Untethered Typings

So there was this story in the local news last week. It was "news" but at the same time didn't feel like news at all. Some minor variation of this story comes up in some Canadian city every few months. Here's the story, in brief. Young mom - local city-run pool - breastfeeding infant - told to go somewhere else by pool staff - mom refuses. This is where it gets interesting though. Pool staff, so threatened by the possibility of someone catching a mammary glimpse, calls the cops. You read that right: police were called to the scene. The police - and the manager of the pool - called it an unfortunate mistake. The calling of police that is, just to be clear. Where to begin. I consider myself about as smart as the average bear, capable of thinking to the edges of the box, if not outside it. Even so, I simply cannot understand how anyone has an issue with breastfeeding in public. I mean that, too. I'm not being melodramatic. I literally cannot fathom how off...

Okay, so I did it. Everyone advised against it and I really tried not to. I just couldn't help it. It happened and though I don't regret it overall, I still wish in some small way it didn't happen. I blinked. I blinked and all of a sudden I have a kid in my care. A kid who motors around my house at the speed of light. A kid who reaches for the dog's water dish for the 87th time that day and stops to look right at me, smirks a little, reaches again, smirks a little more, and then dive-bombs the dish with her fat little hand, splashing water everywhere. I come over to her, she crawls away faster than a speeding bullet, shrieking and giggling the whole time. Holy crap. That once far-off word I, until very recently, regarded with only mild interest (in the same way I wonder about my fifties) - "toddler" - is very soon to be my new world. Everyone says the time flies after you have a child. I have to say I only partly agree with this. The first six months...

When I was pregnant I had a lot of people tell me everything about my life as I knew it was going to change. Sometimes this was said with a smug undertone to the tune of, "Oh those suckers are really in for it, they have no idea." Well as I've said before, I fully realized I had no idea what it would be like to be a parent, and did not for a moment pretend otherwise. I probably sound like a broken record to anyone (is there anyone?) who has read my other posts. Please bear with me - I am going somewhere new here. So to no surprise, things have actually changed with a wee one around. Pretty much everything to be exact. So there you go smuggies. You were right. Even though I never said you were wrong. Okay so here's the new twist, and the reason why I rehashed the little bit of info above. After being bombarded by comments of the sort I've just described for nine months, the comments, I've noticed, seem to have undergone an about-face. What do I hear ...

"Wow, you must love being off work for a whole year - like being on vacation, isn't it?" People really do say this kind of stuff to us mom-folk. My answer to these kinds of queries is two-part. First: yes, I love being off work for a whole year to provide care for my daughter. Second: no, it's not like being on vacation. It's a heck of a lot more responsibility on the whole and this new employer doesn't offer great vacation pay. So let's talk about that age-old debate: Who has it harder, the dads at work or the moms at home? Oh and yes, the ones at home will be referred to as the moms and the ones at work as the dads. Trying to be PC here will render me mealy-mouthed - or thumbed. Anyway, the problem with this debate is you can't look at it as who has it harder in terms of tasks performed between the hours of nine and five, Monday to Friday. Pourquoi? Well, we're not comparing apples to apples here - one side is talking about apples (dad...