1. My parents are coming into town this weekend! Yay! Except, wait...I need to clean my house! What is it about your mom that makes you feel like your home is a) a mess and b) never quite polished/dusted/decorated enough? Wasn't I supposed to get rid of this feeling once I grew up?
2. I love dishes, and more specifically, I love Target's cute dishes. If you do too, check out the give-away on Whitney's blog, My Journey Toward: The Glamorous Life of a Housewife. She's a newlywed and a new mommy-to-be, and I've been reading her blog for a while and loving it!
3. I have no idea what it is about the end of January through February, but literally 95 percent of my close friends have birthdays during this time period...there are three birthdays this week alone! Expect a lot of birthday posts to come!
4. I have to do teach THREE fitness classes tonight. Three. I won't lie. I've done this before, back in my college days, but what's so jarring about this is that I didn't find out till a) 5:30 this morning, and b) when I was half way to 6 a.m. Cycling class. So yes, by 7 p.m. today, I'll have completed a cycle class, a BOSU training class, a cardio circuit class, and an aerobics class. And I have to teach three our of four of them. I feel kind of duped by the fellow instructor who did this to me, but it's too late now to explain why. The show, er, class, must go on, and I'm the unfortunate main attraction. I will not be walking tomorrow.
5. I'm furious, furious, furious with the media. Now, this isn't uncommon for me, despite the fact that I have an academic/professional background in journalism. But really?
The media, bloggers, everybody has given J. Simpson here a hard time because she's fat. Is she wearing an ugly belt, bad jeans? Sure. (Although, can we just point out that apparently she was a at chilli cook-off? I mean, there isn't really appropriate dress for that sort of thing.)However, my concern is not with this celebrity. I hate hate hate (and rarely follow) celebrity gossip (plus Simpson, I'm sure, can and will take care of herself. She doesn't need me defending her).
What really makes me so, so mad is the effect this kind of name-calling has on children, specifically adolescent girls.
As a high school teacher, I work with them every day, and images and words like these are SO detrimental to these girls. Because real-world women and girls look like this, if not more shapely. And when you call this "fat," you are, in essence, labeling all of us as fat. As an adult, I don't much care, but younger versions of us do care. They are still forging paths and identities, and these kinds of media attacks (even against others) are big obstacles in the way of their growing up safely.
In addition, these celebrity media-hounds are bad-mouthing what women are all about. What makes women so special and wonderful is our God-given ability to give birth to children and care for them. That gift is exclusive to women. And when you mock someone's body, with features that are NOT fat, but are indeed womanly, you mock her ability to do what she's designed to do.
No one should make young girls ashamed to have the curves and bodies that will enable them to be mothers when they are ready. Teenage girls have a hard place in this world as it is, and it hurts my heart to see the girls in my classroom deal with even more than they should be at their age. (Phew! Sorry! I had to get that one out there!)
6. My poor husband. As some of you know, Patrick works full time and has gone back to school. He's in a fine arts program, and it's very time-consuming (not exactly book learning. You have to constantly create.) He's been staying up till 5 a.m.(the time I get up!) to get his work done, after he works a full day and attends class. I feel so horrible for him. He was dozing off mid-dinner last night! And on top of that, he left his USB drive in a work computer yesterday, which had ALL of his portfolio work and assignments on it. And someone took it. He's hoping it will appear in lost and found today, but if it doesn't, he's going to have to re-do everything! So, any encouragement you have for him would be most appreciated.
Thanks for reading my rants! Have a lovely Tuesday!
