by Ann Bibby

I have always been amazed by my kindergartener’s hardiness. Long before the trees bud, she is clamoring for summer footwear which become the mainstay of her wardrobe until long after the same trees are bare again in the fall. Perhaps the shoe fetish gene skips generations, but Crocs and flip flops proliferate in her closet and in the both the front and back entry ways of our home.

But when she woke me at 3 A.M. this morning, complaining yet again of “growing pains” in her ankles and lower leg, my thoughts returned to a Newsweek article this week about a recent study conducted on the perennial favorite of warm weather footwear. It seems that free-wheeling summer foot wear is more than just a good way to stub a toe or skin a knee (or two). Read the rest of this entry »

by Ann Bibby

A year ago my fiancé and I were attempting to pack my entire adult life plus my four year old daughter’s life’s accumulations into a 6 by 12 foot U-haul for our move from the Midwest to Alberta, Canada. For a solid month leading up to June 10, 2007, I sorted, purged and packed. The intake staff at the Goodwill knew me on sight and my niece was able to furnish her first post college apartment without ever setting foot in a store.

And despite the purging, I still own at this moment well more than 100 personal items. My daughter’s Barbie paraphernalia alone dwarfs my measly stash of stuff. Which leads me to wonder, could I pare down my life to a mere 100 possessions?

Could you? Read the rest of this entry »

by Ann Bibby

A blogger at the Des Moines Register recently wrote about having to give a few of the families she provides daycare for their notice. It seems she has a policy that strictly prohibits parents from using her services outside their working hours. She will not care for children on a parent’s day off, nor is she inclined to keep them while a parent runs an errand. If these things happen on a regular basis, she will terminate her contract with them.

I understood her frustration. A family who knew her policy took advantage of her by simply not telling her when they were using her as a babysitter as opposed to a daycare provider. She had every right to be upset, but does she have a right to dictate how parents choose to parent? Read the rest of this entry »

By Ann Bibby

Does anyone remember Ally McBeal? And her therapist? The one who suggested she find a theme song for herself? I have a soundtrack for my life. I think that most people do. Perhaps it’s not appropriate but The Clash’s Should I Stay or Should I Go is my theme music of late.

When I emigrated to Canada not quite a year ago with my then nearly five year old daughter, it was with the understanding that I would be taking the 2008/09 school year off. My husband to be was in a position that allowed me to be a stay at home mother for the first time in my child’s life and my status as an immigrant meant that I couldn’t seek employment until I’d gone through the process of becoming a permanent resident anyway. I was set to work on my writing and be just a wife and mother. Note the order of the aforementioned and the word “just”. Telling is it not?

I came of age in the early 80’s. During the “women can have it all” phase of the movement. I fell in line like so many others. Got my degree. Established my “career”. Married and procreated in my middle 30’s - barely.

And I discovered that I could not “have it all”. Read the rest of this entry »

by Ann Bibby 

We recently replaced our gas stove with an electric range. As an asthmatic I am forever discovering new dangers to my sensitive airways, and gas stoves are one of them. Secure in this knowledge (and driven by a recent annoucment by our power company that natural gas prices were about to double, triple or worse at the end of the month), we headed off to the appliance store to make our purchase. After settling on a ceramic topped self-cleaning model, we waited patiently for it to be shipped.

While we waited, I ran across an article on Wired by Patrick Di Justo about the oven cleaner, Easy-Off. A bit tongue in cheek (my favorite part was when he referenced Brad Pitt’s lines in the movie Fight Club when his character explains what happens when one mixes lye with animal fat - the “animal” being “human”), the article is sobering. Read the rest of this entry »

by Ann Bibby

I was introduced to Fair Trade by my younger step-daughter, the same one who frowns on my patronage of Starbucks. Whenever possible she buys Fair Trade goods believing that this helps producers in third world countries, and to some extent it does. Poverty levels have been lowered. Infant mortality rates have declined. Work conditions have improved.

But, while I was conducting a bit of research about the Fair Trade coffee brand Cafe Feminino, I stumbled across something that made me think a bit about our culture’s standard approach to improving the lot of those not lucky enough to have been born in a country civilized by western standards. Money does not buy women their rights. Read the rest of this entry »

by Ann Bibby

When I was teaching middle school back in central Iowa, I was expected to ensure the learning and safety of every child assigned to me regardless of how cooperative, charming or innately intelligent that child was, and I took that very seriously. I cannot honestly say I enjoyed every little soul I crossed paths with but I can say that there were only a handful of them that I couldn’t manage or that I didn’t coerce into learning.

The recent incident in a Florida elementary school, where a kindergarten teacher had her students vote to remove a disruptive classmate after allowing them the opportunity to tell the boy what they didn’t like about him, got me thinking about some of the reasons I left the classroom and will probably never return. Read the rest of this entry »

by Ann Bibby

Driving home from a recent holiday in British Columbia, my husband and I caught the talking heads on XM’s Fox broadcast discussing the Kentucky and Oregon primary outcomes. Clinton had taken Kentucky as expected and Obama was in Iowa not declaring himself the nominee presumptive as his campaign waited for Oregon’s tally to come in. The heads predictably reminded us that Clinton, though not being soundly defeated in this two-way race for the Democratic nomination, was the inevitable loser none the less. Why didn’t she just quit? An interesting question that my Canadian friend Christa and I were discussing just last week. I explained to her that it was not typical for the primary season to drag on as it has. Normally, I told her, the also rans are weeded out early, but Clinton just refused to quit. “Well of course,” Christa replied, as though this were a no brainer. “Women don’t quit.” Read the rest of this entry »

With a disabled dishwasher I am reliving my preteen years and rediscovering the joys of hand washing dishes. It’s akin to the potato peeling thrills of yore. Lately many of my kitchen adventures have recalled my past life of indentured servitude but I draw the line at ironing. Hours of practice on my mother’s lace hankies left me convinced that wrinkles were not the evil she made them out to be.Washing dishes, however, has not been as arduous as I remember it. Perhaps the reason why lies with my help mate? My husband is certainly preferable company to my younger sisters or perhaps it’s the feeling that I’m doing something to help the environment and conserve water and energy. While the former is true, the latter is one of those eco-myths that needs to be snoped out. Read the rest of this entry »

by Ann Bibby To my continuing shame, I am still a plastic bag girl. Despite owning enough Lululemon bags (another shame for another post) to easily carry a week’s worth of groceries for our family of three, I find myself standing at the checkout bag less and once again accumulating more plastic sacks. I even allow double bagging. It’s that bad. The time has come for me to declare myself a BooBs girl for the good of the planet. Read the rest of this entry »