The Musings of a Latte Queen: Narratives of Everyday Life

I am sitting in a bakery, sipping a vanilla caramel hazelnut latte, watching the people, feeling the sun, and thinking about the week. This is holy week.  Of major importance to Jews and Christians.  Passover began on Monday and Christians of all denominations are engaging in rituals leading up to Sunday. In all this, I started to think about the events that led to this week. Last week, the weather was up and down and it was spring break for my children.  Last week, elected officials were hurling insults and trying to deny health coverage to children.  Last week, tea party protestors were calling elected officials every racial and homophobic epithet you could imagine.  Last week felt like alot of hate was in the air. Some of those same self-proclaimed voices for the unborn, adherents to conservative doctrine, proponents of a faith-based country were definitely not acting like Jesus.  Now this week, you bet you can find some of them in their church p...

At this late hour, on this Sunday, during Spring Break, history happened! 219 votes in the House of Representatives to accept the Senate Bill is now on its way to the President of the United States to make sure my little girl will always have health care!  It is historic to see this.  It is major sweeping social legislation and it is fantastic that this first woman Speaker of the House kept fighting for it!  It does sometimes take a woman to get it done.  And that this happened under this historic presidency. Thank you President Obama for bringing this to my family. Republicans will be sorry they did not cast votes for people.  Hatred has no place and illness knows no color or party.  This was relevant for ALL Americans. Life is for the living and health care is for the living, we need to take care of the children who are alive!!!!

This was not a good morning for my eight-year-old daughter. It started badly with breakfast. "Ugh, I'm NOT eating that."  And so the battle began. Of course I knew it wasn't about the really good, rich, and creamy bowl of non-allergic hot cereal I made for her little sister (and she and I), it was about her thinking her little sister was getting more attention that she.  And, I think she may be right. The princess, aptly named because she was the first girl to come along after four boys, was feeling as if her mother didn't love her as much.  I could tell the pouty look on her face and her feigning illness yesterday when I was battling a cold, she wanted to stay home.  There was more to the story. "Look, I'm eating the same breakfast, and guess what, you can even put chocolate sprinkles on it."  I tried to be my cheery best even with minimal sleep and a busy day ahead.  We were running late and didn't need her throwing a tween fit. ...