The following was written 12/14/99, on iVillage's Current Debates board, by Vaniam. I recently had reason to search it out and reread it and felt it bore repeating after 10 years.

Titled "Deconstructing the Militant SAHM" the entire post can be found here. But the quote I sought was this:

All SAHMs are not militant. Far from it. I've never met a militant SAHM in real life, (not that I know of anyway). But I've *met* at few on the internet. SAH vs WOH debates reach a fever pitch on this board from time to time. These debates cause war zones on internet Playgroups - which is weird if a group has been together through the Expecting part and then they create havoc if a mom returns to work.

I'm not talking about SAHMs who say things like,

"I stay at home because it's best for my family"

or

"I believe young children should be with a parent, in my opinion".

Nope. I'm talking about the woman who says things like:

"What did you have kids for? Why didn't you just get a dog?"

or

"Why are you letting daycare raise your kids?"

or

"Why did you have kids if you don't want to care for them".

These women fight any progress made in the workplace to make employers more family friendly. They fight maturnity and parental leave legislation. They think workplace daycares are horrors. They don't want mothers working. Period.

They say that they "care about children" and that's why they feel so strongly. But they turn on a dime if the mother is a single mother. Those mothers are allowed to work. They obviously care less about children of single parents because the potential tax increase to pay benefits for SAH single parents is enough to get them to compromise their all-caring, all-knowing philosophy on child rearing.

All too often, when challenged by a militant SAHM, the working mother will list all the reasons - financial, health benefits etc. If the plight is pathetic enough, the militant SAHM will forgive them the "need" to work. Without full disclosure or justification for working, the militant SAHM assumes and boldly announces that the working mother is materialistic and has a greater need for consumer goods than a sense of responsibility for their children.

If the brave WOH mom says that she likes to work. Then she becomes "selfish". The militant SAHM says that pursuing her own selfish needs at the expense of the child's well being is a detriment to society. And we wonder, she says, why there are school shootings, juvenile crime and why our schools are crumbling.

Now - we know that each family decision is different. We all have different variables. We all have different compentencies. We have different family goals. We like to live different ways. We want different things.

I work for money, myself. Nothing more, nothing less. I would be a SAHM in a heartbeat if I could. And I could. But I have no interest in fashioning my daughter's Xmas dress from dryer lint. I don't wish to buy birthday presents from the dollar store. I wish for my child to have access to swimming lessons, enrichment activities and such. I like to buy what I want in the grocery store. And I want cable. And I want 2 cars. And I want to make the odd spontaneous purchase. And I want to decide at the last minute that we're going out for dinner. And I don't wish to rent. I want to own.

Most SAHMs who have the income or financial security to live a reasonably comfortable existance are not militant. They generally feel lucky and priviledged to be able to live well on one income and be at home. They have likely planned well.

I have found that the greater degree of militancy comes from those who have made huge sacrifices. They use one car. They don't shop. They down-grade everything they own. Get rid of cable. No spontaneous purchases. No pay to play activities for the children. That's fine if that's what you want, but I couldn't live that way and they think everyone should.

I would feel like a terrible parent if I gave up everything to stay home. First of all, I'd be miserable because I would feel deprived. I'd be jealous of those who had more than me. I would feel resentful that I couldn't prepare the meals that I really wanted to. I would feel guilty that my kid couldn't participate in activities because we didn't have the money for the program. And if momma is miserable, no-one is going to be having any fun.

I think three factors contribute to militant SAHMism. One if misery - they create a life with so much sacrifice that they want everyone else to be miserable too.

The second factor is control. They cannot entertain for even a nano-second that anyone else could possibly have a positive influence on their child. No one else can teach. No one else can nurture. No one else can be important to the child.

The third factor is an unusually high need for validation. Non-militant SAHMs are comfortable doing what they do without needing society or the entire internet to pat them on the back and validate them. Militant SAHMs want people to think they are the unselfish heros of the world.

So what do you think? Who are these women to log on to the internet and rake everyone else over the coals while looking for kudos for their "sacrifice". Who are these women to put everyone on the defensive and cause people to justify their choices? What do you think motivates them? And why?

Now, I just *know* that a militant SAHM will attempt to turn this thread into a debate. Let her. It will only help us to deconstruct the personality traits that cause this militancy.

Thanks, Van! Looking back, this might actually be on par with the Buckley Manifesto, even if it wasn't seen as such at the time.

Drinking Will Solve Everything

It's kinda cute, but it's the end of her blog entry that I want to address.

"....Raising little kids, especially if you are crazy enough to stay home (like I was), will eventually drive you stark raving mad. Friggin’ nuts. And the skills you will use to stay sane when they are teens and moving on with their lives are different than the skills you need to survive while raising little ones. Perhaps treasuring your past years with them is a skill the Empty Nester uses to cope. But while you are in the middle of it, you know as well as the sun will shine tomorrow, that this madness will never ever end. They will never go to bed easily, they will never let go of your leg when you want to go somewhere, they will never stop having tantrums at the most embarrassing times, and they will never learn to wipe their own butts.

"However, now, mine have. They walk and talk and drive and go to bed all on their own. And they let go of my leg when I leave, and usually they don’t even know I am leaving or coming or whether I am alive at all. In fact, they are just not here. They are gone. And to survive this, I drink since I haven’t yet figured out more proper skills or taken up needlepoint, bridge, or bingo. And frankly it is not that great having the bathroom to oneself, or picking the radio station, or having un-pooped on clothes. And having all the time in the world to get your hair done, or to have a lovely lunch with friends, or to become self-actualized is over-rated. Simply stated, when your kids leave, it is just very sad and frankly a little lonely."

and my reply? Meh, you're fucking crazy.

If you want to share the bathroom while you potty, get a fucking cat--you'll never pee alone again. Having one's child grow up and leave isn't sad; it's awesome. Hell it's the entire POINT of all the pooped-on clothing! And if you've done it right, they don't go away forever; they just figure out how to get their own pooped on clothing and they're going to need babysitters occasionally.

I get the part about missing the very things I railed about in the day, but the fact is, if I weren't missing those days, I'd be missing THESE. The ones where my kid's a grown up that I really like, about to marry a girl I really like. Where I'm actually contemplating a pointless and totally unnecessary change of domicile, so that I can drive even FARTHER to work, but live in the same neighborhood that boy and his girl are moving to. Because they have ASKED me to consider moving there.

I would never want to be missing THESE days. This is where life is the richest. Why on earth would I trade that for more poop??

I was planning on using the leftover yellow fabric from the applique as the binding, but now I think black is a better choice. This portion of the quilt top, the black 1" border and the multicolor 2.5" border with colored corners, was sewn on the 1909 Singer 66.

For those playing along at home on the vintage machine bingo, the decal set here is called Brown Lotus. This machine is one of my favorites (as I mentioned in the meme post), because I cleaned and restored it and its original cabinet myself.

I've been working on the quilt top, I promise! I just haven't posted any of my progress on it. Got all the sashing done (and in less than 5 hours, too, which is much more quickly than I thought it would go). Ultimately, I chose to make the sashing a bit narrower than the original sample, because I only had 46 inches of the black fabric once I'd squared it up. So I cut 1.5" strips the length of the fabric (rather than the width--this was to make the black tie in more closely with the yellow, which was 56" wide (the black was only 42" wide). Also 1.5" strips of the yellow and sewed two of each color, alternating (black, yellow, black, yellow) down the lengths.

Then I cut across 1" wide strips. My sewing space looked like I'd deconstructed a bunch of huge bumblebees! I then sewed 6 of those strips so that I had a long alternating piece and then sewed another 1.5" black strip on either side of it. The resulting sashing is about .5 inch narrower than my example, but it's not an appreciable difference, imo.

Then I had to tackle block placement so I would know how to sew it all together. I didn't want any duplication of a block in any row or column and I was intending a random placement of the blocks. As it happened the best color distribution worked out with the blocks going in a diagonal, so although there is some pattern to the placement, I don't think it's screaming or anything. Okay, maybe it is, but I'm good with it anyway :) And here it is; I apologize for the cocky-wampus view on the picture, but it was the only way to get the whole thing in the frame.

This weekend's agenda includes attaching the borders and then making the quilt sandwich. Once that's done, I plan to spend the rest of the weekend practicing free-motion quilting on my Singer 66 treadle. We'll see how that goes before I commit to FMQ for this project, but that's my intention right now. I want to spend the last weekend in October binding the quilt. We'll see how that goes ;)

Now that the applique process is done, there's time for playing in the sewing room. The first thing I wanted to do today was experiment with the strip piecing of the sashing--I wanted to see if the results from making a dotted yellow line in the 'roadway' sashing would be worth all the extra work, so I dug through my scrap pile and found some cheap remnants (since I didn't want to experiment with the expensive quilt-store fabric). The alternative is to do a simple 3 strip piecing of black/yellow/black for a solid yellow line, but my instinct is to go with the dotted line.

Anyway, I set up the handcrank machine, which always does a great job with piecing and came up with this:

I love it! Definitely going to go with the dotted yellow line (once I do all the math to ensure I have enough of the black fabric). when I'm ready to start that project, I'll be using this machine:

With that settled, I dug out my Kenmore machine to begin the blanket stitching on the applique. and then realized I don't have matching thread for all the different colors on the applique, so off to JoAnn's for thread.

What?? You didn't actually think I'd go to JoAnn's and only return with the things I intended to buy, did you? I saw this and immediately realized I would NOT have to strip piece the border if I didn't want to. And I bought enough to use this fabric as the backing, although that ship hasn't sailed for sure either--I still really like the background fabric on the applique. But if I don't use this fabric on this quilt, I'm sure to use it on some quilte because it's adorable and I love it.

Anyway, once I got back home, I stuck the new fabric in the wash and settled down to start working on the details and outlining of the applique blocks.

These are great fun to do, but slower and more painstaking than piecing, especially while I got used to the rhythm of the blanket stitch. But I like the effect and it's a relaxing process--I just stick a movie in the DVD player and settle in.

And here's the Kenmore (and let me just say, I LOOOOVE that machine, considering it's only 2 years old :)

Current Mood: creative

Yay! The applique work is done (aside from edging and top stitching). The Singer 27 worked for all of it.

Dump Trucks! I'm really pleased with how these came out.

Train Engines! Ok, I admit, I have some mixed feelings on these (and I think I burned my fingers into several layers of doneness trying (unsuccessfully in too many cases) to get the fusible interfacing tucked underneath. But I'm hoping the top stitching will do a good bit to cover that up and if not? Well, he's 2, he'll never know it wasn't intentional ;)

This afternoon, I'm going to practice with a couple different ways to get the sashing the way I want it.

Got started (sewing) on my newest quilt this weekend. This quilt will be appliques of cars and trucks, with sashing pieced like roadway between the blocks. Applique is NOT my favorite quilt form, so I'm doing a hard push to get that part done as quickly as possible, since this quilt is intended as a Christmas gift. And anyone who knows me, knows how I embrace procrastination, so there's really no time to lose! ;)

This weekend I did 3 blocks each of fire trucks and cars, on a neutral background of tan.

The fire trucks are the only vehicles which will have uniform color scheme, other than the wheels on all of the vehicles which are going to be blue (because I am cutting it VERY close on my black fabric for the sashing). The other vehicles (cars, dump trucks and a train engine) will be mix and match.

Here's a close up of the fire engine, so you can see the background fabric. One of the ladies at the fabric store picked the background out and I loved it immediately. I was fortunate that when I described the project, they understood immediately (and agreed with me) that the blocks needed a neutral to fade into the background. And I like this as it has some interest, but doesn't try to overwhelm the colors of the applique.

And the three cars. I will be using a blanket stitch for the outlines of all the appliques. That will be done prior to piecing the quilt top together. I'm also planning top stitching on all of the vehicles to put some details (like windows and doors), without having to applique/piece every detail in. I haven't decided if that part will be done before constructing the quilt top, or as part of the final quilting.

All the sewing on this quilt so far has been done on my 1908 Singer 27 (Sphinx decals). I *do* so love sewing on this machine head. the blanket stitching will be done on my modern-era Kenmore, but I anticipate all of the straight-stitching to be done on my antique and vintage machines.

SewMamaSew.com recently requested links to blog entries with the following meme about our favorite(s) sewing machines, so here are mine:

What brand and model do you have? A 1908 Singer 27-3 with Sphinx decals (pretty badly worn) in a treadle cabinet; a 1909 Singer 66-1 with Brown Lotus decals (better condition than the Singer 27, but not perfect by any means) in a parlor cabinet; a modern Kenmore 16231 portable--I usually set this up on the Singer 27 cabinet with a cutting board over the hole, so I can have the cabinet flip top open for more work space.

That's the Singer 27; the wear of the decals is pretty obvious.

And this is the Singer 66, after a good cleaning. The decals were gorgeous once I got 80 some odd years of grunge off the machine head (caution for anyone trying this at home--be GENTLE--decals on sewing machines made before the 1940s are very easily damaged)

This is a picture of my sewing room; the machine on the metal shelving unit is the Kenmore 16231.

How long have you had it? I've had the Singer 27 the longest, at 5 years, the Singer 66 at 4 years and the Kenmore at 2 years.

How much does that machine cost (approximately)? The Singer 27 cost about $20 for the machine head, but it had been "Franken-fitted" with parts from a Singer 127 to try to make the machine head work off a motor instead of a treadle. This can actually be done, but not the way the original "designer" was attempting. So I had to buy appropriate parts. In the meantime, I'd been given an orphaned set of treadle irons, so I bought cabinet parts off Ebay to create the treadle cabinet for the machine head. In all, I probably paid about $75 for everything and have a wonderful machine to sew on.

The Singer 66-1 cost $100 from Ebay. The head was filthy and the cabinet desperately needed refinishing.

Here are a couple of before/after shots of the back side of the Lotus' machine's pillar. I actually used an automotive degreaser (some house brand from Wal-Mart, in a purple jug), cut with 4 parts of water (to 1 part of cleaner) and 0000 steel wool (used VERY VERY VERY gently). Any kind of chrome or silver polish works on the shiny bits. Rust can be cleaned off (and obviously should be), and then the pieces shined and oiled lightly. For light rust, just a bit of fine sand paper should do it. For really bad rust, I like to use EvapoRust.

And a before/after of the cabinet refinishing. this side was in the worst condition--I probably wouldn't have had to strip the entire cabinet, but for this side.

I probably spent another $30 in cleaning and wood stripping/refinishing supplies. The machine head took a day's hard work and the cabinet took 2 full weekend days with lots of elbow grease for both pieces, but again, paid off with a beautiful cabinet and pretty machine head that sews as beautifully as the day it came from the Singer factory.

The Kenmore 16231 cost $249 from Sears. I could have gotten it for less, but I didn't want to wait--I was having knee surgery and wanted to get the machine before the surgery (so I wasn't trying to tote the thing out to my car while on crutches or a walker :)

What types of things do you sew (i.e. quilting, clothing, handbags, home dec projects, etc.)? Mostly quilting and home decorating, but I do love to make clothing--I simply haven't had the time to get into any clothing projects recently. Below are a couple thumbnail pics of a few of babyquilts I've finished.

How much do you sew? How much wear and tear does the machine get? I *try* to sew at least once a week, usually on Sundays, when I can schedule a marathon session in the sewing room with confidence that I'm not likely to be interrupted. I'd like to sew more, but my full time job gets in the way and they won't let me set up any of my sewing machines there! LOL

Do you like/love/hate your machine? Are you ambivalent? Passionate? Does she have a name? I love *all* my machines, but these three are my sure favorites. Some of my machines have names, but not these three :)

What features does your machine have that work well for you? I love the rhythm of treadling, also the stitch by stitch control of it--it's much easier to control speed on a treadle than on an electric machine, which is very helpful in piecing quilts. Most of my quilts are pieced on the treadles or a hand crank machine that I have. I like my Kenmore for straightline quilting--I've not tried my hand at free-motion yet, so I can't say if any of my machines does that well. I love the needle up/down feature on the Kenmore. And with the treadles and handcranks, because speed is so easily controlled, it's as if they have needle up/down :)

Is there anything that drives you nuts about your machine? Well, the nature of the Singer 27 is that it has the old style vibrating shuttle with the long bobbins, so they don't hold nearly as much thread as the more modern round bobbins. But I get around that by winding half a dozen or so at a time. Since I piece quilts with only a couple basic colors of thread, it doesn't matter if I use up all the bobbin thread or not on any given project.

Do you have a great story to share about your machine (i.e., Found it under the Christmas tree? Dropped it on the kitchen floor? Sewed your fingernail to your zipper?, Got it from your Great Grandma?, etc.!)? We want to hear it! LOL, I think I've already told all their stories :) I enjoyed putting my Singer 27 back into working order from its sad, grungy state, and I enjoyed cleaning up the Singer 66 and refinishing the cabinet. I'm not really eager to take on either such project any time soon, mind you, but I enjoyed doing it and bringing very old machines back into useful life. And I love my little Kenmore because it's very portable, especially compared to the weight of my vintage machines!

Would you recommend the machine to others? Why? I'd recommend any of these machines to anyone. They're fun to sew on and it's nice to think of the history of the century old machines and wonder about the households where they lived before mine.

What factors do you think are important to consider when looking for a new machine? It should sing to you when you use it. Which sounds very silly and emotional, but I've found it to be true. I mentioned the "11 essential machines" earlier, but all of them are either Singers or Kenmores. I love them. I've had other brands of vintage machines (a couple Whites and Davis), but they simply didn't touch me the way the Singers and Kenmores do. (Which is silly, because Kenmores, over the years, have been made by a number of different companies, but emotional responses don't have to make sense, thank goodness!)

And I have friends online with vintage machines--one woman won't collect anything but White. Another one is a very vocal advocate for the old Domestics. Another one has a sewing room filled with Willcox & Gibbs chainstitch treadles. Choosing your sewing machine is a very personal decision, imo, and I think anyone looking for a new machine should try lots of different brands, taking into consideration the features she will need/use most. And then pick the machine that sings to her--even if everyone she knows likes another kind better.

Do you have a dream machine? I think I already have my dream machines :)

Tags: kenmore, sewing machines, singer, vintage sewing machines

Oh, you know which one I mean: the one where I get to think of new and interesting ways to totally freak out an entire city, using Air Force One. I mean c'mon, a low altitude fly-over thru/next to Manhattan??? Genius, I tell you! Genius! All in the name of updating the photo files of AF1. Hey, everyone needs a portfolio, right? It's good for publicity. Everybody in Hollywood does it.

Think of the possibilities. Now that we've recreated the horror of 9/11, we can create an entire genre of history-related AF1 fly-overs. Like, next we can zoom Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Or if the budget in these tight economic times doesn't cover international terror, maybe we can just recreate the bombing of Pearl Harbor. There's gotta be some Navy ship ready for scuttling. Or, you know....not. Probably shouldn't spoil the surprise or we won't get realistic shots.

And let's not limit ourselves to the history of air travel. This is pure Hollywood, so think outside the box. We can TOTALLY have AF1 kick General Lee's ass at Gettysburg. Re-enactors live for shit like this! Or the Battle of Baltimore Harbor. The national anthem could only be improved by the addition of a strafing run on the British by AF1. Cornwallis, anyone? Yorktown could use the economic boost, is all I'm sayin'.

We don't even have to limit ourselves to real events. How about if AF1 does an entire portfolio of famous airplane scenes from movies? Tell me it would NOT be awesome to see Cary Grant running like hell from Air Force One? The possibilities here are limitless.

Current Mood: thoughtful

Doesn't matter who for (okay, yes, it does, but that's not the point here). Vote. Dammit.

Current Mood: bouncy