Fun with Gifts from Alison!!!

My long time awesome friend Al sent some presents from South Korea! I love the beauty stuff she sends me. The face masks are amazing 100% of the time. Here's some pics of Cam enjoying his new back pack and hat (which I will be stealing).

Here he is inspecting his schwag.

I put it on him and he was off!

And back out into the living room.

Checking out the penguin hat.

Snatched it from daddy and treating it like his blankie. Cute.

Hehehehehe...

He's pretty much worn the backpack all day. And I he threw the most epic temper tantrum when I took it off of him to put him in the high chair. And I do mean epic.

Thanks Al -- we love EVERYTHING. The stationary stuff is soooo cute I might just die.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 22 -- Hands

Taken with my HTC Evo 4g with the Vignette filter on the Vignette app.

B and I were both freaked out by how he picked this up and started acting like he was playing. He held it right and everything. Weird.

I have been sooooooooooo busy. This time of year is always going to be crazy for us with Cam's bday two weeks before xmas but this year got even crazier with my graduation!

Cheryl DeFlavis, MA

hahahahaha, had to do it :)

Presenting Motherhood

November 11 - 13 I attended the National Women's Studies Association's annual conference. On a whim two other students from my graduate cohort and I put a panel together based on papers that we wrote in our Bodies and Technology course. We asked our professor to be our moderator since we knew she planned on attending. We were super excited that we got accepted but didn't really talk about it much.

Our department had a dress rehearsal for us that only served to make us more nervous, I think. Though I got a lot out of it and went to the conference feeling pretty confident. 

I really had a great time on this trip. It was the most saturated I had been in academia in a long time. I reveled in it. I felt more like myself than I had in a long time. 

The first session I went to was called Mothering and Hip Hop. omg, so good, even if it was an advertisement for a book that was coming out in a few months. I saw sessions on pedagogy, and activism, and mothering, and teaching trans, and online feminism/ activism. I participated in one highly interactive panel in which we broke into groups and mapped out bodies using beauty products. Then we mapped out the bodies we wanted to see. We added things like tattoos and voice and community and strength. I loved that it incorporated feminist pedagogy in the conference setting. So refreshing!

Since having a baby and going the whole "work-from-stay-at-home-mom" route I am not as immersed in school/ my academic life as I would like to be. My first semester of grad school I felt like I lived on campus. I had a shared office with 6 other people. We laughed, and fought, and cried. We had dinner parties, and I made two of my best friends in the world. Those 2 girls and I would stand outside and drink coffee and smoke cigarettes and bond over the fact that we were in committed relationships and in school and not looking for friends (so funny). During the period where we wrote final papers for our seminars and graded undergraduate papers the 4 of us women in the program were cemented together for life. We spent long days in the library together buying one another coffee and snacks. Bringing fruits and veggies to share with one another. Supporting each other and snapping  one another back to reality when necessary. I spent all night with one of them and we bonded through our usual food, coffee, and cigarettes and wrote together all night long; we only slept 2 hours. Then got up and went to meet the others at the library.

When I transferred to my new department I spent a lot of time with my new cohort as well. We socialized a lot and talked and joked about feminist theory and pedagogy. I was pretty pregnant by this time and it was great to still have the freedom to go out and do whatever. But by the end of my first semester with them I was finishing final papers early and preparing to have a baby. I could not pull any all nighters. Everything had changed. I was removed from my submersion in intellectualism and thought and pondering. 

Going to this conference brought me back to my first semester. I even got to see one of the best friends I made my first semester. I got to bond with two of the women from my cohort now and we had some pretty interesting experiences. In three words, "Suck my C.V.". 

The chair of my internship committee introduced me to one of my favorite scholars. She writes about and has collected wonderful anthologies about motherhood. I got to chat it up with her (hopefully impress her) and get a few of  her books for super cheap!

We had a really awesome dinner with 2 of our profs. I don't think I'll ever forget it!

We stayed up late at night and cracked up over Paula Deen Riding Things and Feminist Hulk and our anxiety over our presentation. We realized once we got there that we were somewhat over our heads and that it was kind of a big deal that we were presenting at this national conference. We were 3 of about 5 Master's students who were presenting. Holy Shit!

I had a really good time and the experience was cathartic and liberating and somewhat guilt inducing. I was nervous before we left because it was the longest I was going to be away from Cameron since he was born. As we walked to the restaurant to go to dinner with our profs my chair asked me, "So, do you miss Cameron?" I said that I didn't miss him as much as I thought I would. She looked at me and said, "And that's OK". I hadn't realized that I didn't miss him as much as I expected until I was answering her question so I was smashed with guilt and her reply was exactly what I needed to hear.

Once I got home and thought about all this a lot more I realized that it really was okay. One of the things I promised myself, that BJ and I promised ourselves, was that we wouldn't lose our identity in the process of becoming parents. We were naive to think that was possible. It wasn't as though I lost who I am on the inside, the essence of what makes me Cheryl, but we've both lost the activities that made up so much of our identities. So, it really was okay that I went away to a conference and "rediscovered myself". It really was okay that part of me didn't quite want to leave yet when we had to. It really was okay that I didn't miss my son to the degree that I thought I would.

I'm so glad I reconnected with my nerdy intellectual self. I have felt re-energized and ready to tackle my last couple of weeks of school before I graduate. And I learned a lot about being the kind of mother who allows herself to do the activities that define her once in a while without succumbing to guilt. 

Adventures in Domesticity -- Liquid Laundry Soap Edition

As I mentioned in my entry about my home made dishwasher detergent I have also been making my own laundry soap. I tried powder but as I also said before -- we love laundry soap that smells really good in my house -- especially the beej. He's not sure it's clean unless it smells really fresh. I wasn't so happy with the powdered because I didn't feel it got incorporated very well together and once I got to a certain point the bits of shaved soap weren't getting any smaller. I also ran through the soap much more quickly and it made less than the recipe said.

After hunting around a bit I found a recipe that I could make in my 3 gallon bucket. Most of the recipes I found were for HUGE batches in 5 gallon buckets, so I was happy to run across it. I was also armed with the knowledge from reading the comments on other recipes that I could add essential oils to my liquid laundry soap.

The recipe called for the following ingredients:

1/3 bar Fels-Naptha or Zote laundry soap (or any other bar soap that doesn't have added scents, like ivory)

1/2 cup Washing Soda

1/2 cup Borax

10-15 drops of essential oil per 2 gallons (my addition)

I decided to add Tea Tree oil for its antiseptic qualities (and I like the way it smells) and Lavender oil. Oils are sort of expensive, but I already had these on hand and so little is used at a time that it is still economical. I used 8 drops of each because . 

I also doubled the soda and the borax to increase the washing power since BJ is a chef and his coats and chef pants get pretty greasy and nasty. 

So then the recipe calls for you to: 

• grate the soap and add to 6 cups of water and heat until soap melts

•   add the washing soda and borax and stir until it dissolves

• remove from heat and put 4 cups of hot water into your bucket

• add the soap mixture and stir

• then add 1 gallon and 6 cups of water and stir

• let the soap sit for 24 hours to gel (should be an egg drop soup like consistency)

• add the oil after the soap has completely cooled (took about 8 hours)

Use 1/2 cup per load of laundry. I double it for the load of BJ's chef/ work clothes that I do weekly.

I originally intended to keep the soap stored in the bucket, but didn't want to have stir it every time I used it so I began looking for a container that would make it easy to store and then shake and pour. I had just happened to buy some cat litter (don't worry I washed the container out REALLY REALLY well) and was happy to not have to put the container in the trash. It works out really well. 

Yup. Next I need to think of a clever name for my soap so I can make a cool label for the container.

I didn't smell the oil after my first load but noticed that I liked the cleaning power of this homemade soap A LOT more than I liked the powder soap. My pastels and whites didn't seem dingy anymore which I loved.

So I did a little more digging around and found suggestions to add oil to the rinse cycle. I use a downy ball filled with white vinegar as a rinse aid (it is supposed to be good for removing soap residue) and I add 10 drops of oil to the downy ball.

I didn't have a dropper for the oil so I cleaned out this bottle and dropper (which used to be infant gas drops).

I still don't notice much of the smell on the clothes come out of the wash. But I like that it smells good while I'm doing laundry.

I'm not sure what I'm going to try next to increase the "smell good". But I do know that next time I make the detergent I'm going to do all tea tree oil in the detergent and add lavender to only the rinse aid. I'm also going to double the Fels-Naptha to make the soap a little more concentrated.

I'm sort of ok with my clothes not smelling strong since the smell goes away pretty quickly with the strongly smelling store bought detergents but I think I'll have to start adding bounce sheets to BJ's chef stuff. Unless, I can come up with some other idea for smell good! lol -- maybe a wash cloth that soaks in oil and water in between loads of laundry?

Next I'm going to make some household cleaners!

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 21 -- Faceless Self Portrait

So obviously I've been having a hard time finishing this in 30 days but with the conference I just returned from (thoughts coming soon) and my impending graduation (3 weeks) I've had to slow down on the picture taking. I will finish though!

This photo is scary and empowering to post all at once. I call it Tiger Stripes.

I shot this with my HTC EVO 4g with the default camera. I can't remember what exactly I adjusted in snaptastic because I took and edited this photo before the conference and am only getting the balls to post it now. :)

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 20 -- Bokeh

Whoops, forgot to post this one.

This is not a true Bokeh, but since I am shooting these with my phone I can't set the aperture to stay open longer which would allow me to achieve bokeh. I think this is pretty good for a phone and what I was working with!

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g default camera. No settings were changed and no editing.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 19 -- Something Orange

The bane of my existence:

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g. Using the vignette filter on the Vignette app. Further edited with snaptastic.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 18 -- Your Shoes

OK -- so they're not my shoes, but I wish they were!

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 17 -- Technology

Taken with my HTC EVO 4 g with the default camera.

That's my scentsy burner. Yay Scentsy!

Regrets?

Probably the most brilliant mom I know in grad school posted this on fb today: "Dear Son: I'm sorry that my choice of "careers" consumed your mother. Dear Academe: I'm sorry that my responsibilities as a mother interfered with your plans for me. Dear Self: I don't really remember you at all."

GOOD.NESS. That hits close to home. Seriously, one day I'm ready to cry because I don't have the time to be the mom I want to be, the next I'm ready to cry because I will never realize my full potential as an academic because I chose to become a mom. And others I'm ready to cry because I seriously don't remember who I am or how I got here.

This is not to say that I don't love my life. I FUCKING LOVE MY LIFE. But sometimes I'm frustrated that I can't have it all. I'm close. So close.

I remember my first year of grad school a prof I idolized was talking about what a disappointment she was to her mother because all she had given her was book manuscripts and not grandchildren. This prof is a name in her field and admired by many. I always shook my head because I thought she could have had children and still made it to where she is today.

I was so wrong. If you want to be a serious name in your field and you have a vagina, you can't have kids.

If you want kids and have a vagina you might as well give up your hopes of becoming a serious name in your field.

One time when I was privately meeting with that prof she told me she looked up how many times she was cited in databases so she could feel important. She felt unfulfilled and defeated. Even with her "name". I don't know if having kids would have made her fulfilled.

But I'm thanking my lucky stars that on days that I feel defeated I will have Cameron looking at me with his mischievous little grin and his eyes filled with love.

And I won't have to go looking up how many people deemed my words intelligent enough to repeat in order to feel important.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 16 -- Overexposed

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g with the Barbl Camera on retroCamera. Edited in Picasa.

Adventures in Domesticity

I've been pinning (Pinterest) quite a few recipes to make various household cleansers naturally. I try to live as green as possible (which is REALLY REALLY hard) and I thought making my own laundry soap, dishwasher detergent, and other various cleansers was something I could easily commit to. So far all I have tried to make is powdered laundry soap. Which left something to be desired. The Beej and I are both big on laundry smelling good which I'll talk about more tomorrow. (I made liquid laundry soap today but it has to gel for 24 hours and I want a picture of that step before I post).

Today I made powered dishwasher detergent and it was SUPER easy. I modified two recipes to create my own; this one I found on pinterest and the other I found by googling around. Just happened to be by the guy who posted the powdered laundry soap.

I didn't want to make a huge batch because the person who wrote the first recipe mentioned that the soap tightens up after you make it. I knew if I made a batch this size it would clump up really bad seeing that FL is humid all the time. And I didn't want to make a batch as small as the second one.

My modified recipe was this:

3 cups of borax

3 cups of washing soda

3 packages of no sugar added lemonade (or you can use citric acid -- it is worth noting that I've read that the drink mix will stain your detergent cup in your dishwasher)

1 1/2 cups of epsom salt

Here's my ingredients all gathered together. I used a different size of lemonade packages, but made sure I had the correct total amount per the first recipe. I used a 3 gallon bucket to mix the ingredients. You definitely don't have to use something that big for this size of a batch but I know what a klutz I am and knew I wouldn't spill any while stirring if I used the bucket.

I measured all the ingredients into the bucket.

Then I stirred it all up which was really easy. Nothing really clumped too much except for the borax. Next time I whip this up I will definitely de-clump the borax as I pour it in the mix. I didn't quite get rid of all the big clumps in this batch.

Then I just poured this into a drink storage container for storage and easy pouring. One recipe says to use 1 tbsp per load while another says to fill your detergent cup with it. I will probably try out the tablespoon first and go from there.

It's worth mentioning that this is way cheaper than buying the store made stuff too. There are price breakdowns all over the internet and I think the first recipe has one written up. I bought 2 boxes each of borax and the washing soda. I have now made the powdered laundry soap, the powdered dishwasher detergent, and the liquid laundry soap and still haven't gone through the first boxes. The powdered laundry soap lasted us 2 months even with me using 3 tablespoons instead of one. I can only imagine how long the powdered dishwasher detergent and liquid laundry soap will last! This was another reason I was so determined to find recipes that work for us and that we're happy with. We need to skrimp every penny we can to save for our move!

EDIT 11/08/11: After using this a few times... I must tell you that you will NEED a rinse aid using this. I tried putting just white vinegar in my rinse aid dispenser but no dice. I started adding LemiShine (just 1 tbsp sprinkled in the bottom) and everything is coming out gorg. I picked mine up at WalMart (evil). I think I may try to figure out the measurements for adding LemiShine to the overall recipe for the next batch.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 15 -- Silhouette

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g with the Hipsteroku camera on retroCamera. Edited in Snaptastic and Picasa.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 14 -- Eyes

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g with the Barbl with the retroCamera. Then edited with Picasa.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 13 -- Your Self with 13 Things

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g with the default camera. Cropped and warm vintage effect added in Photoshop Express (free app).

13 things:
Saucer for ball popping toy
The very hungry caterpillar
Ring from stacking toy
Ring box
Soft book
Stacking toy base
5 senses toy
3 stacking blocks
Pink crab
Keyboard toy
 

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 12 -- Sunset

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g with the Velvia filter on Vignette.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 11 -- Something Blue

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g with the Portra filter on the Vignette app. Edited with Picasa.

Yes, I missed a day. I intended to catch up today because I actually took this picture last night. So I was going to post this in the morning and today's pic tonight. But it was sunset. And I slept through the sunset. Will be posting tomorrow and just going from there rather than trying to catch up.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 10 -- Childhood Memory

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g with the Hipsteroku camera in retroCamera (default settings). Edited in Picasa.

My grandma kept this doll at her house when I was a kid and every time we came over she would give me a pie tin and I'd go on their porch and give her a bath or pretend like she was swimming in a pool. When my grandparents moved in with us when I was 16 I walked into their part of our house and found this doll prominently displayed. When my grandmother died my grandfather gave it to me. It still smells like it did when I was a kid.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 9 -- Someone You Love

Taken with my HTC EVO 4G. Default settings. Cropped and edited with Photoshop Express.

Four someones I love: Dad, Grandma Betty (mom's mom), Drayven (my nephew), and Cameron. Shortly after this Cameron and Drayven kissed and hugged for the first time. Awww cousins.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 8 -- Bad Habit

Taken on my HTC EVO 4g with the Pinhole Cameron in the retroCamera app. Edited using paint.net (open source photoshop)

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 7 -- Fruit

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g using the pastel color effect on the Vignette app. I added the vignette focus with the snaptastic app. (I hate that "snaptastic" got stamped on the bottom of my photo :( such is life with free versions of apps)

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 6 -- From a Low Angle

 

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g with the default camera. ISO 200, everything else auto.

It's kinda fun seeing if I can take "nice" photos with my phone.

Body Backlash

 **This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival**

This post is inspired by a project I did in the last semester of my Bachelor's degree while I was in the fantastic Leisa Clark's class, titled Issues in Feminism: Body Image. I have been thinking more and more about that class and how meaningful it was to me and my feminism a lot lately while dealing with crazy feelings about my new mom body. So I wanted to write this post as a reminder that it's not worth it to hold ourselves to unrealistic standards. The message that our (women's) bodies should remain as tiny as possible, except for tits and ass, permeates our every day lives. In this post I explore the ideal body type from the U.S. Victorian Era until our contemporary era to show how the messages to women have changed (and also remained the same) throughout history.

Victorian Era

In the Victorian Era women used corsets to maintain an hourglass figure, which was considered the ideal. Corsets were an external means of keeping the body under control.

Victorian Era

1920s: Clara Bow

In the 1920s women began using internal means of keeping their bodies under control, such as dieting, binging, purging, other forms of eating disorders, exercise, and body projects. The flapper emerged and the ideal body type was youthful, slim, and boyish.

1930s: Katharine Hepburn

During the Depression era bodies remained slim overall but we start to see more curves.

1940s: Betty Grable

In the 1940s and 50s we begin to see a "Victorian Resurgence". The hourglass figure is back and the super slim, curveless look is on pause. 

1950s: Marilyn Monroe

1960s: Twiggy

The arrival of Twiggy in the mid 60s brought back the ultra slim ideal. This ideal remains to this day.

1970s: Farrah Fawcett

1980s: Madonna

The 1970s and 80s brought us slimmer bodies with less clothing.

1990s: Pamela Anderson

Even thinner bodies (and larger boobs) with less clothing in the 90s and aughts. Cosmetic surgeries, and especially breast augmentation begin exploding in this era. Women also begin using external methods of controlling their bodies once again in the late 2000s in the form of spanx and other body shapers.

2000s: Nicole Richie

2010s: Olivia Munn

Looking back through these images we can see that the ultra slim ideal shows up in the 20s and 60s after two successful waves of the women's movement. Both waves made significant gains in the social standing/ rights of women. It seems to me that as women began to demand more space in society, cultural norms demanded that they take up less space.

In the early 90s Susan Faludi released Backlash, where she argues that backlash is a historical trend recurring when it seems as though women have made significant gains.It seems that we can see this occurring in the ideal body types of women as well.


This is not to say that men are not effected by unrealistic body ideals. In fact I imagine I could put together this sort of history for ideal masculine bodies and it would be exactly the opposite with bodies getting bigger through the decades. I would argue we would even see an effect in men's body types from the women's movements based on the observations made by Faludi. I can imagine we would see men's bodies become larger in the 20s and 60s as women's are becoming smaller.

It even more important to note that this would be a totally different post for WOC, well POC really. With the main emphasis being on exoticization, dehumanization, and sexualization. Because of the compound nature of oppression that WOC experience it's far more disgusting and disturbing than the ideals white women have been subjected to.

If you want to learn more about women and body image check out Joan Brumberg's Body Project, Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth, and Courtney E. Martin's Perfect Girls Starving Daughters. I could really recommend so much more but these are three books that really influenced my own perception of my body. Anybody else have any recommendations?

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 5 -- From a High Angle

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g with the Vignette app. Technicolor effect and edited with Photoshop (saturation and exposure).

This is my least favorite so far. I had to take it at night and the lighting was awful. I can't wait to do this challenge again with my real camera.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 4-- Something Green

Taken with my HTC EVO 4g with the Little Orange Box on the retroCamera app.

30 Day Photo Challenge -- Day 3 -- Clouds

Taken with my HTC Evo 4g with the Fudge Camera on retroCamera (default settings)