In absence of actual content to blog, I’m going to take a page (…haa bad writing pun not intended) from the lovely and fabulous Lisa Schmeiser, a woman noted for not only posting articles on Facebook with follow on comments suggesting further reading to enhance enjoyment of the initial piece, a practice I find delightfully geeky and also one that lends itself to fairly robust Facebook conversations, but also the author of So What, Who Cares, a daily email newsletter that has three to five news or pop culture items with a brief discussion of why you should care. This is exactly the kind of hand holding I currently need to remain a somewhat well read and moderately interesting adult, so I recommend it enthusiastically.
Anyway, in the spirit of that (but definitely not in the execution because there will be no related intelligent summary of the below) please to enjoy some things I’ve found kicking around that I’m still thinking about:
- From Avidly: “Essays That We, As Ladies Of Early Middle Age, Would Like To See Written*”, my favorite of which is “I Have Thoughts About the Revolution, But I Have Not Slept and Can’t Find My Other Shoe”, which is pretty much becoming the alternate title of this blog. Other favorites include:
- “Women Who Take Care of Too Many People and the People Who Take Care of Them, i.e. Other Women”
- “Plans to Murder my Ex’s Now-Ex, or, Alternately, Take Her Out for Drinks”
- From Buzzfeed: “If Hermione Were The Main Character In “Harry Potter: Hermione Granger and the Goddamn Patriarchy.” This was one of the most delightful things I have read in a good long while:
- “Even though she’d read that women are less likely to speak up in classrooms, Hermione gave literally zero fucks for socially mandated gender roles.”
- Professor Snape: “Tell me, Miss Granger, are you incapable of restraining yourself, or do you take pride in being an insufferable know-it-all?” HG, Boss Witch:“I’ll take pride in setting you the fuck on fire again, how about that?”
- “When confronted, Dumbledore did what Dumbledore did best – Left teenagers to deal with everything.“
- A bit of a longer read: “The Plath Resolution”:
“For the past year and a half I’ve been going to yoga every Friday morning. Before this I’d done maybe a handful of classes and every one had left me in a barbed, mutinous mood. It was uncomfortable! And crowded! And on a couple occasions a little like being in a relationship where you end up shouting things like, “Don’t tell me to calm down!”…One Friday last spring, I woke up in a foul mood. No reason. I just woke up a human gargoyle. I considered skipping yoga because there was going to be a substitute teacher but talked myself into going anyway. (“Those toes aren’t going to touch themselves you know.”) It was a grey, stuffy morning, and the entire drive I was thinking a stream of fuckity-fuck-fuck gargoyle thoughts. At one point I drove past a line of Bradford pear trees in bloom, and got offended by how ugly and dirty-snowball-looking they were, and thought, “FUCK BRADFORD PEAR TREES.”
- Nothing I’ve excerpted above actually has nothing to do with the point of the article, so you should probably just read it. In addition to enjoying a mental script that feels similar to my own (“fuckity-fuck-fuck gargoyle thoughts” is going to stick), I enjoyed the main idea that there is always going to be this better version of yourself, this woman in your mind that has corrected for the things you hate, a woman who remembers to buy stamps and pick up dry cleaning and has organized cabinets and great handwriting and has never once, not once, Febrezed the clothes on her body before walking out the door, but that woman doesn’t exist, and really: that’s ok. It’s ok. It’s good to want to do things better, and it’s ok to not actually achieve that goal.
- Along those lines, I submit to you a picture of me that I subtitle: “How DOES She Do It All??” Well, dear reader, sometimes She Does It All by having her husband Gorilla Glue her boot together and then clamping it down with food clips so the adhesive can set while she drives into work wearing mismatched shoes, muttering repeatedly to herself “Remember to switch your shoes. Remember to switch your shoes”
- Also, I don’t know what’s going on with my overall look here; I can only assume I was trying valiantly to recreate my middle school self’s desire to perfect the Cindy Mancini hair sweep, while trying to cobble together an outfit that didn’t scream “Look, I ran out of clean socks and can’t find my normal hose, you’re not perfect either, ok?”
Leave a comment