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If you gave or received this book for Festivus or the holiday of your persuasion. Nearly everyone I know in real life did. I'm wondering if this is universal or just in my little corner of the world.
Question part the second- do you think he is a scab for going back to work during the writer's strike?
This is just one more reason David Letterman and Craig Ferguson are at the top of my list (Craig being first) of imaginary celebrity boyfriends. Vote union.
We saw Juno today. Spoiler Alert! I will write about the ending in this post.
First, as a film, I think it's quirky and different and has a small film feel like Napoleon Dynamite. The dialog seems forced, no better example than Rainn Wilson's cameo as a convenience store clerk. I just wanted one of my favorite actors to shut up. Yes, it's clever, too clever though to be any kind of believable. It almost turns the characters into caricatures. Juno and her best friend use so much slang and teen speak that the three teens who were with me noticed it and commented on how unnatural it seemed.
If you are involved in the adoption world, you should know that this is totally pro-adoption. There is only a brief nod to considering Juno as a valid parent in an interaction between Juno's step-mom and an ultrasound technician. The film operates on the basic societal assumption that a teenager shouldn't even consider being a mother.
I have to tell you that I cried from the moment that she told her parents she was pregnant to the end of the movie. When she first meets the prospective adoptive parents and drives through their beige subdivision and gets a glimpse into their uptight life I wanted to scream "don't give your baby to these people!".
Juno immediately tells them she wants an "old school" closed adoption and never wavers from that idea even as she befriends the potential adoptive father. You could see the relief from the potential adoptive parents. The first meeting isn't as much of a get to know you, as "sign the paperwork". It bothered me.
It portrayed all the downside of a private adoption, no counseling for anyone, let alone the expectant mom. It portrayed the heavy emotional investment by the potential adoptive parents months before the baby is born. They laid all their dreams on the already heavily burdened shoulders of a 16 year old. I know it's only a movie, but it seemed like adoption was cut and dried and on some level, easy. I think what bothered me the most is that most people outside of adoption wouldn't see any thing wrong with that meeting.
In the end Juno does place the baby. Yes, there are some surprises that I won't reveal, but she places. The pain of relinquishing this child is downplayed. Both she and the baby's father choose not to see or hold the baby, explaining that he never felt like their's. Every old school adoptive parent's dream, huh? Beautiful baby, martyr birth parents who go on with their regular high school life without a blip.
Bert thought this was a walking advertisement why private adoption should be illegal. The "birth" father was treated like a sperm donor with no real say so. The implication was that it was not only all settled, but there was nothing to settle. He had no voice. The first meeting between Juno and her dad and the prospective adoptive parents bothers him. They were so completely inexperienced and of a different class and had no clue to the intricacies of adoption and there was no one there representing them.
Mallory liked it more than Bert and I. She was seeing from the view of a teenager who wants nothing to do with a baby. She is a content adoptee. Placing the baby seemed right to her. While she is happy with her own open adoption she can understand why Juno may want a closed one. She said the average 16 year old without knowledge of how adoption works would thinks it would be less painful to be in a closed adoption. She has no desire to parent and thinks that obviously the adoptive mother was the one who should, because she wanted to. She thinks Juno made the right decision.
I have no idea if this particular character made the right decision, but my heart hurt knowing the environment that decision was made in. There is more to adoption than this "old school" film invites it's viewer to ponder. I wish we were given more to chew on and contemplate.
I really wanted to like this film, and for awhile today I thought I did. However, the more I think about it, I think the reinforcement of adoption stereotypes far outweigh the good things the film has. This film is does a lot more harm than good. It doesn't further the discussion, it's just a rewind of an old discussion.
This is what a beautiful Christmas portrait looks like with a dirty lens. Nice, huh?
It's been a great day. We got to see my niece (a rare treat) and watch her open a gift that made her happy beyond belief. We attended a beautiful mass that made me all warm and fuzzy and happy. We had a simple soup supper with martinis. Then we went to the pagans for Christmas Eve and it was lovely. Mallory is right now singing with the Protestant choir(should we talk about the irony that my little pagan/athiest/agnostic spends more time today and every Sunday than the rest of us participating in organized religion?). Bert and I are frantically wrapping presents, the house is a mess, I have a million things to do, but it doesn't seem to matter. I am a happy girl tonight.
This is Mallory's new favorite song. It's been a favorite of mine for years.
Whatever you are celebrating tonight- Merry Christmas, Peace, Love, and Joy to everyone.
Remember this post? Like I wasn't going to do anything about the ailing fish, because really it's only a fish.
Then I googled. And I tried treating. We moved his bowl to a warmer spot, next to the stove. We put Fish Food on a 48 hour fast. Then we tried to feed him a cooked, skinned pea from a chop stick (otherwise it sank). As Mal said, this is an awful lot of trouble for a $1.00 fish. He never ate the pea. Supposedly it would make him poop and his swelling would go down. Mal sat there for the better part of an hour and he didn't take a nibble.
Then I spilled baking soda into his fish tank. Emergency water change. Turns out next to the stove may not be the smartest idea.
He is still going. Swollen. On his side sometimes, but he seems to be the beta that won't quit.
I have pictures of all this. But I decided it was unfair to Fish Food's dignity. He used to be beautiful.
Shit, I'm turning into my mother.
I'm getting really tired of hearing how Jamie Lynn Spears is a) a slut, tramp, harlot b) a cautionary tale or c) a product of bad mothering.
She slept with her high school boyfriend. There are a lot of us who could raise our hands here and say "me too!". She has an unplanned pregnancy. Again, let's raise hands for how many of us could say "me too!" . Some of us could even chime in and say it happened as a teenager. The girl is not a slut solely because she is 16 and pregnant.
Likewise I don't think she should be used as the poster child for teenage abstinence. I've never believed that pregnancy was the sole or most prominent reason that teenagers should refrain from sexual activity. I've talked to my daughters for years about being responsible sexual beings. I've urged them to wait until they are older because I don't think most teenagers have the emotional capability to handle the level of relationship that comes with sex. Pregnancy is pretty far down on the list to me as a reason to wait for a lot of reasons. The first is that my children are intelligent and know about birth control. The second is that I don't believe in portraying pregnancy as the end of someone's (even a teenager's) life. Two of my children are the result of unplanned pregnancy, I don't want them for one second to think they were a mistake. A surprise, yes, a mistake, no.
I believe in talking to my kids honestly about sex. I don't believe in scaring them. I don't believe in making them think that sex is something bad or unsavory.
I hear a lot people snarking about Lynn Spears parenting. I find it interesting James Spears is rarely mentioned. The truth is that we know little about what kind of mother Lynn Spears is, but that won't stop the general public from blaming her for every wrong turn her children take. My guess is that if Lynn Spears were your coworker or friend or sister, you would be reassuring her this was not her fault and that at some point her children become responsible for their own actions. How many of us have friends, siblings, cousins who are constant crisis? Do we constantly blame their mothers?
I know some people blame her for getting her children into entertainment. These same people(or their children) enjoy movies and television starring children. We encourage people to let their children get involved in entertainment by purchasing their products. The fact is that these are not problems of the entertainment industry, but pretty common problems for most of society.
If you are really worried that Jamie Lynn or Britney is a role model for your child and is someone that they will want to emulate, I'd suggest that you look at your own parenting rather than Lynn Spears.
My heart breaks for that family. Self-destruction, addiction and depression are not easy to deal with, and neither is a crisis pregnancy. I have seen similar things happen in my family and friends. My guess is that you have too. I hope that people begin looking at some these situations with a little more grace and a lot less judgment.
