Remember the '90s? For some reason, I've been stuck there a lot
lately. One reason is a game called "SongPop." Since I'm still pretty
new to the game, I don't have a lot of playlists to pick from, so the
"90s Alternative" playlist comes up very often.
In the
nineties, if you wanted to sound like a Cool Kid when someone asked you
what kind of music you liked, you'd affect a pose of slouchy
not-caring-ness and shrug and say 'I like Alternative,' and everybody
knew what you meant. Except before I even graduated from high school,
"Alternative" was more like "Allthereistoturnthedialto."
Even
at the time, it was hard to really put a finger on "Alternative,"
because everybody called themselves "Alternative." Everybody was
rebelling against some machine, but few of us knew what it was we were
rebelling against.
I never gave it much thought back
then. I just liked the music. I'd grown up listening to the Beach Boys
and Elvis and the Beatles, all great, great music, but something about
listening to "Alternative" music made squeaky-clean, goody-two-shoes me
feel a little badass. But this game, which puts U2 and Joan Osborne and
Nirvana and Duran Duran on the same playlist for us to guess the songs,
got me wondering just how something so ubiquitous, and in a lot of
cases commercial, could have ever been called "Alternative."
I
didn't have it then, but now, I have the power of the Internet, so I
checked around. 'Alternative' music, as it turns out, began as a term
for music that started out with independent labels, which a surprising
number of acts did. And it became a catch-all to mean anything from
independent rock to college rock to postmodern to post-punk. It's one
of those terms that's a big, overstuffed, jumbled-up duffelbag that
means everything and nothing.
Alternative to what?
You
get older, and get more confident in your own tastes, and care less
about being a Cool Kid. It's not enough explanation to drawl
"Alternative" when someone asks you what music you like, especially if
you're stuck in a car with someone and you don't have the sand to put on
your earbuds and listen to your own iPod. Say you tell them you like
"Alternative," thinking music in the vein of Nirvana, and Smashing
Pumpkins, and U2, and what you get instead is four hours of "Where Have
All The Cowboys Gone?" That right there would make me think about
throwing myself from a vehicle moving at highway speeds, before even the
first "Yippie-yi, Yippie-yay!" Especially now, since we're kind of out
of the "Alternative" movement, and can look back and see borders
between the different kinds of music that huddled under the
"Alternative" festival tent in the '90s.
And since
we've passed the decade point of the passing of the 1990s, it's even
okay to admit that you didn't really care much for the Alternative Music
of the 1990s at all. Nobody's going to trip you in the lunchroom over
it. And if they do, they're the ones with issues, not you. I don't
fall into the camp that didn't like any of the music back then. I have
very strong likes and dislikes, and even some music from then I'm tepid
about. But I do have to say, I couldn't stand it when everybody wore
flannel shirts for every occasion. And 90s hair frustrated me to no
end, with all its half-hearted, sulky, dirty lifeless flatness. I'm a
big-hair, lots of makeup girl. I'm really more glam-rock than grunge,
so in that respect, and also with Ace of Base factored in, and the whole
junior high thing, the 90s were a little bit of a personal Hell for me
in some ways.
So no matter how old you are, like the
music you like, and I'll like the music I like. If the Nineties taught
us anything, it's that if you don't like what's on this station, you
have Alternatives.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Saturday, October 6, 2012
This Was Our Friday
Yesterday was just loads of sequential vortex fun, here at the house. See, it all started about a month ago, the (hot) day of Zoe's birthday party. I realized that our refrigerator's ice maker, which has been in service for five whole years, had kicked the bucket. There were bigger things to deal with, though, and we haven't really had a chance to deal with it or figure out just what the problem was, until yesterday.
Shane said it could be as simple as the water line being frozen, so he unloaded the whole fridge and freezer, stocked our other fridge downstairs (the 30-year-old "beer fridge" that never has any beer in it) with our perishables, and unplugged our kitchen fridge to give the line time to defrost. Since there wasn't anything else he could do while we waited for things to thaw out, and since Zoe was taking a nap upstairs, he decided to go to NAPA in search of lightbulbs for his car or whatever guys go to NAPA for. And I thought I'd impress the daylights out of him by having the refrigerator all cleaned and shiny when he got back.
It started out smooth enough. Both the fridge and freezer were empty, and my Scunci Steamer, a bottle of half-and-half white vinegar and water, and a microfiber cloth and a Magic Eraser made easy work of the spills and such that accumulate in a refrigerator between Big Cleanings (read: in the five years we've had it- oops!)
And then I noticed, sticking out from under the refrigerator, a ball of white dog hair. Geeze Louise! If I'm going to clean the refrigerator, I ought to clean around and under it, too! So I got our central vac's 30-foot hose and commenced to prodding blindly under the fridge. Then I heard what sounded like an area rug getting sucked up inside the hose, and I stopped short. I also stopped because I suddenly had no suction, but I could hear the unit downstairs really revving.
A clog! NOOOOOOOOOO!
Well, I still had the refrigerator bins and removable shelves to wash, but a plugged-up central vacuum hose counts as an emergency in my world. Otherwise, I'd just stuff it back in its cubby and forget about it until I have a big mess to vacuum up, and then---- no suction! So I set out to try to find out where the clog in the hose was, and to push it back out. I knew WHAT the clog was- dog hair!- because after my hose got stopped up, I took the face plate off the refrigerator grate and had a look. It looked like quilt batting under there. No wonder things got plugged! Big wonder we haven't had a fire here because of it!
Shane still wasn't home- how long can it take to find stupid light bulbs for a car, anyway? So I had to muddle through and try to figure this out on my own. First off, I duct-taped all the Swiffer Sweeper handles together that we have in the house (3 of them), which got me a third of the way through the sweeper hose, if I was lucky. I spent way too much time trying this tactic, when it dawned on me that since the hose was clogged with a batting-like hair ball, maybe if I sent a bunch of quarters down the hose, and shook it really good while doing so, the money would dislodge the hairball, and all it would cost me was a little dignity and some dirty quarters, since I'd need to perform this delicate surgery out in the yard, where I'd have enough room to really stretch out that hose and not beat up the floor while I flailed it around.
In went 50 quarters. I counted them as I sent them down the sweeper hose. And I shook and shook the hose, making sure to agitate whatever was in there loose. When I got the hose collected back up on the porch, I got all 50 quarters retrieved, and.... just some residual dust from inside the hose. So again, with the quarters and the shaking, and.... same thing. If that hairball somehow let two loads of quarters through without getting dislodged and forced out, it was a magical hairball, for sure!
I was starting to feel that sick, panicky feeling, though. That meant the clog was not in my hose, but somewhere in the ductwork between the outlet in the kitchen and the vac unit in the basement. And Zoe was upstairs crying because she'd woken up from a good, long afternoon nap, it was five o'clock, and she was ready not to be up in her room anymore. And how could I bring my sweet little girl back downstairs to a house with a plugged-up central vac unit?! And where was Shane? Damn that car, and damn his cell phone, sitting and mocking me on the kitchen island!
Just when I was building up a good head of steam, I caught the back end of a bright snot-green car rolling through the intersection. On a good day, the car is something-something official green. On days like today, when I'm frustrated, the car's snot-green, and a big time-suck. I have a love-hate relationship with Shane's hobby, in other words.
But, I had to remind myself as he put the car in park in front of the house, it wasn't Shane who'd sucked up a giant hairball in the sweeper and plugged it up, so he didn't need me to start yelling the minute he got out of the car. And he seemed to be in a good mood, which is the kind of mood the car puts him in, and I didn't want his trip to have been all for naught.
"Ummmm, I sort of plugged up the vacuum," I said, and proceeded to tell him all about my repair efforts.
"Oh, not a problem. We just need to snake it," he said, almost cheerfully. That snot green car has magical powers. If I'd said this to him on a work day, when he hadn't been driving the car, I would have gotten his "Shane look," which Zoe also gives me if I do something she doesn't like.
Within fifteen minutes, he had the duct all snaked out, and the big quilt-batting-like dog hair ball sat in a big pile in the middle of the basement floor. And the central vac hasn't had this much suction in ages. And after I washed my declogger quarters, I've never had cleaner parking meter money.
But there was still the thing that set all this off to begin with. The ice maker. After we got everything cleaned the rest of the way up (the refrigerator and freezer are SPARKLY inside!), we plugged everything back in, and.... no ice. So the thing is really, really dead. But happily, Shane thinks it might be the sensor, and that with the $40 part, he could maybe fix it himself. So there's one on its way, as I type.
And just in case there's really no fixing the ice maker, we've already talked about what our endgame is. We're just going to buy a portable ice maker unit to make our ice, and fill up the tub in the freezer, to continue with the through-the-door ice service we've become accustomed to in the last five years, because first of all, I LOVE my refrigerator, and I'm not about to go looking for a new one, simply because the ice maker, which is really kind of a fragile, pain in the butt little part of the entire unit, broke, and more importantly because we're afraid that if we got a new fridge, we'd end up remodeling the kitchen, which would make the rest of the house look shabby, and next thing you know, this house is gutted again, and us, the kid, and the dog are living in the yard in a travel trailer for the next ten years while we work on the house.
It's the way of the Sequential Vortex, people.
Shane said it could be as simple as the water line being frozen, so he unloaded the whole fridge and freezer, stocked our other fridge downstairs (the 30-year-old "beer fridge" that never has any beer in it) with our perishables, and unplugged our kitchen fridge to give the line time to defrost. Since there wasn't anything else he could do while we waited for things to thaw out, and since Zoe was taking a nap upstairs, he decided to go to NAPA in search of lightbulbs for his car or whatever guys go to NAPA for. And I thought I'd impress the daylights out of him by having the refrigerator all cleaned and shiny when he got back.
It started out smooth enough. Both the fridge and freezer were empty, and my Scunci Steamer, a bottle of half-and-half white vinegar and water, and a microfiber cloth and a Magic Eraser made easy work of the spills and such that accumulate in a refrigerator between Big Cleanings (read: in the five years we've had it- oops!)
And then I noticed, sticking out from under the refrigerator, a ball of white dog hair. Geeze Louise! If I'm going to clean the refrigerator, I ought to clean around and under it, too! So I got our central vac's 30-foot hose and commenced to prodding blindly under the fridge. Then I heard what sounded like an area rug getting sucked up inside the hose, and I stopped short. I also stopped because I suddenly had no suction, but I could hear the unit downstairs really revving.
A clog! NOOOOOOOOOO!
Well, I still had the refrigerator bins and removable shelves to wash, but a plugged-up central vacuum hose counts as an emergency in my world. Otherwise, I'd just stuff it back in its cubby and forget about it until I have a big mess to vacuum up, and then---- no suction! So I set out to try to find out where the clog in the hose was, and to push it back out. I knew WHAT the clog was- dog hair!- because after my hose got stopped up, I took the face plate off the refrigerator grate and had a look. It looked like quilt batting under there. No wonder things got plugged! Big wonder we haven't had a fire here because of it!
Shane still wasn't home- how long can it take to find stupid light bulbs for a car, anyway? So I had to muddle through and try to figure this out on my own. First off, I duct-taped all the Swiffer Sweeper handles together that we have in the house (3 of them), which got me a third of the way through the sweeper hose, if I was lucky. I spent way too much time trying this tactic, when it dawned on me that since the hose was clogged with a batting-like hair ball, maybe if I sent a bunch of quarters down the hose, and shook it really good while doing so, the money would dislodge the hairball, and all it would cost me was a little dignity and some dirty quarters, since I'd need to perform this delicate surgery out in the yard, where I'd have enough room to really stretch out that hose and not beat up the floor while I flailed it around.
In went 50 quarters. I counted them as I sent them down the sweeper hose. And I shook and shook the hose, making sure to agitate whatever was in there loose. When I got the hose collected back up on the porch, I got all 50 quarters retrieved, and.... just some residual dust from inside the hose. So again, with the quarters and the shaking, and.... same thing. If that hairball somehow let two loads of quarters through without getting dislodged and forced out, it was a magical hairball, for sure!
I was starting to feel that sick, panicky feeling, though. That meant the clog was not in my hose, but somewhere in the ductwork between the outlet in the kitchen and the vac unit in the basement. And Zoe was upstairs crying because she'd woken up from a good, long afternoon nap, it was five o'clock, and she was ready not to be up in her room anymore. And how could I bring my sweet little girl back downstairs to a house with a plugged-up central vac unit?! And where was Shane? Damn that car, and damn his cell phone, sitting and mocking me on the kitchen island!
Just when I was building up a good head of steam, I caught the back end of a bright snot-green car rolling through the intersection. On a good day, the car is something-something official green. On days like today, when I'm frustrated, the car's snot-green, and a big time-suck. I have a love-hate relationship with Shane's hobby, in other words.
But, I had to remind myself as he put the car in park in front of the house, it wasn't Shane who'd sucked up a giant hairball in the sweeper and plugged it up, so he didn't need me to start yelling the minute he got out of the car. And he seemed to be in a good mood, which is the kind of mood the car puts him in, and I didn't want his trip to have been all for naught.
"Ummmm, I sort of plugged up the vacuum," I said, and proceeded to tell him all about my repair efforts.
"Oh, not a problem. We just need to snake it," he said, almost cheerfully. That snot green car has magical powers. If I'd said this to him on a work day, when he hadn't been driving the car, I would have gotten his "Shane look," which Zoe also gives me if I do something she doesn't like.
Within fifteen minutes, he had the duct all snaked out, and the big quilt-batting-like dog hair ball sat in a big pile in the middle of the basement floor. And the central vac hasn't had this much suction in ages. And after I washed my declogger quarters, I've never had cleaner parking meter money.
But there was still the thing that set all this off to begin with. The ice maker. After we got everything cleaned the rest of the way up (the refrigerator and freezer are SPARKLY inside!), we plugged everything back in, and.... no ice. So the thing is really, really dead. But happily, Shane thinks it might be the sensor, and that with the $40 part, he could maybe fix it himself. So there's one on its way, as I type.
And just in case there's really no fixing the ice maker, we've already talked about what our endgame is. We're just going to buy a portable ice maker unit to make our ice, and fill up the tub in the freezer, to continue with the through-the-door ice service we've become accustomed to in the last five years, because first of all, I LOVE my refrigerator, and I'm not about to go looking for a new one, simply because the ice maker, which is really kind of a fragile, pain in the butt little part of the entire unit, broke, and more importantly because we're afraid that if we got a new fridge, we'd end up remodeling the kitchen, which would make the rest of the house look shabby, and next thing you know, this house is gutted again, and us, the kid, and the dog are living in the yard in a travel trailer for the next ten years while we work on the house.
It's the way of the Sequential Vortex, people.
Friday, October 5, 2012
My Big, Fat Mess
Last week, Mom, Zoe, and I went shopping on my birthday. Zoe was the big winner of the day, coming home with a closetful of new outfits that she probably didn't so much need, but they're adorable, so there you go. That's not to say I didn't see anything I liked. Some stuff was a lot like other things I have in my closet and wear, so there was no point in buying more, since by rights, I should really hoe out the closet anyway.
But there was this one top in Penney's. It was a black sleeveless shell, with a subtle peplum and a belt, and was made of a fabric that looked like leather, but it wasn't. It was right up my alley, and as Mom agreed to keep Zoe occupied, I took a Size M and Size L (there was no Size S, but it probably didn't matter, as the fabric, while not leather, offered no stretch anyway) into the fitting room.
I've been packing on a few pounds lately, so I started out by trying on the Size L. Happily, it looked huge on me, like I'd cut a neck and armholes in a garbage bag and cinched a skinny belt around the middle. So I hung it back on the hanger nicely, wrapped the belt around it, and cinched it back up, just like I'd found it.
I was a little giddy, pulling on the Size M. I really loved the looks of this top, and I was imagining how I'd wear it as-is, while it was still warm, then add a long-sleeved top underneath when it got cold, making it sort of a pullover vest. I was thinking of all the places I could wear it, and already feeling a little bit cool and rock-starrish.
The reflection didn't match up with my expectations. The drop from the shoulders to the bust darts was too long for me, putting the bust darts an inch too low and making me look not like a rock star but a droopy-boobed fashion victim. I stood there in the mirror for more minutes than I really needed to, pinching at the fabric, wondering if I just took up the shoulders a little bit, would it render the armholes too small? What if I ran a seem down the sides, too? Nipped it in just a little more? Mmmmmmmaybe. But then I realized the top had a worse flaw than too-low bust-darts. It cut me off right at an awkward place, making me look shorter and wider than I already am. Having the peplum around the bottom didn't help matters much. That just added a horizontal line to confirm suspicions.
In disgust, I peeled the top off, hung it nicely back on its hanger, wrapped the belt around it, just like I'd found it. After all, it's not the Penney's sales associates fault that the clothes didn't fit me, so why should I pay forward my bad feelings and make them pick rejected Worthington shells off the fitting room floor? That's no way to be!
Before I put my own black three-quarter-sleeve fitted T back on, though, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was wearing a generic Spanx tank, which I bought in bulk the week after Zoe was born, to smooth things out and prevent back fat, and also to keep from exposing a lot of boobage while wearing a deep-V-neck. And I saw a chubster looking back at me. My London "Boyfriend" jeans with 4% spandex that I was wearing, that I always wear, which fit the best of any jeans I've had in my adult life, didn't really do anything for me. I looked short-legged, thick-legged, stocky. I figured it was just because I had the black Spanx-like tank tucked in, and things were cutting me off at a weird angle, so I put my own top back on. I think that made things worse. Now I looked chunky AND a little frumpy.
Didn't I remember looking in the mirror this morning and thinking I didn't look all that bad?
Well, maybe not. I was lucky enough to have "snapped back" after Zoe was born, pretty quickly. I had to pack away the maternity pants a week after she was born. I'm not bragging. I had a good base of muscle tone, I worked hard at keeping fit while pregnant, and then the rest is probably luck. I was also not a skinny-mini before I was pregnant. I was around 140, and I was back to that weight by New Year's. The scale has crept back up to 147, 150 in these last few weeks. 150 is the weight I held steady at for weeks during my pregnancy- until about the 20-week mark. I know, because I weighed myself every day and kept track in a notebook. I've been able to stay in the same pants and tops I wore before Zoe, and after Zoe. They're just a little tighter on some days than others. So I probably hadn't really, actually looked myself over that much in the mirror that day or any day in a while, really. What I was seeing in the mirror that day at Penney's wasn't an awful muffin top lopping over my jeans, or pronounced backfat, or an ass like the back of a bus, but I was seeing "thickness," "puffiness," just a lack of definition.
When I stomped out of the fitting room, I told Mom that if I could put my own clothes back on the rack and walk away that day, I would have, because I didn't like how they looked on me any more than I liked the way the top had.
I work out almost every day. I can do a hour-long intense step workout without being winded (tired, soaked in sweat, noodly muscles, yes, but not doubled over and struggling to breathe), I can lift heavy weights. I can lift up Rozzie, who weighs a good 70+ pounds and haul her up the stairs at a good clip. So I'm not so much out of shape. But it's a lie that I tell myself over and over that a) I weigh more because I have more muscle, and b) I work out a lot, so I can eat whatever I want.
The thing is, the kitchen trumps the gym, hands down. I know this, when I track what I eat. I can burn 400 calories in an hour, and then come up to the kitchen and wipe that out with one big spoonful of Nutella. Or six pumps of syrup in my coffee (really, all I need is about 3 to make it sweet enough). Or half a dozen cookies.
I know that a lot of factors can make a person carry more weight than they need. Sometimes it's an underactive thyroid. I had mine tested when I was 30, and it came back squeaky clean. I know I should probably go have this checked again, just for good maintenance, but I don't think underactive thyroid is my problem. Back when I had it tested, I kind of hoped that it was the problem, because then I could pop a pill, get all the levels straightened out, and be skinny! I know some people have metabolic disorders that cause them to burn what they eat veeeeeerrrrrrrrrrry sloooooooooooowly. Some people are genetically predisposed to be larger- they're the "big-boned" folks. I don't think I can use that excuse. And everybody says it's easier to put on weight and harder to take it off after you have a baby, but a lot of the fitness mentors I follow have had two or three babies and don't have this thick look like I do. Disorders like Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) can be both a result of being overweight and a contributing factor of overweightness. The jury's still out on whether or not that's a problem for me, but I've read that even if it is, as far as weight goes, it can be overcome with hard work- diet and exercise.
The thing about this current Big Fat Mess I have myself in is that I put myself in it. When I was younger, I enjoyed a fast metabolism, but I was never skinny (skinny's not what I'm going for, even now- I do have muscle buried like treasure under the layer of chub, and I want THAT to show through!). I never paid much attention to what I ate and got used to not having to, to stay reasonably thin. Then I'd lie to myself and say that since I work out, I don't really have to skip dessert. But the thing is, I don't have an excuse, and I don't have somebody else to blame this on. It's all me, and that really sucks.
Except, it kind of doesn't. See, instead of sitting helplessly by, lamenting that something- I don't know what, but something- is making me fat, and I don't have any control over it, and I'm just helpless to watch that scale creep up and up and up while I find bigger and bigger pants, I know that it's been my own bad habits that are making me a thicker version of myself than I want to be. I got myself into this big, fat mess. I have the power to get myself back out of it.
Yes, I do!
But there was this one top in Penney's. It was a black sleeveless shell, with a subtle peplum and a belt, and was made of a fabric that looked like leather, but it wasn't. It was right up my alley, and as Mom agreed to keep Zoe occupied, I took a Size M and Size L (there was no Size S, but it probably didn't matter, as the fabric, while not leather, offered no stretch anyway) into the fitting room.
I've been packing on a few pounds lately, so I started out by trying on the Size L. Happily, it looked huge on me, like I'd cut a neck and armholes in a garbage bag and cinched a skinny belt around the middle. So I hung it back on the hanger nicely, wrapped the belt around it, and cinched it back up, just like I'd found it.
I was a little giddy, pulling on the Size M. I really loved the looks of this top, and I was imagining how I'd wear it as-is, while it was still warm, then add a long-sleeved top underneath when it got cold, making it sort of a pullover vest. I was thinking of all the places I could wear it, and already feeling a little bit cool and rock-starrish.
The reflection didn't match up with my expectations. The drop from the shoulders to the bust darts was too long for me, putting the bust darts an inch too low and making me look not like a rock star but a droopy-boobed fashion victim. I stood there in the mirror for more minutes than I really needed to, pinching at the fabric, wondering if I just took up the shoulders a little bit, would it render the armholes too small? What if I ran a seem down the sides, too? Nipped it in just a little more? Mmmmmmmaybe. But then I realized the top had a worse flaw than too-low bust-darts. It cut me off right at an awkward place, making me look shorter and wider than I already am. Having the peplum around the bottom didn't help matters much. That just added a horizontal line to confirm suspicions.
In disgust, I peeled the top off, hung it nicely back on its hanger, wrapped the belt around it, just like I'd found it. After all, it's not the Penney's sales associates fault that the clothes didn't fit me, so why should I pay forward my bad feelings and make them pick rejected Worthington shells off the fitting room floor? That's no way to be!
Before I put my own black three-quarter-sleeve fitted T back on, though, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was wearing a generic Spanx tank, which I bought in bulk the week after Zoe was born, to smooth things out and prevent back fat, and also to keep from exposing a lot of boobage while wearing a deep-V-neck. And I saw a chubster looking back at me. My London "Boyfriend" jeans with 4% spandex that I was wearing, that I always wear, which fit the best of any jeans I've had in my adult life, didn't really do anything for me. I looked short-legged, thick-legged, stocky. I figured it was just because I had the black Spanx-like tank tucked in, and things were cutting me off at a weird angle, so I put my own top back on. I think that made things worse. Now I looked chunky AND a little frumpy.
Didn't I remember looking in the mirror this morning and thinking I didn't look all that bad?
Well, maybe not. I was lucky enough to have "snapped back" after Zoe was born, pretty quickly. I had to pack away the maternity pants a week after she was born. I'm not bragging. I had a good base of muscle tone, I worked hard at keeping fit while pregnant, and then the rest is probably luck. I was also not a skinny-mini before I was pregnant. I was around 140, and I was back to that weight by New Year's. The scale has crept back up to 147, 150 in these last few weeks. 150 is the weight I held steady at for weeks during my pregnancy- until about the 20-week mark. I know, because I weighed myself every day and kept track in a notebook. I've been able to stay in the same pants and tops I wore before Zoe, and after Zoe. They're just a little tighter on some days than others. So I probably hadn't really, actually looked myself over that much in the mirror that day or any day in a while, really. What I was seeing in the mirror that day at Penney's wasn't an awful muffin top lopping over my jeans, or pronounced backfat, or an ass like the back of a bus, but I was seeing "thickness," "puffiness," just a lack of definition.
When I stomped out of the fitting room, I told Mom that if I could put my own clothes back on the rack and walk away that day, I would have, because I didn't like how they looked on me any more than I liked the way the top had.
I work out almost every day. I can do a hour-long intense step workout without being winded (tired, soaked in sweat, noodly muscles, yes, but not doubled over and struggling to breathe), I can lift heavy weights. I can lift up Rozzie, who weighs a good 70+ pounds and haul her up the stairs at a good clip. So I'm not so much out of shape. But it's a lie that I tell myself over and over that a) I weigh more because I have more muscle, and b) I work out a lot, so I can eat whatever I want.
The thing is, the kitchen trumps the gym, hands down. I know this, when I track what I eat. I can burn 400 calories in an hour, and then come up to the kitchen and wipe that out with one big spoonful of Nutella. Or six pumps of syrup in my coffee (really, all I need is about 3 to make it sweet enough). Or half a dozen cookies.
I know that a lot of factors can make a person carry more weight than they need. Sometimes it's an underactive thyroid. I had mine tested when I was 30, and it came back squeaky clean. I know I should probably go have this checked again, just for good maintenance, but I don't think underactive thyroid is my problem. Back when I had it tested, I kind of hoped that it was the problem, because then I could pop a pill, get all the levels straightened out, and be skinny! I know some people have metabolic disorders that cause them to burn what they eat veeeeeerrrrrrrrrrry sloooooooooooowly. Some people are genetically predisposed to be larger- they're the "big-boned" folks. I don't think I can use that excuse. And everybody says it's easier to put on weight and harder to take it off after you have a baby, but a lot of the fitness mentors I follow have had two or three babies and don't have this thick look like I do. Disorders like Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) can be both a result of being overweight and a contributing factor of overweightness. The jury's still out on whether or not that's a problem for me, but I've read that even if it is, as far as weight goes, it can be overcome with hard work- diet and exercise.
The thing about this current Big Fat Mess I have myself in is that I put myself in it. When I was younger, I enjoyed a fast metabolism, but I was never skinny (skinny's not what I'm going for, even now- I do have muscle buried like treasure under the layer of chub, and I want THAT to show through!). I never paid much attention to what I ate and got used to not having to, to stay reasonably thin. Then I'd lie to myself and say that since I work out, I don't really have to skip dessert. But the thing is, I don't have an excuse, and I don't have somebody else to blame this on. It's all me, and that really sucks.
Except, it kind of doesn't. See, instead of sitting helplessly by, lamenting that something- I don't know what, but something- is making me fat, and I don't have any control over it, and I'm just helpless to watch that scale creep up and up and up while I find bigger and bigger pants, I know that it's been my own bad habits that are making me a thicker version of myself than I want to be. I got myself into this big, fat mess. I have the power to get myself back out of it.
Yes, I do!
Let's Go To The Mall!
When I was a kid, going to the mall was a Big Deal. We didn't have tons of money to throw at the Mausoleum of Commerce, and also, the mall we liked (The Arnot Mall, baby!) was an hour and fifteen minutes away. I really didn't know any other mall. We didn't go on vacation much when I was a kid, and the other mall within reasonable driving distance was in Olean, also an hour and fifteen minutes away, but it didn't offer as much stuff. Early-early on, they had an AM&As, but that wasn't enough of a draw to lure us from the Arnot Mall.
I remember being instantly happy whenever we walked in the entrance at the Sears end. We never parked at the main entrance. I never understood why until I started driving. We could get closer up by Sears. Back in the day, when there were a lot of stores not filled up, the mall featured walls with a pen-and-ink cityscape, to make it look as though Big Things Are Coming Here! instead of "we can't fill our shops."
The way the mall smelled always made me happy, too. There were a few leather stores sprinkled throughout, so there was always the rich smell of leather. Not Wal-Mart leather, Mall leather. Up and down the wide skylit corridors were big stone planters that you could sit on, and fountains that added a chlorine smell to the air. It wasn't anything that would gag a (normal) person, but it was like when you walk by the hotel swimming pool when you're on vacation. Great American Cookie Company somehow managed to make the entire gigantic building smell like cookies, and the newsstand on the Other End of the Mall sold pipe tobacco. Vanilla Cavendish was always my favorite one to smell. Back then, people were allowed to smoke in the food court and the common areas. The smell of pipes and cigarettes just sort of spiced the air. Either the ventilation was really good in the mall, or there weren't enough smokers to make the air feel close and choking like it can when somebody's smoking in a full car with the windows up. Trust me, mixed with all the other mall smells, it all worked.
If Yankee Candle could make a scented candle that smelled like "Shopping Mall in the 80s," I'd buy it by the case and burn it whenever I need a lift. (I need a lift a lot sometimes) The closest I can get to recreating the smell is a Yankee "Leather" candle (I think that one had a short run) burned simultaneously with a "Vanilla Lime" Housewarmer. If I clean the bathrooms and kitchen with some Clorox Clean-Up, it gets it closer.
And then there were the stores! What a cavernous Aladin's Cave of Wonders! Besides the anchor stores: Sears, JCPenney's, Izard's, Hess's (their store sign looked like a giant wrote it on the wall in light-up red lipstick!), and Bradlee's. The anchor stores were all right. We pretty much only ever shopped at Sears, which accounts for my super-stylish Mainframe wardrobe, and Bradlee's. Back in the day, the Arnot Mall had a Science Store. It was my favorite, followed closely by Topkapi/Claire's. I still have boxes and boxes of junk jewelry from there that I feel silly wearing but can't quite part with. (Zoe, meet your inheritance!) There was a 5-and-10 store called McCrory's, where you could buy just about anything you wanted. Sam Goody sold sheet music, so in later years, I spent a king's fortune in there, as well as in the music store, where they sold pianos and band instruments.
I bought my very first thing at DEB, which was a lot cooler and darker lit back then, in the tenth grade. It was a dark blue velvet off-the-shoulder semi-formal for homecoming that year. It was 1993. Off-the-shoulder was where it was AT. I loved that dress so much that I wore it to homecoming the next year too. Nobody paid that much attention to what I wore to stuff to have it matter. I still have that dress. I wouldn't be able to zip it up now, but I have it, and I'm not getting rid of it, ever.
When I was in sixth grade, we bought our first family computer, a Tandy, at Radio Shack. Errrrrmagerd, typing that sentence just made me laugh so hard I almost peed my pants. Go ahead and read it again and have a chuckle, yourself. And plus, that baby had a dot-matrix printer. FROM RADIO SHACK! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhahahahahaahah! But think about it. In the late fall of 1989, even a Radio Shack Tandy with a dot-matrix printer was a pretty neato piece of computing equipment, and not everybody had one. This was our big splurge purchase for the family that year, and I remember we bought it on a Sunday. I remember this because we got home from church and changed and piled back in the Voyager and headed to Big Flats. Wouldn't that just smack of preciousness if we'd not changed out of our church clothes before we went? Oh, man.
My love affair with the mall continued through high school and college. There were other malls, the Susquehanna Valley Mall and the Lycoming Mall, but the Arnot Mall was still "My Mall." Things changed over the years. Anchor stores came and went. They remodeled and took out the planters and fountains and put in a new, less impressive fountain at Center Court. The Mall looked brighter and shinier, but it wasn't the same experience. Some of the magic was lost. More and more storefronts emptied. I went to graduate school in Philadelphia and lived ten minutes away from the King of Prussia Mall, an ENORMOUS shopping mall, double decker even, with snootay stores alongside more modest ones. I loved going there as an escape after I got home from class. I worked for a short time at Bath and Body Works at the Plymouth Meeting Mall, a smaller double-decker mall that was even closer to my apartment.
I think that's when I started to sour on malls in general. There were new shopping centers popping up all over the place then. There was a particularly beautiful one, the Metroplex, on Chemical Road, and it featured Target, and Barnes and Noble and DSW and a Giant- the Eastern PA version, not like Giant in Wellsville. Everything was right there, right off the Blue Route. My drive home would all but deliver me into Target!
Maybe it was all that retail overload when I was in graduate school, or maybe it was the rise of online shopping (which I am passionate about), but by the time we moved home, I could happily go for months without setting foot in "My Mall." Things around the mall had grown up enough that I could get everything I could ever want or need at the new plazas, and I wouldn't have to haul my bags around while I walked through the mall. Shop at Old Navy, park at Old Navy's plaza, bring out your bags, when you're done, move the Jeep down the line to Barnes and Noble's part of the plaza, then dash across and hit all those stores on the WalMart side. My world was complete when Target came in. If I went to the mall at all, it was for a specific thing, in a specific store, and in I'd go, but my specific thing, do a hot-lap around to see which stores were still there, lament the ones that were gone, and look around with something of a sneer at the empty storefronts. I wouldn't linger. I thought it was so much better to drive to the plazas, and move the Jeep whenever I changed stores.
Then something happened to make me almost love the mall again: Zoe came along. The first time we took her to the mall, she was a week old. Literally, seven days old. I was in the very depths of something post-partum-y, beating myself up during all the sleepless hours for sucking at being a mom, sucking at keeping the house presentable, just sucking in general. I felt like getting out would maybe help me breathe again, and we needed to have some work done on our Challenger at the dealership, so Shane drove Zoe in the Jeep, and I drove the sassy car and listened to my music on the hour-long drive. While we were waiting on the Challenger, we took Zoe and the Jeep to the Mall. Shane was after a tool box, a big one like mechanics use, and he wanted to check out Sears.
I was on pins and needles the whole way from Chilson-Wilcox to the Mall. So was Shane. He was so nervous about week-old Zoe waking up and screaming that we drove around Arby's and ate the tepid Beef'n'Cheddars in the parking lot of the old Ponderosa. He didn't want her ruining anybody's lunch. As it was, she slept the whole way there, the whole way around the mall, the whole way back out to the Jeep, and all the way back to Chilson-Wilcox, where she woke up, insistent on being changed and fed (awkward, because she wasn't on the bottle just yet).
But back to the Mall. It was our first trip out with the baby carrier and the stroller. We opted for the travel system, so the carrier was supposed to snap easily into the stroller. And it would have, if I'd have RTFM before we headed out. There was a little learning curve on that bit, but we eventually got it! And it was great, because Zoe could go from vehicle to stroller, and into the Mall we went, where she could slumber in peace while we leisurely roamed the mall. I noticed a lot of other parents with strollers that day at the mall. I even saw a couple moms changing their babies and nursing, right in the corridors! They had the same Hooter Hider I did! Wow!
I wasn't quite "there," even with the Hooter Hider, but hey, there were other parents at the mall, and they looked like they were doing all right!
On a more extensive trip to The Mall a few weekends later, Shane and I learned what a pain in the ass it is to constantly snap out and snap in that baby seat in the Jeep, when we traveled the plazas. The mall didn't make us do that. Just one snap, and we could wander for hours if we wanted to! This was GREAT!
As Zoe got less content to ride around in the bucket seat, and we started leaving it in the car and just strolling her around in her stroller, we really have come to appreciate the ease of mall shopping when it comes to that stroller, not to mention how fabulous that big basket on the bottom of that stroller is, all those places to hang bags, in the mall. When we want to get out and go somewhere, we can take Zoe and the stroller to the mall, and make a day of it, minimizing taking her out into rain, or burning sun, or traffic. She gets to people-watch, we get some exercise, and eat, all right there.
So now, when someone asks me what I want to do on a day when we're all bored, my refrain is the same as it used to be, Let's Go To The Mall!
I remember being instantly happy whenever we walked in the entrance at the Sears end. We never parked at the main entrance. I never understood why until I started driving. We could get closer up by Sears. Back in the day, when there were a lot of stores not filled up, the mall featured walls with a pen-and-ink cityscape, to make it look as though Big Things Are Coming Here! instead of "we can't fill our shops."
The way the mall smelled always made me happy, too. There were a few leather stores sprinkled throughout, so there was always the rich smell of leather. Not Wal-Mart leather, Mall leather. Up and down the wide skylit corridors were big stone planters that you could sit on, and fountains that added a chlorine smell to the air. It wasn't anything that would gag a (normal) person, but it was like when you walk by the hotel swimming pool when you're on vacation. Great American Cookie Company somehow managed to make the entire gigantic building smell like cookies, and the newsstand on the Other End of the Mall sold pipe tobacco. Vanilla Cavendish was always my favorite one to smell. Back then, people were allowed to smoke in the food court and the common areas. The smell of pipes and cigarettes just sort of spiced the air. Either the ventilation was really good in the mall, or there weren't enough smokers to make the air feel close and choking like it can when somebody's smoking in a full car with the windows up. Trust me, mixed with all the other mall smells, it all worked.
If Yankee Candle could make a scented candle that smelled like "Shopping Mall in the 80s," I'd buy it by the case and burn it whenever I need a lift. (I need a lift a lot sometimes) The closest I can get to recreating the smell is a Yankee "Leather" candle (I think that one had a short run) burned simultaneously with a "Vanilla Lime" Housewarmer. If I clean the bathrooms and kitchen with some Clorox Clean-Up, it gets it closer.
And then there were the stores! What a cavernous Aladin's Cave of Wonders! Besides the anchor stores: Sears, JCPenney's, Izard's, Hess's (their store sign looked like a giant wrote it on the wall in light-up red lipstick!), and Bradlee's. The anchor stores were all right. We pretty much only ever shopped at Sears, which accounts for my super-stylish Mainframe wardrobe, and Bradlee's. Back in the day, the Arnot Mall had a Science Store. It was my favorite, followed closely by Topkapi/Claire's. I still have boxes and boxes of junk jewelry from there that I feel silly wearing but can't quite part with. (Zoe, meet your inheritance!) There was a 5-and-10 store called McCrory's, where you could buy just about anything you wanted. Sam Goody sold sheet music, so in later years, I spent a king's fortune in there, as well as in the music store, where they sold pianos and band instruments.
I bought my very first thing at DEB, which was a lot cooler and darker lit back then, in the tenth grade. It was a dark blue velvet off-the-shoulder semi-formal for homecoming that year. It was 1993. Off-the-shoulder was where it was AT. I loved that dress so much that I wore it to homecoming the next year too. Nobody paid that much attention to what I wore to stuff to have it matter. I still have that dress. I wouldn't be able to zip it up now, but I have it, and I'm not getting rid of it, ever.
When I was in sixth grade, we bought our first family computer, a Tandy, at Radio Shack. Errrrrmagerd, typing that sentence just made me laugh so hard I almost peed my pants. Go ahead and read it again and have a chuckle, yourself. And plus, that baby had a dot-matrix printer. FROM RADIO SHACK! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhahahahahaahah! But think about it. In the late fall of 1989, even a Radio Shack Tandy with a dot-matrix printer was a pretty neato piece of computing equipment, and not everybody had one. This was our big splurge purchase for the family that year, and I remember we bought it on a Sunday. I remember this because we got home from church and changed and piled back in the Voyager and headed to Big Flats. Wouldn't that just smack of preciousness if we'd not changed out of our church clothes before we went? Oh, man.
My love affair with the mall continued through high school and college. There were other malls, the Susquehanna Valley Mall and the Lycoming Mall, but the Arnot Mall was still "My Mall." Things changed over the years. Anchor stores came and went. They remodeled and took out the planters and fountains and put in a new, less impressive fountain at Center Court. The Mall looked brighter and shinier, but it wasn't the same experience. Some of the magic was lost. More and more storefronts emptied. I went to graduate school in Philadelphia and lived ten minutes away from the King of Prussia Mall, an ENORMOUS shopping mall, double decker even, with snootay stores alongside more modest ones. I loved going there as an escape after I got home from class. I worked for a short time at Bath and Body Works at the Plymouth Meeting Mall, a smaller double-decker mall that was even closer to my apartment.
I think that's when I started to sour on malls in general. There were new shopping centers popping up all over the place then. There was a particularly beautiful one, the Metroplex, on Chemical Road, and it featured Target, and Barnes and Noble and DSW and a Giant- the Eastern PA version, not like Giant in Wellsville. Everything was right there, right off the Blue Route. My drive home would all but deliver me into Target!
Maybe it was all that retail overload when I was in graduate school, or maybe it was the rise of online shopping (which I am passionate about), but by the time we moved home, I could happily go for months without setting foot in "My Mall." Things around the mall had grown up enough that I could get everything I could ever want or need at the new plazas, and I wouldn't have to haul my bags around while I walked through the mall. Shop at Old Navy, park at Old Navy's plaza, bring out your bags, when you're done, move the Jeep down the line to Barnes and Noble's part of the plaza, then dash across and hit all those stores on the WalMart side. My world was complete when Target came in. If I went to the mall at all, it was for a specific thing, in a specific store, and in I'd go, but my specific thing, do a hot-lap around to see which stores were still there, lament the ones that were gone, and look around with something of a sneer at the empty storefronts. I wouldn't linger. I thought it was so much better to drive to the plazas, and move the Jeep whenever I changed stores.
Then something happened to make me almost love the mall again: Zoe came along. The first time we took her to the mall, she was a week old. Literally, seven days old. I was in the very depths of something post-partum-y, beating myself up during all the sleepless hours for sucking at being a mom, sucking at keeping the house presentable, just sucking in general. I felt like getting out would maybe help me breathe again, and we needed to have some work done on our Challenger at the dealership, so Shane drove Zoe in the Jeep, and I drove the sassy car and listened to my music on the hour-long drive. While we were waiting on the Challenger, we took Zoe and the Jeep to the Mall. Shane was after a tool box, a big one like mechanics use, and he wanted to check out Sears.
I was on pins and needles the whole way from Chilson-Wilcox to the Mall. So was Shane. He was so nervous about week-old Zoe waking up and screaming that we drove around Arby's and ate the tepid Beef'n'Cheddars in the parking lot of the old Ponderosa. He didn't want her ruining anybody's lunch. As it was, she slept the whole way there, the whole way around the mall, the whole way back out to the Jeep, and all the way back to Chilson-Wilcox, where she woke up, insistent on being changed and fed (awkward, because she wasn't on the bottle just yet).
But back to the Mall. It was our first trip out with the baby carrier and the stroller. We opted for the travel system, so the carrier was supposed to snap easily into the stroller. And it would have, if I'd have RTFM before we headed out. There was a little learning curve on that bit, but we eventually got it! And it was great, because Zoe could go from vehicle to stroller, and into the Mall we went, where she could slumber in peace while we leisurely roamed the mall. I noticed a lot of other parents with strollers that day at the mall. I even saw a couple moms changing their babies and nursing, right in the corridors! They had the same Hooter Hider I did! Wow!
I wasn't quite "there," even with the Hooter Hider, but hey, there were other parents at the mall, and they looked like they were doing all right!
On a more extensive trip to The Mall a few weekends later, Shane and I learned what a pain in the ass it is to constantly snap out and snap in that baby seat in the Jeep, when we traveled the plazas. The mall didn't make us do that. Just one snap, and we could wander for hours if we wanted to! This was GREAT!
As Zoe got less content to ride around in the bucket seat, and we started leaving it in the car and just strolling her around in her stroller, we really have come to appreciate the ease of mall shopping when it comes to that stroller, not to mention how fabulous that big basket on the bottom of that stroller is, all those places to hang bags, in the mall. When we want to get out and go somewhere, we can take Zoe and the stroller to the mall, and make a day of it, minimizing taking her out into rain, or burning sun, or traffic. She gets to people-watch, we get some exercise, and eat, all right there.
So now, when someone asks me what I want to do on a day when we're all bored, my refrain is the same as it used to be, Let's Go To The Mall!
Thursday, October 4, 2012
How to Break a Stall
Back when I was learning to fly planes, an integral part of training was learning how to stall the plane and then recover. I hated this training at first. It's arguably one of the most violent things a beginning pilot needs to learn to do, and it scared me witless. See, there's a rule of thumb that if you don't stall, you can't spin. You have to stall before you can spin, and you don't want to spin unless you're an acrobatic pilot, which I was not. I didn't want to spin!
Luckily for me, maybe, spinning isn't on the syllabus for a beginner pilot. But stalls are.
There are two kinds of stalls I learned: Power-On and Power-Off, and if you're going to get a pilots license, you do a lot of stalls, because it needs to be a reflex, it needs to be entrenched in the reptilian part of the brain. In a stall, especially if you've let it happen close to the ground, there's no time to think. Deliberation can mean death. It's counter-intuitive, a little bit, to think that when you're stalling, and the plane's sinking, to push the nose down, but that's how you break the stall. You have to descend a little bit (quickly) in order to get your airspeed back up and climb at all. If you pull back on the yoke and make the nose go even higher, your stall's just going to get worse and the ground's just going to get closer.
Power-Off stalls, which teach you what to do if you stall too soon during landing, are initially easier to put the plane into, because you configure the plane for landing (flaps down, gear down if you have retractable gear, mixture rich, throttle to idle), then glide to the appropriate airspeed and pull the yoke back until the plane starts to buffet and your stall horn is going off in your ear or your stall light is blinking like crazy. Welcome to the stall!
How to fix it is you smoothly push the yoke forward to push the nose of the plane down, push in the throttle, and gradually get the flaps back up and get back up to airspeed.
Power-On stalls are meant to simulate stalling on take-off. I hated these the most, because they are terrifying, especially in a Tomahawk, which have the reputation of having the tail fall off. My flight instructor always called our bird the "Traumahawk." Anyway, Power-On stalls are where you configure the plane for take-off, then let the throttle rip, and pull back on the yoke to make the plane go nose-high until it buffets, buffets, buffets, b-u-u-u-u-ffets, and then you just nose down to break the stall and gain your airspeed.
The trick to both stalls is that to get up to spiffy for any checkride or flight review, a private pilot has to stall and recover within 100 feet of the altitude you were at when the stall began. At first blush, this seems like some pain in the butt impossible feat to pull off to impress the hell out of somebody from the FAA. Well, and this is what made stalls the most terrifying thing for me, was that you practice them over and over again so that if it happens on take-off or landing, you won't have hundreds of feet below you to play with, to get your stall broken and recover enough not to crash.
Once I got over being so afraid of the buffeting, and I got onto how to break the stalls and recover, and what do you know, even do so well within the test standards, it was empowering. That's not to say that my mouth didn't go dry whenever it was time to "do stalls." Just because I found stalls empowering, doesn't mean I learned to love them. Ever.
It kind of applies out of an airplane, too, when you're in some kind of stall of the psyche. Happens to me a lot, those stalls of the psyche. The thing I find is that when I pull back on the yoke, doing what's logical or what I think is right sometimes just makes the stall worse. Sometimes I have to do the thing that seems like the worst thing ever to do when I'm on the way to crashing back to earth, pushing the nose down, to get my momentum back, to break the stall.
The good thing about it is that just like in the airplane, the more I break my stalls of the psyche, the more automatic it becomes.
Luckily for me, maybe, spinning isn't on the syllabus for a beginner pilot. But stalls are.
There are two kinds of stalls I learned: Power-On and Power-Off, and if you're going to get a pilots license, you do a lot of stalls, because it needs to be a reflex, it needs to be entrenched in the reptilian part of the brain. In a stall, especially if you've let it happen close to the ground, there's no time to think. Deliberation can mean death. It's counter-intuitive, a little bit, to think that when you're stalling, and the plane's sinking, to push the nose down, but that's how you break the stall. You have to descend a little bit (quickly) in order to get your airspeed back up and climb at all. If you pull back on the yoke and make the nose go even higher, your stall's just going to get worse and the ground's just going to get closer.
Power-Off stalls, which teach you what to do if you stall too soon during landing, are initially easier to put the plane into, because you configure the plane for landing (flaps down, gear down if you have retractable gear, mixture rich, throttle to idle), then glide to the appropriate airspeed and pull the yoke back until the plane starts to buffet and your stall horn is going off in your ear or your stall light is blinking like crazy. Welcome to the stall!
How to fix it is you smoothly push the yoke forward to push the nose of the plane down, push in the throttle, and gradually get the flaps back up and get back up to airspeed.
Power-On stalls are meant to simulate stalling on take-off. I hated these the most, because they are terrifying, especially in a Tomahawk, which have the reputation of having the tail fall off. My flight instructor always called our bird the "Traumahawk." Anyway, Power-On stalls are where you configure the plane for take-off, then let the throttle rip, and pull back on the yoke to make the plane go nose-high until it buffets, buffets, buffets, b-u-u-u-u-ffets, and then you just nose down to break the stall and gain your airspeed.
The trick to both stalls is that to get up to spiffy for any checkride or flight review, a private pilot has to stall and recover within 100 feet of the altitude you were at when the stall began. At first blush, this seems like some pain in the butt impossible feat to pull off to impress the hell out of somebody from the FAA. Well, and this is what made stalls the most terrifying thing for me, was that you practice them over and over again so that if it happens on take-off or landing, you won't have hundreds of feet below you to play with, to get your stall broken and recover enough not to crash.
Once I got over being so afraid of the buffeting, and I got onto how to break the stalls and recover, and what do you know, even do so well within the test standards, it was empowering. That's not to say that my mouth didn't go dry whenever it was time to "do stalls." Just because I found stalls empowering, doesn't mean I learned to love them. Ever.
It kind of applies out of an airplane, too, when you're in some kind of stall of the psyche. Happens to me a lot, those stalls of the psyche. The thing I find is that when I pull back on the yoke, doing what's logical or what I think is right sometimes just makes the stall worse. Sometimes I have to do the thing that seems like the worst thing ever to do when I'm on the way to crashing back to earth, pushing the nose down, to get my momentum back, to break the stall.
The good thing about it is that just like in the airplane, the more I break my stalls of the psyche, the more automatic it becomes.
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Say Yes To Algebra
I read the other day that there's a push
to stop teaching algebra and higher maths to kids in school if they aren't good at it or
aren't particularly interested in it, and that instead they should be
taught practical math and how to make a budget and such. At first, I heard my thirteen-year-old self shout "Yesssssssss! No more torturing the poets!"
Thirty-four year-old me said "Not so fast." And this isn't coming from someone who looooved math in school. This isn't coming from someone who solved quadratic equations for fun in her spare time. I had the reputation among my classmates for being an utter nerd, and I was, but not so much with the numbers. I mean, not at all with the numbers.
I think taking this approach with algebra is a mistake. Do I think everyone belongs in a trig or calculus class? Well, no, but we already have a system in place where the kids who want to take the higher maths like that can elect to, and those who don't, take some other kind of math in senior high. It's algebra they're wanting to turn into some high-powered thing, letting kids opt out in the younger grades, and take some other type of math that teaches them how to balance a checkbook and budget.
This might seem like a way to breathe for the kids like me, who struggled with a capital S-T-RUGGLED with pre-algebra, algebra 1 and algebra 2. Hey, if you're not good at it, you don't have to do it. I think this is a loser way of looking at things, all the way around. Especially because say a kid struggles in algebra in seventh grade, opts out for this other "real-world math" they want to substitute (which sounds a lot like fifth grade basic math to me), and then realizes he or she has limited himself as far as college goes, because they don't reach the math requirements. Then, they'll have a lot of catching up to do if they are willing to do the work to get to college. Age 12 or 13 is awfully young to make that kind of decision for one's life.
Also, that's about the age where if a kid has gotten by on natural talent, the complexity of the math at hand starts putting potholes in a road that used to be smooth-sailing. I don't think it hurts a kid to have to really work hard for something, like math, so they learn that when they find themselves in a problem, they work to solve it. They don't just walk away. I know not every kid is going to grow up to be an engineer or a rocket scientist. But every single one of us faces in life problems where natural talent alone won't get us by. Sometimes, we have to turn on our brains and think. And learning algebra gives us the skills to be able to do just that.
My complicated and abusive relationship with math began in the first grade. I remember throwing tantrums when I had to do a page of math problems at home. At school, of course, I wouldn't throw tantrums, but that didn't make the act of math work any less painful. My worst, worst, worst nightmare in first grade were the "blue pages" in my math workbook. These were the unit-end tests we'd take before the ditto-copied (Yes! Ditto machines, out in the hallway!) Math Tests that followed every unit.
It didn't matter if the lessons involved adding and subtracting single digit numbers, double digit numbers, or a mixture of both. It was all torture. Then "borrowing" was introduced into the mix, and I figured my numerical hell had broken loose.
That summer between first and second grades was the first summer of a few that I spent doing pages and pages of math, on MY time, in the SUMMER. There were plenty of meltdowns. My parents were at the end of their rope with me and math. They threatened, they begged, they bribed. I was sent to bed early. Despite getting to bed at 8 pretty much every night over the summer, when my preschool-age younger sister got to stay up (and she could do MY math homework!!!), I still sucked hard at math. And I have to say, it set me wrong on all things numbery for the better part of my life.
When word problems reared their fugly heads, I knew I was screwed. They stymied me in the classroom, and by the time I got home from school, the last thing I wanted was hours of my dad tutoring me on word problems. And I'm sure it was the last thing he wanted to do after working all day. It was a recipe for disaster. Then, then, then, then, on Saturday mornings, I'd find at my breakfast spot a page of Dad-made word problems, to be completed before I was allowed to watch Saturday morning cartoons. I outgrew being excited to watch Saturday Morning Cartoons before I ever got good at solving word problems, whether they were out of the mathbook or whether Dad made them up.
And then I got to the seventh grade. In some places, this is Middle School, in some places, it's Junior High. Where I come from, seventh graders go to school in the same building as seniors. This is immaterial. I'm pretty sure it's immaterial to the story I'm telling here. But maybe not.
I was a smart enough kid in school. I think I got more credit for smartitude than I deserved. See, I was really good at the reading and the English and history kind of subjects. I was in almost every music group I could be. Those kinds of classes made me look a lot smarter than I was. But math, beginning with pre-Algebra in seventh grade was as painful as barbed-wire toilet tissue.
Except. This time, I don't think it was entirely my fault. In seventh and eighth grades, the junior high pre-Algebra and Algebra I teacher was going through some personal crap that would derail any train, and we spent a lot of our pre-Algebra and Algebra I time playing fecking kickball. I sucked as hard at kickball as I did at the actual math, but it was immaterial, because our tests we took weren't on kickball, they were on solving for X, and rise over run, and other such numbery bullshit. And that's how I looked upon it. Because by eighth grade, I'd begun swearing under my breath, and it's all Algebra's fault.
Oh my God. I remember there was quite a flap among the parents of the kids in my class. They went to the school principal. They complained about the teacher. At the time, I remember I was mortified. Now that I'm a parent, I get it. We weren't learning math. Some of us who were bad at math and bad at kickball were even having our self-esteems pummelled by the kids who were a year ahead of us yet somehow in our math. Yeah, I'm still bitter. So anyway, back to the principal. His answer for my mom in particular was that apparently, I was allowed to start school too early (I was three weeks shy of my fifth birthday when I went to kindergarten), and it had finally caught up with me, because my frontal lobes weren't developed enough to handle algebra.
This has stuck with me for twenty-some years. My 'frontal lobes' being underdeveloped, because I heard my parents talking about it, and I stormed into the room and said 'Now Mr. [Principal] is commentating on my FRONTAL LOBES not being developed enough for math? There was a special Cosby Show about this! Clair told Rudy that with frontal lobes, you get whatcha get when ya get 'em!"
I guess the principal and I were thinking of different frontal lobes. And it was really awkward. And I'm pretty sure I was grounded for a while, but the grounding probably came from what I'm sure was a major meltdown when I brought home the next test, which surely had a number below 70 written at the top of it.
Ninth grade Algebra 2 and a different teacher really was no better. In fact, it was pretty horrific. The teacher adhered automaton-like to the textbook, which believe it or not, I really tried to learn from. The whole lot of us in that Algebra 2 class, which was the last class of the day, routinely had trouble with the material. There was a poster on the wall of the classroom that said "The Only Stupid Question Is The One You Don't Ask," so a few times, I was the dumbass who raised her hand and said "I don't understand." And the teacher would suck a breath in through his teeth, his face and head would get beet-red, and he'd explain the lesson again, verbatim out of the textbook, but he'd change the numbers. Then he'd glare at me and ask "Was that a good enough explanation for you, Miss Wynick?" One time, I said "No, it wasn't. You explained it just like you did before, just like it is written in the book, but you just changed the numbers. I didn't understand it when you explained it with the original numbers, and I don't understand it when you explained it with different numbers. I just don't understand!" I was near tears, his face was at Three-Mile-Island Meltdown color, and I was sure I bought myself a one-way ticket to detention. I didn't. But I never got the problem explained to me any differently, and after that, I just learned to smile and nod during the lessons, which were going completely over my head, flirt with the boys I sat near, and figure on having my dad explain it so I'd at least pass the wretched class.
Or the madness would stop, and the school would stop letting me into the higher maths. But just for the record, I wasn't the only derpaderp in that Algebra 2 class. When we got to Matrices, nobody got it the way our teacher was explaining it to us, so he brought in The Big Gun: The Senior High Math Teacher, who taught kids Geometry, Trig, and Calculus. At least for that lesson, that teacher didn't let any frustration with us show. HIS head didn't get all red when he was faced by twenty blank stares. He just changed his approach, just like that, and damn. Twenty lightbulbs went off. And what do you know: I distinctly remember that the Matrix test was the high water mark of my Algebra test experience. Even when I wound up in that teacher's Trig class, two years later, and we were allowed to do matrices on our TI-81s, I did mine out by hand, because they were kind of fun.
I tell that long, long tale of woe not to castigate my junior high math teachers. Looking back, I know I could have applied myself a lot more. I really could have applied myself a lot better once I did get to Geometry, and Trig. For some reason, Calc senior year wasn't a problem. Yay, frontal lobes! But in the younger grades, in algebra, when that foundation was being established, I had the unfortunate poker hand of having a pisspoor junior high attitude, not being naturally numerically inclined, having a distracted teacher or a teacher who had a hard time getting math down to my level, and an acute fear of either disappointing or looking stupid.
I might have failed algebra test after algebra test in junior high, but what I really failed to see was that maybe it's not always about solving for X. There's a lot of emphasis placed on finding the answer, but the thing of it is, in algebra and in life, the more important thing is your thought process. Xs and Ys and showing your work are ways to train your brain to solve complex problems.
Then there's actually solving for X and Y for solving for X and Y. Maybe not in a quadratic equation, but in figuring out what time you need to leave your house to get to work or an appointment on time. Every time you figure out gas mileage, you're solving for an X. Every time you double a recipe, or figure out how many shingles for a roof, or how many gallons of paint for a room or square feet of carpet for a floor--- all solving for X and all practical.
Then there are the impractical higher maths only engineers use. Trig. Calculus. Thing is, I sort of wish I still spoke Higher Math. See, I knit. And I make my own patterns sometimes. I'm always having to re-size other people's designs, so I don't look like I'm wearing a box with sleeves. I spend a lot of time trialling and erroring that would be all but eliminated with trig or calc.
I think the main trouble with algebra and the higher maths is that sometimes they can seem really, really abstract, especially to kids who aren't naturally numerically inclined. Instead of patting them on the butt and telling them it's okay, they're just not good at numbery things and send them off to "practical" math, which seems to be a code for dumbed-down math, why not at least help make Algebra practical for those kids? They're too young maybe to bring the Xs and Ys out of the abstract and turn them into a concrete problem to be solved, so it seems like it's on us adults. Will the 12 and 13 year-olds be pissy and snarly about it? Yeah, because that's what 12 and 13 year-olds do. But I also know that in the end, even the pissy, snarly kid is going to be really pumped when they figure something out, when they solve the problem, when it's made to matter to them.
Say yes to algebra for today's kids. Make it matter to them. Show them that they don't have to care about if Train A leaving Detroit at 6 :15, and Train B leaving Tallahassee at 8:15 colliding in Ohio or wherever. But they do need to care that if they live thirty miles from their work, which they have to be at by 8 am, and the average speed limit on their route is 45, at what time do they need to leave their house. And should they decide to leave late and speed, a speeding ticket costs such and such an amount, which is X percent of their weekly pay, plus gas is so much per gallon, and their vehicle gets this gas mileage, and has a tank so big, and then they have rent and groceries. So can they afford to speed on the way to work? Algebra. It's all algebra. And it's practical.
Thirty-four year-old me said "Not so fast." And this isn't coming from someone who looooved math in school. This isn't coming from someone who solved quadratic equations for fun in her spare time. I had the reputation among my classmates for being an utter nerd, and I was, but not so much with the numbers. I mean, not at all with the numbers.
I think taking this approach with algebra is a mistake. Do I think everyone belongs in a trig or calculus class? Well, no, but we already have a system in place where the kids who want to take the higher maths like that can elect to, and those who don't, take some other kind of math in senior high. It's algebra they're wanting to turn into some high-powered thing, letting kids opt out in the younger grades, and take some other type of math that teaches them how to balance a checkbook and budget.
This might seem like a way to breathe for the kids like me, who struggled with a capital S-T-RUGGLED with pre-algebra, algebra 1 and algebra 2. Hey, if you're not good at it, you don't have to do it. I think this is a loser way of looking at things, all the way around. Especially because say a kid struggles in algebra in seventh grade, opts out for this other "real-world math" they want to substitute (which sounds a lot like fifth grade basic math to me), and then realizes he or she has limited himself as far as college goes, because they don't reach the math requirements. Then, they'll have a lot of catching up to do if they are willing to do the work to get to college. Age 12 or 13 is awfully young to make that kind of decision for one's life.
Also, that's about the age where if a kid has gotten by on natural talent, the complexity of the math at hand starts putting potholes in a road that used to be smooth-sailing. I don't think it hurts a kid to have to really work hard for something, like math, so they learn that when they find themselves in a problem, they work to solve it. They don't just walk away. I know not every kid is going to grow up to be an engineer or a rocket scientist. But every single one of us faces in life problems where natural talent alone won't get us by. Sometimes, we have to turn on our brains and think. And learning algebra gives us the skills to be able to do just that.
My complicated and abusive relationship with math began in the first grade. I remember throwing tantrums when I had to do a page of math problems at home. At school, of course, I wouldn't throw tantrums, but that didn't make the act of math work any less painful. My worst, worst, worst nightmare in first grade were the "blue pages" in my math workbook. These were the unit-end tests we'd take before the ditto-copied (Yes! Ditto machines, out in the hallway!) Math Tests that followed every unit.
It didn't matter if the lessons involved adding and subtracting single digit numbers, double digit numbers, or a mixture of both. It was all torture. Then "borrowing" was introduced into the mix, and I figured my numerical hell had broken loose.
That summer between first and second grades was the first summer of a few that I spent doing pages and pages of math, on MY time, in the SUMMER. There were plenty of meltdowns. My parents were at the end of their rope with me and math. They threatened, they begged, they bribed. I was sent to bed early. Despite getting to bed at 8 pretty much every night over the summer, when my preschool-age younger sister got to stay up (and she could do MY math homework!!!), I still sucked hard at math. And I have to say, it set me wrong on all things numbery for the better part of my life.
When word problems reared their fugly heads, I knew I was screwed. They stymied me in the classroom, and by the time I got home from school, the last thing I wanted was hours of my dad tutoring me on word problems. And I'm sure it was the last thing he wanted to do after working all day. It was a recipe for disaster. Then, then, then, then, on Saturday mornings, I'd find at my breakfast spot a page of Dad-made word problems, to be completed before I was allowed to watch Saturday morning cartoons. I outgrew being excited to watch Saturday Morning Cartoons before I ever got good at solving word problems, whether they were out of the mathbook or whether Dad made them up.
And then I got to the seventh grade. In some places, this is Middle School, in some places, it's Junior High. Where I come from, seventh graders go to school in the same building as seniors. This is immaterial. I'm pretty sure it's immaterial to the story I'm telling here. But maybe not.
I was a smart enough kid in school. I think I got more credit for smartitude than I deserved. See, I was really good at the reading and the English and history kind of subjects. I was in almost every music group I could be. Those kinds of classes made me look a lot smarter than I was. But math, beginning with pre-Algebra in seventh grade was as painful as barbed-wire toilet tissue.
Except. This time, I don't think it was entirely my fault. In seventh and eighth grades, the junior high pre-Algebra and Algebra I teacher was going through some personal crap that would derail any train, and we spent a lot of our pre-Algebra and Algebra I time playing fecking kickball. I sucked as hard at kickball as I did at the actual math, but it was immaterial, because our tests we took weren't on kickball, they were on solving for X, and rise over run, and other such numbery bullshit. And that's how I looked upon it. Because by eighth grade, I'd begun swearing under my breath, and it's all Algebra's fault.
Oh my God. I remember there was quite a flap among the parents of the kids in my class. They went to the school principal. They complained about the teacher. At the time, I remember I was mortified. Now that I'm a parent, I get it. We weren't learning math. Some of us who were bad at math and bad at kickball were even having our self-esteems pummelled by the kids who were a year ahead of us yet somehow in our math. Yeah, I'm still bitter. So anyway, back to the principal. His answer for my mom in particular was that apparently, I was allowed to start school too early (I was three weeks shy of my fifth birthday when I went to kindergarten), and it had finally caught up with me, because my frontal lobes weren't developed enough to handle algebra.
This has stuck with me for twenty-some years. My 'frontal lobes' being underdeveloped, because I heard my parents talking about it, and I stormed into the room and said 'Now Mr. [Principal] is commentating on my FRONTAL LOBES not being developed enough for math? There was a special Cosby Show about this! Clair told Rudy that with frontal lobes, you get whatcha get when ya get 'em!"
I guess the principal and I were thinking of different frontal lobes. And it was really awkward. And I'm pretty sure I was grounded for a while, but the grounding probably came from what I'm sure was a major meltdown when I brought home the next test, which surely had a number below 70 written at the top of it.
Ninth grade Algebra 2 and a different teacher really was no better. In fact, it was pretty horrific. The teacher adhered automaton-like to the textbook, which believe it or not, I really tried to learn from. The whole lot of us in that Algebra 2 class, which was the last class of the day, routinely had trouble with the material. There was a poster on the wall of the classroom that said "The Only Stupid Question Is The One You Don't Ask," so a few times, I was the dumbass who raised her hand and said "I don't understand." And the teacher would suck a breath in through his teeth, his face and head would get beet-red, and he'd explain the lesson again, verbatim out of the textbook, but he'd change the numbers. Then he'd glare at me and ask "Was that a good enough explanation for you, Miss Wynick?" One time, I said "No, it wasn't. You explained it just like you did before, just like it is written in the book, but you just changed the numbers. I didn't understand it when you explained it with the original numbers, and I don't understand it when you explained it with different numbers. I just don't understand!" I was near tears, his face was at Three-Mile-Island Meltdown color, and I was sure I bought myself a one-way ticket to detention. I didn't. But I never got the problem explained to me any differently, and after that, I just learned to smile and nod during the lessons, which were going completely over my head, flirt with the boys I sat near, and figure on having my dad explain it so I'd at least pass the wretched class.
Or the madness would stop, and the school would stop letting me into the higher maths. But just for the record, I wasn't the only derpaderp in that Algebra 2 class. When we got to Matrices, nobody got it the way our teacher was explaining it to us, so he brought in The Big Gun: The Senior High Math Teacher, who taught kids Geometry, Trig, and Calculus. At least for that lesson, that teacher didn't let any frustration with us show. HIS head didn't get all red when he was faced by twenty blank stares. He just changed his approach, just like that, and damn. Twenty lightbulbs went off. And what do you know: I distinctly remember that the Matrix test was the high water mark of my Algebra test experience. Even when I wound up in that teacher's Trig class, two years later, and we were allowed to do matrices on our TI-81s, I did mine out by hand, because they were kind of fun.
I tell that long, long tale of woe not to castigate my junior high math teachers. Looking back, I know I could have applied myself a lot more. I really could have applied myself a lot better once I did get to Geometry, and Trig. For some reason, Calc senior year wasn't a problem. Yay, frontal lobes! But in the younger grades, in algebra, when that foundation was being established, I had the unfortunate poker hand of having a pisspoor junior high attitude, not being naturally numerically inclined, having a distracted teacher or a teacher who had a hard time getting math down to my level, and an acute fear of either disappointing or looking stupid.
I might have failed algebra test after algebra test in junior high, but what I really failed to see was that maybe it's not always about solving for X. There's a lot of emphasis placed on finding the answer, but the thing of it is, in algebra and in life, the more important thing is your thought process. Xs and Ys and showing your work are ways to train your brain to solve complex problems.
Then there's actually solving for X and Y for solving for X and Y. Maybe not in a quadratic equation, but in figuring out what time you need to leave your house to get to work or an appointment on time. Every time you figure out gas mileage, you're solving for an X. Every time you double a recipe, or figure out how many shingles for a roof, or how many gallons of paint for a room or square feet of carpet for a floor--- all solving for X and all practical.
Then there are the impractical higher maths only engineers use. Trig. Calculus. Thing is, I sort of wish I still spoke Higher Math. See, I knit. And I make my own patterns sometimes. I'm always having to re-size other people's designs, so I don't look like I'm wearing a box with sleeves. I spend a lot of time trialling and erroring that would be all but eliminated with trig or calc.
I think the main trouble with algebra and the higher maths is that sometimes they can seem really, really abstract, especially to kids who aren't naturally numerically inclined. Instead of patting them on the butt and telling them it's okay, they're just not good at numbery things and send them off to "practical" math, which seems to be a code for dumbed-down math, why not at least help make Algebra practical for those kids? They're too young maybe to bring the Xs and Ys out of the abstract and turn them into a concrete problem to be solved, so it seems like it's on us adults. Will the 12 and 13 year-olds be pissy and snarly about it? Yeah, because that's what 12 and 13 year-olds do. But I also know that in the end, even the pissy, snarly kid is going to be really pumped when they figure something out, when they solve the problem, when it's made to matter to them.
Say yes to algebra for today's kids. Make it matter to them. Show them that they don't have to care about if Train A leaving Detroit at 6 :15, and Train B leaving Tallahassee at 8:15 colliding in Ohio or wherever. But they do need to care that if they live thirty miles from their work, which they have to be at by 8 am, and the average speed limit on their route is 45, at what time do they need to leave their house. And should they decide to leave late and speed, a speeding ticket costs such and such an amount, which is X percent of their weekly pay, plus gas is so much per gallon, and their vehicle gets this gas mileage, and has a tank so big, and then they have rent and groceries. So can they afford to speed on the way to work? Algebra. It's all algebra. And it's practical.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
At Least Let Me Keep My Own Damn First Name!
I know there are plenty of things in this world to get my knickers all in a twist over, but this one's happened a couple times in the last little space of time, and I have to say, it really is starting to grind my gears a little. The problem? Mail (invitations, cards, etc.) addressed just to me, but in the following manner: "Mrs. Shane Blake." And it makes me wonder what the hell decade we're living in, and if I still have my right to own property myself and to vote.
One piece of mail, a bridal shower invitation, came back in August from the friend of a twenty-something cousin of my husband's. I've never met this friend of the cousin, and I don't really know the cousin all that well. She was seven or something when I started dating Shane, and we really only ever saw her twice a year, at the most, until a few years ago when the number of times dwindled to less than once a year on average. She and I have never actually spoken, one-to-one, at any family get-together. But the thing is, she sure as hell knows my first name. It's April.
So I was kind of annoyed at getting this invitation in the mail, which I really felt was extended to me more as an obligation because she's my husband's cousin, than because we really know each other and are besties, and also the shower was all the way up in New England, on the very same day as my daughter's first birthday party. It also flashed through my mind to wonder if she expected me to round up the Pennsylvania contingent of the family tree and truck up there for this shower, or if it was just a solicitation for a shower gift.
I know. I'm a pisser when it comes to social things like this. But I think I'm just the one coming right out and saying what we all think, from time to time, when invitations such as this turn up in our mailboxes.
And then there was the matter of the invitation being addressed to "Mrs. Shane Blake." Bloody hell. I think this particular set of quite conservative, quite churchy young women are trying to be all proper and Victorian. From what little I've seen of the cousin over the years, I figure she'd be all in to that sort of thing. The thing is, it's 2012.
See, I grew up during feminism's Third Wave, in the 1990s, when it was all about GRRL Power, and Lilith Fair, and spelling woman/women as "womyn" and really thinking about and challenging the Second Wave, the feminism from the bra-burning 60s. I didn't adhere to everything GRRL Power, but growing up in that era has definitely made me think before I address an envelope or assume another woman has taken her husband's last name, or if she's even married at all.
These little girls who are now in their mid-twenties grew up after I did. Their philosophies ought to have been as informed as mine, but I suspect they were sheltered by parents who saw the Third Wave coming and got worried that their sweet little girls would grow up to be snarling, head-shaved, braless, Femi-Nazis who stand on every corner pushing abortions on every pregnant woman that they meet, and also who hate men a lot. So perhaps they took an ultra-conservative, Victorian approach to raising these little girls, molding them into little latter-day Annes of Green Gables and making sure they'll happily adopt such things as losing one's identity completely once the wedding ring is on the finger, going from "Miss Penelope Prisspants" to "Mrs. Jonathan Fussbudget."
Now, there's nothing wrong with Anne of Green Gables. It was one of my favorite books, growing up, too. But it's important to remember that Anne Shirley lived in the late 1800s. This was an era where a woman was defined first in her life by who her father was and what he did, and then later, by who her husband was and what he did. Back then, a woman's way to climb the social and economic ladder was usually through marrying well then nagging her husband to go after bigger and better ladders for the rest of their lives. Girls in Anne's day might have gone to teacher's college, but the main objective was to get the Mrs. degree, or if she failed to meet her One True Love (meal ticket) at teacher's college, at least she could support herself while she looked for him. Then once the right marriage was made, Mrs. would usually quit her teaching job, so the next single girl fresh out of teacher's college could fill it while she looked for Mr. Right, and the cycle continued. And if a woman wasn't married by the time she was 25, she was considered a Spinster and was always looked at by society with a bit of a hairy eyeball: what was wrong with her?
Things in today's world are far from perfect, but I don't want to go back to those "simpler" days, and I don't want my daughter growing up thinking that's how things need to be.
The other piece of mail, which I probably would have been able to let go of my rage had it not been for receiving the first, a month before, was a birthday card from an aged relative of Shane's. It's nice to get kind words on my birthday from anyone, but seeing the card's address, "Mrs. Shane Blake...." was like a punch in the face this time around. I can't remember in years past if this person addressed my birthday card as such. Probably she did. But the thing is, she's from an era where, according to my etiquette book (YES! I have an etiquette book! You have to know the rules before you choose which ones to follow and which ones to ignore completely!), when a woman was single, she was addressed as "Miss Sally Singleton," her first name, her last name. When she got married to Mr. John Doubleplay, she became Mrs. John Doubleplay. When she and Mr. Doubleplay divorced (the shame!) or Mr. Doubleplay kicked over from a heart attack suffered at a stag party thrown by his friend Barney Goodtimes, tragic, widowed Mrs. John Doubleplay was known as Mrs. Sally Doubleplay.
Only through divorce or the death of her husband could Sally sort of be defined for herself again.
The older relative, I can kind of excuse for addressing my birthday card as Mrs. Shane Blake, since she's a throw-back from an era where women were defined by their fathers then their husbands instead of by who they themselves were. And like I said, at least it was a birthday card and not a nasty-gram. But still. It was MY BIRTHDAY. When you get right down to it, my husband and his first name have nothing to do with my birthday. This older relative also knows my first name. It's not that hard to spell. A-P-R-I-L, just like the month.
All this vitriol is not to say that when we, the family gets a card addressed to all of us, and on the outer envelope it says Dr. and Mrs. Shane Blake (and family), or even Mr. and Mrs. Shane Blake (and family) (even though my husband didn't spend all those years in school to be called "Mr."), that I spazz out and throw a tantrum such as this one right here. I can bow to tradition when it's called for, such as when my husband is included on the front of the envelope. It is in the interest of an economy of time and writer's cramp. But on his birthday, do any of MY relatives, elderly or otherwise, send him cards addressed to "Mr. April Blake?"
Listen. Despite having grown up in the Grrl Power '90s, I've done some pretty traditional things. When I married my husband at age 21, I did take his last name. It was just more convenient for me, plus my maiden name is an Anglicized version of a central European surname of questionable origin. Nobody could have pronounced it in its original form, and I was always correcting people's pronunciations of my maiden name. "Blake" is straightforward, and if it gets mispronounced, it's probably because the pronunciator is having a stroke, in which case, I can call 911 and seek medical attention for them, and with strokes, ever second counts! I ran with a hyphen in graduate school, and it was cumbersome, and there was still the matter of correcting everybody on the maiden name part of the hypenation.
And for the longest time, I'd bristle when someone called me "Mrs. Blake" or "Ma'am." I've since gotten over that. "Mrs. Blake" and "Ma'am" are respectful, especially if you've forgotten my first name and want to cover for yourself (I'll letcha!), or I never told it to you, or we just don't know each other that well, and you're given to taking that route. I'll also answer to Ms. Blake, which was always my preferred title, if I had to have one. But it's ridiculous on a piece of mail addressed to me and Shane both to have it say "Dr. and Ms. Shane Blake." I mean, that's pathetic. And I'd even considered going back to school for my doctorate, just so I'd be "Dr. Blake" as well, but the area in which I live, it wouldn't take. People would first be confused as to why I'd be a doctor yet not able to write them a prescription for their OxyCodone, and then they'd just go back to calling me "Mrs. Blake" anyway. I used to work with a female dentist who was married to the onocologist at the area hospital. He Was always "Doctor" and she was referred to either by her first name or as "Mrs. [Onocologist]. That's just the way this place is.
I'm referred to all the time as "Dr. Blake's wife," and now as "Zoe's mommy." I don't mind so much, mostly. I'm Dr. Blake's wife, and I'm Zoe's mommy. Wouldn't change those things for the world. But when you're wanting to get MY attention, or you want me to send you a gift, please at least let me keep my own damn first name!
One piece of mail, a bridal shower invitation, came back in August from the friend of a twenty-something cousin of my husband's. I've never met this friend of the cousin, and I don't really know the cousin all that well. She was seven or something when I started dating Shane, and we really only ever saw her twice a year, at the most, until a few years ago when the number of times dwindled to less than once a year on average. She and I have never actually spoken, one-to-one, at any family get-together. But the thing is, she sure as hell knows my first name. It's April.
So I was kind of annoyed at getting this invitation in the mail, which I really felt was extended to me more as an obligation because she's my husband's cousin, than because we really know each other and are besties, and also the shower was all the way up in New England, on the very same day as my daughter's first birthday party. It also flashed through my mind to wonder if she expected me to round up the Pennsylvania contingent of the family tree and truck up there for this shower, or if it was just a solicitation for a shower gift.
I know. I'm a pisser when it comes to social things like this. But I think I'm just the one coming right out and saying what we all think, from time to time, when invitations such as this turn up in our mailboxes.
And then there was the matter of the invitation being addressed to "Mrs. Shane Blake." Bloody hell. I think this particular set of quite conservative, quite churchy young women are trying to be all proper and Victorian. From what little I've seen of the cousin over the years, I figure she'd be all in to that sort of thing. The thing is, it's 2012.
See, I grew up during feminism's Third Wave, in the 1990s, when it was all about GRRL Power, and Lilith Fair, and spelling woman/women as "womyn" and really thinking about and challenging the Second Wave, the feminism from the bra-burning 60s. I didn't adhere to everything GRRL Power, but growing up in that era has definitely made me think before I address an envelope or assume another woman has taken her husband's last name, or if she's even married at all.
These little girls who are now in their mid-twenties grew up after I did. Their philosophies ought to have been as informed as mine, but I suspect they were sheltered by parents who saw the Third Wave coming and got worried that their sweet little girls would grow up to be snarling, head-shaved, braless, Femi-Nazis who stand on every corner pushing abortions on every pregnant woman that they meet, and also who hate men a lot. So perhaps they took an ultra-conservative, Victorian approach to raising these little girls, molding them into little latter-day Annes of Green Gables and making sure they'll happily adopt such things as losing one's identity completely once the wedding ring is on the finger, going from "Miss Penelope Prisspants" to "Mrs. Jonathan Fussbudget."
Now, there's nothing wrong with Anne of Green Gables. It was one of my favorite books, growing up, too. But it's important to remember that Anne Shirley lived in the late 1800s. This was an era where a woman was defined first in her life by who her father was and what he did, and then later, by who her husband was and what he did. Back then, a woman's way to climb the social and economic ladder was usually through marrying well then nagging her husband to go after bigger and better ladders for the rest of their lives. Girls in Anne's day might have gone to teacher's college, but the main objective was to get the Mrs. degree, or if she failed to meet her One True Love (meal ticket) at teacher's college, at least she could support herself while she looked for him. Then once the right marriage was made, Mrs. would usually quit her teaching job, so the next single girl fresh out of teacher's college could fill it while she looked for Mr. Right, and the cycle continued. And if a woman wasn't married by the time she was 25, she was considered a Spinster and was always looked at by society with a bit of a hairy eyeball: what was wrong with her?
Things in today's world are far from perfect, but I don't want to go back to those "simpler" days, and I don't want my daughter growing up thinking that's how things need to be.
The other piece of mail, which I probably would have been able to let go of my rage had it not been for receiving the first, a month before, was a birthday card from an aged relative of Shane's. It's nice to get kind words on my birthday from anyone, but seeing the card's address, "Mrs. Shane Blake...." was like a punch in the face this time around. I can't remember in years past if this person addressed my birthday card as such. Probably she did. But the thing is, she's from an era where, according to my etiquette book (YES! I have an etiquette book! You have to know the rules before you choose which ones to follow and which ones to ignore completely!), when a woman was single, she was addressed as "Miss Sally Singleton," her first name, her last name. When she got married to Mr. John Doubleplay, she became Mrs. John Doubleplay. When she and Mr. Doubleplay divorced (the shame!) or Mr. Doubleplay kicked over from a heart attack suffered at a stag party thrown by his friend Barney Goodtimes, tragic, widowed Mrs. John Doubleplay was known as Mrs. Sally Doubleplay.
Only through divorce or the death of her husband could Sally sort of be defined for herself again.
The older relative, I can kind of excuse for addressing my birthday card as Mrs. Shane Blake, since she's a throw-back from an era where women were defined by their fathers then their husbands instead of by who they themselves were. And like I said, at least it was a birthday card and not a nasty-gram. But still. It was MY BIRTHDAY. When you get right down to it, my husband and his first name have nothing to do with my birthday. This older relative also knows my first name. It's not that hard to spell. A-P-R-I-L, just like the month.
All this vitriol is not to say that when we, the family gets a card addressed to all of us, and on the outer envelope it says Dr. and Mrs. Shane Blake (and family), or even Mr. and Mrs. Shane Blake (and family) (even though my husband didn't spend all those years in school to be called "Mr."), that I spazz out and throw a tantrum such as this one right here. I can bow to tradition when it's called for, such as when my husband is included on the front of the envelope. It is in the interest of an economy of time and writer's cramp. But on his birthday, do any of MY relatives, elderly or otherwise, send him cards addressed to "Mr. April Blake?"
Listen. Despite having grown up in the Grrl Power '90s, I've done some pretty traditional things. When I married my husband at age 21, I did take his last name. It was just more convenient for me, plus my maiden name is an Anglicized version of a central European surname of questionable origin. Nobody could have pronounced it in its original form, and I was always correcting people's pronunciations of my maiden name. "Blake" is straightforward, and if it gets mispronounced, it's probably because the pronunciator is having a stroke, in which case, I can call 911 and seek medical attention for them, and with strokes, ever second counts! I ran with a hyphen in graduate school, and it was cumbersome, and there was still the matter of correcting everybody on the maiden name part of the hypenation.
And for the longest time, I'd bristle when someone called me "Mrs. Blake" or "Ma'am." I've since gotten over that. "Mrs. Blake" and "Ma'am" are respectful, especially if you've forgotten my first name and want to cover for yourself (I'll letcha!), or I never told it to you, or we just don't know each other that well, and you're given to taking that route. I'll also answer to Ms. Blake, which was always my preferred title, if I had to have one. But it's ridiculous on a piece of mail addressed to me and Shane both to have it say "Dr. and Ms. Shane Blake." I mean, that's pathetic. And I'd even considered going back to school for my doctorate, just so I'd be "Dr. Blake" as well, but the area in which I live, it wouldn't take. People would first be confused as to why I'd be a doctor yet not able to write them a prescription for their OxyCodone, and then they'd just go back to calling me "Mrs. Blake" anyway. I used to work with a female dentist who was married to the onocologist at the area hospital. He Was always "Doctor" and she was referred to either by her first name or as "Mrs. [Onocologist]. That's just the way this place is.
I'm referred to all the time as "Dr. Blake's wife," and now as "Zoe's mommy." I don't mind so much, mostly. I'm Dr. Blake's wife, and I'm Zoe's mommy. Wouldn't change those things for the world. But when you're wanting to get MY attention, or you want me to send you a gift, please at least let me keep my own damn first name!
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