Half Changed World

This month’s Blogging for Book’s assignment is to "describe in 2,000 words or less why your life would make perfect sitcom."

Ok, here’s the pitch:  "It’s about a family — with two boys — a toddler and a preschooler — but the twist is that the DAD stays home with them, while the mom works.  And he drives a minivan!"

Are you doubled over with laughter yet?  No?  Oh, I’m not either.  Gee, I guess that unless you find the concept of a father changing a diaper inherently hysterical, my life probably won’t make a good sitcom.  Oh well.

So, I’ve been trying to figure out what sort of TV show my life is:

Blessedly, it’s not a soap opera.  No life-threatening illnesses, no affairs, no mistaken identities. Thank you, G-d; if possible, I’d like to keep it that way.

In spite of my sons’ best efforts, it’s not an opera.  While there’s lots of singing, and occasionally bursts of passion (otherwise known as tantrums), there’s no build-up to a dramatic peak with the tension resolved in the final act.

It is definitely not a decorating, or house repair show.  All our walls are off-white and when something leaks, we call a plumber.

My husband suggested that it’s an old-time serial adventure, with the hero getting into a scrape each week, but always pulling off a daring escape by the end of the episode.  And it’s true, our dialogue often sounds like a bad melodrama:

"You must go to sleep."

"But I can’t go to sleep."

"But you must go to sleep."

"But I can’t go to sleep"

"But you must go to sleep."

"I’ll go to sleep."

"My hero!"

However, I’ve decided that it’s really a science show, something that might run on the Discovery Channel late at night.  One day we learn what happens to milk that has been left at room temperature in a sippy cup for two week, the next day we discuss where pee-pee comes from.  We learn some biology, some physics (our youngest cast member is engaged in an extensive exploration of gravity and its effects on everything from his breakfast to Daddy’s keyboard), a little meteorology. The budget may be low, the effects cheesy, but we’re all learning together and having a good time.

Just thought I’d let you know that the reason I haven’t posted in a few days is that I’m sick, and have been sleeping as much as possible with two active boys underfoot.

When I feel better, I’m planning on discussing the new Census report on family structure (in the meantime, you can read RebelDad and At Home Dad’s takes on it), how much nonprofit and public sector jobs pay (and should pay), how we deal with the whole Santa story, and starting a primer on tax reform and why liberals need to start reading the business section of the newspaper.  And maybe entering the new Blogging for Books contest, if I have any ideas when the topic is announced tomorrow.

In response to Monday’s post about the federal appropriations process, in which I vented a bit about cuts to the education budget, Jen asked me whether I’m still considering sending my kids to public school.

I do expect to send my kids to public school.  I’ve been very impressed by the new principal at my local elementary school, and I’ve heard enough positive experiences from parents that I think I’m willing to give it a try.  If that doesn’t work out, we’d probably try an out-of-boundaries public school (allowable both because the local school is a magnet or "focus’ school, and because of its low test scores under No Child Left Behind) and then consider moving to another school district, before turning to private school. 

With two kids, it’s hard to imagine coming up with the private school tuition for 13 years of K-12 education for each of them, certainly not without both my husband and I working for pay.  I earn enough that we’d be unlikely to qualify for much financial aid; plus, even if we could scrape the tuition together, I worry about the consumption expectations set by more affluent classmates.  (By contrast, at the local elementary school, we’d be among the wealthier families, which I realize has a set of issues of its own.) 

There’s always homeschooling, but I don’t think either my husband or I is really cut out for it.  And it’s hard to imagine my highly gregarious older son thriving in that environment.  I could may be see us "unschooling" in high school for kids with enough self-motivation, but that’s a long ways off.  (I went to grad school with the publisher of New Moon magazine, and her unschooled daughters were among the most impressively thoughtful and poised teenagers I’ve met in my life, far ahead of where I was at that stage.)

In thinking of my kids — rather than all kids across the country — I’m not especially worried about the budget cuts.  Most education spending is still from local dollars; federal budget cuts don’t make much difference in affluent communities like mine.  Rather, the impact will be felt in places where local taxes can’t make up the difference.  I’m more worried about No Child Left Behind (at the federal level) and the Standards of Learning (SOLs, in Virginia) forcing teachers to teach to the test to the exclusion of all else; I don’t know a single teacher who  doesn’t think that the overriding emphasis on standardized testing is a disaster.  But I assume the pendulum will swing back somewhat in the other direction in the next few years.

I’m a reluctant convert to school choice, meaning both charter schools within the public school system and even vouchers.  I don’t think it’s a panacea to everything that’s wrong with the American educational system, but I do think it provides a life raft to some kids who would otherwise go down with the sinking ship of disastrous urban schools.  The liberal argument against school choice has traditionally been that by giving some kids an escape route, it undermines support for and funding of public schools. I’ve come to the conclusion that this argument is essentially hostage taking, and I’m no longer willing to take kids hostage.

Plus, it doesn’t work.  People like me already have escape routes even without "school choice" — whether moving to suburbia or sending our kids to private school.  The only kids being held hostage are those whose parents have the ambition to take advantage of a school choice program, but not the money to escape otherwise.  And that’s not enough of a base to change public policy.  We’re never going to improve inner-city public schools until we make a convincing case that it’s in all of our interest to do so, not just the interest of those whose kids attend them.

Some things I’m giving thanks for today:

• The health of myself and my family.
• My husband, who believes in me more than I do in myself.
• My boys, who let me share their delight in the world.
• My parents, for braving the Thanksgiving traffic so we wouldn’t have to.
• Our freedom from material need.
• Our dishwasher, running its third load of the day.
• The easy recovery of the kitty from her surgery.
• The people who volunteered in the wind and rain this morning putting on the Turkey Trot race I ran this morning.
• The people I work with, for making it a pleasure to go to work most days, even when the policies we have to support make me want to bang my head against the wall.
• The internet, for bringing to my life so many people who I never would have met otherwise.
• All the people who are far from their loved ones today because they volunteered to serve our country, or to try to improve the lives of strangers.
• That I live in a country where I can write my opinions without fear that the government will break down my door as a result.

I can’t believe how fast the holidays are coming up.  Is it really possible that Thanksgiving is coming up next week?  For the first time in my life, I’m going to be cooking the Thanksgiving meal.  I’m actually looking forward to it; I like to cook, but don’t do it much these days because of time constraints. I just wish we didn’t have quite so much cleaning to do before the house was in a condition to receive guests.  But cooking and cleaning both are preferable to facing the NJ Turnpike Thanksgiving week.

Hanukah comes really early this year.  (The Jewish holidays operate on a lunar calendar, which means that they move back and forth in the solar calendar — next year Hanukah won’t start until December 25, and there’s one year coming up when it doesn’t fall until January.)  This means I have to get my act together soon, but also that the rest of December will be relatively low-stress.  I bought a ticket today from one of my coworkers for an opportunity to do after-hours shopping at a local mall this weekend.  It supports NOVAM, which is a good cause, and if I can get all my shopping wrapped up, I’ll be thrilled.  Plus, I’d like to get myself some clothes before my annual "no setting foot in a mall between Thanksgiving and New Years" resolution takes effect.

The early Hanukah also spreads the orgy of gift-giving out a bit, as my in-laws will still give us Christmas presents.  It’s lots of fun to shop for my older son, as he’s at the age when he’s absolutely thrilled by anything you wrap up, whether it’s a t-shirt, a book, or a toy.  I have no idea what to get for the baby, who doesn’t need anything, but his brother will be horrified if he doesn’t have something to unwrap too.

I started reading Spin Sisters, by Myrna Blyth, last week, thinking it would be one of my Tuesday book reviews.  It’s not going to be, because I feel a moral compulsion to actually read all the books I review; it’s sufficiently poorly written and repetitive that I’m not willing to slog all the way through it.  The funny thing is that, in spite of the gratuitous slaps at liberalism, I agree with Blyth’s thesis that the main goal of most "women’s magazines" is to make their advertisers happy.  She’s got some zingers about the concept of stress — especially the kind of stress that isn’t caused by major external events like illness or job loss, but just by overextension to too many activities and/or feeling like you need to live up to an unattainable standard (think Martha Stewart).  She does raise an interesting question about cause and effect — do people feel more stressed about the holidays now that it’s the conventional wisdom that they’re stressful?

My favorite anti-holiday stress book is Unplug the Christmas Machine, by Jo Robinson (and no, you don’t have to celebrate Christmas to find it useful).  It’s not terribly complicated, but it talks you step by step through the process of figuring out what parts of the holiday experience are really important to you, and making those the priorities, while letting everything else slide. It’s out of print, but there seem to be plenty of used copies floating around.

The cat is back from the vet, with big bald patches on her backside, her side, and one of her front legs, and a patch that is slowly dispensing painkiller.  She’s eating, and sat on my lap to be petted for about half an hour, but is definitely moving slowly.  We need to find a store that sells unflavored metamucil, because she’s not at all pleased to find her cat food suddenly flavored orange.

We had her anal glands removed yesterday, because they kept on getting impacted and infected.  Fingers crossed that she will resume using the litter box now.  We’re also really hoping that this is the underlying cause of the unexplained weight loss she’s had — the vet was sure it was her thyroid, but all of the blood work came back perfectly normal. 

The surgery was expensive, and I’m still not entirely sure that we did the right thing.  It seems wrong that a cat should have this sort of medical care in a world where kids go without basic things like immunizations.  But we’ve taken on the responsibility for this cat, in a way that we haven’t for the rest of the world.  It didn’t seem right to either let her suffer, or to put her to sleep.  If caring for the cat would mean that we didn’t have food to eat, I wouldn’t have done it, but it doesn’t.

The really pathetic thing is that I’m not all that fond of the cat, not the way I was about our other cat, who died about four years ago.  That one had been mine since I was a teenager, and she used to sleep under the covers with me when it got cold at night.  This one was my husband’s originally, and has never been that cuddly with either of us.

But she’s remarkably gentle with the boys, and has never scratched either of them, in spite of being provoked at times.  It’s surprising, because she’s not always gentle with adults — she’s one of those cats that will demand attention and then suddenly decide she’s had enough and claw you without warning. 

Heal fast, little one.

I am totally fascinated by the question of how couples make joint decisions about money, especially when one earns more than the other. 

Today somone pointed me to the website of Equality in Marriage.  It’s got a lot of nice links and advice on how to talk about money, before, during and after marriage.  This organization was founded by Lorna Wendt, who became famous for fighting for half of the assets from her marriage with former GE CEO Gary Wendt even though just the 10 percent he offered her would have made her a very wealthy woman.  She argued that they were equal partners in the economic unit that was their marriage, and that he couldn’t have become the success he was without her support. 

(I remember reading about her in The Price of Motherhood, and asking my husband if he wanted a post-nuptual agreement before he quit his job to be an at-home parent.)

When my husband and I were both working for pay, we had three sets of bank accounts — his, hers, and ours.  We figured out how much we needed to cover our regular bills and save a bit, and divided that amount roughly in proportion to our after-tax incomes.  The remainder was ours to spend as we pleased.  Like our decision to both hyphenate our last names, it was complicated, but equitable.

We haven’t changed our formal system, but all the money going into the "ours" account comes out of my paycheck, and the amounts of money left in the "his" and "hers" accounts are smaller and smaller.   I don’t feel like I get more of a vote on how we spend our money because it’s my name on the paycheck, but I do have slightly more money that’s mine.  I pay more attention to how we’re doing at staying within our budget, so am more likely to be the one to say "whoa," but that was true even when my husband earned more than I did.  (Neither of us considers shopping a leisure activity, so it’s almost never a big issue.)

The conventional wisdom is that only breadwinning is valued in our society, that caregiving is overlooked.  And yet, one of the recurring complaints from the mothers on the email list for working wives of SAHDs is how little credit we get for breadwinning.  At best, we are seen as good mothers in spite of our employment, not because of it.

My brother is getting married on Sunday, so I’m going to be off-line for a few days.  Have a good weekend, everyone.

During the campaign, you may have heard a candidate or two saying that all Americans should have access to the same health insurance program that members of Congress have, who can pick from a range of different plans.  Well, as a fed, I do have access to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.  Our "open season," when we get to pick our plan for the next year, has started and I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed by it.

This year, the Office of Personnel Management is heavily pushing the new "consumer-driven" options, which combine fairly high levels of cost-sharing and deductibles with health savings accounts that allow you to set-aside money for health expenses pre-tax.  They differ from the more well-known Flexible Spending Accounts in that extra money isn’t lost at the end of the year, but can be carried over indefinitely.  The logic is that if patients share in more of the costs of health services, they’ll shop more wisely and help keep total costs down. 

Most reports that I’ve read about these plans suggest that they’re a good deal for young and generally healthy people; in fact, the main criticism I’ve heard of them is that they’ll result in adverse selection against traditional plans, by drawing healthier consumers out of the shared risk pool.  But every time I try to read through the benefits description for one of these plans, my head starts to ache and my eyes refuse to focus.  And I consider myself a pretty well-informed savvy consumer; if I’m having this much trouble figuring it out, I suspect that a lot of other people are too.

I therefore think I’m going to stay with the same HMO I’ve had for the past 8 years, even if I could save a little money with one of these new plans.  Fundamentally, the reason is that I have enough on my plate between my job and my family and volunteering and trying to carve out a little time for personal things I enjoy like writing this blog and taking photos.  I don’t need to be the "driver" of my health insurance — I’m happy to be a passenger.

I just want to share some interesting maps of the election results I ran across today.

This one has red and blue colored by county, rather than by state. It dramatically shows how much the red/blue divide is a rural/urban one — the map is overwhelmingly red even though the gap in the popular vote was just a few million. Ole Eichhorn also compares it to a similar display of the 2000 results.

This one shades each state somewhere on the Red-Blue continuum, depending on the percentage of the popular vote. It’s a visible reminder that there are people who supported both candidates in every state of the union.

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I’m officially looking for a new job. While I still think there’s a need for dedicated career civil servants to provide a continuity of knowledge across administrations, I don’t think I have the temperament to do it for another 4 years. If any of my readers have suggestions for places to look, I’d love to hear them.

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Jimbo commented that fillibustering isn’t an effective legislative strategy. I disagree — I think we’d be a lot worse off now than we are if the Dems hadn’t held the line in the Senate against the excesses of the Republicans in the House. And I don’t think the public ever really holds the minority accountable for lack of action. But it’s certainly not enough to stand against things — we need to say what we’re for as well.

And we need to pay more attention to local and state politics. The Hot Flash Report provides a nice summary of how the Christian Right started in the 1980s by getting their people to turn out for school board races, and built a base that has carried them forward to today. The closest Democratic equivalent is unions, which are getting weaker and weaker by the year.