the pushed-out revolution The Christian Science Monitor finally gets it right: Women with children aren't blithely "opting out" of the workforce. They're being pushed out of the workplace, which offers employees (with children or without) little flexibility.

Once I had a dream job with flexibility. There were no sick days; you just called in if you were sick, and you stayed home. No point in giving everyone your germs. You picked your own hours. One guy started his workday at 5:30 a.m. and left in the middle of the afternoon. After a couple of years I left town and moved back to Austin; I telecommuted, kept the job.

We were the most productive people on planet Earth.

I had a very different kind of job when I got pregnant. I had the kind with bad benefits, chaotic management, and "comp time"--the elusive carrot dangled in front of an employee to keep her or him working indefinitely with the promise of leisure deferred. I was expected to work Saturdays and weekends for comp time I could use after the launch of this or that project, which always got pushed back.

We were a big bunch of clockwatchers.

The lesson: flexibility is good. For everybody.

oh, crap A way of life is ending.

Amen to that Check the time on the Teaching Time Clock, man!

the ocho! Today is our eighth wedding anniversary. What's that--the microfiber anniversary?

If you count up all the living-in-sin years and the living-down-the-street years, which were practically the same thing, that's a total of twelve years since I persuaded J. to be interested in me instead of my roommate (come on, admit it) after drinking an entire pitcher of another person's beer (I don't think he got a single glass). I had to be carried back to Kenmore Square, and the rest is small-scale history.

Few things begin well with drinking a pitcher of someone else's beer and being carried through Kenmore Square, but our marriage did.

File Under: What Was I Thinking? A warning to parents: Remove "Jet Boy, Jet Girl" by The Damned from your portable audio devices. Your four-year-olds are able to pick out and repeat all the words, and then they will ask you what each of them means. They are developmentally unprepared for certain of those concepts. They're still trying to get the hang of regular tooth-brushing.

No. Really? Reasons I have to weep for joy:

• Cardinals in the World Series.
• It's 45 degrees outside.
• There was a knock at my door yesterday afternoon, and a vaguely familiar-looking guy handed me a white square box. Containing a pie. A very tall pie with lots of tropical ingredients. It was the most complicated pie I've ever seen, and it was delicious. I'm pretty sure I know where it came from, but I'm going to play along. Thank you, whoever you are, and I think I know but I'm going to play along, for the pie. It was outrageous.
• Just go ahead and put the child's chocolate soy milk (how did he talk you into chocolate soy milk?) in your coffee. You'll be glad you did.

Million-dollar baby Stiefel says its new MimyX cream can reduce eczema flares by 48%.

The company should provide a companion lubricant patients can apply to the anal area before approaching the pharmacy checkout: $90. With insurance.

AFF If you're going to the Austin Film Festival, I strongly encourage you to see Third Monday in October, a documentary about student-council elections. It premieres tomorrow night at the IMAX.

The Commandments of Coyote Dude, I'm stoked to pass along The Commandments of Coyote, by cadlha/Seanan McGuire, for those of you who haven't seen it.

I read that shit, and let's just say it's after Baldo's bedtime and we have in fact already dealt with the inevitable Evening Curveball (a scary shadow), and well, I was pretty much open to it, you know? That's pretty much what I think of as How It Ought to Be.

Everybody, please. Can we have this be our religion? It's so sensible. It's decent. It's exactly how people should treat animals, their world, and each other. Man, I love that shit.

I have decided that God, whatever or whoever God is, doesn't sweat minor stuff, and if you're a decent human being who does not pollute the universe with your presence, pillage your employees' 401Ks, or hurt children, you're good with God. It doesn't matter how devoted you are to your religion if you are polluting the universe with your presence. Just do your bit not to scorch the Earth with your footprint and keep good counsel with others.

Perhaps it's because I've been hospitalized recently and diagnosed with Type II Bipolar, for which I've been given lithium carbonate, which I'm telling you people is the raddest shit ever. Please don't let my kidneys give out or something. It's definitely going up a notch on the Oh My God, You're Giving Me Psychiatric Medicine Scale, and if it's getting handed to you by a nurse in a paper cup, you might become The Scream for a moment. That's the kind of thing some people would not divulge. Me, I feel like I've had fucking prayers answered. Why would I not share that? Thou shalt not Bogart life.

I really worry that there are a lot of people who are on antidepressant after antidepressant with no real improvement, prescribed by family physicians who don't assess their patients properly for bipolar. I'm especially concerned about mothers who see their obstetricians for postpartum depression or anxiety and take antidepressant after antidepressant with no real improvement and are not assessed properly for bipolar. Some people think mood disorders that present after the birth of a baby are strictly hormonal and can be managed by a specialist in the reproductive system. Me, I'm sticking with a specialist in mental health. It drives me crazy to think of gynecologists prescribing psychiatric medicine. Like, whoa! That's so Victorian! Your mental health explained in your girly parts!

I'm just not sold on the model where the woman with postpartum depression goes back to the doctor who delivered her baby, gets a med, and is all fixed up and cheerful and back to her life in six months. I think that's a minority of people. I think for a lot of us it's a daily struggle, and mothers are really vulnerable to depression. There's soldiers and mothers. (The thought of being a soldier and a mother made my brain go pow for a minute there.) We are particularly susceptible to tragedy and never entirely without the thought of something bad happening to our children. And in many cultures of the world, inexplicably, we are not celebrated for being the goddamn basis of civilization. Civilization begins in the relationship between mother and child. A person's entire relational self generates from the mother-child bond. Is there really no way to reflect that work in the GNP? "Okay, let's see what you did today...you were the basis of civilization. Fed and nurtured the following generation of people, who will follow the Commandments of Coyote and bring the world back to harmony? Okay, yeah. You've worked."

October 12 Today would have been my sister's 36th birthday.

Sometimes I like to extrapolate from when she was 11, when I knew her last, before she died, and imagine her as an adult woman. Her life would be different from mine. I imagine her with kitten heels and a Miata, Carrie Bradshaw to my Daria Morgendorffer.

I miss her.

A dozen or so medium-sized pieces I'm home from the ward, y'all. It's kind of weird being able to go outside whenever I want, but I'm sure I'll get used to it again. I think I'll celebrate by wearing a belt and shoelaces.

This is one of those times where the blogger is supposed to bust some funny and observant rhymes about emotional wellness and the universality of our struggles, but I'm so tired my eyes are crossing. All I can say is this: Thank you for the comments and the support. I tried not to talk too much in group about my "friends in the computer"; to a social worker that sounds like psychotic features, and I didn't want to wind up across the hall in PICU or lose my cafeteria privileges. But I thought about the crazy mamas who share their lives with me, who wish each other well, who have each other's backs. We have a sphere. I'm glad to belong.

Call the Annenberg School: or The O'Really? Factor How's this for interesting?

Making the rounds of LJ this morning is this graphic, screen-capped from The O'Reilly Factor, which identifies former Congressman and man-boy lover Mark Foley as a Democrat. The accompanying caption claims Foley was identified as a Democrat on the program three times.

I guess if a guy is an embarrassment to your party, just tell your viewers he's with that other party. Now that's truth in reporting.

the sexiest woman alive Okay, I know the answer to this but I'll still ask.

Scarlett Johansson is the sexiest woman alive. Okay. So let's be sure to present her in photos as an "enigmatic trailer-park temptress." That's a really perfect depiction of a rich 21-year-old Hollywood actress. And so true. Trailer parks are full of enigmatic temptresses, right?

Female poverty is, like, SO HOT. When we celebrate young and beautiful women with powerful careers, let's be sure to show them in kitchens and trailer parks. That way even if you the reader are not a Rich and Powerful Guy, you will not be threatened. You can imagine that instead of being way too good for you, Scarlett Johansson is actually waiting for you in a tornado-bait double-wide on the wrong side of town.

You need this today. Or at least I do.

Via megan666.