“On the whole, women are smarter than men”
I heard the phrase and was so shocked that I stared at the TV screen and replayed it in my head. No, I wasn’t hearing things. No, the speaker wasn’t joking. No, the speaker wasn’t attempting to impress anyone.
It was Clive James, aged seventy, talking to Andrew Denton on the latter’s “Elders” show.
It astonished me that any man would actually believe that. When I was fifteen, an intelligent older woman gently advised me that my own intelligence might be a barrier to romance – or, if you prefer, she told me that gentlemen prefer their women dumb.
This was quite shocking to me, since I’d always felt that intelligence was like money – the more you had, the more attractive you were. But unfortunately, statistics do reveal that women who are more intelligent are less likely to marry (those statistics don’t reveal whether it’s because they are too smart to marry – as a happily married woman, I think the statistics would indicate that men are too insecure to marry someone they recognise as smarter than themselves).
Whatever the truth of the matter, from the age of fifteen I learnt to sometimes bite my lip rather than speaking out (especially to correct an ignorant man), I threw a lot of poor grammar and clumsy phrasing into my everyday speech (the ironic use of poor grammar still amuses me hugely), and I developed that irritating habit of laughing when I make a joke – not because I’m so hilarious I can’t resist, but to make sure that people who don’t get it at least know that a joke has occured in the vicinity.
Some of you will find those changes stupid, and some tragic. I suspect those two groups will be divided largely along gender lines.
Personally, I think women are smarter and stronger (mentally and emotionally) than men. How could I not, when I so often find myself pretending to believe a man is smarter than me (I don’t do this with CJ, but I still do so with other men)? When I push past my natural preference for my own gender and try to be objectively rational, I think that men and women are differently intelligent, and we simply tend to value (and to notice) our own gender’s intelligence styles more readily than the other. Men are also more likely to base their self-esteem on intelligence (better than basing it on beauty, at least), which can make them inflexible when it comes to admitting they’re wrong or less intelligent than someone else. My own self-esteem is linked strongly to independence (particularly financial independence, which I equate with being an adult) and intelligence, both of which have been decimated by mental illness. This is a problem.
If you’re pregnant and you know it, clap your hands
According to this Huffington Post article, 1 in 450 women don’t know they’re pregnant until after twenty weeks have passed – that’s halfway through the pregnancy.
Since I was about twelve, the familiar joke of “You must be pregnant” in response to every known symptom of physical illness has cropped up over and over again. Maybe there’s a frightening amount of truth to that (for one thing, estimates on the rate of miscarriage are as high as 70% – but most of those occur before the woman’s period is even due, so they pass unnoticed).
It seems insane that anyone could fail to notice they were pregnant for more than about a month – and most of us hear a statistic like the one above and immediately think, “Wow, that’s some serious denial.” There’s some truth in that – I am quite close to a man who realised his girlfriend was pregnant long before the thought had occured to her – but apparently in most cases the story is quite different. Apparently the body will very often deliberately hide a pregnancy from the mother by releasing only a small amount of the HCG hormone – the one that causes nausea and stops periods (amd the one that turns urine or blood tests positive for pregnancy). It means a miscarriage is more likely, but it also means that factors like maternal stress or illness are reduced (useful, for example, if the mother is poor and malnutritioned). Ultimately, it gives the baby its best chance of survival.
I like this article because it confirms what I’ve felt all along – the worse I feel, the better off my baby is. It also confirms what several people have said: Bad pregnancy, good birth (because many of the hormones are designed specifically to help with the birth – like relaxin, which is doing horrible things to my back, hips, and digestive system, but useful things to the birth canal).
So that’s. . . nice.
Narnia #7 of 7: “The Last Battle” by CS Lewis
Once again, this book has more cynical tone than some of the earlier stories – but it is still most definitely a children’s book. The theme is deception and doubt, and the nature of Aslan is called into question. Aslan himself is apparently both silent and absent.
The story begins inside Narnia, as a greedy ape hatches a plan to make Narnia more civilized (because even in fiction, history teaches us nothing) using a fake Aslan to get his way. It works all too well, and within a few chapters the last king of Narnia, King Tirian (my first fictional crush – and I wouldn’t say I’m entirely over him yet) is imprisoned.
That is when two children from our world, Jill and Eustace, arrive to free him and – for better or worse – put their lives on the line in a desperate attempt to save the last remnants of goodness, imagination, and joy in Narnia as the Calormenes once more take over. This time, the lines between good and evil are blurred, and hope battles despair throughout.
This is the final battle, and it is the end. Many previous characters reappear, which is highly enjoyable for fans – but the losses of this book are greater than in the rest of the series. The joy of this book is greater, too, however. The first and the last books are a perfect framing device for the whole series.
Free sample (a good Calormene named Emeth is speaking):
“. . . my happiness is so great that it even weakens me like a wound. And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me Beloved, me who am but as a dog –”
“Eh? What’s that?” said one of the Dogs.
“Sir,” said Emeth. “It is but a fashion of speech which we have in Calormen.”
“Well, I can’t say it’s one I like very much,” said the Dog.
“He doesn’t mean any harm,” said an older Dog. “After all, we call our puppies boys when they don’t behave properly.”
“So we do,” said the first Dog. “Or girls.”
“S-s-sh,” said the older Dog. “That’s not a nice word to use. Remember where you are.”
Rating: PG. I’d call it absolutely G and safe for anyone, but one character is a close parallel to Jesus Christ (in one of the later books this character clearly states that he exists on Earth as well, is known by a different name there, and that the children have been brought into Narnia so that they can more easily recognise him on Earth), and some atheists have found that offensive. The books do focus on the adventures, rather than allegory about 95% of the time.
It LIIIIVES!
Our balcony is where plants come to die.
It is South-facing with a concrete base, brick walls on two sides, and metal fences on the other two sides. Watering the plants (or simply looking at them to see if they were dead or not) was one of the things that didn’t happen when I was at my most sick, so I wasn’t particularly surprised to find that one previously happy plant had withered and died. But since I was still sick and still pregnant, I didn’t bother uprooting it and throwing it away.
Several months passed, and then this happened:
The moral of this story is that if you procrastinate long enough, DEAD THINGS COME BACK TO LIFE.
Pregnant Seasons
This entry is somewhat Australia-centric (and doesn’t even take into account the tropics), but it’s what I know. Extrapolate at will. It’s all about my experiences of the advantages and disadvantages of the seasons.
Winter: First Trimester
Most women are nauseous in first trimester. For me, nausea makes me cold. This translated to massive electricity bills. On the up side, it gets two types of misery (nausea and cold) over right at the start. Also, it’s very easy to hide one’s baby belly when wearing Winter clothes (which many people choose to do for at least the first three months). Plus, if you are in first trimester in Winter, it means that when your baby is starting on solid foods (and thus on much smellier nappies) it will be Winter again – and therefore things will be less stinky in the outside bin.
Spring: Second Trimester
This worked really well for me, because the second trimester is the best time to do every type of baby preparation – shopping, moving furniture, doing extra work (a nice plan), and so on. Spring makes everything easier, which hopefully means stuff gets done before third trimester sets in.
Sidebar: It’s not all that great a time to actually give birth, because it’s just so common. Maternity wards are always over-full nine months after the holiday period.
Summer: Third Trimester
A lot of women get extremely hot when pregnant – especially in third trimester – which is a disadvantage (personally I’ve been fine, but Summer hasn’t really struck yet). The other down side is that every pregnancy involves extra fat (you’re meant to put on 12-15 kilos, of which 7-9 kilos aren’t even in your belly area), and that can make the pregnant woman feel insecure about wearing sleeveless tops and so on (which reminds me, I shall be posting a large number of pregnancy outfits from week 20 to week 38 very soon).
Summer is great for clothing, because dresses are the most comfortable and versatile type of maternity wear (far more adjustable than pants, for example), and they’re also cooler than almost anything else. The whole difficulty of taking shoes and pants on and off is very easily solved by dresses and slip-on shoes (the shoes in particular make life a lot easier).
For anyone who works in education, having a baby in the Christmas holidays is really handy for giving you a natural kind of maternity leave. It’s not so nice for the kid, who will often have friends away on holiday during their birthday, and/or get those dodgy “combined Christmas and birthday” presents.
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As I grow less and less active, my nausea is not as bad (although the range of foods that gross me out seems to be getting bigger). It’s getting replaced by muscle pain (which I’m now more or less used to) and that wacky drugged-out pregnant-lady fatigue. I’ve gotta say, the switch from nausea to fatigue is SO NICE. I was deeply afraid my ability to drive, walk, and think would be impaired – which they are, severely, and sooner than expected – but on my most tired days I just don’t care any more.
It’s not so nice for CJ, who is physically ill with the stress of all the usual life stuff plus doing almost all my chores in addition to his own (again) plus the knowledge that he’s fast becoming the only mental or physical adult in a household of three.
Six weeks until the due date.
See the milk bottle in the above picture? Louisette already weighs more than that.
Screams in the night
It’s happened before: we’ve been invaded by a neighbour’s cat who saunters in through our oh-so-inviting cat door only to realise that (a) Princess Ana will defend her territory tooth and claw, and (b) The cat door only goes inwards – not outwards.
This time CJ and I were awoken at 2:00am by such an extreme cacophony of screaming and hissing and banging that we both bolted to the front door expecting scenes of bloody carnage. The intruder fled past us to the study so quickly I couldn’t even tell whether it was our cat or someone else’s (it turned out Indah was hiding in our room, and Ana was outside looking in – furiously preventing the intruder’s escape). CJ opened the front door and the cat flew back past us and streaked away into the night.
This meant Ana and the intruder were both outside. CJ and I called sweetly for our fluffy/psychotic princess (she’s one of those peculiar cats who will often come when you call – presumably out of simple curiosity). Once she was within sight (but clearly too psyched up to come in), CJ went and ran the shower for a second. Ana is addicted to running water, so at that stage instinct took over and she ran in to lap at the shower tiles. At which point we locked her inside for the night.
Pictured: the defender of our borders. Approach with extreme caution!
CJ and I went back to bed, soothed Indah, and lay down to sleep as well as we could. Once again, none of the cats were so much as scratched. This time was different, however. This time the WHOLE family was involved – all the excitement gave Louisette the hiccups.
December
Here’s what December means to me:
1. No more driving to tutoring work – all my students’ assessment is finished, and only one continues in holidays (which is why I tend to have eight weeks with basically no income each year – which is why we always aimed to have a baby in the Christmas holidays).
2. Christmas. More baby loot! And books! And other stuff! Probably including chocolate!
3. It’s possible I’ll have a non-premmie baby THIS MONTH – and it’s absolutely definite that (assuming December passes without child-birth style incidents) I’ll have a baby next month.
4. It’s possible I’ll hear back from an exciting literary agent who requested the full manuscript of my steampunk novel (a British woman, as it happens) – but assuming December passes without response-type incidents, I’ll definitely hear back from her next month.
December is a shiny month for me. How is December for you?
Mechanical dragon
Now obviously, I’m powerless to resist the phrase “steampunk mechanical dragon” (even if it does look somewhat uncomfortable to ride). So here you are, from artist Reinhard Shmid.
Felicity Banks 