Travel notes

We arrived home last night, a day earlier than planned. It wasn't so much the heavy snow that was supposed to fall on Illinois and Indiana Wednesday night and all day Thursday - six inches of snow isn't so bad if you can drive out of it. But looking at the forecast made it clear that we would be chasing the weather system the entire way home. Blowing snow for 800 miles isn't my idea of a good time.

So although we're bitterly disappointed not to see our friends in Champaign, we instead made a stop in Indiana for dinner with friends on Wednesday and then went on to spend the night in Columbus. Our trip yesterday was cold but dry, only marred by Alec's discovery of the upper registers of his vocal range. Between the high pitched shrieks and the teething induced biting, I'm beginning to understand what it's like to live with a pterodactyl. Without the flying, that is.

It was lovely to have a day off today, before we embark on our work-filled weekend. We mostly spent it doing exciting things like getting groceries, but it was nice to have two parents for the day.

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A quote from K today: "I don't want to wear a dinosaur shirt! I'm a girl!" Then she went and gave one of her previously beloved dinosaurs to her little brother because he's a boy and boys like dinosaurs (well, he liked chewing on the dinosaur). Apparently all she likes is princesses and ponies.

That sound you hear would be the breaking of her feminist parents' hearts. Sigh. It's a phase. I know it's a phase. And at least it's not as unpleasant as her other phase of the moment, which involves poop withholding.

About that Facebook meme

I got an e-mail yesterday morning, telling me to post my bra color into my Facebook status as a way to raise "awareness" for breast cancer. I use quotes because I didn't participate because I couldn't see how calling attention to my bra without actually including any information about breast cancer would raise awareness of it. I mean, posting my bra color with a link to the Susan G. Komen foundation website or suchlike would raise awareness. But just my bra color would raise awareness of, well, my bra.

In my web meanderings today, I found people who agreed with me for more or less the same reasons, and I was prepared to pretty much forget it as another stupid Facebook thing. And then I found a post by a breast cancer survivor explaining why it was a colossally insensitive to breast cancer survivors, the people it was ostensibly trying to help:

"Other cancer survivors joined in, telling me that they felt left out too. After all, this was ostensibly an effort to raise awareness of breast cancer — but one in which breast cancer survivors themselves could not participate, and were reminded (as if we needed a reminder) that we didn’t need bras anymore, that most basic undergarment of women everywhere, that symbol of sexuality, for the simple reason that we had already sacrificed our breasts in a hail mary attempt to keep the rest of our bodies from dying of cancer."

I know it's late to be posting this, since that meme was so yesterday. But if you were just getting the e-mail today, or didn't have time to post yesterday and were going to today, please don't. And maybe this should serve as a cautionary tale about how when well-meaning people try to help a cause, they should check with the people actually affected by it to find out if it would actually be helpful.