the pieces of my life

Some real appreciation for the president’s State of the Union address.

Last night Hannah, from work, and I went to a reading at BU’s bookstore (are all college bookstores run by Barnes and Nobles these days? BU’s is. Harvard’s is. University of Washington’s bookstore, though, remains steadfastly independent. Yeah, U-Dub!) for a book called That Takes Ovaries!: Bold Females and Their Brazen Acts. It’s a collection of very short essays of bold things women have done, everything from attacking back when being attacked to demanding equal playground rights in elementary school. They’re written by women of all ages. Over all the stories are great, but I do think there are too many of them of women doing brazen acts that fall under the realm of questionable (sometimes it’s better to just escape an attacker than to try and hurt him especially if you don’t know if he has a gun or a knife). But over all, the book seems good (when I’m done reading it, I’ll give it full critique). The reading, though, brought me back to my younger days in New York, when I’d hang out a women’s bookstores, go to hear people such as Andrea Dworkin speak, and spend my time going to pro-choice rallies. When did I stop doing those things? When did I become a suburban frau? Actually, I stopped doing those things long before I married. Is it a phase young women go through and then grow out of? I mean, the editor of this book was easily my age or older–she never grew out of it. I think there came a point where I didn’t feel I was making a difference as a single voice among many. I think I’ve done more by just leading the life I’ve wanted, by not letting my gender interfere with doing what I want (I still remember how freaked my mom was when I decided to take my three-month solo cross-country trip. Would she have been as frightened if I had been a boy? If I remember her panicked night-before-I-left note correctly, it said something to the effect of, “You could get raped. You could get murdered. You could get raped and murdered by some cop on a Texas highway.” I’m sure that’s not an exact quote, but you get the drift). As one of the authors put in her essay, Is just living a political act? Maybe it is. Maybe just leading your life they way you see best is enough of a statement.

So, even though I said I wouldn’t post from work, I tried to sneak in a lunch time blog–only to have the system screw up on my and wipe out my page (temporarily, obviously). That’ll teach me!

A quick trip to the bookstore during lunch revealed a lovely display of Valentine’s Day books. On a big table right in the front, there was a sign to the effect of “Presents for Your Valentine.” And what are the hot books for lovers? Well, prominently placed were How to Dump a Guy (A Coward’s Manual), Do You Love Me or Am I Just Paranoid: The Serial Monogamist’s Guide to Love, How to Spot a Bastard by His Star Sign, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days: The Universal Don’ts of Dating (a book with a stick figure per page doing things such as asking a guy if she’s fat, lying about missing a period, and calling his friends for relationship advice), and Dumped: An Anthology. Is it just me or does it seem the romance has gone out of dating? This is what passes for Valentine’s Day? This should be on a table under a sign that reads “Bitter About Love.” And while I’m here, let me say that it’s moronic what gets published these days. There’s Even God Is Single, So Stop Giving Me A Hard Time, a picture book of all the reasons (twenty-six to be exact) why single is good. Don’t get me wrong, I like the concept. But a picture book? How about a web site instead. Or a comic book. And then there are Love Coupons, for those too inane to come up with their own nice things to do for their mates. Puh-lease! How hard is it to draw a pretty picture and write “Back rub on demand.” And then there is a book–and hell if I can remember the name–that is verbatim–verbatim, I tell you–from an e-mail that went around years and years ago on what every woman should have/know by the time she’s thirty. It was exactly the same as that e-mail! I’ve got a folder full of old e-mail forwards that I’d be happy to publish under my name. What is up with the publishing industry? Geez!

Sang sent me an interesting article about the abortion issue. I confess I didn’t read the entire sixty-seven pages, but the gist of it is that the crime rate fell roughly eighteen years after the legalization of abortion. It states, “Legalized abortion appears to account for as much as 50 percent of the recent drop in crime,” which blatantly contradicts what the commentary on NPR had said. (Interestingly, it’s the “sharpest drop in murder rates since the end of Prohibition in 1933.” So what is that saying? Give the people booze and free sex and they’re content enough to not kill?) Basically, fewer young males in the highest-crime areas leads to fewer crimes. While this makes perfect sense, something about this theory rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it’s the implications? That women in high-crime areas should be discouraged from having kids? There’s a leap there to sterilizing women on welfare that makes me too uncomfortable. It’s too Gattaca for me. I think I’d better read the entire report.

Me and the Big Mac, we both turn 35 this year. I don’t know why I find that depressing, but I do.

My play-by-play commentary:

The Buccaneer fans don’t look even the tiniest bit menacing. The Raider fans, though, are not ones you’d want to meet in a dark alley. By fandom alone, this game is the Raiders.

Celine Dion is singing “God Bless America.” Do you think the organizers don’t know that she’s Canadian? And that no one likes her? (And don’t give me any crap about Canada being part of the Americas. Irrelevant here.)

How cool would it be if, as the players introduced themselves and said what colleges they went to, they also said what their GPAs were?

The Osbourne’s Diet Pepsi commercial hands down the best of the night.

Does anyone really care who wins this game?

Melissa Rivers has done the unbelievable: sunk to new levels with Help, I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, a celebrity survivor show, which apparently, has done well in the U.K.

“There isn’t any fire, there’s no emotion. I mean these guys are fighting for the championship of the world.” Um, yeah. If by “championship” you mean “the single sport of football” and by “world” you mean “the self-absorbed United States.”

Why are car commercials so boring. Isn’t there anything interesting they can say about a car? Yawn.

Do you think Jon Gruden is sitting there on the sideline calling out, “Hey, anyone want a little time in the Super Bowl? You can play on the winning team. You, water boy? Wanna play? Yo, Brad? Your mother want to get in this game?” How much are advertisers bumming that a lot of people have already flipped the channel.

Who do you have to sleep with to get to be a Dial-a-Down guy at the Super Bowl? More specifically, who do I have to sleep with to be a Dial-a-Down guy at the Super Bowl?

How much longer until reality TV does a sports show? And I’m not talking about the police report on the 11 o’clock news.

“The Raiders are clearly back in the game.” Yeah, but the viewers aren’t and the advertisers are screwed anyway. They should’ve just stayed in the game from the beginning.

I miss the Bud Bowl.

Apparently it wasn’t all that clear to the Raiders that they were back in the game. Whoops.

I guess you can’t judge a team by its fans. Game’s over. And I still don’t care.

So apparently I spew out a weekend’s worth of blog, and then have nothing else to say? Well, that’s not exactly it. What’s happened this week is I got all fired up about things when I’m nowhere near a computer, and then by the time I return, I can’t recapture the original angst. For instance, on the 22nd, I was burning about the NPR commentary from a formerly pro-choice person (although the rebuttal had me feeling better). The interesting thing about both commentaries is that they came from angles I wasn’t really expecting. The anti view was that child abuse hasn’t gone down and that women feel like they have no choice; they will get family and boyfriend/husband support for abortions but not for raising a child. The pro side took a strictly medical view: she’s a neonatal nurse who has spent too much time watching horribly sick babies suffer and die. My passion for this issue is strong, but my desire to rant about it right now is not, so consider yourself lucky to not have gotten an earful (eyeful?) of my pro-choice views. I think I’m just too tired, because Adam’s got some sort of cough that kept me up all night. Which is another thing I could rant about: how as wonderful as marriage is, sometimes it’s nice to have a bed to yourself. I could also rant that we had to reclaim our garbage can from our neighbors who took it (as Adam said, “Does it get any more suburban cliche than that?” Actually, he mangled what he said, but that’s what he meant). I could rant about the fact that we need a new car (in this weather, Adam’s heat works only intermittently, and things seem to just keep falling off). I could rant that work went from snail’s pace to slammed, but I don’t write about work here. I could go on for a while about how much I just do not care about this year’s Super Bowl, because the idiot Dolphins blew it, and how much I really don’t care about the Oscars, because I haven’t seen any of the movies that are going to be nominated. I could rant… well, actually I couldn’t. Because it’s time for me to get myself to work. Rant averted.

I know it’s incredibly trite to talk about the weather, but I can’t help it! What is with this state? Today’s temperature is practically balmy compared tonight. Today is high of 20 degrees, low of 5 degrees. But tonight–when I have my sewing class and I can’t just go straight home and climb into my super warm bed–it’s going to be a high of 0 degrees and a low of -5 degrees with a wind chill temperature of -25 degrees! No joke! They said it every five minutes on NPR this morning. This is supposed to last the week, until Sunday, when temperatures may hit 30. Give me the rain any day. (According to Yahoo MA weather, it’s currently 13 degrees but “it feels like -5.” I’m thinking of canceling my afternoon interview… I wish!) Okay, hopefully that will be my last weather rant for a good long time, although I can’t make any promises.

I’m not sure why we don’t go to New York more often. It was four hours door-to-door from our house to the Bear’s apartment, including stops for gas and food. Very doable. Parking in the city was a breeze–got a spot just across the street from her apartment. She and Dave have a magnificent apartment for New York: high ceilings, lots of light, and elevator in the building. The rooms are big and they’ve decorated them with just that Claire and Dave flair, so it’s all great fun. They made us waffles and coffee to fortify us for our New York adventure.