Vulnerable

So I had no intention of taking a break from blogging while we were on vacation, but the place we’re staying charges $5 per day per machine for internet access. Since I’m not made of money, we’ll have very limited access. I may have the chance to put up a post tomorrow morning before my services expires, but if not, I’ll likely disappear for the rest of the week. I may pay for one more day sometime in the middle of the week, but possibly not. The sheer expense is mindblowing!

Since I’ve had Eve, one of the things I always do when traveling is to look up the state laws pertaining to breastfeeding. I’m lucky to live in a state that explicitly defends a woman’s right to nurse in public, and until now we’ve always stayed in states with similar laws.

This time, however, I have no such protection. While there is a law in place that will prevent me from being charged with a sex crime for nursing my daughter (the very fact that such a law has to exist makes me ragey), there is nothing in place that will prevent a private establishment from kicking me out if I need to feed my baby straight from the tap.

This has me feeling…uneasy, to say the least. For the past year I’ve been very, very lucky to have never been confronted aggressively or negatively for nursing Eve in public. For the next week, every time I unbutton my bra and cradle her close to my breast, I’m going to have to wonder whether we are going to be targeted, humiliated, harassed, shamed, or shown the door. I am afraid to feed my daughter. And I am realizing for the first time the extent to which I had taken the laws of my home state for granted; without them I feel naked, unprotected. The women who live here and nurse their children have to deal with this all the time. I found a website for the state in which parents have compiled a list of nursing-friendly businesses, a resource that is just not necessary in my home state (as well as 43 other states!) because all businesses are legally mandated to allow me to nurse.

It’s just a week. I know I can do it, and that even if we get kicked out of a pizza place or arcade, at least the law is on my side enough such that I won’t be put on a sex offender registry for having the indecency to feed my hungry baby while on vacation. I guess that’s a silver lining?

Recipe of the Week: Roasted Garlic

Even though we knew we’d be spending the past weekend out of town, I was adamant about trying a new recipe for the week. We were staying with my sister-in-law after all, and I knew that she had a kitchen (a particularly roomy one at that, compared to our tiny space), so the show must go on!

Well…yeah. My SIL has a kitchen all right, and it’s got a fridge, stove/oven, toaster oven, and a microwave. She even had flatware and silverware. But that was about it. No roasting pans, cookie sheets, rolling pin, cutting board, ANYTHING. In other words, her kitchen was severely anemic, and while I’m sure I could have figured SOMETHING out that didn’t require us to buy new kitchen ware that would make what we had at home redundant, I didn’t want to get started on anything and have to pause mid-recipe because it called for something that I took for granted that she had.

So we decided to wait until we got back home, when we had little time and no energy to do it after all the driving and unpacking, and so I decided on something ridiculously simple just for the sake of saying that I had done anything at all.

And so, yeah. Roasted garlic. I cut the top off of a head of garlic, poured a little bit of olive oil on top, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, wrapped it in foil, and then stuck the packet in a 350 degree oven for 50 minutes.

The finished product was soft and tasted like, well, garlic. The book (Betty Crocker cookbook) had said that garlic develops a sweet flavor when roasted, but I didn’t notice anything like that. It just tasted like garlic. By itself it was unimpressive and kind of gross (I mean, it’s garlic! Not chocolate! Who just eats a clove of garlic? I’d much prefer a clove of chocolate!), but I bet it would be really yummy smooshed into something else, like butter for garlic butter (I don’t know if that’s how you make garlic butter, that’s just what came to mind).

I’ve got to think of something not quite so “meh” for this coming weekend’s recipe, preferably something that could be gifted to my mom. I’m open to suggestions!

Aaaand We’re Back!

Ugh. I hate the first Monday after a vacation. I’m usually very restless and daydreamy, still full of energy from my break. I find it difficult to concentrate on the work at hand, which seriously doesn’t make my work day any easier or shorter.

In any case, we’re back. We have successfully traveled with a young child, and everything was just fine. She spent most of the time in the car knocked out, and the 300+ mile drive didn’t even seem that long going up (and felt even shorter coming back!). The time with family was well spent, and a couple of things happened that have inspired me to write a couple of new posts in the next week or two, which is always a good thing.

I’d write more, but I’m surrounded by a pile of work that isn’t going to do itself any time soon. A more detailed family vacation update will be coming soon!

Day Two!

Today is the second day of our vacation, and so far things have been going wonderfully. Eve was pretty patient with us for the six-hour drive on Wednesday (it helped that she was asleep for 80% of the ride), and upon arriving we were received warmly by my husband’s parents, grandparents, aunt, and sister. We’re staying with my sister-in-law, who is 7 months pregnant with her first child; she has a cough that doesn’t want to go away, reminding me of how I used to catch every single bug and ailment that came my way during my pregnancy with Eve. While I do miss pregnancy sometimes, I certainly don’t miss that.

Right now Marcus is downstairs with his grandparents, attempting to barter the baby for a little breakfast. I’m trying to decide whether I should comb out my afro (I washed out the twists yesterday) or attempt and likely fail – again – to cornrow my own hair. I know how to braid (or at the very least, I know the mechanics of it), but I think I’m mostly having trouble because my hair, while certainly of cornrow-able length, is still pretty short. Perhaps I’ll have better luck once I’ve got another inch.

All right, I’m going to bring this totally exciting update to a close. It’s time to check on my husband and see if he was able to successfully trade our firstborn for some bacon and grits. Whatever you’re up to this weekend, friends, I hope you enjoy it.

Finally, A Break

For the first time since the Snowpocalypse, I’ve got a couple of days scheduled off from work. We’re hitting the highway after I leave work to visit my husband’s family for the weekend (a six-hour drive away…ouch) and to celebrate my husband’s grandmother at her 80th birthday bash. The rest of his family will finally get to meet Eve (so far, only his parents have had the pleasure) and I will get to sleep in for 4 whole days in a row (well, as much as Eve will let me anyhow).

I’m not sure what the Internet situation is up there so I don’t know if I’ll be back before Monday. In the meantime I’ve scheduled a post for Thursday so I won’t be entirely gone. 🙂

Enjoy your weekend, friends. I certainly do intend to enjoy mine.