10:04 AM under Change Addict
| (1) Hippos Go Berserk