Sweetpea’s Garden

I’ve written often about my dad here on the blog, since his death was one of the things that spurred me to start it. I haven’t, however, written much about my mom. Since she’s a frequent commenter, I’ve let her speak for herself. It’s also surprisingly awkward and intimidating to write about someone knowing that they will read it. But It’s Mothers’ Day, and I feel like it’s Mom’s turn to get her due here in blogland. So, here’s a little bit about the woman I am proud to call my mom.

Mom was born before the Baby Boom, and raised in in a very traditional, blue-collar way — girls grew up to be teachers and secretaries while waiting for their turns to be wives and mothers, and boys went to college, had careers, and left the child-rearing to the women. And while she had wonderful parents and a great upbringing, she very specifically chose a different path for her own family. I don’t know if my mom would call herself a feminist, but that is absolutely the way she raised us. I literally cannot think of a time when we weren’t told that we could be anything we wanted to be, and that it was important for us to think for ourselves, stand up for ourselves, and know how to support ourselves. (And if you know any of the three of us in the outside world, you know that we’re pretty independent and mouthy, so it may have worked a little too well.)

She led us by example by going back to work when we were in grade school; showing us that, yes, moms could have jobs, but that being super-woman and “having it all” — as was the trend in the 80s — was not easy. It involved everyone in the family, including Dad, contributing to the household, and we did — with varying degrees of success, I will admit. I never did quite get the hang of keeping my room clean, but I could (and can still) iron better and faster than most people.

Another important lesson I learned from my mom was not to mistake education for intelligence. She never had a chance to go to college, but is one of the smartest and most curious people I know. I think all of the lawyers she has worked for over the years would agree that, had circumstances been different, they would have been as proud to have her as a colleague as support staff. And more than a few of them might even admit that her smarts have, on many occasions, contributed directly to their success.

A long way of getting to my original point: Mom, you rock. I love you very much.

Happy Mothers’ Day!

The blog got some spring cleaning and sprucing up yesterday. Here’s what’s new:

• I updated the post author feature, so that now everything comes from me, Sarah (formerly known as Sweetpea) or my sister Eileen (neé Snapdragon). I figured that, even though I haven’t solved the new blog name issue, I can at least transition us to our proper names.
• There are now feeds in the sidebar for just her posts, and just mine, in case you’re only interested in one or the other — or you’ve read a post and can’t figure out which of us wrote it, as the new layout does not have author names on the posts like the last one.
• Speaking of which — I’ve changed the page template and header image.
• I cleaned out the blogroll to delete a few links for blogs that have gone dormant. I’ve also added a few things to the “stuff I like” list.
• I discovered while poking around that WordPress has added an option to include digg, del.icio.us, reddit, and stumbleupon links to my RSS feeds. What, exactly, this means, I don’t know. They’re all different social bookmarking and news sites, but I’ve only used del.icio.us, so I don’t really know how the others work. But I added them anyway, ’cause why not?

I know I am not alone when I say that I am just over the Democratic primary process — so, so over it. I don’t know if I can stand to hear another breakdown of the numbers of delegates, superdelegates, and that third kind of extra-special, kinda-secret delegates needed for victory in my party’s arcane nominating system. And honestly, I might cry if I hear one more time that now, unexpectedly, state X matters. It’s not just Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Indiana — I started hearing this back in February, when much to our surprise, the DC, Maryland, and Virginia “Potomac Primary” suddenly rose to relevancy.

This, actually, is a huge part of why I’m just done with the whole thing. Call me naive and idealistic, but I think all the states should matter — and as far as I can tell, the party leadership in most states agree. What else could explain the way states tripped over themselves to bump their primaries earlier and earlier in the year? (Leading, of course, to the current ruckus about seating the Michigan and Florida delegations at the convention.) Obviously, the plan to front-load the primaries neither made the early votes more important nor made selecting a candidate any faster.

Just as an aside, I don’t think the primary problem is exclusive to the Democrats, though we’re the ones, obviously, making news right now. The Republicans have a similarly strange calendar, but their winner-take-all methodology at least kept their primaries from being a months-long ordeal. I doubt, though, that supporters of Romney, Giuliani, Huckabee, or others of the original cast of thousands — especially in the states that voted late — find it much more satisfactory.

I don’t know what the solution is. A national primary day seems like a good idea to me, but I don’t know that the states would go for it. After all, the whole primary system is at the ugly crossroads of states’ rights and national party politics. It seems to me that something must change, since the current methodology is so flawed.

But of course, it’s not just the process that has me worn out. I’m not especially crazy about either of the candidates and watching them tear each other down day after day on issues where, fundamentally, they agree, is exhausting. And, oh, I dunno… incredibly detrimental to our chances in November.

Sigh.

(And yes, I realize that the primary process is not especially new; I think the current Democratic disaster has served to highlight for me some problems inherent in the current system.)