Picket Fence Post

Item #1: Cindy McCain’s Strength

While some in the media portray her harshly — depict her as talking Barbie doll — Cindy McCain has an inspiring life story. Profiled in a cover story in Newsweek, she addresses how difficult it has been to be married to someone who spent a large chunk of their marriage either deployed with the Navy someplace or serving in Washington, D.C. while she was home with four kids in Arizona, working at her father’s beer distributorship and running her charity for children.

An excerpt:

“Cindy has sometimes likened herself to a single mother; now 54, she has often been far away from her husband during difficult moments, including two of three miscarriages she suffered in the 1980s. Years later, her husband did not notice when she became addicted to painkillers, a habit, she says, brought on in part by the stress of politics. In 2004, he was on the other side of the country when she suffered a stroke that left her partly debilitated. On her own, she learned to walk again. Cindy says she doesn’t resent the time she spent without her husband. It was her choice to stay in Arizona while he rose in Washington, and she says she knew when she married him that he was always going to ‘put country first.’”

She also said she tries not to discuss that she had a son serving in Iraq during the presidential primaries because she was afraid it would put him in danger, while her husband’s statements on the Iraq war were being parsed by the media. Newsweeksaid that when her son was in Iraq (he’s back now and it’s unclear if he could be redeployed), McCain slept with her BlackBerry in her hand so she wouldn’t miss his call if he phoned.

Item #2: Married Career Trade-Offs

Researchers from the University of Iowa and the University of California-Davis polled 9,000 married couples last year and found that the bulk of them make decisions, as a couple, that benefit the husband’s career, not the wife’s, according to CNN.

University of Iowa researcher Mary Noonan attributed it people’s upbringing, saying: “Men and women are taught to play very different roles within a marriage. Women are socialized to play a homemaking role within the family, whereas men are encouraged to focus on their careers and breadwinning.”

Item #3: ‘Not It’

I’d completely forgotten about the pediatric “not it” phenomenon, where, when something needs to be done, like . . . uh . . . I don’t know . . . let’s say cleaning up a puddle of juice that’s rapidly spreading across the kitchen floor while three slack-jawed children stand around and watch it, everyone tries to avoid being the last one to yell, “Not it” because the last one has to clean it up.

“Not it” had fallen into an untapped reservoir of childhood memories until recently when The Offspring began using the phrase on a daily basis. And, let me tell ya, it quickly becomes tiring when repeatedly invoked and The Youngest Boy tries to overcome his slow response by upping the volume.

Item #4: Holly Hobbie ‘Update’

I’d file this story under: Can’t they just leave well enough alone?

The web site Babble has truly disturbing news about “updates” that have been done to girl characters that date back to my childhood, so today’s girls would relate to them. But when I looked at the updates, I was extremely saddened.

I mourned, for example, for the original country gal, Holly Hobbie. When I was a girl, my mother re-created Holly Hobbie in needlepoint, framed her handiwork, framed and hung them in my room. (One of them hangs in The Girl’s room today.) Holly Hobbie has been transformed from her charming image to what you see on the left.

Seriously.

Image credits: Newsweek and USA Today.