A day in the life

“What do you do all day, Mama?” asks my daughter as she readies for another busy day at school.

This question is the kind you always know is coming, like “how are babies made?” but are never quite ready for when it does.

I fumble for a quick answer, knowing there is not one. Her eyes lower to focus on her Cheerios, not wanting to meet my “deer in the headlights” gaze. She knows she got me, and I think it scares her a little.

The truth is, I don’t do any one thing all day, like my mother did, or like I did, before my children were born. On surveys about profession, I check the box labeled “other.”

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Order of the Phoenix

Following the supposed election of George W. Bush in 2000, there were many people who thought they had it made. After the September 11 attacks, they must have thought themselves so solidly entrenched in power that nothing would ever dislodge them. Talk of a “permanent majority” echoed the “end of history” rhetoric that followed the end of the Cold War (not to mention the phrase “Thousand-Year Reich”).

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