The way I see it, feminism is about equality.  Women should be able to get the jobs they want, get paid equivalently for doing those jobs, should not be forced to be the “little wife,” and should be able to feel good about themselves in whatever they pursue.  Feminism is about choice too.  It is not about “having it all” if you don’t want to.  And it by no means makes you less of a feminist or less of a woman if you don’t.

I am a housewife, a stay at home mom, a home maker, whatever you want to call it.  This was MY choice.  I have never been able to see myself as full on having a full time job and staying at it for twenty years.  I get bored too easily.  It’s one of the reasons I went into theater, actually.  When you do a show, every night is different.  Heck, every rehearsal is different.  That’s not to say that I would never work.  I have, I may in the future (both near and far), but I will because I want to, not because some “crazy feminist” thinks that I should because I’m turning my back on all my “sistah’s” who burned their bras for our freedom to have it all.

I don’t want it all.

I want to be happy in my own life.

I spend my days right now playing with Enzi, spending time with C, seeing friends, passing the time online, and helping C out at much as I can with his business: puregrowthorganics.com. You totally should check out the website.  I’ll post a little review of what we have experienced by using these products in our own garden in a few.  You can see it as slightly biased, but coming from someone who has a “black thumb,” it really isn’t.  I also cook, do some of the cleaning, go to the gym, go out by myself, watch TV, and yes, sometimes I even eat bon-bons while I do that.  None of these things make me less of a woman.

I don’t vaccuum while wearing high heels and pearls and reading War and Peace.  I don’t have dinner ready by 6pm and wait for my husband with a stiff drink and a kiss at the door.  I hardly ever wear make-up or a dress.  I am not and have never been the “little woman.”

Yet, I am not feminist enough for many people?  Well, for many women because we are the ones that all of a sudden came up with so many rules about being a modern woman and a feminist.  Supposedly I should be getting up no later than 5am to go to the gym, working a full time job, preferably as a doctor, lawyer, lobbyist, or politician, come home and still have the time and energy to take care of myself and my family including cooking dinner and keeping a spotless house, and then after spending some “quality time” with my husband (who I really don’t need in any sense of the word and is only superficially important in my life) once the kids are in bed, where I am always on top, take a little bit of “me time” with a hot bath and then go to sleep to start all over again the next morning.

No, thank you.  That’s just not my idea of a good time.

These same women would dismiss my not wanting these things with the notion that I have been conditioned by our patriarchal society and my upbringing to want to take on traditional woman’s roles.  The big problem with that theory is that these same women have no idea at all about my upbringing.  They figure that my mom was a housewife and my dad went to work, bla, bla, bla.  They have no idea that while my mom did stay home with us kids, so did my dad.  Both my parents cooked and cleaned and took care of us.  We only ate dinner together on holidays and were, for lack of a better word, roomates in our tiny condo.  My dad was the one that drove us to and from school.  He was the one who would wake up early and have breakfast ready for us so that my mom could sleep.  Both would have to go to Brazil or Greece for different amounts of time, my dad to look over the factory, and my mom for either health or family reasons.  It’s definitely not what one could discribe as a typical patriarchal upbringing.  Very little of how I grew up is even how my friends grew up.  So don’t tell me that I’ve been conditioned against whatever you are selling just because I’m not buying.  I just don’t want it.

Not only do I not want to drive myself crazy by trying to do and have it all, which my perfectionist self would end up with a nervous breakdown trying to achieve and not succeeding, I also don’t want to be bombarded by the belittling views of self-righteous crazies who try to make me feel bad for not wanting to fit into their box when the whole idea was for us to not have to fit into any box.

Why did we fight so hard to not be oppressed by men, only to be oppressed by other women?

Since sharing is scaring, prepare to be frightened as well.

Does anyone else get images of that clown asking that little girl if she wants some candy or to help him find his little lost puppy from the driver’s side of a tiny little polka-dotted clown car while holding a handkerchief soaked in chloroform in one hand and slowly driving with the other?  This is the aftermath!

Jem and the Holograms were supposed to be the ones you rooted for.  After all, they were “truly outrageous, truly, truly, truly outrageous.” But honestly, The Misfits were better.  Way better.

They weren’t lying when they sang

We are The Misfits

Our songs are better

We are The Misfits, The Misfits

We’re gonna get her.

In the days of my youth Saturday morning meant waking up later than I usually did for school, but early enough to catch cartoons galore.  I watched everything from Bugs Bunny and The Smurfs, to M.A.S.K. and Jem (y’know, she’s truly outrageous).  I even would sometimes what the “Poor Man’s Smurfs” known as The Snorks.

It never occurred to me that there was “evil” in Bugs Bunny dressing as a sexy woman to escape from Elmer Fudd and saying “Come up and see me sometime.”  So what if there was “violence” in Wile E. Coyote always trying to catch the Roadrunner?  We all knew it was fake.  First off, no phone order would come as quickly as those from ACME.  You know that when you ordered sea monkeys, or even better, your Roller Racer, you needed to allow anywhere between 4-6 or 6-8 weeks for delivery.  Apparently, they didn’t actually make anything until you ordered it.  Anyway, it would not just show up 3 seconds after you ordered it.  Second, no one can really walk off a cliff and not fall until you look down.  You know you tried to do it at least once off the porch steps or the side of the pool.  It wouldn’t work.  Your head then figured that maybe it was just coyotes, either way, you didn’t think that you could do it.

The Flintstones or The Jetsons were chauvinistic?  So what?  By the time we were watching them our moms were working too.  Well, not my mom, but my dad stayed home too so what I saw on the Flintstones wouldn’t make me think that’s the way “we as women” should be treated.  My cousin once told me I needed to “go inside and make him a sandwich,” in return he got a punch in the face.  I think I just managed to survive the things I saw on Saturday mornings.  Ooooh.

So what is there to see now?  Nothing.  It’s true.  Many stations don’t even show cartoons anymore.  Or should we call them animated series now?  In general, we usually stick with stuff we have DVRed but this morning I wanted to see what was beyond the Disney Channel and past the Chuggington/Mickey Mouse Clubhouse/ Jungle Junction we have recorded.  I aso wanted to try and steer clear of the Dinosaur Train and Thomas and Friends on PBS.  I turned to NBC to find the Saturday edition of The Today Show.  What every kid wants to see- news.  Uh huh.  CBS had the Early Show.  After the Early Show came the Doodlebops cartoon.  The Doodlebops live action show was mildly unirritating at best.  The cartoon made me want to rip my eyelashes off one by one.   Quick!  PBS to the rescue!  Eventually I tried NBC again and found Turbo Dogs and Shelldon.  These weren’t actually too bad except that they are, like most animated shows nowadays, computer generated.  I appreciate the mastery that goes behind making these and that it’s complicated and cool to make them look all “real” 0r whatever, but I miss the actually drawn stuff.  I also miss that not everything has to have a huge moral at the end.  I don’t always want to learn, not even as a kid… or maybe especially as a kid ater I’ve spent a whole week learning my booty off at school.  I want a mental break.  I want He-Man and She-Ra and Popeye and Fat Albert (although that used to be on our Channel 33- like today’s CW- and not on the “mainstream” channels).

We were all ready for a great Father’s Day dinner.  The five of us piled in C’s car and off we went to the Sagebrush Steakhouse in Morganton, NC.  C and I had eaten there about a year and a half ago and the food had been good.  The In-Laws had eaten there a few times since, but they had not been in the past few months.

I know that Father’s Day is nowhere near as celebrated as Mother’s Day when it comes to restaurants, but people still go out to eat with their dads.  The parking lot wasn’t very crowded.  Okay, well it was around 8 so maybe that’s late for dinner in this part of the world.  There was no host/hostess so we had to wait to eventually get seated by some of the waitstaff.  No biggie.

We get seated.  There is a family at the table behind us.  I don’t know how long they have been there, but it looks like it they are nearly done.  We watch the table across the aisle from us get bussed.  The busboy literally wipes the food from the table onto the floor.  I watch a half eaten carrot roll under the table.  He walks away.  I’m hoping that he will come back with a broom to finish cleaning, but he’s never seen again.

Here are the scenes from underneath our table and from the table across the aisle:

Under our table

More under our table

The rear of our seats at Sagebrush

Under the table across the aisle at Sagebrush

Yes, under our table those things are lettuce, what may be either a carrot or a crayon, some half eaten bread, and chewed up globs of meat.  In the seat are peanuts and french fries that have hardened.  Under the other table is another myriad of filth.

The busboy saw us taking these pictures and was unfazed.

According to a report from the Burke County Health Department linked here, Sagebrush apparently got a 96 rating in February of this year.  How this happened, I just don’t understand if what we saw today is any indication of how things were back then.  If this is the kind of things patrons see, imagine what goes on behind the scenes.

We really should have left right there and then, because things just went downhill from there.  We ordered our food.  Cheese fries for an appetizer, steaks all around for the rest of us with various add-ons, and some spaghetti and french fries for Enzi.  I ask the waitress to put in the request for Enzi’s food with the app so that he can start eating.  We went through an average of 2.5 drinks per person before the cheese fries came out.  The cheese had previously been melted, and was hardened, and the fries were not very hot.  It looked as if it had been sitting on the pass for several minutes.  It tasted okay, but would have been better if it had been brought out correctly.  No sight of Enzi’s food.

A long while after we were finished eating the appetizer, the entrees come out.  Mom-in-law’s prime rib had a sheen to it.  That meat had either been previously frozen for so long a time that it now was full of freezer burn, or it was old and should not have been passed onto a consumer.  Either way, not edible.  She had ordered mushrooms to go along with it, these were delivered about 10 minutes after the dish was served..and tasted dirty and gritty as if they had not been cleaned.  Dad-in-law’s steak and potato was in  similar state.  Both C’s and Dad-in-law’s shrimp didn’t look quite cooked through.  Both my and C’s steaks were put on the wrong plate, and were tough and cold, and my baked potato was also cold and dried out.  I had ordered onions rings as a side and these came after Mom-in-law’s mushrooms and only after a reminder about their request and the request of Enzi’s fries which also didn’t show up.

Worst of all, though, may have been Enzi’s spaghetti.  When it came out, it looked like it had been sitting on a plate for over half an hour.  The noodles were cold, stuck together, and were beginning to harden.  The sauce was cold and congealed.  I couldn’t let my kid eat that.  In the middle of this “meal” C got up and took Enzi to McDonald’s- and he ended up with the best meal of the night!  Fast food better than a steakhouse…. who would have guessed!  We then overheard the family in the booth behind us that they had been waiting for over an hour for some of their food, including a baked potato.

I wish I had taken pictures of the food to show, but I was so disgusted that I just couldn’t do it.  I couldn’t.  Only about 15% of the food had even been eaten and most of it was just in tasting and grimacing.

When the waitress came with the checks, she automatically came with boxes.  When she asked if we wanted said boxes, she was met with a resounding “NO!” and we told her that this was possibly the worst meal we have ever had.  Honestly, the meal was in such bad shape that it should have been comped.  It wasn’t, and only a 10% discount was granted.  The manager didn’t even come out to get our feedback.

An email is being sent to the contact us section of Sagebrush’s website.  I am not linking to it here because it is just that disgusting!  I am also just letting the health dept there know what’s up.  Maybe it’s time for a reinspection…a surprise inpection… and NOT by the same person who previously inspected them.

I had a huge revelation about myself last week.  I am no longer the fat girl in the joint.

We’ll harken back to the days of elementary school…

I was a little butterball.  That’s just a fact.  I was not the kid that happily or easily ran the mile in P.E.  In fact, I could usually be seen feigning a stitch in my side or hobbling because of a twisted ankle (sadly, this was not faked, I’ve always been a klutz).  I still can’t do a pull-up to save my life and the only “sports” I was good at were kickball, dodgeball, and oddly enough, floor gymnastics.

I was the kid that quit ballet because the original “easy” teacher left and the new one was an actual ballet teacher so she expected us to work and dance and actually try.  Looking back, I wish my parents had pushed the issue with me a little bit, maybe then I might have actually had some semblance of grace when I walk instead of being a mix between an elephant and a clydesdale.  Maybe then I would have also been slightly less accident prone because I would be awake of how to turn without falling or hitting stuff/people.

Later in life, I found a way to get out of taking real personal fitness in high school.  I took it in nightschool… at another school.  I told my parents that it was so I could have more room to take AP classes, which I was able to take more of, but it was actually because I was lazy and didn’t want to run.  At night, the field at the other school wasn’t lit up and they also don’t expect anything really from you.  I don’t know if that’s true of all night classes, but it was with night P.E.  It was great.  I actually got an A in a P.E. class.  The only A I ever got in P.E.  I was always a C1A student.  I wasn’t good at anything so they gave me a C but I was always able to make it look like I made an effort and I didn’t whine so I got the 1 and A.

Now, I know what some of you may be thinking… If I had just tried in P.E. while growing up, maybe I would not be a butterball.  Alas, that isn’t the case.  In orer to battle the amount of food constantly presented, I would have had to exercise as much as they do on The Biggest Loser every single day.  A measley P.E. class wasn’t going to cut it.

You see, my dad was Greek.  That means that you automatically get food shoved in your face the second you walk in the door.  My friends knew that they were going to eat if they came over.  And just because you might have been slightly allergic to eggs, doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t end up eating an omelet…. or two.

When you ate at my house, you automatically got a plate (that you did not fill).  Afterwards, this was the drill

If you didn’t want any more food… TOUGH

If you wanted a little bit more, just say “No, thanks.  I don’t want any more.”

If you want a whole other plate, say, “Just a little, please.”

If you want a whole new mountain of food,  say “Yes.”

I grew up with the awesome food of both Brazil and Greece.  At my house we didn’t eat macaroni and cheese (which I had never had until second grade when I started eating school lunches) or meatloaf.  We had Pastitsio and Bife Enrolado with rice and beans.  I also grew up in a condo that was one step away from the grave so my brother and I didn’t have much of an opportunity to play high action running around games.  We only got to do that in the summer when we would go to “The Ranch” and I would lose something like 20 pounds in 4 months (we would leave school early) only to gain it back once we returned.

So, that was a huge background to what I figured out last week.  I don’t know if other girls do this too or if it was just my little idiosyncrasy (aka crazyness), but when I would take a class or walk into a party or whatever, I always compared my body to all the other girls there.  Who was fatter, who was thinner, and who was the same.  Well, last week I was in the middle of a dance class when I noticed that I hadn’t bothered to do that at all (and this was day three of the class).  This is when it finally hit me that in the past year and a half I have lost about 45 lbs.  It’s not a super impressive number in the long run and only averages to 2.5 lbs lost a month, but it means a lot more than that.  I now go to the gym… for fun.  I use the ellyptical and take Zumba classes (which are way fun and remind me of our high school dances because of the music).  I still don’t run, though.  I doubt I ever will.  It’s just not my thing and I’m okay with it. But most of all, it hit me that I have actually lost this weight.

I bought pants in size 8/10 last week.  I don’t think I ever saw those numbers on the way up.  For as long as I can remember I have always been a size 14/XL girl.  Now I’m even getting some mediums.

Before you start doubting and screaming vanity sizing I will say that it’s not at any particular store that I have been able to buy smaller clothes, it’s at all of them, including Anthropologie which is one of those stores where, in the past, I would have walked by just knowing that they wouldn’t have anything that fit me.  Plus, instead of just clothing sizes, I am actually looking at my measurements.

I feel better too. 

So, big step for me here.  Yay!

Last night I took melatonin again.  This time it did nothing.  I got all of about 2 hours of sleep all night.  Great.  Maybe I was too tired from travelling and then doing stuff all day long, but maybe not.

A punch in the face.

A group of teens was jaywalking in Seattle, WA and were called over by a police officer who had just cited another man for jaywalking in the same area.  I don’t have an issue with this at all.  If it’s unlawful in a particular city to be jaywalking, then you shouldn’t be doing it.  Although, I don’t have any problem with jaywalking itself, I can see how it can be dangerous especially in overly trafficked streets where drivers aren’t expecting pedestrians outside of designated crosswalks.

HOWEVER, I do take issue with a punch to the face that seems to be what I would consider use of excessive force.  While the teen (who was 17 yrs old) isn’t completely faultless (I mean, really, even if you don’t agree you need to cooperate with the police so that you have more of a leg to stand on to fight whatever it is) I really can’t see how it would qualify as needing to be punched in the face.

See for yourself-

Here is a link to the story on KOMO news (A local Seattle News site).  A follow up to the story reports that the police department has “concerns” about the event stating:

Seattle police officials said Tuesday that their officers are trained to throw a punch in certain situations, but said they have a “number of concerns” regarding the tactics an officer used in dealing with a 17-year-old girl he punched in the face while trying to cite a group of women for jaywalking.

“The issue we have to investigate is whether the force he used is reasonable given the combative resistance he was facing… and we’re not going to pass judgment on that until the matter has been thoroughly investigated,” said Assistant Seattle Police Chief Nick Metz.

So, who wants to bet that the officer will be found not at fault?

I was sitting down and drinking my coffee this morning while reading SELF magazine today. Reading health/fitness magazines always makes me feel like doing something physical so I usually find it a good thing to do in the morning. Start the day off right, sort of speak.
So, anyways, there I was drinking my coffee with just a teaspoon of sugar (a tiny amount if you knew how much sugar I used to put in) and fat free half and half, (BTW, Can someone explain to me how you get FAT FREE Half and Half since isn’t half and half, well, half cream and how do you get fat free cream?) when I come across an article that just about made me spit out said coffee.

It was an article about snacking and how your brain doesn’t really help your fight against snacking.  To top it all off, there was this sidebar:

The Anatomy of a Craving

It’s not your imagination—you’re wired to crave. Consider what happens when you pass by the Cinnabon stand at your local mall.

By Melissa Chessher

From the June 2010 Issue

1. The scent of the cinnamon bun enters your nose, and your brain can tell the confection is high in sugar and fat. Your brain releases dopamine, so you expect to experience pleasure and feel desire if you eat it. “Although you had lunch and don’t want to gain weight, you start salivating, and it’s a strong urge,” says Nora Volkow, M.D., an addiction researcher and director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Bethesda, Maryland.

2. The smell activates areas of your gray matter associated with memory and emotion. You probably had your first Cinnabon with a friend as you shopped and gossiped together. Your brain taps into the fun memories you associate with the bun, which make you want it on an emotional level as well as a physical one.

3. Stressed? You step right up. Tension makes you even more likely to be lured to the counter, because the dopamine and serotonin surge you get from eating lifts your mood. You’re also conditioned to associate comfort foods with feeling better.

4. You feast your eyes on a big bun. “The sight and smell together get you to place an order,” says Roy Wise, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. When you see how cheap it is to supersize, you’ll do it, research shows.

5. You taste the gooey goodness. As you take your first, sweet bite, your body begins to absorb and process the sugar, which increases dopamine in the brain, prompting you to take another bite. And another. Your plan to eat only half evaporates.

6. You start feeling stuffed and sick to your stomach. For most people, the signal to stop noshing arrives too late: Your stomach begins to feel uncomfortably full and pumps out more leptin to let you know you’re satiated. Massive sugar consumption prompts your body to release insulin, further squelching the impulse to eat.

Now, we’ll go beyond the fact that Cinnabon is ALWAYS, much like pancakes, better in theory than it is is practice.  You always think it’s going to be really tasty, but instead you’re left with overly sweet disappointment.  And I do actually understand the correlation between the brain and stomach and the power of the brain, etc.  But, and it’s a huge butt but, this seems to be just another way to put the blame on something “that I can’t control.”  It’s not my fault that I ate that entire gallon of ice cream smothered in hard chocolate shell, I am just wired that way.  This can quickly turn into I’m just wired to insert-whatever-here…. and I would be 300 lbs by the time I was done.

I’m not going to say that my view here is fairly simplistic, but I know how much hard work it takes to lose pounds and I really don’t need yet another excuse to cheat myself on how I eat.  I can do it all by myself without relying on feel-good memories and blaming my mind for eating like poop on a stick.  Seriously SELF.

Shakespeare really needed to write in a Sassy Gay Friend!

Thanks to my friends who let me know about these videos. They are hilarious!