Sexual Assault Prevention Tips, Guaranteed to Work

I can't take credit for this one, it actually comes from a site called No, Not You. Love the text, but the graphic design is making me a little nuts! :) So I'm reposting here, because it should absolutely be shared.

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are committing a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

You know you're an adult when...

...your kid throws up in the car.

I don't drive often, maybe half a dozen times a year. So I'm always a bit nervous about it, just because I don't have enough practice to be really confident.

A few weeks ago, I had borrowed my parents' car (eep!) which they are trying to sell (eep!), and was driving home with my daughter in the back seat. And all of a sudden I heard a distinctive little "brup" sound coming from behind me. Oh, no...but okay, it's just a little tiny bit of vomit, and we're almost home, she should be okay for a few minutes...

Then...brup...brup...BRUP...BRUUUUP...waaaah!!!

Right, then. This is no longer a small amount of puke, this is a whole lot of puke. Like, a LOT. And it's all over her. And there's no way I can leave her like that till we get home, she'll have her hands all in it, and who knows what.

I turned onto a side street, and found a safe place to park. And honestly, my first thought after that was to call my mom for help. Then I thought I'd call my husband for help. And then reality set in, and all of a sudden I was in charge, I was the mom who had to deal with the situation, all by myself.

I'm proud to say that I did deal with it, and everything was fine. (The car is still unsold, but I'm pretty sure that's just a coincidence...) But you know those moments, when you realize 100% for sure that you're a grownup? This was one of them.

And then...

...your kid has a meltdown at (someone else's) birthday party.

DD had a rough night on Friday night. Or rather, she had a fine night, with an extended playtime between midnight and 3:00 am. She was perfectly happy, it was her dad and I who had the rough night! Then she woke up at 6:15 am on Saturday morning - likely due to the bottle and a half of milk we pumped into her in the middle of the night, trying to get her back to sleep. Her diaper, pyjamas, sheets, everything was soaked, so no wonder she couldn't sleep anymore.

And then, she didn't have a nap all day. And we had a birthday party to go to on Saturday evening.

So needless to say, I was on high alert for any signs of an impending meltdown, just in case we had to put the cake down and get the hell out of Dodge.

She was fine, for a while. The party was at an indoor playground, and she had a wonderful time playing in the ball pit and on the rocking horses. But the jig was eventually up, and she started getting fussy and crabby. DD is pretty quiet, most of the time. But when she's done, she is DONE, and she gets pretty loud.

I don't think the other parents were judging me, or at least not judging-judging, but I do assume they were watching me (how could they not be, when DD was screaming her head off?). And if they're anything like me, they would have been partly sympathetic (thank goodness that's not my kid, but I've been there, I know what it's like) and partly evaluating (oh, that's a good idea what that mom said/ oh, I don't think I would have said that...)

Again, I think I handled things pretty well. But there's nothing like Parenting in a room full of other parents - especially parents who are strangers - to make you hyper-aware of your own parenting style, and that even if you don't feel like a grownup, you better be darn sure you're acting like one...

Cute Toddler Brag

It's pouring rain here in Toronto. So when I left this morning, I got all suited up in my new MEC gear (yay!), and got DD all ready with the rain shield for her stroller. Her feet stick out the bottom of the cover, so I even took the extra step of covering her legs with a garbage bag and a towel to keep her dry.

About halfway through our walk to day care, I realized that I was getting some funny looks from passers-by. Some of them were smiling at DD (not unusual), and some of them were giving me the She's A Bad Mom look (very unusual). So I went to the front of the stroller to see what was going on. Turns out DD had squirmed her way out from under the rain guard, and was sitting right forward at the front of the stroller in the rain. Soaked to the skin, and happy as anything!

Silly little duck. (But at least her feet were dry, lol!)

Beautiful image, and a compliment

I was chatting with one of the little girls on my street the other day - I think she's about 7 or 8. She asked what my DD's name is, and I told her. Then she asked what her last name is, and I told her that.

She repeated both names, thought about it for a second, and said "That sounds like a lake."

What a lovely thing to say!

Blogging for Choice (repost)

(This was posted on my original blog, which I have since shut down. I am reposting it here as my submission to the October 2009 edition of the Carnival of Feminist Parenting.)

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January 28th 2008 marks the 20th anniversary of the Morgenthaler decision, which declared that it is unconstitutional to force a woman to carry a fetus to term. This is a very big deal, of course, but there is still a question of semantics to be decided…as I understand it, the decision did not so much legalize abortion as make it not-illegal – and a woman’s right to an abortion is still not guaranteed in Canada.

To celebrate this decision – and to help ensure that the issues remain in the public eye – Canadian pro-choice bloggers have declared January 22nd “Blog for Choice” day. As always, a big thanks to Antonia for the idea, and my contribution follows.

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As you know, I have a healthy, happy fetus kicking around in my uterus right now, distracting me from all sorts of other important things that I should be doing. And as you also know, this was a planned pregnancy – so it’s safe to assume that I would never have considered terminating it, even for one second.

But a lot of that is down to luck, and to my particular combination of circumstances. I’m tremendously lucky to have a loving, supportive partner, who is as excited as I am, and who can’t wait to be a father. I’m also lucky to have loving supportive family and friends nearby, and lucky to have enough money to raise this child into adulthood. She won’t be getting a car for her 16th birthday (although if all goes well, her dad and I might just be able to afford one for ourselves by then!), but she will have food, clothing, school trips, Christmas presents, and everything else she needs.

So I’m immensely lucky as a parent…but of course my daughter is going to be the recipient of tremendous good fortune as well. Not only the supportive family and friends mentioned above, but she will also have plenty of food and clean drinking water running freely in her home. And not only will she have this clean water available for drinking and cooking, but she will be able to pour litres and litres of it down the drain as she takes a shower or flushes the toilet. In fact, my daughter will be flushing the toilet with cleaner water than most of the world has to drink – and I hope we can raise her to understand what a privilege that is.

She will also have access to some of the best taxpayer-funded education and healthcare in the world, and if she chooses to go to university, she will have both the rights and the means to make that happen.

But what if you’re not so lucky? What if you’re too young, too poor, too sick, to be able to raise a child? What if you already have six kids, or you live in a country where you don’t have access to enough food, water, or medical care? It’s hard work, this parenting thing, and not everyone has the emotional or financial wherewithal to handle it.

Of course adoption is always an option as well. But I’m discovering that pregnancy itself is also very hard work – there’s nausea, fatigue, a thousand different kinds of discomfort, crazy hormonal surges, and of course the financial cost of replacing your entire wardrobe as your body expands.

Plus you have to take a ton of time off work for doctor’s appointments. My pregnancy is about as low-risk as they come, and still in the past five months I’ve had six medical appointments and four ultrasounds. And more are scheduled for down the line as well. Apart from one of the ultrasounds, that’s about the minimum that anyone in Ontario would have – and of course, all these appointments take place during regular 9-5 working hours, which means I’m taking time away from my job to attend. So once again, I’m one of the lucky ones – not only a low-risk pregnancy that requires minimal medical attention, but I have a salaried job and an understanding boss who doesn’t mind all the time I’m taking off as long as my work gets done. Not to mention that I don’t have to pay for all these appointments – I can’t imagine living in the United States or some place where these costs would all come out of my own pocket.

Or even living in Canada, where the health care costs are covered – not everyone can take the time away from work like I am. There are many many women out there who work for an hourly wage, and who don’t get time off for medical appointments, and who don’t get paid if they don’t put in the hours. And how many of these women are already using their entire hourly wage to support their families? Would they be able to afford the financial costs of pregnancy, let alone child rearing?

I know exactly how lucky I am to be in the position that I am in, and to be able to say with confidence that I never considered terminating this pregnancy. But not everyone is as well off as I am – and even I have not always been where I am today. If I had gotten pregnant, say, ten years ago, my circumstances would have been entirely different. I was still in school, still living paycheque to paycheque, and although I can’t remember who my boyfriend was at the time, I can guarantee that neither of us was at all ready for parenthood. If had gotten pregnant then, would I have had an abortion? I don’t know what I would have done, but I do know that I would at least have considered it.

And I would have considered myself lucky, even then, to have had the option of not continuing the pregnancy, and of avoiding the huge financial and emotional costs of bearing a child that I was not equipped to raise at that point in my life.

It's too early for the terrible twos, isn't it?

My charming, cheerful, giggly 13-month old turned into a terrible two-year old - overnight!

She had a full-on temper tantrum this morning, complete with screaming, crying, and general theatrics. When it was finally over and we were on our way to day care, I bumped into a neighbour who lives behind us and 5-6 houses down the street. When I told her about the tanrum, she said "Oh! So it was H that I heard!" (Let me tell you, that kid can YELL.)

Anyway. The reason I'm giving myself a gold star is that I think I handled it quite well, all things considered. I was reading just the other day about the phrase "when you do X, I'll know you're ready for Y." So I tried it - "when you stop screaming, I'll know you're ready for a hug." I kept a discreet eye on her to make sure she wasn't hurting herself, then went about my business getting ready for work.

Every few minutes, I repeated the same phrase, then when she did stop screaming, I picked her up and gave her a hug. I had to repeat it a couple of times, because I had to keep putting her back on the floor (can't blowdry my hair while holding her, for example!). But on the whole, I think I did pretty well - at least I laid the groundwork for "screaming is not an acceptable way to get Mummy's attention."

Ohhh, it's going to be a long two years, though! :)

My smart girl

Clearly, I have the smartest little one-year-old in the world (with apologies to all the moms who have the second-smartest!)

We have a little wooden book of farm animals, with a chicken and a magnet attached - there's a little piece of metal on each page to stick the magnet to. We were reading the book yesterday, and I showed her how to use the magnet, and she got it! That is, she knew that if she just put the chicken on the page, it should slide off. And she knew that something was weird, when I put it on the metal bit and it *didn't* slide off!

Yay, for clever girls who figure things out! :)

Everybody's talking about...being a bad parent

I put the day care story (in 140 characters or less) on my Twitter that morning, and that led to a whole series of conversations with other moms, about "good vs bad" parenting.

Earlier that day, I had been reading @phdinparenting's thoughts on the subject, here: http://bit.ly/X0qT The gist of that article is that you are not a perfect parent, but you should be a confident one.

So the next day, when I was Tweeting about my adventures, I referenced @phdinparenting, and told her that I had "very confidently" left DD at daycare. (I amuse myself, if no one else...)

She referred me to this post by @kgranju, who had done the same thing, and blogged about it: http://bit.ly/jQKQi . She had some interesting thoughts about the idea of "bad" parenting, namely that people who blog about their parenting mistakes are in a special position, as their readers will generally jump on board and assure them that yes, everyone does things like this, and no, they are not bad parents.

But just because the blogosphere says so, does that make it true? In her case, and in mine, we were lucky that we had left our kids in safe places, and there were no negative consequences other than our own embarrassment and some logistical hassles. But even good parents can be catastrophically unlucky, and it's often a very thin line between "good" parents and "bad" ones.

Then a timely article in the Toronto Star about how we are using the label "bad" as a backlash against the idea of the "perfect" parent. This is where I, and most of my friends, fall when we use the term.

We tend to mean it sort of semi-ironically, as a tip of the hat to the idea of the “perfect” mother. The “what would the neighbours think,” or “gasp - that’s not what it says in the baby book!” kind of thing.

For example, my girlfriend was teasing me about being a “bad” mom the other day because I was letting my DD (1 yr) feed herself dried cranberries and sunflower seeds. Because They Say that kids shouldn’t have small foods like that until they’re 2, or 4, or whatever age. We laughed, and agreed that yes, I’m clearly a Bad Mom.

But the thing is, she would never tease me about the things that she genuinely disagrees with. For example, we still go in to DD when she cries in the night. She does sleep through occasionally, but not regularly, and we’re fine with that for now. My friend was a big proponent of the cry-it-out method, and tells me that her girls were sleeping through the night quite young.

But we don’t ever talk about those differences in terms of “good” or “bad” parenting. In fact, we hardly talk about it at all. We sort of dance around the topic if it comes up, but then go back to safer ground.

So for us, we only use the label “bad” when it’s quite clear that we don’t mean it. If there’s any chance at all that we could be seen as judging each other’s choices, or that we really do think the other one is doing something wrong, we steer clear entirely.

I find that part especially interesting - that we only really talk about aspects of parenting that we agree about, and ignore areas where we disagree. Shouldn't it be the other way around? If we really agree on something, or at least agree that it doesn't matter all that much, shouldn't that be the bit that we talk about the least? As mothers, we're all in this game together, and we should be supporting each other and each other's choices (to the extent that our children's health and safety is not at stake, of course) But I find this happens a lot - we just don't talk about things that we really don't agree with. So rather than listening to other people's point of view, and learning from them, we tend to clam up and do our own thing anyway. And we hide behind the "Bad Mom" label when we don't really mean it, even if we're thinking it quietly to ourselves when we do.

Finally, @phdinparenting weighs in again, saying

I’m going to reserve the term “bad mother” for those that are truly abusive or neglectful. That isn’t to say that I’m lining up to give “mother of the year” awards to every other type I’ve described, but I don’t think that it is helpful for me or anyone else to label someone as a bad mother if they are doing their best. Instead I think we should stop glamourizing “bad”, we should offer a helping hand to those that are struggling, we should be confident in our own parenting, and we should continue to think about how we could improve.

And that's where we stand now. None of us is a perfect parent, by any means. And I like to assume that even those who are abusing or neglecting their kids are not necessarily bad parents, or bad people. They're also doing the best they can with what they have, and maybe they just need more help than some of the rest of us? There are very, very few parents in the world who can truly be labelled "bad." Most of us are just less than perfect...just like everyone else.

June 5, 2009 - Parent of the year award, right here

I forgot to pick up DD from day care last night!

DH normally picks her up, but he had his bike in for repairs and was going to get that instead after work. I knew that, but somehow forgot to translate it in my head to "it's my turn to pick up DD."

So I left work at the usual time, wandered around the grocery store for a bit, enjoyed the weather, and got home at 6:30. And nobody was home. I thought that was a bit unusual, and a bit annoying considering her bedtime is 7:00 and she still has to have dinner if they're out for a walk somewhere.

Then, the lightbulb went off.

So I phoned the DCP, told her I was on my way, and left the house in a tearing hurry. It was almost 7:00 by the time I got there...oops!!

DD was fine, of course, and the DCP was really nice about it. I offered to pay her for her time, and she said no - so I'll take her a bottle of wine on Monday to thank her instead.

And the best part, is that another friend of mine forgot to pick up her kid from day care as well yesterday, so I was giggling a bit at her Facebook status before I left work!

Ah, parenting...not for the faint of heart, that's for sure. :)

May 25, 2009 - Have you ever tried to shower with a baby?

I had to shower with one hand this morning, because I was holding DD with the other.

It went like this:

I childproofed, took off her PJ's, changed her diaper, gave her a bottle and a cookie, and got into the shower. She followed me into the bathroom, as she always does.

Now that she's cruising, she pulls up on anything that will hold her weight, including the side of the bathtub. So she was standing there, trying to climb in to the tub, dropping soggy cookie crumbs all over the place, and flinging the (wet!) shower curtain around.

I thought, hey, maybe she would like to sit at the end of the tub and play with some of her bathtub toys while I have a shower. It'll be inconvenient for me to have her sitting there, but at least there won't be water all over the bathroom.

So I took off her diaper, grabbed some toys, and set her up at the end of the tub.

She did NOT think this was a good idea. She howled, and cried, and tried to climb up my legs, and carried on as if it was the end of the world. So I picked her up, and of course she stopped crying and tried to play with the water coming out of the shower.

Problem is, I was in mid-shower, both of us were naked and wet, and there was no good way of getting out to get her back into her diaper. And I didn't want her peeing on the bathroom floor.

I couldn't put her out of the shower, and she wouldn't stay on the floor in the shower, so the only option was for me to hold her with one hand, and do all my shampooing etc with the other.

Have you ever tried to shower while holding a baby? It's not easy, I can tell you. But I did it! Now all I have to do is explain to my boss why I was late for work this morning...

January 7, 2009 - first day back to work

(There's going to be a lot of backdating going on here, as I sort through all the stuff that I've written but not posted over the past few months. Bear with me...)

Like a lot of moms, I had mixed emotions about going back to work after my mat leave. I was a little bit sad to be losing my time alone with DD, and a little bit excited to be getting back to the world of adults again. The good news was that DH was beginning two months paternity leave of his own, so at least we didn't have day care to add to the angst.

Even better news is that DH turned out to be a much better stay-at-home parent than I am, so I really did have nothing to worry about.

I wasn't on Twitter at the time, but I was certainly thinking in terms of Facebook statuses (stati?). In fact, I ended up narrating my entire first day of work to myself in that format! So here we go...

Megan:

...is wondering if it hurts to loosen the apron strings.

...thinks DD knows that something is up.

...is wearing a REAL BRA!

...is cleverly disguised as a fully functional human being.

...thinks that her gloves would be more effective if she actually put them on her hands.

...had forgotten how many people there are in the world, and how many of them can fit onto a subway car at rush hour.

...is glad that her office has direct access to the subway.

...has a spiffy new desk with a window. But no computer, phone, boss, or colleagues in the same department.

...is wondering what to do with herself.

...now has a computer, and is proceeding to deal with 665 new emails.

...really hates automatic soap dispensers.

...still loves her new bra!

...still doesn't have a phone, and is thinking of going home early.

JMegan has left the building

But not for long, because I never can keep my opinions to myself!

I've been missing blogging lately, due in no small part to my addiction to Twitter. Getting the word out there is great, but sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough for me. (Okay, most of the time. That's why I'm here, right?)

So why not revive my original blog, and keep going from there? I thought about it, but decided against it. I've shared a lot of personal information on that blog, including full names, pictures, and other details of myself and my family. And the more I think about it, the more I've decided I'm just not comfortable with that. It was fine (~ish) when I was blogging entirely about adults, but now that I have a daughter, I have a whole new perspective on the world of online information sharing.

And here we are. I'll still talk about my family, and parenting, and my work, and feminism, and all the other things that interest me. But I will leave off names and identifying details, and ask any commenters who know me to do the same.

More to come this weekend - I have a couple of posts lined up already! Looking forward to being out there in the world again...

~JMegan