Caution: rant ahead

A friend of mine emailed recently to let me know that after five years of living under her husband's name, she's come to realize it's just not her, and she has decided to bushwack through a jungle of paperwork to return to the name she was given at birth.

My first thought was, "let's throw the sister a party!"

I wrote to tell her congratulations and mentioned that even though she was married when I met her, she had never struck me as someone who would change her name when she got married. She said she was relieved to hear I hadn't pegged her as a name-taking kind of gal - not that there's anything wrong with it!

I have to disagree. I do think there's something wrong with a woman taking her husband's name when she gets married. I have a lot of good friends (or had, maybe, once they read this,) who are strong, smart women and say it was their personal choice to take change their names on their wedding days. I think that's a cop out. Marriage is no longer the sexist institution it once was, but there's still a lot of institutionalized sexism, and how can we expect to shake it if we don't shatter the nearly subconscious perception changing our names give: ie. that once a woman is married, she leaves her independent self behind and becomes part of her husband's household. My women friends may be liberated themselves, but they're not helping the cause any.

Women are no longer their husband's legal property; they rarely vow to obey in this country, and dowries are pretty much a thing of the past. But women are still expected to change their identity when they get married. It would be different if men were held to the same expectations, but you never hear the groom being asked if he'll take his wife's name. (Actually, I did ask this of my brother-in-law. He thought it was a ridiculous idea. I think he even laughed. Fortunately, he has a lot of other redeeming qualities.) Maybe if couples were asked, "whose name will you be taking?" I wouldn't have such a problem with it. But here and now, like most domestic responsibilities, the burden falls to the wife.

There are always exceptions. I know a couple of men who have hyphenated last names, and I say good for them! I know one guy who decided with his wife to come up with a completely different last name for the both of them. Bold! I am proud to count among my friends at least three who have spent time as stay-at-home dads and a few more who share equally in household chores. This is progress, but it's not equality. We women have more freedom and choices today because of the women who came before us and fought for our rights. We can't give up the struggle just because things have gotten easier for us. Women still earn less than men and face discrimination in the workplace when pregnant. Legislation has secured us many more rights than we once had, but we still have to fight the pervading perception that women are most valuable in the home.

And if you're not part of the solution, Sister, you're part of the problem.

A Portland story

A few months ago, as you'll recall, I did something really stupid. I left my bike out on the front porch overnight and, shockingly, someone stole it. Dumb AnnaRay.

A few days ago, two complete strangers did something really nice. They'd read about my dilemma on a local blog devoted to reuniting stolen riders with their bikes, and they spotted one that matched my description outside a local breakfast joint. (In a neat "Twilight Zone" spin, it happened to be one of the two or three places The Boy and I frequent on our Saturday mornings out together. But we've never biked there, so it's sort of an extraneous if interesting detail. Moving on ...)

The bike was tied to a rack with a sign on it that advertised it for sale for $30 -- if interested, "Call Bruce." This kind couple put their own lock on to keep it there, and emailed me. Later, they took the bike home and ditched it in their back yard to await my arrival.

The sad news: Not my bike. The even sadder news: When "Bruce" came back to the rack and saw what our friendly couple had done, he stole someone else's bike.

To my thinking, this is sort of the quintessential Portland story: Well-meaning people doing well-meaningthings, and occasionally leaving the world even more screwed up as a result. It's refreshing, and yet depressing at the same time.

Sigh. I do miss my bike.

Rejoining the workforce

So, which is more dangerous: picking up a hitchhiker or biking to work in a thong?

Anyhoo, I started my new job last week. I have colleagues now, and when they ask me questions, I know the answer, unlike at home where I'm faced with a barrage of "Why?" this and "Why?" that every time the Boy exhales. It's nice to feel relevant again.

The schedule is a bit of a challenge. I work ten hours a week over three days, which is just enough time to get next to nothing done at the office and arrive late to pick up The Boy at school. I'm also working on a little freelance video project this summer (that I talked my way into before I knew I had successfully talked my way into the part-time position,) so there's that much less time in my day to get things done around the house. The hardest part, though, is not the juggling so much as the awkwardness I feel when I explain I have to schedule my work around my child rearing.

The people I work with are most understanding. This is Portland, after all, where folks seem to have their priorities in place and value having a life as much as - if not more than - having a career. Still, there's something unseemly to me about bringing up my parental duties at work. As if that makes me less qualified to join the work force. As if the work place is no place for a mother.

I'm not sure where I get that idea. Like I said, no one is giving me a hard time at work. Maybe I just don't like making excuses, however legitimate they may be. (Floyd Landis doesn't make excuses, and look what he just did on a degenerated hip.) Or maybe it's an East Coast attitude I cannot shake. I was talking to a friend in DC who has a 3-month-old and is constantly asked not whether she's returning to work but when.

Being able to balance work and family is essential not only for a happy individual, but also for a healthy society. Yet it's not something we do well in this country. The fact that employers rarely offer paid maternity leave or flex schedules means most women must put their kids in day care to return to work, then they're demonized for doing so. Yet here I've realized my ideal of meaningful part-time work that allows me to stay at home with the kid for most of the day, and I can't seem to shake the feeling that I'm doing it all wrong.

At what point do we stop feeling like we don't deserve what we know is best for us?

One last thought

One last thought on hitchhiking: I think the rules change when you have a spouse, and then they change again when you have a child. When you're flying solo, take whatever risks you want as long, of course, as you're not putting other innocents at risk in the process. Jump out of a plane, pick up a hitchhiker, eat $1 sushi at a restaurant in the Midwest. Go for it.

But when there are other people depending on you -- not just your life insurance policy -- it's a different ballgame. You have a greater responsibility to keep yourself out of harm's way, even if it's less fun.

Plus -- and this is the key in this situation, I think -- the responsibility isn't just to do what you think is reasonable and safe. Judybat asked me several years ago to stop eating meat at fast food places. Because I love and respect her (and because I don't to hear 'I told you so,' should I catch Mad Cow disease), I've agreed. I'm asking her not to pick up hitchhikers. These are the compromises we make in our marriage.

I will admit that she's absolutely right on one count: We see the world differently. I'm convinced every plane I step on is going to crash, and also that I'm going to be famous and filthy rich someday; she's convinced she's never going to die in a plane or win a lottery ticket. I do view the world as a darker place. Perhaps it's the journalism talking. Perhaps it's just brain chemistry. Either way, I believe part of being in a healthy relationship is adjusting your personal choices based on the fears and wishes of your spouse. Give and take.

Plus, as most of us have the good sense to know, I'm right on this one. So there.

Rebuttal

It must suck to live in a world in which everyone you meet is a potential Shropshire Slasher. How can you stand it? If you had a less jaundiced view, you might see that some people are worth talking to, even if it means you have to trust them as far as the next exit. Like that nice French couple we picked up in Yosemite - remember? They were spending a year hiking through the Sierra Nevada with their 1-year-old and needed a ride back to their llamas, which they had tied up outside the park because you're not allowed to bring live stock in. Sure they were a little bit smelly, (did I mention they were French?) and maybe even a little crazy, (did I mention they were spending a year hiking through the mountains with a 1-year-old and two llamas?) but they were also very interesting, grateful and certainly not dangerous.

You get a sense for these things. I have stopped to pick up a handful of people in the last 20 years, and driven past many, many more. I do not pick people on random stretches of highway, for example, because it's harder to judge where these people are coming from and what their intentions are. The only time I picked up a lone, male hitchhiker was on the way to a ski slope, and he was carrying a snowboard. When I saw the young (and not smelly) woman the other day, I was driving through suburban Portland - hardly a hotbed for carjacking - and I asked where she was going. She told me the highway she needed to get to (ten minutes from where we were and on my way) so she could hitch a ride out to the coast. I'm not saying there were no unknowns. But life is risky, and I will not live in fear.

I'm sure this attitude will terrify people like my dad, but my dad hasn't gotten on a plane since 9/11 because he thinks flying is too dangerous. My dad's philosophy is Trust No One. I can't live like that.

I've had to trust a lot of people in my life, in ways big and small, and while I can't say I've never been burned, I've never come close to losing life or limb or livelihood. I ask questions. I weigh my options. I do not throw caution to the wind. You can walk around thinking every encounter is a chance to get screwed or a chance to learn; I chose the latter. Of course, sometimes they're one and the same, but in my 37 years of approaching life with an open mind and an open heart - and my eyes wide open - I've gained much more than I've lost.

The nice, young, pleasant-smelling woman told me she's been hitchhiking for 10 years. She's traveled all over the country - passing up some rides here and there, judging them unsafe - and has never had a problem. She said she finally got a car about three months ago, but her license was suspended. She said she hopes to get it back soon and vows to be more careful when she does.

Sometimes the risky road is the safest.

Stick out your thumb

There's a debate raging in the little green house, and we need some input.

One of us -- I'll let you guess which -- picked up a hitchhiker this week. She was driving without TheBoy, and the hitchhiker was a relatively sane and safe looking young woman. The other one of us thinks this was absolutely insane and irresponsible behavior that should have stopped about the time the wedding vows were taken, and certainly before Junior joined the world.

So we need your help. Picking up complete and probably smelly strangers who could kill you and leave your mangled body by the side of the road: Acceptable or not?

(Sidenote to our mothers: Please stop screaming. Everything turned out fine.)

Just another quiet night at the pool

Pregnant lady nearly got in a fistfight this evening. OK, maybe not quite. But I still had one of those moments that make me worry that the small fetus inside me will come out with Hulk-like random flashes of rage.

TheBoy was enjoying the neighborhood pool's water slide -- climb up the ladder, slide down, immediately demand to be put down so you can go slide again -- when suddenly a large man ran over, grabbed him by the leg and began yelling at him. The kid tripped on the concrete, and began wailing. I hustled over and demanded to know just what the hell dude thought he was doing.

"Your son was grabbing my son's legs on the ladder!"

He was in my face, a lot closer than I'm used to anyone reasonable getting in my happy little white-picket-fence world. I was, of course, not exactly rational at that point and yelled back that there was no reason, ever, for him to touch my kid. He yelled again. My worst side came out, and I told him -- pardon the French, kids -- to back the fuck off. I'm ashamed to say some finger pointing was involved.

Remarkably, however, he did back the fuck off. He took a step away from me, and I calmed down enough to tell him that if he had a problem with my kid, all he had to do was come tell me. I was the one catching him on the slide -- over and over and over again. Clearly, I have some kind of parental duty here. If he's done something wrong, I'm going to get all over his ass. That's my job.

Dude relaxed. It helped, I think, that at some point I shifted from sticking my finger in his face to putting a hand on his arm. A gentle hand. Not the, "I want to punch you in the face or squeeze your balls until you die for daring to even look at my child," hand that my animal brain wanted to be using. He apologized for grabbing TheBoy. I apologized for cursing at him. We retreated to far off corners of the pool. I managed not to weep.

Notice that I'm not mentioning that the guy was a fairly large Middle Eastern-looking man, because I'm not the kind of person who would register such a fact. Except I am that kind of person. And I'm really ashamed of pretty much the entire incident.

Not the best night at the pool. All that, and the ice cream machine was broken.

All boy

The oddest thing has happened. Our sweet, kind, gentle baby has turned into a rough, loud, ferocious little boy. He loves nothing more than splashing as wildly as possible in the pool. He puts on his Superman pajamas and announces, "I go faster in these!" I walk outside just in time to here Judybat chastise him for his treatment of a spider: "Sometimes you sit in my chair, but I don't pull your legs off!"

I used to be one of those who believe girls and boys emerge exactly alike, and that it's society that puts them in their hard and fast gender boxes. I still think nurture has a lot to do with the finished product. But ... it's hard for me to look at the little girls playing nicely in the pool and the little boys wandering away from their swim classes to chase shiny objects and not think that our basic makeup is sort of set.

The good news: Junior still prefers pink to just about every color. And you should see his blue glitter nail polish.

The good news is ...

I got a job. That's right - strike up the band - I got a job. It's part time and temporary, but it's doing what I want to do, so Yippee!

Now for the bad news: I had to buy new clothes. Ugh.

I am a remedial shopper at best, hindered further by a curvy body in world designed for less lumpy shapes. To me, time spent trying on clothes feels like a time out. For the past year and a half, I've been getting away with, what I like to call "Mommy Casual," which is maybe one step above the gowns they give you to wear in the hospital. I have one pair of super-looking grey slacks that I wear to every interview and adult-type occassion, but what happens when I have to show up looking respectable two days in a row? Fortunately for me, I have a friend with a sense of style, and our kids are in school at the same time, so we took a little trip to Nordstrom.

I like Nordstrom. Sure it's overpriced, but you can walk in and say to the saleswoman, "I need something pretty," and she will take care of you. The last time I went I was looking for a dress to wear to a wedding, and the saleswoman pulled something off the rack I thought looked dreadful on the hangar - something I would never have given a second look except to wonder, who would wear that? But dutifully, I tried it on, because the woman handing it to me was not my mother, and it looked fabulous! In fact, I got many unsolicited compliments on it at the wedding.

Fast forward to my most recent trip to Nordies and the search for slacks. With the help of my friend and the solicitous sales staff, I managed to find some nice-looking - dare I say fashionable? - pants. Yippee! But there was a black cloud in my sunny sky: unsightly panty lines! Ugh.

"Have you considered a thong?" the sales woman asked. I looked to my friend. "That's all I wear," she said. "Well, ok then," I said, and we headed over to the lingerie department. We searched through the racks, and my friend held up a few pair with buttons and bows and things. "I'm thinking more Ernest Hemingway and less Jane Austen," I said. She had no idea what I was talking about, but we managed to find some minimally adorned styles to my liking. I'm used to buying my underwear in bulk, so there was a little sticker shock at the counter, but in the end, I went home happily with three sleek pairs: my thong starter set.

If all this is too much information, you may want to skip the next paragraph, in which I take my first thong out for a test drive.

The saleswoman at the lingerie counter told me I should give it at least a week, that thongs take a little getting used to, but I had no problem with them whatsoever. The thing that always bothered me about wedgies was not so much the feeling of my panties all in a bunch as the knowledge that they were forming a hideously visible bulge on my backside. No such worries with a thong! Sure it's a little weird having that narrow piece of fabric running up your butt, but it's easy enough to ignore when you think of the how nice your butt looks. The hardest part for me was keeping my own hand off my ass, as I kept wanting to run it over the smooth, unlined expanse of my new pants. That wouldn't play well in the workplace. But all in all, I'd have to say the great thing experiment was a big success.

Yippee!

Halfway home

We hit 20 weeks in doctor-speak and 18 weeks in real-people-speak tomorrow. That means we're nearly halfway toward hatching our second little progeny on the world. So far, so good. That nasty little test of a few weeks ago apparently came back negative. The fetus seems to be growing at a reasonable pace and has all the appropriate parts, at least judging by the ultrasound last week.

And how is the happy mother-to-be? Physically, I'm better. The gas -- should I have stuck a TMI alert in there before mentioning the farting again? -- has calmed down. I'm still exhausted, but not peeing quite so often. The brief bout of odd food cravings has passed.

But on the other hand, I'm feeling freakin' huge. I am, for the first time in my life, truly fat. Not a little overweight. Not a tad pudgy. FAT. I have a middle, and my middle has a middle, but no apparent beginning or end. My rear end ... well, it's getting harder and harder to separate my belly from my butt. Yes, it's that bad. That whole canard about women being beautiful when they're pregnant? Not this woman. I just look like I've let myself go. A lot.

I know this is part of the process, and I'm trying to embrace it. My mother was kind enough to buy me a bunch of maternity clothes, and when I tried them on this weekend, it was a revelation. Clothes aren't supposed to be uncomfortable. You're supposed to be able to breathe in your pants. Imagine that!

Still, this is taking some getting used to. Today, I finally broke out a maternity top and let my gut hang. A coworker came up to me today with a relieved look on his face. He'd just heard I was pregnant. And he was very pleased, because, you know, he'd been wondering ... "You haven't really looked like yourself recently."

Uh, no. I haven't. It's that extra 5, 10, 15 pounds. Thanks for noticing.

Our first glimpse of the beta version

It seemed like a good idea at the time, to bring The Boy to our ultrasound appointment so he could see the baby growing in Mommy's tummy. That was before I realized it would take at least an hour for the technician to take the 80 pictures she needed of the baby's various parts from various angles. The Boy sat quietly for about five of those minutes, then he wanted to know if the monitor we were watching also showed cartoons.

Ah, the sad plight of the second child. "Look, there's a foot!" your mommy says as the ultrasound wand is guided over her gel-ied belly. I'd like to look, but right now I have to deal with your brother, who is climbing onto my shoulders because he wants to stand on my head. We'd like to attend your start in this world with the same fascination and awe on which we lavished your brother's beginnings, but we're a little distracted. Also, I'm sorry to say, there's a been-there-done-that quality to the whole adventure. Sorry, kid. You should have gotten here first.

The good news is everything seems to be normal. As for the big question that people seem pathologically driven to ask: We won't know if it's a boy or a girl until the the kid joins us on the outside. We asked the technician to avoid any areas that might give us a clue as the baby's sex, and she was happy to comply. I figure we'll have plenty of time to stick the kid in a box and slap a label on it, as we humans are driven to do. No need to start in utero.