colds has hit our little Minnow. He is handling it very well, except of course when I try to clean out his nose. It is certainly his absolutely least favorite thing in the world. You would think I was poking him with a hot stick, etc. He is sleeping well still and has just as much energy as ever, he just can’t really breath through his nose. He hates having his nose wiped, etc. He would much rather rub his face on my shirt or pants for cleaning. This is just another in my rites of passage as a mom. There seems to have been quite a few lately–first surgery, first tooth and now first cold. I can’t even imagine how many more firsts are too come, but I look forward to each and everyone of them.

on so many levels this is true. I am a month away from my century in Palm Springs. I am so very much looking forward to going to Palm Springs and to doing the ride with my best friend and I have to admit I like to challenge myself. They published the route map and the profile of the ride and I am no freaking out a little. I am not in the best shape of my life. I am not sure if I am in better shape now than for my last century. But back to the idea of a challenge. Yesterday I posted about the demise of our basic genetic roles. I am very interested in societal roles and changes and how those changes influence the direction our world takes. As our world becomes more automated and more advanced, our genes become lost and we must define for ourselves new roles that will feed the genes’ desires/needs to satisfy their primal needs.

There are so few things in our world that are challenging. No longer is it a challenge to get food–you go to the market and everything that you could possibly want is there. I am not forgetting the challenge that some face to make enough money to pay for food, etc. But these challenges are created by this “fake” society that we live in. We have more food and resources than we need–we have become hoarders and we keep our excess away from those who cannot pay what we think is a fair market value for our goods–even if that means we have to throw them away because we have so much. This is fodder for another post…Challenges are what give us control and purpose in our life. Without them we are seemingly powerless. This powerlessness causes stress.

I find it necessary to continually challenge myself to create my own source of power. It is all we can do if we are not in positions of real power. Turning away from power and challenge in favor of leisure activities actually causes more stress because we have sacrificed our own power over our lives. We pretend that we have control and that we are happy, but as a species we are happiest when we are challenging ourselves to reach and achieve some goal we have set for ourselves. So, set a goal. No matter how absurd it seems. Challenge yourself. I am looking forward to my upcoming challenge and the others I am setting. I need to take back the power.

I have PCOS and I can give in to it or I can challenge it. My hubby and I want to have biological children. But that is not the reason to conquer my PCOS. I want to control it to have the power and to make sure that I don’t have health problems later. I have know about the PCOS for years and I have let in control me. I have let it have power over me. I have to admit that it is a problem and that I have to take back the power. I will. What is your challenge?

This is a question that has plagued men for centuries and forced women to work harder for their due place in the “fake” world created by men. Since the beginning of time, women have been the most important gender in our society. This is something easily overlooked and well hidden. Hubby is reading a great book The Lucifer Principle, by Harold Bloom. This book examines society and its evil nature based on the idea of the “pecking” order within each culture/species. It examines the true “disposable” nature of the male species. More men are killed by violence and by accidents that are seemingly brought on by their {male} aggressive nature. Bloom examines the reason for natures treatment of men as disposable…

“If you did away with the vast majority of men on the planet but preserved the women, you would scarcely even dent our species’ reproductive capabilities. One man kept around as a stud could easily provide a hundred women with the wherewithal to become pregnant whenever they pleased. Every nine months a one-man, one-hundred-women collective could produce a hundred babies.

The lives of women, on the other hand, cannot be so casually disposed of. Pare humanity down to one woman for every hundred men, and you’ll have one hundred very horny and bellicose guys slicing each other to ribbons or slashing themselves in despair. What’s worse, you’ll cut the number of possible babies down from one hundred every nine months to one, dooming the human race to extinction. The result? We send our men to war but keep the women safe at home. When ships are sinking, it’s women and children to the lifeboats first. Let the men founder in the sea. You need each precious woman as a vessel for procreation (p149).”

If you were to look at our society today you would not think that women are truly society’s most valuable resource? Why not you ask, well I have a theory. Men need to create their own need for importance. If all men are really good for in nature is to protect the women and offspring and to create more off spring, if there are an excess of men then the value of all men goes down.

So, men have created a world–politics, business, and religion–where they reign supreme and women are made to feel less valuable. This model goes against the design of nature and I think you can see the unravelling of society in this “fake” world created by men to maintain their overall importance. Women have been brainwashed to think that the world created by men is really the important one. Women have bought into the idea that the world of men is the valuable one, when in reality it is an illusion. Without women there would be nothing. Okay, I know the world is full of people, and our reality has changed. But it is important to remember that the thing that is important is not the boardroom and the corner office, but the tribe and its survival.

Maybe this is a naive view, as our reality has become the world manufactured by men to maintain their own importance in the world. I know that it is improbable to think that we can change the world we live in. The world that has been created to steal away from women their importance and to bestow on men an authority that gives them the power that they long to have. How can we reconcile the natural world with the manufactured one? How can we all find happiness when our natural insticts to take care of our tribe are pushed down?

It is always bittersweet for my to ring in the New Year. It makes me sad for all the things I didn’t quite get done–or even start. On the flip side it gives me hope to finish all those things that I didn’t and to start all those projects gathering dust in the house and on the proverbial drawing board. This has been overall one of the best if not the best year of my life thus far. I became a mother this year and that has wiped away all of the disappointments. As the year fades into the dust a new year full of hope, dreams and possiblilities rises from the same dust like a phoenix. I hope to make more of this one, as new years are finite. Happy New Year to all…

We have made it throught the holiday roughly unscathed. It was a very busy holiday and exhausting. We have waited a long time to be able to have Christmas as a family–with our child–and it was all I had hoped. I must say we are now considering moving to bigger house, as I don’t know where we are going to put all the wonderful toys and things that were given to Minnow. Minnow had 4 Christmas celebrations.

• On Saturday with my bonus mom’s family
• On Christmas Eve with my dad’s family
• On Christmas Eve with my mom’s family
• On Christmas Day with us and my brother, dad and bonus mom

Minnow also made his first girlfriend–or I gues more accurately scared away his first girlfriend. Since we have been home, Minnow has not really had the opportunity to be around other kids his own age. On Christmas eve that changed and he was absolutely smitten with a 7 mos old girl who was his same size. It was so cute and I am still kicking myself for not having brought our video camera–as it is a priceless memory for me. The were totally enamored of each other. I have never seen Minnow so excited about someone other than us. It was so cute.

Not only did Minnow get lots of gifts for Christmas, he is also cutting his first tooth and he is not at all liking it. It seems to be better now, but it was a rough couple of days with all that the little guy endured since Wednesday. I must say that our first Christmas with our first child was more than I ever anticipated it to be. I look forward to all the holidays to come and the delight that our son continues to experience and that he brings to our lives. He is the embodiment of the Christmas spirit. He is our meaning of life.

Here he is on his bounce and spin zebra. It is awesome. He is still a little short for it but he likes it and once he can touch the ground it will be his favorite.

Christmas morning was a little tough as his tooth was bothering him. But here he is with the little loot from Santa.

This is the coolest thing ever. It is a little Tigger airplane that has a propeller that spins with lights on it and it turns etc. It is a very cool toy. He did get a great Kenneth Cole outfit from my brother and his partner. I can’t wait to dress Minnow up in it for a pic. It is precious.