After my loooong post the other day, I am presenting you with a shorter post on the same topic, addressing another of the supporting arguments in that ridiculous indictment of feminism that I lambasted because I was feeling fed up with the state of the sexist world that day.

The argument:  Because men simply won’t do housework, women have to work hard not only outside of the home, but inside, too; therefore, women should not work outside the home. (In my last post, I shared another example of this guy’s stunning logic.)

To be fair, here are some of his actual words:

The feminist promise that everything in their marriage will be 50-50 — each partner will do half the outside work, half the housework, and half the child rearing — has rarely panned out.

Most men will work their tails off outside the home, but won’t inside the home.

Consequently, many working women either experience increased tension with their husband or increased pressure to succeed both outside the home and inside the home as mother, homemaker, and wife.

Those dastardly feminists, expecting that men would help with housework. What a brilliant solution:  since men will not cook or clean, wives will simply have to quit their jobs and stay at home full time to do these things.

Hey, I want a wife! (Oh, haven’t I read that before?)

But there really is a logical solution to this problem. Raise boys who understand that it is their job to a) cook b) do dishes c) do laundry d) change diapers and e) etc., including all other household duties. Raise daughters who are aware enough to marry these kinds of sons and not the kinds raised by clueless parents who live by the ancient theory that drudgery is women’s work. When men can’t find slaves—er, I mean wives—they will be forced to change.

When I grew up, we girls helped with cooking, we did the dishes, cleaned floors, dusted and vacuumed. The boys took out trash and that kind of thing (I honestly can’t remember what else that kind of thing entailed—I suspect we were outworking them even then). One of my brothers now participates in all the household chores, while the other is of the persuasion that is is not his job to do housework (the funny thing is, his wife is of the persuasion that it is not her job either—this becomes distinctly not funny during family get-togethers when they both lounge about like the queen and king while the rest of us take care of the business of cooking and cleaning).

Okay, I promised this would be short and it’s becoming unshort.  Done.

Addendum:  Oh, and all you women who are married and working out of sheer necessity, if we follow Mr. Logic’s solution—sorry, you’re SOL.

My daughter didn’t just make lunch for me yesterday, she put together a beautiful feast.

Look at this! Apple fritters! OMG, these were DE-licious. (And sparkling cider there on the left.)

Two types of sandwiches! Egg salad and cucumber. Plus, a beautiful Polish (or Ukrainian, maybe) salad. And another (!) dessert—strawberries with Balsamic vinegar and mascarpone. Heavenly!

And tulips for the table.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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Strawberry Mascarpone Dessert (alternatively, could be called Died and Gone to Heaven Dessert)

4 pints fresh strawberries
1 cup mascarpone cheese; or more
2 teaspoon Balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoon granulated sugar
1 cup heavy cream

Slice strawberries and place in bowl. Add the balsamic vinegar and sugar and toss to distribute. Let macerate about 1 hour.

Remove 1 cup (or more) strawberries and reserve. Put remaining berries in a food processor along with the mascarpone and process till smooth. Beat heavy cream till whipped and gently but thoroughly combine with the mascarpone mixture.

Divide reserved sliced strawberries among 4-6 footed clear goblets and top with the mascarpone cream. Garnish with a whole berry.

This recipe was found here. (I think it’s funny that it says “let macerate.” Ha! Makes me think of insects chewing. Oh, I guess that’s masticate.)

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Dear P’s dinner went all wrong. He was making a curry from one of my recipe books and there was an error in the recipe! How annoying. It called for 12 cups (CUPS!) of water—in a curry to serve six. Don’t think so.  But I have to say, the beautiful lunch more than made up for it!

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And after this morning, I can attest that heavy cream and oatmeal do not a delicious breakfast make. Wouldn’t've tried it, except we were out of milk.

YogaMum tagged me back! Here’s a marriage meme for Valentine’s Day.

1. Where / how did you meet?
At a coffee shop. He sat down at my table. We talked. We went out for dinner. We saw each other again and again and again. (There’s a longer version, but this is the short, sweet one.)

2. How long have you known each other?
Twelve and a half years.

3. How long after you met did you start dating?
Immediately!

4. How long did you date before you were engaged?
Maybe a month. I knew within minutes of meeting him that we would be married—this sounds weird, but I had a vision of a wedding ring on his hand and I just knew it.

5. How long was your engagement?
Six months.

6. How long have you been married?
Twelve years.

7. When is your anniversary?
January 1.

8. How many people came to your wedding reception?
Hmmm, don’t remember. I think about fifty.

9. What kind of cake did you serve?
White?

10. Where was your wedding?
At a Divine Science church. The reception was at our house (which, until then, was my house).

11. What did you serve for the meal?
There wasn’t a formal meal. We served food buffet style after the wedding—people brought dishes to share (this was a very informal reception).

12. How many people were in your bridal party?
My daughter and a best man.

13. Are you still friends with them all?
No, the best man apparently didn’t like me very much (we ran into him downtown a couple of years ago and he said in a shocked voice, “You two are still together?”).

14. Did your spouse cry during the ceremony?
No. I didn’t either, but I shook like a leaf.

15. Most special moment of your wedding day?
My daughter playing her violin and reciting her letter to her new step-dad (she had just turned 10). The letter was about her hopes for their relationship and it was lovely.

16. Any funny moments?
During photo time after the ceremony, the best man made my grandfather laugh by clowning behind the camera (too bad he didn’t like me—he was funny!). As a result, we got the best photo of Grandpa ever (he didn’t usually smile for the camera—probably didn’t like his smile).

17. Any big disasters?
Other than shaking like a leaf—no.

18. Where did you go on your honeymoon?
To Jamaica. We stayed here. It was a beautiful, beautiful place to stay, but we were ready to leave by the time our honeymoon was over.

19. How long were you gone?
Ten days. It seemed a very long time to lounge in one place. I wonder if I would think that now, with the meditation and contemplative lifestyle I’ve gotten used to?

20. If you were to do your wedding over, what would you change?
I might change the weather. It was very cold and snowy.

21. What side of the bed do you sleep on?
The north side.

22. What size is your bed?
Queen.

23. Greatest strength as a couple?
We love to spend time together.

24. Greatest challenge as a couple?
Dealing with stuff like finances. We both like to hide our heads in the sand.

25. Who literally pays the bills?
I do.

26. What is your song?
We don’t have one, but he loves all romantic songs. I like some romantic songs, but I have to like the song itself, not just the words; he’ll go for sappy words! I’m not as romantic as he is.

27. What did you dance your first dance to?
I don’t remember.

28. Describe your wedding dress.
White. Lacy sleeves, lacy bodice. Pretty, but not very formal.

29. What kind of flowers did you have at your wedding?
I don’t remember exactly, but we had a lot.

30. Are your wedding bands engraved?
Yes, they say My love, my life, my world. Because the rings were made in, and shipped from, Germany, I was a little worried they’d mess up the English. Silly worry! I should’ve known Germans wouldn’t do something like that (I’m half German myself, and I know all about perfectionism).

Tagging . . . hmmm, I’m not sure who all is married and who is not. So I tag these three married folk: Jan, Diane, Fran.

Jan tagged me a few days ago, but I’ve been in the real world and out of the cyber world, so am just now getting around to it. This is similar to that ten facts about me meme I did recently, but I’ll try to think of new tidbits for this one.

The rules:

- Link to the person who tagged you.
- Post the rules on your blog.
- Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
- Tag six people and at the end of your post, link to their blogs.
- Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

1. I’m a piler. I have four piles on my desk right now (of course, several books and lots of paper in each pile). It’s a bad habit.

2. When I was a kid, my dad called me Big Bird (my sister was Little Bird).

3. I once called my daughter a stupid cow. It was a moment of incredible frustration in one of those back and forth arguments that never end and was said half-jokingly (I say half because part of me wanted to say something mean). Of course she’s not a stupid cow in any possible sense of the words, but sometimes the worst comes out. We still laugh about it.

4. I bite my nails. I started when I was a kid because my older brother did it and I’m still doing it!

5. Because my father was so strict, I ended up lying to him all the time as a teenager. Now I almost can’t tell a lie—even when doing it as a joke, I’m terrible at it. (I say almost because, of course I can if forced to, but I’d feel incredibly uncomfortable.)

6. Okay, this isn’t about me, but it came to mind, so here it is. My mom was working on the campaign to pass the Equal Rights Amendment* when I was a kid (this was around 1970/71) and she’d have my sister and I help her stuff envelopes or whatever. My parents had been divorced for several years and my dad was (is) extremely conservative, completely against the ERA and everything it stood for (women as equals? no way.). Anyway, on one of our weekend visits to our dad’s house, my sister, who was about six years old, made a bumper sticker and taped it to my dad’s car. It said, All the way with the ERA. She didn’t realize she was doing anything “wrong,” of course. I don’t remember his reaction, but I imagine he was very unhappy. I wonder if this is one of the reasons he was so unyielding in indoctrinating his children in conservative ideology—he felt he had to counter my mom’s influence. It worked, until I went to college and read books like Richard Barnet’s The Roots of War (yeah, it must’ve been assigned by one of those liberal professors, but all I can say is the facts opened my eyes to a reality that I had been ignorant to before that; it’s better to know the truth and then make up your mind than to be blindly stick to what you’ve been taught).

I know that many of you have been tagged with similar memes already, so feel free to decline if you want (feel free to decline even if you haven’t done one!). That in mind, I tag: YogaMum, Kirsten, Scout, GypsyGirl, Moonymaid, CrankyHausfrau.

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*The Equal Rights Amendment is very threatening:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

I decided to take a picture of the beautiful box my daughter decorated and gave me for Christmas (the photo doesn’t do it justice, unfortunately—it is gorgeous, with several types of wood and copper edging, and, as you can see, a picture of the two of us). I wanted to share my gift with y’all.

So I had the camera set and was peering through the viewfinder, just starting to press down my finger to shoot, when suddenly, the box was bumped off kilter by a party or parties unknown.

This is the evidence:

Quickly, I spun around and popped off another shot as the perp made a getaway. (There are two clues in the photo below—I spy a green and white disc on the floor behind the desk.)

What d’ya think? Who dunnit?

A Sherlock Holmes Certificate to the gumshoe with the zippiest (correct) answer.

Yesterday my daughter graduated from college.

She graduated number one in her class in her major (architecture). Here is a photo of her giving her speech (click for larger photo; I’m sorry it’s a little blurry).

Here is a photo of the two of us. She’s just a tad taller than me (and no, I’m not short—I’m almost 5′6″).

She is going to intern next and then on to grad school.

Ah, yes, I am so very proud of her.  And not only for her academic achievements. She truly is a beautiful soul. I am so, so blessed.

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And speaking of blessings . . .

Here is a blessing meme. Jan so kindly blessed me and I am passing it on. The point is to bless and pray for three fellow bloggers, and they do the same. Seeing how most memes are about one’s self, it is refreshing to see one about the other. The blessing meme was started by ukok. Here is the description:

The idea… it’s a game of tag with a difference, rather than looking inwardly, we look outside ourselves and bless, praise and pray for one blog friend. By participating in this endeavour we not only make the recipient of the blessing feel valued and appreciated, but we are having some fun too. We’re going to see how far the bloggin’ blessings can travel around the world and how many people can be blessed! Recipients of a bloggin’ blessing may upload the above image to their sidebar if they choose to. If you recieve a bloggin’ blessin’ please leave a comment on this thread here so that we can rejoice in just how many blessings have been sent around the world!

It was changed from blessing one friend to three, in case some people do not do it.

So! I bless . . . Diane, Painter and Kirsten.

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Guess what I”m doing? After eight years of playing my music from computers, I am finally getting around to importing my Christmas CDs. Talk about slooooow. Or lazy.

for the whole weekend and, as a consequence, failed to notice that I was a taggee. Good ‘ol YogaMum got me (back)! [and I don't mean that she is old, I mean good-'ol---because she's younger than me!]

So . . .

What is your least favorite holiday task? (e.g. shopping, cooking, wrapping)

Shopping, especially for my husband—it’s so darn painful. Every year I try to talk him into not buying gifts for one another, and every year he nixes the idea. He loves to buy clothes for me. My daughter’s boyfriend is also painful to buy for. These men!

What was the worst gift you ever received?

Tied:

1) The gifts my dad “gave” when I was a teenager that, he said, “belong to the house,”meaning they were “mine” until I moved out. A stereo, a t.v., an electronic keyboard (that he actually borrowed money from my bank account to buy—he did pay it back, but still). Gee thanks.

2) All the gifts (I don’t remember exactly what they were now, but they were numerous and they were lovely) that a boyfriend gave me one Christmas when I knew I was about to break up with him (maybe he knew, too, eh?) That made it even harder to do the deed.

Who is the hardest person in your family to shop for?

My husband. He buys what he really wants which is mostly computer stuff. Sweaters and scarves are getting old . . .

What holiday tradition would you eliminate if you could?

Hmmm, can’t think of one . . .

What do you swear, every holiday season, that you’ll never do again, only to find yourself doing it again the next year?

Wait till the last minute to send packages, thereby standing in line in the post office line for an hour to do it (which I did today, thank you).

What relative do you dread seeing at the holidays? Or, when you were a child, what relative did you dread seeing?

The only relative that I don’t want to see would not come to see me, either, so I don’t have to worry about that. There are a couple of people I don’t see most years, anyway, that are at the level of mini-dread (mosquito bites). The family I see at Christmas time, I love to see!

Taggees, if you’re up for it, are: Jan,  Kirsten, Fran (when you return from CA—get to work!)

Here’s a video of my daughter’s dance troupe in a swing competition this past summer.

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And, if you’re feeling stressed out about work, or anything else (heck, who isn’t?), go watch this video (found at DZM’s blog).

Yesterday was J’s 22nd birthday.

Happy Birthday to you!!

This is the first time my cake did not collapse in the middle. Yahoo! Celebration! Ring the bells! Okay, in the interest of full disclosure, it was a little lopsided, but it looked pretty good. Unfortunately, I did not think of taking a picture before it was devoured. I only make a cake once a year and every year the layers come out of the oven looking like meteorite crash sites (how did meteorites get in my oven?).

It’s the altitude, of course. For a long time, I thought it was me, that I was born with a cake baking deficiency. Mais non! It does help to adjust for the havoc altitude wreaks on a cake. Less sugar and leavening agent, more flour, more liquid, big eggs, higher oven temp, shorter baking time. Maybe I’ll bake a cake every once in a while, now that it doesn’t seem a foregone disaster. (I still have to figure out how to thicken up my frosting).

Bringing out the camera encourages J’s penchant for making faces. Here is her birthday picture (click for a bigger view of her lovely BIG eyes).

Do you know how many pictures I have of her with eyes crossed or some other clever facial bizarrity*? Actually very few, because they’ve been trashed. There are worse behaviors than hamming for the camera, of course, but mothers like to have pictures of their kids looking normal, especially on special occasions.

Of course, she’s had to put up with a parent with an abnormal penchant for picture taking, so maybe she’s actually been incredibly patient and I’m the one who’s weird. I mean she’s had a camera stuck in her face from the instant she was born. Hmmm. . . .

Happy Birthday to you!!

I am so blessed. So so so so incredibly blessed. Words can’t even get close. Blessed blessed blessed.

Love Love Love Love Love

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* I like making up words and I can do it if I want, ’cause it’s my blog and I’m the decider (and I get to be the decider for ever and ever, ’cause once you’re the decider, you’re always the decider).

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Guinness tastes very good with vegetarian goulash. Very very scrumptiously good (I also don’t have to use commas if I don’t want).

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Coming soon . . . a Salt of the Earth post.

Tagged three times recently and what a sluggard, I haven’t managed any of them—busy, actually—working on that interbeing post at gartenfische and finding all kinds of cool, cool images and articles on the Internet (plus the usual life stuff). My mind is whirling. I apologize, friends, for my uncooperativity/invisibility. I’m writing up the most recent meme, that came from Jan, because it’s freshest in my mind and it’s short and I’ll never catch up with all the reading I have to do (your blogs!) if I write all three.

First let me say that memes like this are difficult for me because I seem to have the memory of a goldfish. But I’ll do my best. . . .

Name five of your favorite all time gifts, either given or gotten.

First of all, there was the beautiful meal-gift that I wrote about recently at gartenfische. That was such a beautiful gift because it was unexpected and he got nothing in return, not even a thank you. But I decided I want this meme to be about family, so I want to mention that one, but it’s not one of the five (well, actually . . . sigh. . . six).

1. For P’s last birthday (a month ago). Truly a gift that I was able to give this gift. She has touched our lives so deeply, and turned out to be a gift as much for me as for him. Click on the photo for a bigger view—if she’s not the cutest thing you’ve ever seen, you’re not allowed to say it (and yes, she needs a haircut, we haven’t found a groomer yet).

2. The gorgeous homemade cards and jewelry that my daughter has given me over the years. I can’t express how much they mean to me (and no, I am NOT saying that because you’re reading this, J). Besides the fact that they really are beautiful, how great is it that she, who is busy, busy, busy, takes the time to hand make gifts?

3. Blue, the German Shepherd my mom got me when I was around seven or eight, who I trained and loved with all my heart (but this beautiful gift was also taken from me when my mom decided to move into an apartment and gave her away—this was the first time my heart was truly broken).

4. My dad’s stopwatch, from his days of high school athletics, that he gave me when I was a teenager. My dad used to do this thing where he’d give a gift and then say it belonged to the house (bizarre?)—which meant that it wasn’t really mine to keep (he did this with a stereo, a t.v., an electric piano). It turns out that these weren’t really great gifts, anyway—the best one was something that was meaningful to him and came out of his personal history.

5. The gifts that P buys me, because it makes me feel incredibly loved that he spends the time and energy to find things that he knows I’ll love. He may wait ’til the last minute, but he doesn’t run out and pick up just anything. Always thougthful, always from the heart, always beautiful.

6. Okay, I’m cheating again, but I can’t leave out my grandfather, who gave me so many gifts. He was the most generous person I’ve ever met. About seven years ago, he paid for me to have laser surgery on my extremely, extremely near-sighted eyes. This photo was taken at his surprise 80th birthday party. He died two years later.

This post made me cry! Didn’t expect that. It also brought home how most gifts really aren’t memorable—when we run out and pluck something off a shelf, it’s not often a heart-gift, it’s just a thing. It also makes me realize that I can’t think of any really worthwhile gifts that I have given, other than number 1. That’s sad.

In our family, some of us don’t buy Christmas gifts for one another anymore, we donate to an organization that we know that person will find meaningful. I like this.

I’m not tagging, but if any of you want to do this, please do, I think it’s a lovely meme (it’s a gratefulness meme!).

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I’ve been enjoying Sufjan Stevens Chrismas music thanks to the cranky hooker—I mean cranky hausfrau. (Husband likes it, too—especially Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing—which surprised me, because I thought he was just tolerating it.)