Dream On, Baby (Part Two)

I've posted about Mila's Daydreams, a blog of lovely imaginative scenes built around a sleeping baby, before. I couldn't resist doing it again, particularly since I'm in a bit of a fairy tale zone teaching-wise at the moment. So, here is one more. Have a lovely weekend!

Pimp My Essay

I'm currently finishing off my first batch of marking for the semester - I know, lucky me, right? As anyone who has marked essays in the past knows, it's always a painful process. Even when the essays are all okay, there are some persistent problems that come up, and your brain gets sore from trying to think how many times you've had to correct them in the past.

Waiter, can of worms please. And make it snappy.

In today's Crikey Guy Rundle argues that adoption rights should not be extended to male homosexual couples. Rundle doesn't suggest that there would be something wrong about a two-father household as such, but that because as a species humans have

"an unusual degree of infant dependency [...] [i]t would be bloody unusual if an infant were not oriented to the female body in a pretty hard-wired and powerful way. It would be doubly unusual if the sustained existence of that bond did not lie at the root of psychic development.[...] It seems undeniable that a predisposition to seek, to hold, to cling to the specifically female body is part of our given nature.

So let's get that straight (as it were), shall we? Because babies were born to breastfeed, gay men shouldn't be allowed to adopt. Right.

What goes "Create New Folder" in the night?

This weekend I've been caught in the crossfire of different aspects of teaching (class preparation and marking), research (thesis and non-related entirely new whizz-bang sparkly article projects), job search and social life (I have one, who knew?).
 
And you know what? I'm loving it.
 
I got home from a party with my own kind, oddly inspired by the general relaxed camaraderie that naturally forms among the overeducated idle poor. I had ideas. I even had to get out of bed at 2.30am to write down a rough plan for an article. I'm now looking at expanding my sights into ghosts, the public sphere, peer learning and volcanoes.

I should go out more often, yes?

Just one more thing...

Today I made progress. Teeny-weeny tiny progress, but progress nonetheless.

Weight for me!

It occurred to me today that I haven't weighed myself since aroundabout Christmas, when I officially got back to my pre-pregnancy weight (the Holy Grail of the newly delivered). That's almost nine months now. So I thought I'd set myself the pseudo-feminist challenge of not weighing myself for a full year. Hurrah the sisterhood and boo to body image issues and all that.

Now, clearly not weighing myself hasn't really been an issue so far: I haven't particularly been aware of myself in weight terms, if that makes sense. It's probably not all good, and really just means that the part of my brain that might have once wondered how much I weigh is now occupied with thoughts of the damage breastfeeding a scratchy, tuggy little being is doing to my ladylumps. Feel free to repress that thought now, by the way.

For now, I'll focus on the little victory, and continue not to know where I'd tilt the scales, for at least another three and a bit months.

In the nuddy

Yesterday Gruen Transfer discussed the marketing of shaving apparatuses in its usual insightful/light-hearted manner. All seemed to go along expected lines until regular panelist Rusself Howcroft mentioned that many 20-year-old men had never seen women with pubic hair, "except their mothers". Cue stunned giggling, clapping, and an awkward "what are you saying, Russell"? About an hour ago @GruenHQ tweeted "If you were stopped dead by the line about mothers and pubic hair, consider the fact that Russel's mum was actually in the studio audience."

Is it really that controversial to suggest someone might have seen their parents naked?  Honestly.