Eat the Damn Cake

If you’re on the fence about starting a blog, here’s some important information for you. Not only does blogging force you to organize your thoughts into something sort of coherent once in a while, but it provides you with access to some of the most diverting, creative spam the internet has to offer. I have saved fourteen of my favorite examples, and I’m sharing them with you today. These come from Un-schooled, which suffers, I think, from being linked to a much larger blog (The Innovative Educator), and, in its infant state, is barely able to defend itself. That was a lot of commas. If you are celebrating Christmas tomorrow, consider this my gift to you. Enjoy!

1. Considerably, the post is really the best on this valuable topic. I agree with your conclusions and will eagerly look forward to your forthcoming updates. Just saying thanks will not just be adequate, for the fantasti c clarity in your writing. I will instantly grab your rss feed to stay informed of any updates. De lightful work and much success in your business dealings!

2. I dont think some of these people are actually even reading this blog, it just seems like a bunch of random auto responses from bots, you should really moderate this better.

3. How am I able to order more of this product?

4. Hmmm this post is not really good. Can you comment me any related articles?

5. i agree, why jesus lets this go on is concerning Continue Reading »

I am reading Gail Collins’ book “When Everything Changed,” and it is freaking me out. Starting with the 1960’s, she tracks the experiences, legal situation, and struggle for equal rights of American women. I’m at the part about the 80’s, but I had to pause and write this.

It isn’t that I didn’t know about the stuff she’s describing. I had whole classes about this stuff in college. But it’s easy to forget.

It’s easy to forget and it’s difficult to imagine that so recently, women had to apply for separate jobs from men, where there was no question that they would be paid less than half as much, and where they would have to sue to be promoted. It’s easy to forget and difficult to imagine that so recently, women weren’t admitted to most colleges, and the women’s colleges they did go to promised that they would acquire an excellent education in being good wives, and gain access to appropriate young men to marry. And of course, the unchecked physical abuses that women suffered without legal intervention are a part of the story. And the specific experience of black women, who definitely didn’t have access to the suburban life that was quietly driving housewives of Betty Friedan’s generation insane.  I’m connected to it all. I mean, my mother was around then. She was a kid in the 60s, but she was there.

And now people are fond of imagining that everything is taken care of. That we don’t have too many issues with sexism anymore. Yeah, there aren’t many women in the most powerful jobs and roles this country has to offer, but they’ll be there soon. It’s really just a matter of time. Continue Reading »

Speaking of getting married, there’s that thing about names. You know, that thing where you’re a woman, and you get married, and then you have to decide whether you want to keep the name you grew up with or take this completely new name that you hadn’t given any thought to (or maybe even heard) until you met a particular guy.

There’s something strange about giving up a name. Suddenly, it sounds like you’re not a part of your own family. You’re a part of this other family, except that you don’t know their stories yet, and you don’t have memories of them yet.  So you’re kind of a name ghost. You’re floating between families. You haven’t grown solid and real yet. That happens when you become normal at their gatherings and dinner tables, and when you can say your own name and think of yourself. It happens when you become automatic to them, and they are automatic to you, and you all have memories of each other. It might take years . Maybe a lot of them.

And what if you do something remarkable and public? The little girl you were wouldn’t know how to recognize herself in your name when she read about you. People who read about you won’t immediately connect you back to the other members of the family you grew up with. And when they know those family members or read about them in the paper, they won’t connect them back to you. You’ll have to say, “You know, he’s actually my brother.” And if you have a sister, and you both get married, and you both have new names, it’s even more confusing.

(My Hebrew name is on my wedding contract. That’s another name entirely.)

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Here it is. (Some of) my wedding in pictures.

This is me in the bridal chamber, at the end of getting ready, when I started to feel overwhelmed at an entirely new level.

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Last week, I got the first real purse I’ve ever had. It is brown and black and gray. It can fit a book, a knit cap, gloves, and all of the normal little things (wallet, phone, tiny mirror, chapstick, random bobby pins, fifteen receipts from Duane Reade, unopened mail,  the earrings that I have to take off after an hour because they hurt my ears). I feel like a woman. I carry it everywhere. I don’t know why it took me this long to get it.

There is a point when girls start carrying purses. I don’t know when it starts exactly, but it’s probably shockingly young. I missed it. And then, at another point later on, those purses become much more mature and practical looking. The colors get more subtle. The shapes are less creative. They grow large enough to fit everything you might need to sustain you for a week, if you find yourself stranded in the wilderness, or in the middle of Manhattan. Continue Reading »

The wedding photos came in today. In two discs. One of the discs works. My computer growls at the other one and then spits it out. I looked through about 450 photos in maybe five minutes. And now I need to think about what I’ve seen. And not do anything rash. And look at everything again.

I’d gotten to the point where I almost didn’t care about how they came out. But now they’re here, and I definitely care. I don’t want to look through them again. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to see myself looking awkward and lumpy and bad, even when I’m wildly happy and wearing a beautiful dress. I don’t want to look in the mirror and think, “Why can’t just one of the pictures capture the way I look right now?” I don’t want to think, “My kids will think this is what I looked like when I was twenty-four.” I don’t want to think anything. Continue Reading »