Tuesday, August 02, 2005

It Takes a (Santorum) Family

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The clock has turned to August, and all we self-centered liberal feminist mothers know what that means. The tots are getting restive, the nannies are going back to college, and we self-centered liberal feminist moms just want to close big corporate deals and jet off to a conference in Aruba, where we drink rum punch and have extramarital affairs.

But we can't. The kids are at home, instead of in the godless, liberal public school getting a sub-standard education, heavy on the anti-Christian brainwashing.

Quick, Senator Sanatorium: What do you get when you take a 96 degree day, add humidity, disruptive home improvements, and two young teens stuck in each other's company with nothing to do?

Oh my, of course! You put them to their home-schooling, get them up to speed on their Theory of Intelligent Design! You lead them lovingly into the kitchen and guide them as they bake cookies from scratch! You get out the button box and let them string together a necklace!

Wow. That senator and his wife must be buying the stairway to heaven.

Do I have to be a godless communist feminist bra-burning kitten-killer to not want to spend every waking moment with my children? Because I do love them, but just lately they are making me want to play "Runaway Bride."

I guess Mrs. Sanatorium never has this problem. She has six children and home-schools them all with expensive cyber-programs from the Great State of Pennsylvania. (The Sanatoriums live in Virginia.) I'll bet every last little Sanatorium Jr. is two grade levels ahead academically, emotionally sound, Biblically disciplined, and well prepared for Dad's run for president.

My kids, conversely, are impatient, emotionally unpredictable, nearly nocturnal, completely convinced that I am an idiot, and embarrassed to be in the same county as me.

Wow. Sounds like a normal pair of siblings. Did I mention that they try to outdo each other in full-contact warfare?

Why does it make me an evil, liberal, feminist, godless, kitten-killer if I don't want to be around these two hormonal teens? Do I have to feel guilty if I'd rather curl up with a book for an hour than drive the teens to the mall and walk around looking at all the extravagant corporate products, fabricated by foreign labor, lavishly laid out to maximize cravings?

I tell you what, Senator Sanatorium. I'm not Mama Walton. I think women should work to support at least themselves. And I'm not some brood mare, either. Six children is an absurd drain on the earth's precious resources! Bad enough to produce an Heir and a Spare.

Maybe all this family togetherness works for the senator. But one wonders. Having spent some time in Washington, DC in August, my mind boggles at the thought of six little Sanatoriums cooped up in the fancy suburban home. But perhaps they're on the road with Dad, pushing the good ol' bestseller and lining up support for next year's campaign. One happy family in a series of hotel rooms in such sunny locales as Johnstown, Altoona, Bethlehem, Montrose, Uniontown, Breezewood, and Chambersburg.

They'd never go to Intercourse, of course. Nothing about that place in the home-schooling curriculum.

I'm not going to turn my awesome site here into a daily gripe about child-rearing. But in August it's hard to concentrate on fun stuff like United Nations appointments and Roman Catholic Supreme Court nominees.

For sure we'll be back into that stuff when good ol' September rolls around, and the godless sub-standard public school reopens.

In the meantime, pass the Valium.

ANNE
U.S. CHAMPION IDIOT MOTHER
RUNNER-UP, MOST EMBARRASSING MOTHER OF THE YEAR
(Got beaten by Angelina Jolie.)

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