Girls! Gone! Wild!

Today is a full moon and I follow with yogic tradition to not practice but take rest on moon days, which means that I slept a full hour and a half later than normal. Pure luxury! Since it is Spring! Break! and we had nowhere in particular to be today, I fulfilled my dream of leisurely coffee drinking; sipping eight – eight! – cups while watching Breakfast Television, or what I like to refer to ironically and with air quotes as “the news”.

Digression: while in university I was friends with a girl who referred to Entertainment Tonight as “the news”.

Speaking of Entertainment Tonight masquerading as the news, remember the OJ Simpson trial? I…don’t really, at the time I was much too absorbed in the fascinating dual worlds of the history of economic thought and step aerobics to pay much attention to it, but I do remember that beach bum houseguest Kato Kaelin, in all his dimwitted glory. I was startled to discover, many years later, the numerous careers that were launched due to a grisly murder trial. For example, Star Jones?

Digression to digression: how strange is it that OJ was acquitted at that time, yet the vast majority of the general population believes him to be a grisly murderer?

Wow, how did I get there? Eight cups of coffee is too much, people, especially when coupled with ninety extra minutes of sleep.

So, spring break good news and bad news.

Good news: The zoo was fantastic yesterday, we had an incredible day. It was the kind of day that I don’t trust myself to talk to people because I would surely boast about my amazing kids and their fantastic personalities and how wonderful they are. I even said to my husband that I felt sorry for him that he is not the stay at home parent.

Bad news: Karma. Today the boys have been fidgety, quarrelsome, and moody. They are DRIVING ME CRAZY. Crazier than normal.

Good news: We made caterpillars out of egg cartons!

Bad news: The groomer was sick and Barkley still stinks.

Good news: The weather was decent enough to send Mark outside to play, which improved his mood immensely. I watched him run around the yard with several garden implements, pretending to shoot and destroy various imaginary aliens.

Bad news: He accidentally hit himself in the head with a garden implement and had to come inside, where he and Jake played for all of five minutes before the game dissolved into an angry argument.

Good news: I baked a yummy looking loaf of bread and a banana loaf.

Bad news: I am not enjoying playing endless games of dinosaurs and killings that the boys are requesting of me, but yet I am acutely aware that they will not want to play with their mother much longer. Melancholy.

Good news: We still have seven days left of spring break, and it is a full moon, and I am focusing all my positive energy on tomorrow; tomorrow is another day.

Good news: We are having a great time!

Bad news: You can't tell from the picture that this is a parasauralophus.

Happy Thoughts!

It rained on Friday, which is highly unusual at this time of year – normally precipitation takes the form of snow – and the city smelled so fresh and clean, also a highly unusual occurrence.

It was dark and grey though, and I’m choosing to believe that was the reason that Costco, haven for bad humour everywhere, housed even more grouchy people than usual. For this post I considered writing merely “I took two kids to Costco on a rainy Friday. The End.” and that would have been a fairly complete description of my day.

It wasn’t the kids. They were actually exceedingly helpful: Mark fetching items I’d asked for and depositing them gently into the cart, Jake frequently looking at my face with some alarm and saying “Mom? Mom? Are you okay, Mom?” Because I’m sure I looked somewhat distressed at the human condition as see in Costco: strangers snapping at each other for their objectionable cart etiquette, children screaming, babies crying, drivers trying to run over pedestrians at high speeds in the parking lot. The fact of us making it out of there unscathed, with the items we went in for, no less, seemed to me to be somewhat miraculous.

So I felt Swistle’s post about happy thoughts was very timely, although she was talking about taxes, and not disturbing Costco trips, but still, here is my list of things that are making me happy right now:

1) Spring break! Girls gone wild! And by girls I mean me, and by wild I mean I’m going to enjoy drinking coffee at a leisurely pace rather than my usual habit of chugging down as much caffeine as humanly possible whilst striving to remain patient, yet encouraging, in the matter of the kids getting dressed, etc., recalling that comments like “What the? For the love of….just get your socks on already!” are not particularly helpful in this type of situation.

2) We’re going to the zoo tomorrow! I used to take the kids all the time when they were smaller but we have not been since school started. There is a new dinosaur display, with some funky animatronic dinos, that I am expecting to be quite entertaining. Plus, Jake is fascinated by the hippos and the fish that eat their fecal matter, and viewing that display always leads to some interesting and enlightening conversation.

3) The weather, other than the brief rainy spell, has been spectacular and not only have I been playing in the garden (so many little perennial sprouts, squee), but I have been able to send the boys outside. Yay spring.

4) My stinky dog is getting groomed tomorrow. Perhaps they will put a little bandanna on him.

5) I have a date! I have a date! My husband and I are going out to my favourite restaurant to belatedly celebrate our anniversary; dinner AND babysitting courtesy of my generous parents. I’ve already looked at the online menu to decide what, exactly, I am going to order, right down to a cosmopolitan to start, to make me feel all Carrie Bradshaw and whatnot. Without creepy Mr. Big.

So, dear readers, what makes you happy right now? Let’s start the week off right and tell me, what is putting a smile on your face today?

Actually, I prefer the term "Big Fat Whore"

After I posted the pictures of my sad little flat cake, a friend suggested I cut it in half and make a mini layer cake out of it, which struck me, quite frankly, as brilliant. It worked perfectly, although Jake and I went a little crazy with the confetti sprinkles.

Don't I look relieved? The cake isn't ruined after all.

Mark loved it.

I rarely read any of those “Fame Baby” articles, mostly because I couldn’t care less about what Suri Cruise is wearing these days or what kind of stroller some celebrity I vaguely recognize purchased. However, I was drawn to a blurb about the Brady/Bundchen baby, mainly because my husband is a New England Patriots fan, meaning that to maintain marital harmony I am as well, and although Tom Brady is a little young for my tastes he sure is a tasty slice of rye.

I immediately wished I hadn’t been so eager to see #12 because the latter half of the blurb focused on the return of Giselle Bundchen’s glorious figure mere months after giving birth. Giselle herself was quoted as follows, “I think a lot of people get pregnant and decide they can turn into garbage disposals. I was mindful of what I ate and only gained 30 pounds.”

I felt about this comment the same way I feel when someone boasts about their six week old baby sleeping through the night, or their child who eats everything set in front of him, or their toddler who was toilet trained at eighteen months: that is, efforts in that direction are helpful, but there is some kind of underlying genetic code that makes this possible. If your newborn sleeps through the night, that does not necessarily mean that it is because of your superior parenting skills – although you may have superior parenting skills, don’t get me wrong – but it is more to do with your individual child than anything else. The implication to Giselle’s comment is that if we all weren’t such disgusting garbage disposals, perhaps we too could be on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition, which is, of course, not possible. I am not denying that I actually was a garbage disposal during my first pregnancy: you do not gain as much junk in the trunk as I did without some serious gorging. However, not counting my gross Cheez Whiz on toast addiction during my second pregnancy, I did watch what I ate and I did gain only 32 pounds, which was significantly, significantly less than my first, and even still I was not a contender for a Victoria’s Secret spread. That is because I am not Giselle Bundchen. I could put all my best efforts into it and there is no way that I could ever become a supermodel.

Do you know what I’m saying here? Mindful eating is a huge part of maintaining your figure before and after childbirth, yes, of course. But boasting about your amazing willpower without laying any credit on personal genetics, not to mention the childcare, personal chefs, nutritionists, and trainers available to someone of Giselle Bundchen’s income bracket is not helpful to the rest of us.

I eat sweets very rarely, I eat desserts even less, for a variety of reasons, not all of them to do with weight. After I read this blurb I enjoyed a delicious slice of Mark’s birthday cake. And I was mindful of every bite.

Astonishment

When I think that Mark is turning six tomorrow, I am astonished. He has evolved from a squalling, spiky haired newborn to a gangly, spiky haired six year old. Six years ago, his single greatest accomplishment was latching on correctly; last week he got his first report card. I could repeat every single cliché about the rapid passage of time, and it would not be enough.

But yet time did not speed by, not always; there were many interminable days and weeks and months, when the clock moved so very slowly, as anyone at home with small children can relate. Often when the boys are in school I will run errands amid mothers who are still in that stage; they are exhausted, and frantic, and desperate just to get out of their houses; they are corralling preschoolers and soothing crying infants and looking mortified at their tantruming toddlers and I know, I know they feel that this stage will never pass but I look at them with sympathy and think it will. It will and it does and in hindsight it is a mere blink of an eye.

I have written about my pregnancy and labour here and here, and so I will try not to repeat myself.

The day my doctor poked my puffy, pre-eclampsic face and announced I would be induced within twenty-four hours, I was astonished, astonished that it was actually happening, on my wedding anniversary no less, that I was going to be a mother. When Mark was born I felt overwhelmed, adoring, and astonished at my sheer luckiness. I still feel that way, six years later.

It's Party Time, It's Excellent

Sorry about the lame title. Mike Myers, you have made a fool of us all.

Tuesday will be Mark’s sixth birthday – sixth! – and so yesterday we took the boys and a few friends bowling. The kids seemed to really enjoy it, which is something I tend to feel quite anxious about while hosting a children’s birthday party. I’m not exactly sure what I think is going to happen; like instead of a birthday party I’m going to be holding several children in a disastrous chamber of horrors which will cause them to go home scarred and crying and their mothers will all hate me and I will be infamous as the mother who cannot host a proper birthday party. Anyway. The kids had fun although in reality – rather than in my crazy head-space – kids are very likely to have fun in any situation involving cupcakes and loot bags, so my birthday party anxiety is largely unfounded.

Speaking of cupcakes, we always have a plethora of them and I end up giving them away so as to not devour them all but all of my containers are currently in use so I decided – erroneously, as it turns out – that it would be optimal to make one dozen cupcakes plus one small cake, the latter to freeze for Mark’s actual birthday. Here is the result:



Behold, the world’s flattest cake. A crepe cake, if you will.



Maybe I should have used a smaller pan.

Perhaps it will improve with frosting. Or…perhaps not. Remember my gingerbread house? I am simply not gifted in this department, people, I need to accept that.

AND...repeat.

I really hope my house is not bugged. Not that I think it is. When I was pregnant with Jake I was reading The Godfather in the waiting room at the doctor’s, and I came to the part where Sonny gets gunned down and the Godfather takes him to his undertaker friend’s and asks him to fix him up. “I don’t want his mother to see him like this.” Hormonally deranged, I burst into tears and called Rob to cry about it. He assured me that he is not a kingpin in some underground mafia and that it is unlikely that our children will be gangsters hunted down at a tollbooth. I stopped crying. Although now that I have written this down horrible and violent, although improbable images are going through my head.

Anyway, I do hope the house is not bugged because it would be very embarrassing, although somewhat enlightening, to hear how often I repeat myself. Perhaps I should invest in a voice recording system that would automatically spew reminders about table manners, reprimands about lacking manners, and random facts about Star Wars, which the boys seem to take me as some kind of authority on, which I kind of am given I grew up with my older brother who is, how shall we say, a FAN. The following statements are repeated countless times a day:

1) “He goes to the Dark Side. That means he is bad. He has to wear that suit because his hand got cut off and he got all burned.”
2) “Jake, you forgot to say please. Try again. No, try the whole sentence again, but with please.”
3) “Mark, sit properly at the table. No. No. Properly. Properly. Yes. Thank you.”
4) “WHO’s a good doggie? WHO’s a good doggie? BARKLEY’s a good doggie. Yes he is. Yes he is.”

Huh. It would seem like I’m playing favourites here, and the favourite is the dog. All of which is to say, I’m still a little tired, and very glad it’s Friday.

Moms Against Time Change

Daylight Savings Time is my nemesis. Well, not Daylight Savings Time exactly: I mean, I enjoy evening light as much as the next person, although at the risk of expressing an unpopular opinion I actually prefer morning sunshine – I am an early bird after all. I’m sure there are some children out there who are completely unaffected by time changes, but frankly, I don’t really want to know about them.

Upon further reflection, I do know someone who strictly adheres to the Kitty Raymond school of parenting and I am fairly certain that her children sail through time changes unscathed, given that the children are locked in their rooms for a specified number of hours per night come hell or high water. No judgment here though.

But Kitty fans notwithstanding, I’m guessing most of us with young children are kind of tired this week, not just from the “loss” of an hour, no, but from the poor emotionally fraught and confused children in our care. Stretches of time will pass normally, pleasantly even, and then someone will burst into tears for obscure and mysterious reasons, or will fall into a complete pit of despair over a game of Chutes and Ladders.

I’m so tired. This exhaustion is not helped by my husband and his refusal to see time change for its true diabolical self. “I really think you’re overreacting” he said to me, causing steam to come out of my ears and my head to spin around a la Linda Blair. “I AM NOT OVERREACTING” I responded, using the SAHM’s patented number one argument enhancer, “You have NO IDEA what it’s like to be around them during the day.” Then I have to take deep ujjayi breaths and grab a bottle of wine for support.

I think I’m not alone here. So here’s my solution: I’m starting a group called Moms Against Time Change. Maybe we could even get t-shirts. Colour preferences, anyone? We could storm the offices of government officials in charge of Daylight Savings Time decisions, with our irritable children in tow, and our own bitchy selves, and we could force them to take back the time change! Take back the time change!

Are there government officials involved? There must be. Is Daylight Savings a North American thing or is it global? Perhaps I should do more research. Never mind, Moms Against Time Change is still a great idea. Who’s with me?

He's gone.

Oh I, oh I, I’d better learn how to face it.

I love Hall and Oates.

So what did I do other than bake bread this weekend? Hold onto your hats: I went to Ikea. I think I’ve made it fairly clear that I’m not someone who particularly enjoys shopping, so I entered the store with my usual mix of trepidation and feelings of being overwhelmed. The thing is, I was overwhelmed and anxious through the trip, but I was also overcome with feelings of consumerism and dissatisfaction as I looked at their neat displays: did I need new drinking glasses, I wondered, or maybe some fancy napkins, or even a giant bubble shaped floor lamp? In the end I left with only one discretionary purchase: a mold for making heart-shaped ice cubes. The other, semi-non-discretionary purchases were of a very practical nature: a desk and shelving unit for our disaster of an office.

After lugging home our purchases, I promptly left for the evening, leaving my husband to swear and sweat and curse the Swedes and their complex, wordless instructions. I came home to find a new desk in the office! A miracle! What a lovely husband I have.

I spent a large amount of time cleaning out the horrors of our office, finding many bizarre and useless items, leaving me to wonder why I hadn’t thrown them out already. It shall remain a mystery. My husband uncovered an old tape case – remember tape cases? – filled with various cassettes and mixed tapes, some hilariously labeled “Party Mix” and one labeled with a distinctly feminine hand. Oh yes it was! A mixed tape from an old girlfriend.

Is there any woman out there who hasn’t made a mixed tape for a boyfriend? Ah, I remember those days with fondness. Mixed tapes were like an interpretive dance for a relationship; there were things that you wanted to say but couldn’t, and so you made a mix tape to show your feelings. Maybe if you were especially creative you could add some photos or something on the case. There was a special formula to a perfect mixed tape: a nice blend of peppy, popular music to show that you were a cool and fun girlfriend, but also some emotionally-charged ballads that you would hope that your boyfriend would interpret in just the right way. The making of the mixed tape would be filled with tension, and often tears, and the mixed tape itself would be heavy with meaning and, possibly, angst. Chances are the boyfriend would be like “Cool. A mixed tape. Thanks.” and then would probably tape over it with something he liked better. I guess with the advent of CD’s and whatnot, those days are long gone. Sigh.

Those days are gone, and I never did make a mixed tape for my husband, but as of today it is a mere nine days until our eighth anniversary! Eight years! Adding that to the four years of togetherness prior to our marriage, and we have been together twelve years! Twelve years of bliss, I might add, but that does makes me feel a teensy bit old. Not, however, as old as when I think of how long it has been since I labeled a mixed tape.

Passionate Choices

I’m passionate about many things: Ashtanga yoga, for example, and gardening, and the ritual of pouring myself a very large glass of wine the minute my children are in bed for the night.

That ritual is not meant to imply that I am not passionate about my children. I am. I love being their mother, their stay-at-home mother. I love the luxurious stretches of time I have with them; my ability to take them to the park or to bake muffins with them, to read with them or to engage them in one of our many strange science experiments that usually conclude with vinegar and baking soda all over the kitchen. Sometimes those hours together can feel like a sentence, but mostly I revel in my life of extreme ordinariness.

It is not a life I ever thought I would have chosen, but it is one I am extraordinarily happy with.

I have chosen this life, just as some women choose a very different path, one with a career and a paycheque. I am aware of this privilege of choice, and also I am acutely aware that some women have no choices whatsoever. Some women are constrained indefinitely, and are making do with the shabby hand life has dealt them. Around me I see mothers – and fathers too – struggling to cope, every day. What I’m most passionate about is remembering that we are all – from the mother with the Louis Vuitton diaper bag to the one with the third-hand stroller and faded, worn jeans – in this parenting thing together. I am passionate about the idea that we parents, all of us, make up a community who need to support each other regardless of what choices we do or do not make.


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This post was written for the Mabel's Labels BlogHer 2010 Contest, in response to the question "What are you passionate about?"

The Bachelor and Royalty

My friend, in reference to The Bachelor: “Who watches this shit?”

Her husband: “The same people who keep with royalty.”

The Bachelor, along with pretty much every other reality TV show, really is shit. It is a horrific concept: hundreds, maybe even thousands of women vying for a shot at dating/marrying a guy simply because he is good looking and successful, or at least for a shot at a reality-TV career and/or a contract with Playboy. I wonder what it would be like if a friend or colleague was on that show, would it change your feelings for that person? What if that person was the woman that no one in the house liked? Although I am a strong believer in karma and non-judgment, I unfortunately would have to respond yes to that question.

That show is revolting on a number of levels but is particularly gross when the dating gets serious and the contestants are all allowed to stay “in the couple’s suite”. Inevitably, every woman chooses to do this meaning that the bachelor is screwing a number of women in a short period of time – and everyone involved knows it. Eww! I am not a prudish person but I find that stomach-turning. Although I do think it would be funny to invent a drinking game in which players take a shot every time someone on The Bachelor says “I feel a real connection with you.” I mentioned this to my husband and he looked at me expressionlessly for a minute, then suggested that a) a game like that has probably already been invented by college students and b) it would not be successful as everyone playing would be passed out in the first five minutes. True.

I don’t actually watch The Bachelor, but I have watched enough episodes over its multi-year run to form an opinion on it. Similarly, I don’t actually keep with royalty but I have in the past. In fact as a child – like many girls born in the seventies, I suspect – I was obsessed with Princess Diana. For Christmas and birthdays I always received those glossy coffee-table books about her and her snappy eighties fashions as well as, I clearly recall, a paper doll book that had a replica of her wedding gown which was impossible to cut out with safety scissors, all those lace points. I was staying with my grandma in Saskatchewan during the Royal Wedding and I remember her waking me up at four in the morning to watch it. I remember lying on her thick shag carpet in my summer pajamas, Grandma in her chair behind me, smoking and drinking coffee and discussing Lloyd Robertson’s boring commentary. When Princess Diana died in 1997, I was on my way to the bar with a group of friends when one of them said “Hey, did you hear Princess Diana died?” It was a sad ending to my royalty following.

I watched the movie The Bank Job this weekend, and discovered that Princess Margaret was involved in a number of sex scandals – who knew she was such a scamp? That was never mentioned in my coffee table books. Apparently she had several sad, doomed relationships, not unlike Diana. This brings me to something that I plan on writing about in more detail – post to come! - Lori Gottleib’s article and book about “settling” for Mr. Right Now instead of Mr. Right. Did Princess Diana settle? She married the heir to the British Throne, for heaven’s sake, she had two lovely boys, and, by all accounts, a very unhappy life. She “won out”, so to speak, against Camilla Parker-Bowles, who evidently “won” in the end. The women on the Bachelor are looking to “win” – but what’s the prize?

Spring-ish

We’ve had a run of really unseasonably warm weather and I spent the afternoon cutting back perennials, pruning shrubs, and pulling back mulch to squeal over the teeny sprouts of my emerging very hardy perennials. Then I immediately replaced the mulch because while I might be excited, I’m not stupid: no mulch shall be removed until May. Fortunately these are extraordinarily hardy plants; they could probably survive nuclear fallout.

In my house, these little sprouts are known as “baby plants” and while my children may have a high level of disdain for actual human babies, they are thrilled about non-human babies, plants included. “Mom”, Mark said excitedly, “It feels like you are going to have a baby! Baby plants!” Apparently my ovaries are green now.

Finding little bits of green in my yard is my favourite part of spring. It feels very festive around here: the sun is shining, the snow is melting, and I walked the dog without gloves on. Truly festive indeed. There are only two small dampers on this festive spirit: muddy paw prints in odd places and the proliferation of outdoor wear in the back entry. I find the latter to be somewhat trying. Our back entry is overflowing: winter jackets and snow boots, gloves and toques and also baseball caps, light jackets and down vests, running shoes and mud-caked rubber boots. And I cannot get rid of One Single Thing because I am superstitious and it’s only March – I’ve finally realized it’s not still February – and the second I put away a winter article, even the smallest mitten, the city will be blasted with snow and ice, and it will be All My Fault.

Cool Things People (who are not me) Do

The other day, someone asked me how my bread making was going. This poses the question: if your New Year’s resolution is to bake bread, and you bake bread one time, does that mean your resolution has been fulfilled? In actuality I have baked bread four times, thank you very much, and each time they have turned out very tasty. I had visions that I would bake bread every weekend – not all bread consumed by our household, but weekend dinner fancy bread. But – fortunately for me, unfortunately for my lofty bread goals – I discovered that my friend, an artisan baker, was selling his wares at a market near my house.

I have a soft spot for this friend because a) his bread is unbelievably delicious, b) he practices early morning yoga with me at the Yoga Shala, and c) his girlfriend is an independent film maker who was indulgent enough to allow me to be an extra in one of her short films! I’m a movie star! I always wanted to be in a movie, and in this you can briefly see me doing a Sun Salutation and also stretching. Total movie star, no? AND, thrillingly enough, her film is going to be shown at the Sofia International Film Festival. I told my mother this and her response was “Wow, a lot of people are going to see your feet!” Yes, my feet figure prominently in one of the shots. At least I had given myself a pedicure prior to this.

Where was I?

Oh yes, bread. With my friend’s bread so incredible and convenient, my own bread making fell by the wayside. Every week he would offer something different: sourdough with poppy seeds, crusty whole grain loaves, cheese bread, and the most amazing cheddar and olive breadsticks. I could eat those breadsticks every single day for the rest of my natural life. But an incredible opportunity has arisen for this couple – they are headed to a Buddhist monastery in Nepal for him to build a restaurant and organic garden, and for her to document the experience for a movie. That is fairly amazing to me, a person who makes numerous lists just to leave the house, and who takes weeks to figure out what to pack for a six-day vacation.

So, I guess I’m back to baking my own tasty-but-much-inferior bread. Is it totally selfish of me to be just a teensy bit sad?

What day is it? What month is it?

I’m completely confused. I keep thinking that it is still February, yet simultaneously I believe that it is later in the week than it actually is. I’m thinking “Wow, I can’t believe how warm it is for February” alongside “I’m sure glad it’s Thursday!”

So I’m confused and I feel like I’ve been whirling around like the Tasmanian Devil, minus the drooling and anger. Well, not totally minus the anger since yesterday I felt that I was actually losing my mind, for real this time, because during the entire afternoon there was no ten minute block in which someone was not complaining, arguing, or hitting someone else with a foam sword. Those foam swords, a loot bag item from a long-past birthday party, are the bane of my existence. The boys have created their own special fight club, where they jovially and companionably beat each other with foam swords, until inevitably someone goes too far and the fight gets serious. The first rule about fight club, of course, is that you don’t talk about fight club, so when I intervene in this so-called game, they tell me that they are just having FUN and they’re NOT REALLY FIGHTING and I’m WRECKING THEIR GAME. I can’t imagine my no-fun status improving any time soon.

Along with the fight club and Jake’s fairly disturbing new picture making obsession, (“I’m drawing Anakin. He has a red light saber. This is Obi-Wan Kenobi. He is cutting off Anakin’s hand. OH NO. Anakin is Darth Vader! He’s BAAADDDDD!” he narrates as he paints over his picture with dark colours, chuckling evilly to himself) I’ve been busy with the school’s Scholastic Book Fair. It’s such a great fund-raiser for the library, but it has, as always, unhappily resulted in the obtaining of a new Scooby Doo Early Reader. I love reading to the boys. I do. I even willingly read Mark’s favourite Dinosaur Encyclopedia, which is clearly the driest and dullest dinosaur book ever written, due to its propensity to list in grave detail the dates and locations of various fossil discoveries. But, along with foam swords, those Scooby Doo books are a menace to society.