THE PHOENIX HAS LANDED, BUT MUM'S STILL THE WORD

First, on a completely superficial girly-fun note which belies the seemingly endless moil of this CPSIA madness, the hours of grinding and groping we the law-opposers are all putting in, "How fun to be quoted!" on that epidural bit from our last musing in The Boston Phoenix yesterday! see: "Congress's War On Toys" by Lissa Harris.

Squealed with a pert, rarely copped to ex-cheerleading voice in the privacy of my own kitchen whilst splashing a rivulet of tooth-ache sweet creamer (entirely unlike me and my adherence to black sludge) into my 5th cup of coffee, with only the dead silence of my sewing machine (yep, still paralyzed with CPSIA-fear for my business), it makes things feel light! and possibly better! for, oh, 1.4 seconds. Someone is noticing!

SIGH, and now it's back to the crushing, day-to-day drone of this thing, where it really can get worse, and wait!--it does!

Oh Cassandra--is it really that bad?
Despite the many lovely phonecalls and e-mails from people "congratulating," reassuring and "see, you got all worked up for nothing!"-ing me after the one year stay on certification and testing announcement which came from the CPSC late last Friday, yes, it appears it's really that bad.

As suspected, this is no time to run off holding hands in a tutu-clad victory circle, there is hard work ahead--and right in front of us. I know it felt good initially, but this "stay" will not fix the fatal flaws in the law, and worse, because it temporarily seemed to subdue the squawking artisans with small businesses, the subject fell mum (can one say "more mum?") over the past week. A week of momentum lost in the self-congratulation.

It is bizarre to me that I cannot (even when it seemed my business would be "off the hook" and it would "all work out") let this go. I have found myself all politicked-out, disenchanted with the same politicians and the system I would think is on "my side," left completely adrift by the fellow moms who think I'm too much of an hysteric and a complainer to even reply to my missives, and even, having worn my Home-Sweet-Home-mat a bit thin, felt the pull-back from my own family on my continuing need to fight this fight.

And now that it looks like we are not out of the woods, starting with this letter from the Waxman-Rush camp to President Obama on February 3rd, and after the rejection of the NAM petition as well as Judge Paul Gardephe's overturn which leaves us with a retroactive nationwide ban on phthalates on February 10, it's an increasingly sticky wicket.
I'm just plain disgusted with the way Henry Waxman's website and office continue to present him as a champion of reform when, according to this letter to President Obama, it is very, very clear that he has absolutely no plans of admitting the flaws in the law or budging one millimeter--and calls for CPSC Chairman Nancy Nord's head on a lead platter, just to stifle her rational complaints over the functionality (or dyfunctionality) of the law.
Yeah, in a move of colossal surprise to me, I find myself feeling sorry for Nancy Nord, and championing the Republican congressmen who will expose this. All in one week. This has nothing and everything to do with my politics; it has everything to do with a big mess we need to clean up.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: like everything in life, this is about short-term pain vs. long-term pain--and nobody wants to do it. Nobody ever wants to do anything painful--and they don't have to feel guilty "if they don't know about it." The reality of National Bankruptcy Day needs more coverage, people. The media has got to jump in in a meaningful way...and the easiest three words in the world must be avoided at all costs. Because you get more flies with honey than "I told you so."

Go see Rick Woldenberg (cpsia-national-bankruptcy-day-redux).--he "doesn't say it" much better than I do. If this ever ends, I am buying that man a vat of coffee.