Some of the people who know me have heard me talk about this site.
It’s a great site.
My OWN curly headedness has began to be spread around the ‘net. The lovely ladies at naturallycurly.com have contacted me to ask if they can put up my Curly Top story on their site.
I said yes, and I am pleased to be part of their outreach.
Check it out, they really are great!
I saw this on naturallycurly.com
Curly hair is a whole different ball game.
It does not do what you expect. It does not look like what anyone expects.
This book lets us curly girls in on some tips and tricks. Understand the curly hair. LOVE the curly hair.
And whatever you do, don’t shampoo too often!
then later, you are sort of rubbing your hand over your head and you find this spot that’s really sore?
Maybe it’s just me.
But I would not be surprised if I’d been knocked unconscious at some point this week, and that I wouldn’t remember it.
It’s been that kind of week. Work is insanely busy. I know some people regularly work 60 hour weeks, but I am quite upset when I have to work 50.
I HAVE to have boundaries, I have to have more than just the one thing MY JOB that I do.
So, I’ve also been trying to sign up to do other things. Just took a dance class last night. It was great. All the Femmes in the room were fun and supportive.
Trying a new eating plan. Don’t like the word diet. It involves more vegetables that I can believe I will really eat. At least I fear I will not be able to eat them before they go bad.
They give you a shopping list. What Kind of nonsense is a shopping list that says
1 Large Stalk of Celery
3 Tbsp. Peanut butter
I hope they want me to eat the rest of the celery later. That’s all I can say.
Well, I just wanted to post something. It’s been a while, I know.
Jane and Michael Stern are roving reporting, travelling the nation for the best road food. They do a column for Gourmet magazine called “Two For the Road”.
I am in absolute green envy. How idyllic is this? You are with the love of your life, your spouse, travelling all over the world, anywhere you want to go. And you are SUPPOSED to eat at all those great places, the ones that say, “Famous for Pies” that always seem to zip past tantalizingly on my journeys
I heard these guys on “The Splendid Table“, an NPR radio show about food and eating. I love their attitude and their stories.
Some people have all the luck.
Just finished the movie, and I am left really thinking about a lot of things. That’s what make s a movie good, right?
It’s about piano playing, and it’s about mental illness. Kind of both. David was supposed to be this raging genius, but right when he showed everyone that he was so extraordinary, he goes insane.
Or just gives in to his insanity, maybe.
What I can’t help thinking about though, is what Gillian was thinking. What woudl life be like married to an insane person?
Of course, insane has many levels. David’s level seemed to be mostly pleasant. But what kind of partnership would a marriage like that be? I guess there are all kinds of marriages, like there are all kinds of people. It blows my mind. I cannot imagine myself in that position.
It’s also interesting to think about what constitutes genius and what constitutes insanity. Haven’t we all been aware of the relationship between the two?
An insane person sees things differently than regular people. A genius does the same. Maybe it’s only a matter of labels.
I also wonder about the idea of classical music. I play the piano. Rather badly at this point. Technique was never anything I worried about. I just wanted to play. And I always wanted to play new things. I hated practicing. I wanted to learn to play a song, and then just PLAY.
Originality is key. Play the same song, but play it in a new way. Put a new twist on it. Practicing seemed going backwards.
But classical musicians play the same stuff over and over and over. 8 hours a day of practicing. Insane! How could you do that?
Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of reinterpretation. I think that the jazz standards can be done endlessly, and always be new.
But I will never understand the idea of playing the same thing, exactly the same as the guy before you. Maybe this is a throwback to a time before we had recording technology.
Interesting that jazz took off right after we had the ability to record stuff. Hmm….
Well, I recommend the movie.
Don Delillo wrote this book about a murderous cult in the middle east. I read it on accident, because I thought it was the one my book club was reading.
Turns out we are reading White Noise. I’ll tell you about that one when I’m done with it.
But The Names was depressing. Man! a story where a man living in the middle east, where he thinks all the time about their political situation, who finds other things to be MORE depressed about.
I guess murder is pretty depressing.
Mainly, I was depressed because he seemed to have such a tough time showing love to his wife. Sad Sad. I like to see love enjoyed. But the main guy didn’t know how to enjoy his love at all. He seemed stuck.
Delillo had a lot a lot of internal thoughts about words and meaning. It was interesting, but still had a hopeless theme.
I think it was worth reading. It made me want to finish, for sure. But I was sad the whole time I read it. It made me sigh a lot.
I’m on a business trip right now. LONG days here at the sattelite office. Last night I was having a rather late dinner, relaxing in the hotel restaurant and enjoying my meal.
Yes, I was alone. I have read older books, references in outdated magazines to a stigma attached to a woman eating alone in a restaurant. Some women used to feel uncomfortable and pathetic to eat alone. Some restaurants would not welcome solitary females.
But I can find a lot of pleasure in a good meal eaten alone. Especially when the meal is really worth savoring, conversation is not missed because I can focus on how delicious the food is.
Last night i had a lovely soup and salad, with interesting textures and flavors. I was delighting in my meal. I took my hair down and rubbed my head a little.
“I like your hair down.” The man from a nearby table leaned away from his other companions to tell me this tidbit.
I smiled and said thanks. I was interested in my meal.
Later, he felt the need to call over to me again.
I answered, somewhat amused. Until he said, in reference to his companions, “These guys have no idea, but you and I know what’s going to happen later.”
I said, “Well, you’re going to think whatever is in your head, and I’m going to go to bed.”
“That’s what I mean,” he said with a leer.
When I used to explore the streets in Russia, I remember I had a rule of thumb. I was worried about the safety of walking around, an American in this foreign city. I took note and realized that there were three levels. When I walked in the company of a male, any male, I was invisible. I was safe and no one paid me any attention. If I walked in the company of one other female, I got a little attention. Lots of stares, a few loud comments.
But when I walked alone, it was as if I was the property of everyone. All the men would stare, and anyone that felt like saying anything to me just when right out and said it. “Devushka..Hey girl, where are you going?”
It’s true here in America too. One male person, no matter how physically insignificant or bland, stopped all potential harrassment. It was like it never even existed.
I started to call them magic amulets. If me and some girls were gonna go out somewhere, I would ask them “Should we invite a guy to be our amulet?”
It depended on how much hassle we were willing to put up with that evening.
So, I was remembering that with the guy in the restaurant. I hadn’t thought about my harrassment formula for a while.
But my god! This was the Four Seasons, not some back-alley Russian construction site. You would think that up-scale establishments would have a clientele with a greater degree of enlightenment.
The men at that table had been talking about how much money they made earlier. It was somewhere around the million-dollar-a-year mark. At least that is what they were telling each other.
In between my delicious bites, I wondered about having that much money. I wondered if they were enjoying their meals more than I did mine. Or if they enjoyed their lives more than I did mine.
I thought about what their wives might be like. As I unerstand, men who make scads of money usually have a stay-at-home wife. It’s an agreement, just like the old days: Man makes money, women gives man anything he wants.
That how it had to be, before. Before women had equal (or mostly equal) access to employment and could pay for their own homes and sustenance.
And restaurant meals.
But I can afford my own home, and I have a job that supports me. The job even sends me out on trips and picks up the tab at a nice restaurant for me.
But my troglodyte neighbor hadn’t seemed to move into the new feminist reality, a reality that says women belong to themselves. We now have made way for women to live with dignity, and not have to tolerate male rudeness and lewdness to make their way ahead.
Jackass millionaire man had said loudly to his buddies at the table: “Look at that! There is nothing more delightful than watching this young woman here butter her cracker and take a bite with absolute enjoyment.”
Perhaps he didn’t understand that the bite I took was for MY enjoyment, not his.
I had no need of him. He started out as amusing and moved to annoying.
Feminism had meant the whole world shifted. Women no longer find men necessary.
What does this mean? I remember my mother discussing the Equal Rights amendment when I was a teenager. It was up for vote in our state, whether we would ratify it or not.
She said one important argument against it was that it would give women the same wages as men and then women would no longer be interested in being good wives and mothers. THey would abandon their families.
I told her that the argument in favor of it was that it was fair and made sense.
“It’s very complicated, ” she replied.
As it happens, she may have been right. How has family fared since the advent of economic feminism? How are marriages and children doing?
We have a high divorce rate. Higher than the 60s. How are children? That’s tough to say, but it is true that there are a lot of single parent households.
What does this mean? Should we go Taliban and turn back the clock? I don’t think that two wrongs make a right, but we still have a problem here.
How do we keep a relationship intact when niether party needs the other? When they are equally able to survive without the other? It would seem that a lot more effort and desire to make it work is necessary.
That is a huge challenge to our moral character. What kind of determination and will can we bring to the table in a relationship? And also, no matter how much you try, there is always the factor of how much the other one is putting out.
Things are changing. According to Ronald B. Mincy, Columbia U professor of Social Work Policy, there are a couple areas to look at:
… There are three broad factors that are affecting marriage trends: the increasing independence of women and the deterioration in the economic status of men. Women are increasing in terms of their educational attainment. They’re increasing in terms of their occupational status and their earnings.
Men, on the other hand, are reducing their college graduation rates. They’re also reducing their earnings. The only men who’ve experienced increases in their earnings since the 1970s are basically men who have gone to graduate school. So you put together improving economic conditions for women, deteriorating economic conditions for men, and then the removal of this moral imperative for marriage, and I don’t think that we should be surprised that marriage rates are falling. …
So what is the imperative? One of my dearest friends said to me:
What about a public commitment of love to one another?
Hmm..In our cynical and self-reliant world, we want to bring up love?
Maybe all we need is love. Maybe that’s the whole point. If we take away the “have to” side of it, and focus on the “want to” we are left with love.
I think that may be one of the greatest legacies of feminism. We have yet to realize it. But we have made some progress.
Oh baby, I went dancing this weekend! I had so much fun. I was so sore I could barely walk afterwards.
Me and my girls were out, and we were wiggling and giggling. One of the fun things about going to a big club is watching what everyone else is doing. There were these two amazing girls that managed to writhe and sway their booties all the way down to their heels, and them work their way back up again.
And they did it again and again. Go!
Of course, we all had to check out everyone else’s outfits. These two girls walked in, one of them all dressed in a sort of cheerleader thingy.
“What, is she trying to be Paula Abdul?’ my friend said to me.
But I was looking at the other girl, all in white.
“I cannot wear all white,” I said back. “I’d be kicked out of Abba first thing.”
It’s true. I’d spill something on it right away. I’d be like, “Oh, that’s stain is gonna need a sequin. A lot of sequins.”
Why don’t you eat your cutlet, man? Eat it with pleasure and joy. Love your wife. Make your babies. Love your friends and have the courage to tell those who seek to diminish you that they are the devil and you want no part of them. Courage, man, courage and appetite!
-George Blecher “The Death of the Russian Novel”
I don’t know what “The Death of the Russian Novel” is. It may be an article from some random magazine or something. I just found this quote on my hard drive, and thought I would share it.
Someone brought tea to share at work. I love tea.
It is Oolong tea.
I went over there at about tea-time yesterday, and decided to have a cup.
As I pulled the finished-brewing bag out of my steaming mug, I thought to myself:
Me love Oolong time.