Eat the Damn Cake

Today the movers came and took away everything I own. Except for an extra blue bra and the dress I got from H&M for $5 that I sleep in sometimes. Tomorrow they are putting all of the stuff in the place that will be my new home. Which means we have to pay a lot more money, because the rates are going up tomorrow because it’s the first of the month. And they have to keep everything in the truck overnight. And we needed all these extra boxes because we are bad at packing.

Two days ago, I was at a funeral. A member of my congregation, a guy who had been a president of the synagogue, finally died. It was finally because he had ALS for eleven years.

The first time I ever saw him, he was standing behind a podium on the bima, reading prayers during Rosh Hashanah. He had a commanding voice. I had my journal with me, because I was twelve and expected to be really bored (the high holidays have very long services), and I was sketching pictures of the interesting characters in the room. I drew him.

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Back in January, a constable from the Toronto Police  gave a talk at a college, where he advised female students to stop being so slutty if they didn’t want to be raped. “Women should avoid dressing like sluts in order to not be victimized,” he cautioned his audience.

And in response, SlutWalk was born.

(source)

It happened in Toronto and Chicago and LA and Boston and London, and on October 1st, it is coming to New York City. Not sure why we’re so late to the game, actually. That’s a little weird.

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You know what I don’t like? The “real world.”

People sound so mean when they talk about it. Once, an ex-boyfriend who was still hurt yelled at me, “You don’t know anything about the real world!”

I thought of this:

(A street fight. That’s what it sounds like. source)

Or maybe it looks like this:

Whenever people say “the real world,” they mean that there’s another world, a fake one, that someone is trying to live in. And that is always bad.

But I especially dislike it when people talk this way about kids. “They need to learn about the real world.” When people say this about kids, they mean that they’re too sheltered, or too spoiled, or too safe, or too innocent.

Sometimes people defend things as awful as bullying by saying, “Well, it’ll teach them to deal with the real world.”

As though this place called the real world is full of cruel people, just waiting to torment you. What a terrible place! I don’t want to live there!

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Bear hates stories where people cheat on each other. He hates stories where people get divorced. Sometimes he mutters, “I hate Elizabeth Gilbert” when people mention Eat, Pray, Love. He doesn’t understand why she left her husband.

“That guy had no direction in his life,” I remind him, trying to remember what her first husband was like in the book. “He was really immature, and she needed someone secure and passionate.”

“I don’t know,” Bear says. “He sounds fine. She just fell out of love with him. Which, apparently, can happen at any moment.”

“Not at any moment.”

I think he equates any woman in the world leaving her husband to me leaving him.  Elizabeth Gilbert leaving her innocent, helpless husband feels like a type of infidelity. I mean, look where she ends up– in the arms of a hot Brazilian guy with an awesome accent! And, wait, even before that, there was James Franco, in the movie, wearing a leather jacket and doing yoga. Am I remembering that correctly?

Bear is positive that if I ever cheated on him, it would be the worst thing in the world. He is really clear on this. I can’t actually imagine Bear cheating on me. It’s like my brain can’t go there. There’s a huge, cinderblock wall. I think it’s actually the wall from every one of my college dorms. Except this one is thick enough to block out the amazingly loud classic rock music that kid next door always played at 3 a.m. when he was drunk. Cheating and Bear don’t make sense together. And, of course, I can’t imagine cheating on Bear either.

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A guest post. You remember her. She wrote about being pregnant and what the hell does “normal” look like anyway– here. And she’s back for more! And the more is amazing.

I am Anna, food-blogger at Icy Violet’s Kitchen, thinker-about-women’s-issues, and lover of Kate’s blog.  My first baby is due tomorrow.  How about that?

NEGATIVE BODY TALK:

I’m so fat!

You’re not!  I am.

You!  You look great!

Chuh.  Have you seen these thighs?

Look at these arms!

What about this double chin!

***

Had a very interesting experience the other day.

I was spending time with family.  Big family.  Family I don’t always see.  Specifically I was spending time with my female cousins.  We’re a large family with a propensity for daughters, and I have a lot (of cousins that is, not daughters…).

My female cousins are beautiful, beautiful women.  My mother’s side of the family just has those genes.  They are small, thin-boned, fine featured and unfailingly thin.

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So I’ve been undergoing a strange metamorphosis. The symptoms started manifesting several weeks ago, when I found myself googling “antique upholstered headboard.” And then I fell in love with this:

(source)

Which is weird, because, well, it’s a bed. And bad, because it’s $2,000 on sale at ABC Home. Not happening. Really, really not happening.

ABC, I’ve recently discovered, has some incredibly beautiful stuff. And it is all overpriced. Even the ugly, random stuff is overpriced:

(source)

This “vintage grape bin” is $595.

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