This is what a feminist writes like:

The little guy is teething. All four premolars seem to be emerging at once. He is unhappy about this and so am I. And it has been going on for weeks now.

I am so tired.

And I am getting on my own nerves.

I can barely remember having read the books I wanted to interview myself about, let alone actually write about them. So I'm putting that aside yet again for a little while.

I have been meaning to post, but the thought of having to open Coffeecup, scroll through the list of files, open my index file, scroll down through the long list of template-y stuff, insert my entry code, write an entry, save it, open filezilla, scroll through the files, and upload my new index file, is just overwhelming when you only have a little something to say. I'm checking into using Wordpress but I can't tell if that will let me use my current design which I adore. (Thanks Greg!) But I really need a better system than this one. I wish I understood more about programming. I can handle html okay, but anything beyond that and I'm lost. Don't give up on me, though, I'll soon find a way to post more often.

Anyway, I will soon have a number of my older columns online (Thanks for asking, Marla!) But in the meantime, here's my first one. A version of this was originally published in The Independent on April 23rd.

I seem to be haunted by an angel. I know ghosts are all the rage but I don't seem to have a problem with them. I just can't get rid of 'The Angel in the House' and she is driving me crazy.

'The Angel in the House' was an expression used to describe the ideal Victorian woman. She was selfless and she sacrificed her own needs and desires for her husband and children and she had poems and essays devoted to her many charms. She also had a housekeeper, a cook and several other servants to take care of the household so she could devote her time to her family.

So why am I haunted by a Victorian Angel? Because the expectations she created are still out there, setting the standards for what people expect of mothers today. We have a host of experts telling us how to be perfect parents, keep a perfect house, cook perfect meals, and how to balance all of that with paid work. But the experts often disagree on how to reach perfection, even as they encourage us to strive for it. And most of this advice is still directed toward mothers, because even though fathers are more involved now than ever before it still Mom who gets blamed if something isn't right.

I can spend my day reading to my sons, colouring with them, teaching them to wash their hands and to say thank-you, but if I turn on the television to entertain them long enough to take a shower then I'm a bad mother. I can put my writing career on simmer for a few years so I can be home with them but if, as a result, we can't afford to buy them the latest gadgets and to enroll them in a daily schedule of enriching activities then I've failed them somehow. No matter how much I (very willingly) give them, there's an expert waiting to tell me what else I should have given.

So with no guidelines for modern angels, it is up to me to decide: How clean does my house have to be before I reach angel status? How much do I sacrifice for my kids before the wings start growing? Do angels ever serve leftovers? And on a side note, how do they ship haloes anyway? Xpresspost? FedEx?

Actually, I left out the most important question: Who really wants to be an angel?

I want to be a good mother, and part of a happy, healthy family, but I'm not interested in taking up where Victorian women left off. I think it is time to hold our ideals up in bright light, to think about the crazy standards that we are asking women to live up to. We need to start recognizing the work of parenting, and to value the effort that goes into managing a home so we can banish that angel once and for all.

Or if that seems impossible, let's make Dads the angels for a while.

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This is the kind of post I hardly ever do anymore. So obviously it is high time for one.

Let's see, what sorts of things qualify as news?

Well, my baby sister has moved out of my house and in with a few friends. If anyone is looking for the crazy but can't seem to find it, I know where there's a house full. (Note: I did not say house full of crazies, just that the house is full of the crazy. They bring the fun. Perhaps I should have used zany instead of crazy. How come no one has zany adventures any more? WE need more zany. Neece, I'm putting you in charge of the zany! Tange, can you back her up?)

My cousin and her husband were married 9 years on Wednesday past. Their wedding was the opposite of ours in the details (their's was traditional and somewhat formal) but it was just as fun. They have an adorable son and their second child will arrive early this fall. (I hope you guys had a nice anniversary, S and C. Oh, and Congratulations.)

Me and the Man will be married 10 years on August 9th. We're having a big party to celebrate, so if you are going to be around, let me know and I'll give you the details.

Did you know that I have a newspaper column? I do! It's in The Independent's Home Section and it is called Making Myself at Home. I've been writing for them since April, I think, but somehow never got around to mentioning it here. It's kind of a Mom Meets World thing where I try to figure out how to balance mothering ideals with actual parenting. I love writing it, but I find it hard to limit myself to 500 words on certain topics.

I'm planning to launch a new site in the next few weeks... that noise you hear is the groans of people who have been listening to me talk about this for years while not actually moving the project ahead - but this time I have it almost ready to go! No, really, I do. I'll let you know more about that when the time is right.

I'm also working on a play for the fall. I've been trying to get my theatre company back on track for ages now, but I've only been able to pull off a few murder mystery parties. I've just have to remember that I need more help now that I have the details of two kids' lives filling my brain. So me and the lovely and talented Katie will be having a story meeting tomorrow night. She's also going to do some kidwrangling for me soon, so I may actually be able to write the damn play. Yay, Katie!

I was talking on the TELEPHONE to Ann Douglas the other day. (Jealous? You should be! She's lovely.) She was interviewing me about Holiday Perfectionism and how I got over it (a premie 7 weeks before Christmas is the short version). I wish I could beam myself to Ontario and visit Ann, and Jen, and Andrea and Marla. They, of course, are suddenly glad that beaming technology doesn't exist (or at least is not readily available or testable on humans - yes, Jason, I do listen!).

Chatting with Ann helped me realize that I've slipped back onto the perfectionist track with some other areas of my life (read: I'm not getting things done!) and I'm making sure to break things down a little more again. Thanks, Ann!

Finally, I do realize that I promised a bunch of book reviews this year and I haven't delivered. I am reading a lot, although I have been buying new books rather than reading the ones I already own (but they were irresistable... no really, I had to buy them!) so I haven't kept to that part of my plan either. The reason I've been putting off the reviews, though, is because I'm not really sure how to write a good one (see, that's that perfectionsism thing again!). I just don't seem to read books in the same way that some other excellent reviewers do (ahem, Doppelganger, ahem, TrudyJ, ahem ) and I feel my reviews fall short. Soooooo, I have been avoiding them (dumb, huh?). But, like I keep telling The Boy, this is a problem-solving house, so I've come up with a solution to let myself off the hook.

I'm going to interview myself about each book. No, wait, it's not as crazy as it sounds. I've made up a list of 5 questions to answer about each book I read and when I do, I'll post them here. Using a different format keeps me from feeling that my reviews aren't "real" and I still manage to get them posted. I have 28 books to do so far (gah!), I'll post the first self-'interview' on Wednesday.

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When I first followed the link to Shape of a Mother from Marritt Ingman's blog, I didn't know what to think.

I want to stress that I was in no way repulsed, or put off, I was just a little puzzled. I thought that the pictures needed more context, perhaps a little more information about how far post-partum the various women were, or …something. I've spent all day (and a lengthy MSN conversation with Meagan) figuring out what that something was.

I didn't go to term on either of my pregnancies, so I don't have a lot of stretch marks, and I missed a lot of the super-stretching that takes place in the last weeks of pregnancy. I had a c-section the first time, so I have a lovely scar and I haven't put in enough steady ab exercise to know if the shape of my middle is permanent or just poor muscle tone. But, due to my lack of stretch marks and stretched skin, I didn't see myself reflected there (at first) and I felt uncomfortable with that*. And I felt like the pictures weren't telling the whole story, somehow.**

I needed to feel that these women were not just posting pictures of their altered bodies, but that they were testifying about the changes in perspective that pregnancy/motherhood brings. I wanted it mentioned that some changes are temporary and some are permanent but that these things happen in varying degrees to all women.* * I'd be uncomfortable with viewing a blog that first-time pregnant women might look at and say 'oh, my god, is that what will happen to me?' but I enjoy a blog that says 'look at the variety of women's bodies, look at how pregnancy changes them, and that's okay'.

I wanted to see a blog that let those first time women know that pregnancy and childbirth and motherhood does a variety of things to your body, but the trade-off is a sense of pride and power. That you begin to see your body not just as an object of appeal, but as something that can do great things. That you may end up saggy and wrinkly in some spots, but that in the big picture it matters far less that you can ever imagine.

Then, of course, as I read more entries, I realized that all of that is there. As more and more women post, there is more and more variety (and lots of comments of 'your belly looks like mine! I'm not alone.) and more and more commentary about how these marks and sags and changes reflect profound life experiences, deep emotional connections and new perspectives. As each woman testifies, she is reminding us that life happens, it changes us, and we shouldn't try and deny the evidence of that change.

Pregnancy is hard work, and it is hard on your body. It leaves your body forever altered. And that is how it should be. You shouldn't have the experience of pregnancy and remain exactly the same. It causes a deep shift in your sense of self, and it affects your relationship to your body (pregnancy changes are largely beyond your control - that can be quite the shock). It makes sense that these profound changes should mark you in some way.

But the most vivid images we have of women's bodies are of celebrities. Women who have lots of time to dedicate to self-maintenance, who can go to the gym and leave their kids with a nanny, who can afford, and justify plastic surgery. Celebrities can do what they wish with their own bodies, but it is a shame that their choices help to form our expectations of our own bodies. No matter how much we fight it, as we gather information to inform our own experiences, to help us create expectations, we end up including celebrity data in the category of "what women look like". And we measure ourselves against that.

And many celebrities do not appear to be marked by pregnancy the way ordinary women do. You don't see their bellies sagging, or their stretch marks or anything of the sort. Perhaps the 'good' genes that contribute to their celebrity status also provide immunity from this bodily evidence of motherhood? Or perhaps the fact that they can often take a break from their ordinary routine during the last weeks of pregnancy helps them fight the effects of gravity and weight gain? Maybe the fact that they start out so very thin means that their growth while pregnant is within the limits of human skin elasticity?

Anyway, I think it is very important to see what pregnancy does to average women's bodies. Women who still have to get their own groceries when they are 39 weeks pregnant. Women who can't afford to have their own personal massage therapist coat them with cocoa butter twice a day. Women who can't take off to the gym for hours every day in the first weeks of their child's life.

And I think many women will find comfort in the fact that they are not the only one, that lurking beneath other t-shirts is a body similar to their own and vastly dissimilar to the flat, tanned, toned body of your average celebrity mother. And that in itself has great value.

There is also great value in the testimony of the mothers who are posting at Shape of a Mother. They are viewing their bodies with respect and with humour. They see their stretch marks as badges of honour, scars from a battle with nature for the lives of their children.

I think that is a vital contribution to the discourse on real motherhood, and on real women. It is incredibly important that real experiences replace the extreme versions of mothering that exist in popular thought. Most mothers are neither perfect nor horrendously selfish. Most mothers don't love every minute, nor do they hate it, there's a mix of both, with the good generally coming out on top (generally). Mothers need to be able to access these sorts of thoughts and these sorts of images, so they don't feel alone and so they can find strength in numbers.

That being said, I don't know if I would direct non-mothers to the site. I don't think they would understand that the body changes are all part of the process, and I don't think anyone could understand the trade-off until they live it. But I do think that the site is a vital part of the mother's movement that seems to be sprouting up everywhere.

Motherhood should be defined and explained by mothers, not by governments, not by laws, not by society and not just by wealthy women and celebrities. And with sites like Shape of a Mother, more mothers get a voice.

* For a long time, I felt that I didn't quite do pregnancy right because I didn't go to term and because I had a c-section (breech birth, not a choice) the first time. I got over some of that feeling when I had a VBAC with The Little Guy, but the feeling still flares from time to time. I recognize that this is my own issue. Intellectually I know that the fact that my belly doesn't look a lot like those of many of the women on the site is doesn't mean I didn't go the distance (after all, I did allow them to cut me open to remove a LIVE HUMAN) but it still sort of feels odd, like I don't really know about the challenges of pregnancy somehow. Meh, I'll get over it.

**Kind of like how some labour stories are extreme, and frightening and the teller often doesn't temper the story with context, or more information. Yes, the labour story is factual, but it isn't the whole story, and it won't happen that way for everyone. Someone who has never been in labour doesn't understand how it is a transformative experience, and they don't know which parts of the story are common to most labours and which are particular to the teller. It's important to share labour stories, but I think individual stories are less overwhelming when they are part of a group of stories.

Another, example of what I mean is pictures of newborns. When babies are first born they are covered with all manner of fluids and they tend to be rather squishy of face. If you had never seen a baby before, you would find it shocking to know that people love these little creatures and think they are cute. And if you had only seen pictures of older babies, you'd think there was something wrong with yours. So you need the context. You need to know that the baby just came through a harrowing experience (like being trapped in a turtleneck sweater!) so that's why they look like that, and that they don't stay all squished up.

I guess what I'm saying here is that I think it is important to know how much of what you are seeing applies to you. That helps you appreciate the information.

*** The post-partum changes continue for a long time, and vary from woman to woman. And, hormonal changes and differences in muscle tone means that the body a woman has at 6 months after birth may be vastly different from the one she has a 12 months. I think that is important to know, too.

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Attention Friends: I am on vacation. I'll be back in a few days. Have the Fun. Well, you can have whatever fun is left over after we're done.

Attention Ne'er-do-wells: Our house will still be occupied so don't bother.

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