The Big, Huge, Enormous, Gargantuan and Mighty Downsize

My darling husband and I have embarked on quite possibly the most daunting and challenging mission of our nearly quarter-century together. We are selling our house.

I admit that I am the galvanizing force in this adventure. I have been dropping subtle hints about downsizing and moving into a smaller place for a bit. Our oldest son James graduated from college, spent a year in Korea, and now is living at his own place. Our youngest son, Charlie is a sophomore in high school and began receiving college brochures for a couple of years. It was the summer before Charlie’s freshman year when he was away at camp and James was in Korea that I realized we were in a huge house that would too-soon be inhabited by just me, my husband and our two crazy terriers.

I believe I announced the night of my realization as I held a tear-stained Bard brochure that we had to move to a smaller place…and I can’t tell you how many times I get the Oh-my-God-she’s-insane look when I make my announcements.

We bought that magnificent house about 5 years ago. It was on the market for a while thanks to the housing market downturn, and the price was right. We had been living in apartments for our entire lives together (with the exception of a winter cottage rental-and that’s a whole different story). Our living situation didn’t prompt the us–the apartment is beautiful, we were the landlords and lived there quite happily for over seven years.

My Father’s House by Will Barnet ca. 1992

I think we were ready to live in our own home but in truth, the timing was way off. Many memories of our boys growing-up were at our apartment. We bought the big house when both my husband and I were working full-time in very demanding jobs and I felt like we shifted all our stuff into a much larger place and went but were barely home. Our weekends were occupied with house projects, yard work, beekeeping and most notably, filling up the empty rooms.

Indeed, nature hates a vacuum. And my nature apparently couldn’t abide by any space with very little crap in it therefore in 5 short years, all of our earthly possessions that adequately filled six rooms doubled to top off twelve.

January 2013. We decided it was time. Make that my constant yammering, sighs, random announcements both day and night, conversation openers and conversation enders and quite possibly some sleep deprivation tactics brought us to the decision to sell. It was a joyful moment…for about a moment. Then the reality hit: we had much to do to sell this house.

We’ve been packing, donating, selling, tossing and giving away for almost five months. When we met with our real estate agent in February with the goal to put it on the market in March, we discussed staging for the Open House. He believed April or May was more realistic. As I was delirious at that time, I was absolutely certain the only month we should put our giant house on the market was March. It had to be March, it couldn’t be later –it had taken the previous owners almost three years to sell it. We couldn’t wait!

I hadn’t considered the drought of available houses since the real estate downturn. I was certain it would take months to sell a huge house–June or July when families with kids were done with school and ready to move. Our open house was March 17th–and who goes to an open house on St. Patrick’s Day in this area? Evidently over thirty people. People who made offers and it was under agreement on March 18th.

The relief of actually selling when I was so certain it would take months was incredible. The rapidity of the sale made me giddy. It was an enormous weight removed. We did it, we’re heading back to our old place, who cares if it’s an apartment, it’s home.

My Early College Memoirs…

Thirty years ago I was at college. It was a fun four years because I made great friends, enjoyed a painless course load and found my absolute favorite job in the world after I graduated: picture framing. I wasn’t really motivated to actually conquer the world or blaze a trail into business and industry in my very early twenties so I took the path less demanding and rigorous. The blessing of being an unmotivated and aimless college co-ed majoring in something of a fluffy field was the tuition at state college was blessedly affordable and my student loan was manageable even on a picture framer’s salary.

My friends were a lot like me. We enjoyed our classes but the bulk of our concentration focused on weekend activities which typically started on Thursday night. In the early 1980′s we knew every bar and club that had 2-for-1 Thursday and free (salty) appetizers with a pitcher of Miller beer. We could buy bleacher seats for Red Sox games for about 5 dollars after the game started and took Chinese bus from Boston to New York round trip for about $20. It was a blast.

Oh yes, I was a good student. I didn’t skip class, not even for a monster hangover because we never had tests on Fridays. My friends didn’t skip either, we all suffered the same plight. Good company to my misery, followed by better company for the hair of the dog remedy that afternoon. Wow, I really hope my sons don’t read this blog.

We did a lot of group work, even most of our term papers were a group effort. I managed to get through my junior and senior year without buying a text book. Honestly! I’m actually kind of annoyed with my younger self that I accepted this superficial experience as high academia and borrowed money to be a part of it.

I knew there would be some sort of back lash for my frivolity. A great deal of my upbringing had to do with giving maximum effort, looking for challenges and the benefit of hard work. I had older sisters who majored in journalism and engineering. They studied over spring break and talked of grueling exams and massive research papers. Not me though, I was beating the system, I was in college and having the time of my life…until my Group Facilitating class.

Don’t ask me why I was taking Group Facilitating, it was probably an elective and it was fun. I had a couple of buddies, we huddled together, group facilitated, wrote our group papers and planned our group Thursday night activities until the professor discovered our modus operandi and mixed things up a little. He sent our happy little trio into separate “work groups” and ordered the class to talk about a difficult topic in our lives.

My group was made up of two other women, neither of whom I’d ever spoken to before although they seemed to know each other. Eager to be friendly and break the ice, I plunged right in to my difficult topic. It was a personal conflict, something you’d talk over with a close friend, not two strangers but the object of the lesson was for the group to facilitate a reasonable solution to a difficult topic.

As I was divulging, I could see my two goup-mates found a lot of humor in my plight. They glanced at each other and tried not to smile. Instead of shutting up, I went on for another five minutes–I think I was trying to impress them or win them over. I did neither and their Group Facilitated Solution for me was that I probably needed a therapist.

As if it wasn’t horrifying enough for two strangers with mile-high hair to decide I was deranged and needed psychoanalysis, group facilitating their problems made me realize what an ass I was to reveal personal information to two snarks. Their problems were 1. Work or volunteer after college? Her fiancee made so much money that if she worked, it would put them in a higher tax bracket and 2. Join her boyfriend’s sailing team or stay with the team she’s been on since high school? Somehow my suggesting they both needed psychiatric treatment for their dilemmas didn’t carry the same bite as when they handed me the phone book opened to the mental health assistance.

Oh My Go-od, you are like, sooo weird!

Where to begin again?

Hello again! It’s been months of procrastinating, neglect, negligent slackerdom. I could name 70 more adjectives for my writing dodge but it all boiled down to a firm belief that I had absolutely NOTHING to say. Massive writer’s block.

Much has happened to shake me out of my grotto of navel gazing. I live close to Boston. The past week was the most unbelievable week I’ve ever experienced. I still can’t believe that there was a bombing at the Boston Marathon, that 4 people were killed–a child, a 23 year-old Chinese student, a 29 year old woman who cheers at the finish line every year, and one MIT police officer. So far, at least fifteen people have lost at least one limb, one MBTA transit police officer nearly bled out from his gunshot wound that severed his femoral artery and almost died and over 180 people were injured. Two brothers, at this point believed to have acted alone, are believed to be responsible.

The amount of information coming out about these two: who they were, where they’re from, their influences, their childhood, school, college, religion, family, travel, friends…is pouring through the media but I have no idea when we will get to WHY. I don’t know if we ever will to the level of comprehension, satisfaction that we understand the trajectory of the actions that affected hundreds of thousands.

The reaction of the people of Boston and surrounding cities was incredible. Images of police officers, race officials, runners and spectators running toward the explosions to help the injured were awe inspiring. The shocking reality of the scope and depth of the damage did not cause people to cower or shy away. They are strong. They continued, they didn’t turn on each other or shutter doors and window. To repeat a great quote paraphrased for Boston, “Keep wicked calm and carry the hell on.”

In the shock and aftermath of the bombing, local and state police and FBI did their work. In this day of instant information, one of the most difficult things was not waiting for information, it was weeding out rumors, lies, false information. There were times I had to turn off the radio and get off Facebook and I heard that from many others around me. The frantic tension that I might miss crucial information interfered with a reality that if any major breaks in the investigation happened, I would quickly find out.

Nothing prepared me for early Friday morning when my sister, traveling from Florida texted  ”What’s going on in Boston?” Boston proper, Watertown, Cambridge, Waltham, Newton, Belmont and Brookline were effectively shut down. Residents were ordered to shelter in place as rifle-armed police officers patrolled the streets in search for two brothers. Suspect Number Two, Dzhokar Tsarnaev, age 19, after a massive shoot-out in Watertown where Suspect Number One, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, age 26 was killed when his brother ran over him with a stolen SUV was on the run. I kept saying, “This is unbelievable, I just can’t believe what I’m seeing.” as the news came in.

After nearly twenty four hours, Suspect Number Two was captured alive. He was hiding under a shrink-wrapped boat in Watertown, just a couple of blocks outside the police perimeter, discovered by the boat’s owner who walked outside after the lock-down and saw some blood on the white wrap and a hole in the side that wasn’t there the day before.

There is so much to process about this incredible week. Sorrow, loss, injury and injustice inflicted upon people who began their Patriots Day ready to run, cheer, root for the Red Sox, eat, laugh, help, be part of something bigger than themselves that has taken place for 116 years prior to this particular marathon day. The actions of those who ran in to help, to save, to protect, to act in ways far greater than their own self-interest. There are the citizens to thank who did exactly what was asked of them–huddle down in their houses to let the police work.

Ultimately all of this revolves around two men who acted upon hateful, deadly, destructive principles that brought them entitlement to kill, a disregard for life in a country that sheltered, educated and provided unlimited opportunity. I have no idea how I’m going to get my mind around that.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 8,500 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 14 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Quirk House

The Quirk House

The Quirk House

We heard about it from the tough kids who loved to terrorize us with horror stories. Back in the 1930‘s they had a baby every year or so but no one ever saw any baby after it was brought home because Mrs. Quirk strangled and buried them in the basement. Mr. Quirk died or left years ago. Mrs. Quirk lived there alone. A shut-in who hadn’t been outside for over fifteen years.

She lived in a tiny white cape with a green front door in the midle of a weedy square lot surrounded by a low chain-link fence. A row of small frosted windows were at the top of that door. The last window on the right had a crack that almost looked like an old lady’s head peering out. We’d argue about the crack while hanging on her fence.

“She’s looking at us! In the last window!”
“No you dummy, that’s a crack!”
“Shut up! She’s right there!”

She had the lawn mowed every two weeks and the gutters cleaned each fall. Storm windows went on after Halloween and came off at Easter. Mrs. Quirk’s metal garbage can was brought to the curb once a month! That little insight to her life fascinated us almost as much as the unseen woman. We, who had three overflowing plastic barrels every single week decided she must live on rotten garbage.

Beeno Karastogianis did all the the handy work. Beeno couldn’t keep a regular job. He had to live with his parents. The tough kids said he was kicked in the head by a mule when he was little. While none of us would ever dare speak to Beeno alone, we teased him as a group to get him to shake his rake and swear at us.

“Hey Beeno! What’s Mrs. Quirk pay you with, dead babies teeth?”
“Get the hell outta here you shits before I beat your asses!”

We stopped debating about the crack in the window after Barney Seymour got hit by a car. He threw a dead skunk on her front steps on Doorbell Night. We heard that after he threw the dead skunk, he rode his bike home, swerved into the street and got hit by a car. He swore on the Holy Bible he swerved because an old lady that suddenly appeared out of nowhere right in front of him. We stopped hanging on the fence at end of her walk to debate about the crack in the door window. After Barney got hit, we wouldn’t dare look at it, not even during the daytime.

Then came the Women’s Group crusade lead by the insufferable do-gooder Mrs. Young. She started a campaign to reach out to the less fortunate. Her group made a festive holiday food basket for Mrs. Quirk at and delivered it to the front steps on Christmas Eve. That basket sat on those steps until Beeno brought it to the curb in the garbage can after New Years. This so outraged Mrs. Young that she marched up to the Quirk house and banged on the green door for half an hour until her husband was called to fetch her off.

“I’d never bang on that door!”
“I won’t even look at it anymore!”
“Not after Barney Seymour…Mrs. Young is insane!”

Mrs. Young was found dead from a stroke the morning after she beat on the Quirk door. We stayed off the sidewalk in front of her house after that. We crossed the street if we had to go by or, more often, took the next street over to avoid walking in front of the Quirk house altogether.

The Quirk house burned down in the late summer. Neighbors heard her screams and called the police. When they ran outside, they saw the house engulfed in smoke and flames. The heat was unbearable, even from across the street. The best the fire department could do was try to soak the houses around the Quirk house to prevent then from catching. Mrs. Quirk’s remains were found in the area of the living room. Nothing else was identifiable, let alone salvageable. We waited for a report of buried baby skeletons in the basement but it never came. The tough kids said it was a cover-up because the fire marshall was petrified when he went through the ruins. The fire investigation pointed to arson.

While no one was ever accused of the crime, we knew who set the Quirk house ablaze. The Young family moved away after the police finished investigating them. No one knew where they went. No one wanted to talk about why they went. No one ever talked about the Quirk house either. We still cross the street to pass by the empty weed lot today.

There is a limit to a very good thing….

I didn’t think I could ever find a bike I couldn’t love. And if you ever told me there was something that combined running and biking equally, I think I would kiss you right on the mouth. That was until I saw this:

It’s called a FLIZ (ironic, my first name is in the product?) it’s a concept walking bike… or biking walk… or an unholy union that blended the very essence of all dorkiness.

Behold! The FLIZ!

Make way pedestrians and cyclist! The flying FLIZ-master will make you eat his/her dirt as he coasts/runs/capers along the byways, suspended by his nether-region

German concept engineering at it’s finest: Behold the FLIZ!

.

FLIZ-ing along, catch you on the flip-side, ladies!

There can be too much of a very good thing.

Braggy-Braggy-Brag-Bragging Rights

Can’t believe I pulled off this shot with my crappy Nikon D4 (oh yeah, it’s now shark snack!) Discovery Channel already bought my photo for next year’s Shark Week! Going with Canon EOS D5 with the royalties…FML!!

I just wanted to end Shark Week with a nice photo to thank them for another thrilling week which reduces average citizens into such a state of terror of the ocean that countless will not venture in further than the depth of their their ankle bones.

No, I didn’t really take that underwater picture with a $5,000.00 camera. I’m not getting any royalty check and there’s no mega-sophisticated, uber-complicated action camera in my future. My caption on the poached, non-credited-totally-illegal shark photo (image search on google, drag & drop into this entry) is actually my contribution to the ubiquitous bragging culture on social media. Pretty darn amazing, aren’t I????!!!!

Gosh why didn’t Dan let me know he was having this painting of me commissioned as a champagne ad? I wouldn’t have worn a dress that makes me look so fat!

Social networking is the greatest and most effective form of self-promotion. Face it, if you’re going to put yourself out there on facebook, twitter, Linkedin, Pintrest, Google+ or mega sharing sites like +AddThis, you better look good, baby.

The thing is, it seems like a chicken and the egg problem: what came first? Social media bragging or the platforms that made it seem so necessary? If you ask anyone why they are on facebook, the first thing they say to keep up with friends and family. Ask what they do on twitter and they’ll say they follow interesting stories and people. But look what they’re posting and you will find almost everyone is spending most of their time making themselves phenomenal and mustering up as many friends and followers as their little boastful hearts can conjure. It reminds me of kids begging parents for cell phones,
“Why do you need a cell phone Wymberly?” (trendy girl name of 2000)
“So I can let you know where I am at all times and tell you how much I loooooove you Mummy!”
Then Wymberly’s mummy got a $900.00 cell phone bill a month later. Why am I on facebook, twitter, Tumbler, Google+, Pintrest, etc? To keep up with friends and family and read interesting articles that may help me be a better citizen. Then I put out a lot of crap about me, me, ME!

Hey Norbert, what’s our Class President been doing since graduation?

There is a certain amount of pressure to look good on these sites, I mean really, you don’t want to catch up with classmates after 10 or 20 years and post your ugly mug shot…well I’d find it hilarious and really refreshing but that’s a bold move that takes a lot of guts.

Social media is a wonderful, mythical place where we can perfect our image, control (to some degree) how we want to be seen and present a very best self to impress people. It stems from living in a very competitive society. I think it’s also a fall-out of the generation of young adults raised to believe everything they do is so totally awesome that everyone needs to know and it’s quite catching. The basic truth is that it is a real ego boost to brag.

But this gloat-fest has gotten stale and I think most regular people are fully aware of what they’re looking at when they see a brag.There are a few ways to subtle-brag, a lame effort to mask the bombastic tone but they come off as inauthentic, phony and contrived. Fake brags have, for the most part, backfired on those trying to sneak in overblown self-promotion.

There’s the Humblebrag: OMG, I hung up on the President of the Nobel Society four times before I realized I had won the Peace Prize Award! I can’t believe they’re still going to give it to me!
Oh please! Now the humblebragger wants us all to go LOL! You’re Amazing! If anyone deserves it, it’s you! and Serves him right for calling you in the middle of the night, doesn’t he know you need your precious Nobel Peace Prize sleep??!!

After enjoying all the fabulousness that is me, please take a few moments to bask in the glow of my smugface…

Feel free to create your own sincere responses to the following the subtle-brags.

Complimentbrag: Oh Frumpy, you must be so happy you lost 35 pounds! Go for another 100, I can give you my size 4 jeans–they’re too big for me since I started Piliates!

Oversharebrag: so I was just trying to make a quick run into Whole Foods for my organic wheatgrass facial putty when a huge scream came from aisle 4 where they sell nuts and legumes so being a certified cardiac resuscitator/defibrillator/organ transplanter, I sprinted over, clearing 4 cartons of black olives when I find GEORGE CLOONEY unconscious from a severe nut reaction so I carefully opened a trach airway that will heal making his neck actually look younger and he gave me the lead female role in his next movie. whew! whataday!

Outsourcebrag: Our Portence got accepted (full scholarships of course) to Harvard, Yale, Trinity, and MIT. Now how is he going to decide where to go????

Finally the all-out Douchebrag: OMFG!!!! My boyfriend Vinny Mike just won the Power Ball! We are going SHOPPING! First a Lamborghini, then 6 foot hair extensions for me, fake abs for him, then a 32 carat diamond ring for me & Tommy Bahama sunglasses for him, then we’re buying as many drugs as we can to take it to our new island where it’s all totally F*%#@ING legal!!! C-ya biii-yatches!!!!

These kind of brags are nauseating and usually make me say, “Oh shut the eff up.” But because they’re everywhere, I just keep reading and hope what I’m putting out there doesn’t provoke much of the same response.

Yeah, it’s all getting really old. But don’t despair, there’s a refreshing antidote that will probably have a shelf life of about a week. The Underbrag. It’s an honest anti-brag, a truthful statement of something that doesn’t make the underbragger look good: What a crappy night–my ex came into the bagel shop with his new girl friend and I didn’t want him to see me so I hid behind the garbage barrel…and yes, he walked over to throw something out and caught me. Wow, now there’s a friend that needs a lot of love while you laugh your head off at what you just read.

Beekeeping Again

Wow! A second sunny beautiful day in June! That is supposed to be the norm but this June was more like April with many cold days of rain, mist or fog.
Another weird weather spring happened upon us: March was like May; it was warm and beautiful. People were swimming in the ocean last March. Now April was like June in the beginning then it was maybe like March toward the middle but then reminded me of second grade…oh, sorry…I was getting a little batty there.
Anyhoo, it has been a very dank, cold June with a lot of rainy days and it is funny how quickly I forgot about the early beautiful spring and became a real grump. Until yesterday when the sun came out. Everything is wonderful, amazing and awesome with a little sunshine.
Well the bees feel the same way in bed weather. The get cramped and waspish instead of bee-ish because they’re all crammed in the hive. To make matters worse, the queen, who has been laying thousands of eggs, keeps laying thousands of eggs because that’s what queen bees do, rain or shine.

A cranking hive has about 50,000 bees. During the day, thousands of those bees are out flying, scouting, bringing in food. Hundreds are buzzing in the vicinity of the hive and there’s usually about twenty-five fanning on the landing board to keep things cool. When it rains, all the outdoor bees are on top of the workers who clean, tend to the queen, take care of the babies and keep order. Crowded, bored bees kind of disrupt the harmony of a hive. I think all the mothers know what I’m talking about here.
Bees are like people, being stuck inside is a real drag. After a week of rain, you can be sure you have a hive full of cranky bees. To challenge the situation further, the longer they’re stuck in the hive, the more crowded it gets because a good queen can lay up to 2,000 eggs per day.

Which brings us to the Swarm. Mid to late spring is the prime swarm time of year. A week of rain during that prime swarm time makes the swarm possibility almost a guarantee. From the bee point-of-view, swarming is the natural part of continuing the bees. From the keepers point-of-view, it can be disaster.
I had three swarms last year. I never thought a beehive could swarm more than once and three swarms were a particular curse because I lived next to neighbors who really, really, really hated the idea that I kept bees. Of course every single swarm went directly to their tree. Three swarms in their tree squashed any hope that they might learn to love my bees so after much agonizing and a week of no sleep I gave away my bees. The tension and worry they created over the fence wasn’t worth it.

I didn’t want to write about beekeeping anymore after the bees were gone.

Then the neighbors astonished me by selling selling their house a month later. I never saw that coming.
We met the new neighbors, who are very friendly but I kept a lid on the “I’m a beekeeper” conversation because I was pretty sad without the bees and was afraid the new neighbors would announce bee allergies or a just general dislike of anything to do with bees.
Imagine how happy I was to see this on their back porch last March:

Unpainted beehive on neighbors back porch

Jackpot. My new neighbor is a beekeeper.

We both started with new hives this spring. We talked of the possibility of swarms but felt it unlikely with new hives because 1. there just aren’t as many bees and 2. they’re so busy building up the hive that a stretch of bad weather doesn’t have the same claustrophobic effect.
And yet this is what I saw this afternoon:

Small apple tree bent over due to a swarm. Yes, this is my backyard.

To the Bee Mobile! Someday….
I called my neighbor and we captured the swarm. What a difference a year makes.

A recycle bin to held a hive frame sprayed with sugar water.

Getting the bees out of the tree takes firm shake of the tree to knock the queen down. The bees will go where she is. Yes it is really scary to knock a huge ball of bees into a recycle bin but you have to do it like you mean it otherwise the queen doesn’t move and the bees get angry.

Once they know where the queen is, they all gather on top of her and the swarm calms down completely.

A swarm is very gentle. It is easy to handle as long as you don’t annoy the bees. A swarm will hang out in one spot for a couple of hours to a couple of days because scout bees are looking for a new place to live and when they find it, the swarm will take off. It is vital to get a swarm into a new hive or they’ll go find their own place to live.

The bare necessities for a captured swarm.

I made a mad run to the local bee supply store–yes thank goodness there is one about 20 minutes away–for the basics: A deep box, 10 frames, bottom board, inner and outer covers. Then I went to Home Depot for cinder blocks. Then I painted the outside of the hive with 2 coats of primer. In the meantime, the bees were just hanging out in a recycle bin while the scouts were on the loose.

Swarm bin next to new hive

Getting the bees into the new hive is the most nerve wracking step…unless you’ve got to get a swarm off a transformer. They have to be dumped onto the frames with the hope that queen goes in without killing her. They don’t like to be dumped so they get pretty mad pretty quick.

Dumped bees with (hope, hope, hope) queen.

If the queen is in the new hive, most of the bees quickly follow. My dump move was a bit lame but I got the queen in on the first try so I had to scoop several handful of bees onto the hive. They did not like that at all. What amazed me was how quickly they settled despite my blundering ministrations.
Within twenty minutes, a bunch of bees were fanning on the landing board to let the scouts and stray bees know they had found a new home.

Bees fanning to call the rest of the hive.

And there you have it. A new season, two new hives and I can write about bees again.

My Adventurous Bike Ride in 11 Tweets

I am EFSweetman on Twitter, the Vespa Piaggio Poster Girl

MY ADVENTUROUS BIKE RIDE by E. F. Sweetman ‏@EFSweetman

Chapter 1
A quick bike ride after the ball game with the unexpected eye-candy of naked (and drunk) guy lying at the end of Washington Street

Chapter 2
“Dude! Put on your pants!” were my words of encouragement as, you see, his soaked jeans were somewhere in the vicinity of his his bare bum.

Chapter 3
A bleary-eyed stare from two eyes on the head; couldn’t see the one-eyed monster as he had tucked his naughty bits between his hairy thighs.

Chapter 4
Tutting and clacking citizens gave this bare fellow a wide berth. I queried for his health with a chorus bark of “Drunk!” for their reply.

Chapter 5
Sirens and squealing tires as Beverly’s finest arrived on the scene. Our naked Drunk! fellow groaned. I think he recognized that sound.

Chapter 6
Two burley officers marched upon the unfortunate boozy buffer. Their abrupt queries were received with a complete surrender–all was exposed

Chapter 7
The crowd gasped or guffawed, a few did both, mothers shielded children’s eyes as burly officers hoisted up the young starker by his armpits

Chapter 8
“Cover up!” ordered the bald officer (who never looked more like a human penis than at that moment) “No point to that anymore!” yelled a man

Chapter 9
Unceremoniously dumped into the squad car, our eyes were spared any further assault of the naked man. He gave a friendly wave from inside.

Chapter 10
“This is why you shouldn’t drink beeeyah!” scolded a weathered mom of a fat young man on a Razor scooter. The buzzing crowd dispersed

Chapter 11
That is how I survived a terrifying encounter with a drunk, naked man at the end of Washington Street. I pedaled home & hugged my children.
Collapse
Reply Delete Favorite
from Beverly, MA
6:35 PM – 27 May 12 via web · Details

FIN

Over Attached and Monsterous

All right, somebody has to say it and it’s going to be me. This is ridiculous:

Here’s a little glimpse of Attachment Parenting. In case you don’t really understand, she’s Mom Enough and the rest of us schlubs are just Loser Moms.
This photo is wrong in so many ways yet why is it so forbiddingly taboo to say anything about it except “It’s a beautiful, moving and totally awesome picture of…of…of a three-year old who’s nearly the size of a line-backer nursing at his hot mother’s bosom!” Oh My God! Did anyone else bring to mind the hilarious passage about the weaning of Gussie from A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN when they saw that photo?
We need to get a grip and recognize the load of unbearable hogwash that is shoved down our collective gullet about Attachment Parenting. It’s a guilt-laden, exclusive notion that marginalizes 99.9% of mother’s today who have to 1. work, 2. manage busy households, 3. have some kind of friendly if not loving relationship with an adult and 4. raise one (or more) baby who will be able to navigate this planet, take over and continue life on earth in a reasonably sustainable manner. None of that will happen if societal pressure crushes the natural course of humankind to raise strong, independent children who are able to explore, discover and learn about the world in reasonable measures. We need to stop reacting in the manner that allows us to think if we’re not Attachment Parenting, we’re not parenting at all.
I am not talking about throwing a one-year old in traffic or swapping breast milk for orange soda–which is a typically predictable circled-wagons retort when it’s even hinted that Attachment Parenting is absurd. I am outright saying that this is a damaging parenting fad that determines nearly unattainable and extreme parenting measures which haven’t been proven yet is praised to the skies by a small cadre of groupies who also manage to undermine good and earnest parenting techniques.
The reality of having and raising children is not to keep them in a diaper until age 15 while they breastfeed until college. Oh is my backlash a little extreme? Sorry, it’s just the image of a kid with a hand the size of a snow shovel nursing at his mother’s breast has me feeling kind of radical. I think it’s the smug look on both their faces that makes me really lash out. Am I Mom Enough? No, I guess not…but I think YOU are completely insane and you both give me the creeps.
Attachment Parenting, a rigorous method of parenting developed by pediatrician William Sears is based on an 8 principle philosophy of parenting that encourages a strong emotional bond with caregivers that result in lifelong consequences. It’s a notion that somehow hooked enough media attention to give a core of influential parents/caregivers a loud, strident, preachy and judgemental voice. It has also managed to guilt the masses into a shameful state that if they aren’t mashing organic turnips, draping the communal bed in organic sheets and swathing a two-year old to their body for daily walks, home school and sacrifice every adult pleasure in favor of baby, they suck as parents and should drown themselves in the polluted waters of an uncool third world country.
There’s no way I’m going to state my principles of parenting in this tirade except to hint that I believe part of childrearing is setting a wonderful example of how good it is to grow up, to be a successful adult, to manage in an adult world. I just don’t see how that translates well if I tried to infantalize my children by creating a human barrier to how they learned about the world.
Therefore! To the core of preachy, judgemental attachment parents forming a posse in order to drown me in polluted waters: I don’t have a problem with raising children in a loving manner that works best for you. I do have a problem with your denouncing other parents loving, appropriate and decent childrearing as inadequate. Keep your weird and creepy style to yourself.