weird time to be american

It's a weird time to be American.

A lot of people are questioning exactly what that means, to be American; not that this nation's history hasn't been rife with identity crises. In some ways it seems like the same story over and over again, with slightly different characters. That's what we get for being a melting pot, I guess. An eternity of lab-testing our ever-changing alloy, at super high temperatures.

This week also marks 150 years since the Battle of Gettysburg, widely heralded as the turning point of the Civil War, after which the secessionists had very little hope of winning and the Union began to take shape with greater certainty.

I can't say what it felt like back then, but if you ask me, the winners-and-losers paradigm doesn't apply very well to the wars we're fighting these days. Who really wins? Who really loses?

Especially because, 150 years later, the "Union" doesn't seem particularly unified at all.

We're still fighting the injustices and questions that led up to the Civil War: Racism. States' rights. There are so many huge issues up for debate at the current moment, issues that bring to bear the very humanity of different groups of people. And in the absence of any foolproof or even somewhat workable solutions, we have resorted to a pathological aversion to agreeing on anything.

I can hardly criticize, because I see fallibilities in a lot of the alternatives that have been put out for review, and I can't come up with anything that I'm satisfied with either; but such is being human. There are rarely foolproof solutions to anything. But I am convinced that, faced with this situation, our legislators and people in "power" have stuffed their ears with cotton, tied their blindfolds on, and strapped on their boxing gloves before they go in to "negotiations."

Maybe this is just politics and I am too green to understand, but I've heard this expressed by people who have been around a little longer than I have -- that, on the political stage, we are moving farther and farther away from any kind of bipartisanship.

But then, I understand that the hugeness and diversity of this country makes it hard for any one decision to cover all the bases. Since my highly disputed post about feminism, my eyes have been opened to the variety of experiences even people in the "same" community live on a daily basis. The other day someone I know, a female business owner, asked me if I knew of any minority female business owner groups in the area. She told me about a female professionals meeting she attended: "I walked into that room and I was the only face that wasn't white. Those women don't know what my experience is like."

Women, so often clustered together as a unified interest group, are different from each other. Another blog post on that subject for those who are interested, on how many different kinds of women there are and why one woman cannot truthfully speak for all women.

A classmate of mine just wrote a post about a book called How to Be Black, which I haven't read but probably will now. Thesis?

"It doesn't make sense to work toward ending your personally offensive -ism and in the process make any of the others worse. It doesn't make sense to work toward equality for women but to worsen the inequality against the LGBTQ community, or the African American community, or those who are experiencing homelessness, etc. ...We really do all have to work together, on behalf of one another."

I spent a lot of today looking up patriotic (but politically innocuous) quotes to post on client social media sites. It turns out -- are you ready for this? -- that if anything is politically innocuous, it sure ain't patriotism.

The Founding Fathers were anything but innocuous. They were not content to sit and wait for things to change for the better. You've heard their quotes:

"Give me liberty or give me death!" - Patrick Henry

"Occasionally the tree of Liberty must be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants." - Thomas Jefferson

Things have changed since then. Americans are different. We are different from each other. We speak different languages and different versions of those languages, we come from different places and have different experiences from each other. We were not all born here, within these borders (which themselves are arbitrary)...

But there is something tying us together. Maybe it is that we live on this soil. Maybe it is that we define ourselves as American, whatever our reasoning and rationale. And for all the subdividing we do to our identity, there is some beauty to the holiday, tomorrow: It is an opportunity, whether we take it or not, to share something.

I hope that we someday learn to listen to each other, and to treat each other with respect, and I hope it happens sooner rather than later. And I hope we can find enough common ground to stand on, to stand up for our neighbors even if they are different from us. Because no matter how many things are different, there will always be something the same. We just have to look for it.

society is crumbling

Last week one of my coworkers found a video on Fox News entitled "All-Male Fox Panel Laments Female Breadwinners." Somewhat shocked and horrified, we took it as our comedy for the day... But the clip stuck with me.

Let me summarize it for you, although the title is pretty self-explanatory:
The clip consists of four guys in suits talking about a new study stating that in 4 out of 10 families a woman is the primary breadwinner. Of course they find this "concerning and troubling," and spend about four minutes discussing the crumbling, the dissolution, the disintegration of American society and why it can be directly attributed to women being the primary breadwinner in less than half of American families.

"It's having an impact on our children," they say. "We as people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complementary relationships, and it's tearing our society apart."

"We're losing a generation. Bottom line, it could undermine our social order."

It's easy to dismiss everything they are saying as sexist and ignorant. Because it is. But there is something in this conversation that needs to be addressed.

I work for a registered minority- and female-owned company. This always casts political and social issues under a really interesting microscope. Especially political and social issues that deal with women or people of color.

When we sent the clip out to everyone in the office, the female partner said, "You know, it's unrealistic to think that we can balance having a fulfilling career, taking care of our kids, maintaining a successful marriage, keeping a clean house... I don't envy you young ladies. I don't envy your generation. You have some incredibly difficult choices to make."

The clip stuck with me, and that comment stuck with me. It's not as though this is something new to me. My female friends and I have been battling the question for most of our conscientious lives, and particularly since we graduated college: What sacrifices do I want to make to have my dream life? What sacrifices should I make to have my dream life?

Do we sacrifice our dreams or our callings for love? Or do we sacrifice love for our calling? Do I move to a new and faraway place, where I know no one, because my significant other got a good job there? Do I move to a new and faraway place, where I know no one, and leave my significant other behind because I got accepted to my dream grad school, or because I got offered my dream job?

The social environment in which I grew up taught me that I should not sacrifice my personal -- read, "professional" -- dreams for a romantic relationship. Because I will inevitably become resentful and that will take a toll on the romantic relationship I gave up everything for.

But I grew up in a family that prioritized the collective, the community, the relationships within a community, above all. Plus, that greater social environment planted this seed in my head that I can have it all. This is one of the main complaints of my peers: that we were led to believe something untrue, namely, that we can do anything; and it is one of the main complaints of older generations against our generation: that millennials have this sense of entitlement, this belief that we deserve to have everything we want. We want to have our cake and eat it too, and it turns out, suddenly, that we can't.

Damn.

So I, and a lot of other people in my peer group, feel a little confused.

there are 168 hours in a week. i need at least 250.

Many of our mothers, now that we're out of the house and figuring out our own lives, are having an opposite realization. My mom has said on multiple occasions that she made the conscious decision to do things she wasn't wild about sometimes because she would be with the people she loved. As a mother and wife she would have given up almost anything for us, and on many occasions she did.

I think that choosing a family or a relationship as #1 is a decision that is unfairly vilified for women in modern, forward-thinking society. But there is real emotional and psychological fallout for those women who do make that choice, and put love in the top spot in their lives.

And there is real emotional and psychological and social fallout for those women who make the choice to put their careers in the top spot. There is and always will be fallout, no matter what we decide to put first. Something will always fall behind.

Those Fox News guys were right when they said the rise of female breadwinners is "having an impact on our children." They were right when they said it's undermining our social order. They were right, honestly, when they said that we as "people in a smart society have lost the ability to have complementary relationships."

But it is ignorant, cowardly, to conclude that this means we should go back to "the way things were." It's ignorant, too, to say that the rise in female breadwinners caused all of this chaos. I would call it more of a symptom of an outdated model that was also flawed and that isn't really working anymore in the world as it is turning out to be.

We do need to learn how to have truly complementary relationships, where all involved parties are on equal ground. We need to figure out some way to raise our children to be functional human beings who can have functional relationships, while also making sure they don't go hungry and that they are comfortable with diversity and the change that is an inevitable part of our future.

We need a new model. I don't know what it is, and I dread the day I have to make an actual decision about my family, my relationships, my career, my lifestyle. I'm barely sustaining sanity as it is, between work, my love life, my friendships, my family, my workout schedule, and having time to eat. I know if something happened to make two of those things suddenly really conflict, it would be the hardest decision I have ever had to make. It already has been, on a smaller scale. And when my friends ask me what to do in x. y, or z situation, I have no idea what to say.

And this, I think, is the real reason "society is crumbling." The global population is getting bigger while the earth stays the same size. The amount of valuable resources really doesn't change, either -- money, time, energy. We're running out of options. The pressure on families is that much higher. The pressure on individuals is that much higher. We have to do a lot more to be seen, and our odds feel like they're always going down.

As a society we need to be creative and resilient and trash the conceptual limitations we have had for a long time. It's time for a change. Get on board, suits. You're going to get left behind. I hope.

girls: i am one.

I know I am behind the times, but I finally got around to borrowing the first season of Girls from the library this week. For some reason the show completely fell off the face of the planet, or at least my circles of the internet, after the first season, but I didn't forget!

For the uninitiated, Girls is a show on HBO created by a 20-something young woman about the lives of four 20-something young women living in New York. It made quite a splash last year when it first came out, with general sentiment recognizing the show as revolutionary, the defining piece of television of our generation, Gen Y, the infamous Millennials. At least that's what I heard.

So, I thought, I'd better watch this. I meant to blog about it a year ago, when episode 4 was the latest. I watched episode 1 and was skeptical; thought, well, maybe I just have to get into it, and watched episode 2; was still skeptical; watched the first half of episode 3 because I felt I should be able to talk about the show that was sweeping the nation and couldn't finish it. I described it as painful. I still think, having watched the whole season, it is uncomfortably oversexed, over-the-top dysfunctional, overdramatic. But I can't hate it as much as I did originally.

My friends were asking me if I'd seen it, and recommending that I watch it. "Oh, it doesn't get good until episode 4," they'd say, when I told them where I'd stopped. My boss came in one morning raving about how this show is the most brilliant exposé of the psychology and experiences of American 24-year-olds (a well-represented demographic in our office).

The one real conversation I had about the show was with T, a male friend from my freshman dorm. We took a course series together in the history of Western thought, philosophy and literature. The turning point in my opinion of the show was when he said:

I see it more as a tale of disconnect. In a society more connected than ever, a lot of people who grew up with infinite amounts of communication feel more disconnected from themselves and others than ever.

He said he appreciates that the show addresses the confusion of being a young adult, one of those who grew up being told that we could do anything, be anything; one of those who graduated into a scene of general panic at the economic and social crises facing us every time we open our eyes. One of those who followed our passions, only to suddenly realize that our passions will not pay the bills and might not even sustain us emotionally...

Or one who grew up with so many options that we don't even have passions anymore. NPR did a story last week on an Ivy League graduate in his early 20s who is looking for his life's calling -- so far in vain. He doesn't even know what he wants to do.

The fact that Max and other young college graduates can even entertain this question — "What is my passion?" — is a new conundrum, and still a luxury not everybody enjoys. Yet, Tyler recently told me, it is "a central question of our time."

The world is changing. Of course it is. There is this to consider, and the fact that each new generation does have to come up with new solutions to old problems, and solutions to problems that didn't exist before, or at least hadn't come to light.

But I'm not convinced that past generations, when the bulk of them were in their 20s, didn't face the same hot hatred from the older generations who felt their seats contested. It's just that now, we read about it every damn day on the internet.

And here's one way I don't mind being lumped in with the inane, overdramatized bullshit millennial myth perpetuated in shows like Girls or, better yet, 2 Broke Girls: we are sick of being talked about! The marketers marketing to us are missing the point. As are the churches preaching to us. And the managers writing treatises about how to manage millennials. And the executives writing angry blog posts about why you shouldn't trust a 23-year-old with your company's social media, just because (s)he grew up with the internet. And then there are the articles, like the one in the New York Times recently which I can't find but was summarized to me roughly thus: "They hate this, they hate this, they suck at this... but they're going to change the world!"

I just want to go about my business. Yeah, maybe it would be cool to change the world, at least in some small way. I can think of a few things that could use a change. Maybe I am super self-centered, like all millennials supposedly are, because I am so concerned with getting my feet under me. Maybe what I have learned about having functional relationships is minimal compared to what I will know by the time I am 50 -- just by virtue of being alive longer and having had a lot of experiences with different kinds of relationships.

Yes, I am concerned about my career, partially because I have to pay rent and stuff, and because I now have a sharpening view down the road to when I will no longer be the only person depending on that career. But I am also concerned about my career because I am obsessed with doing good work, and learning things, and achieving goals. Particularly when doing so comes with the privilege of being included in a team of really interesting, smart and capable people who have experiences already that I will never be able to have because I am me and they are them.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to say, exactly. I guess it boils down to this: we are young. I think sometimes I need to be reminded of this. I am young! I have my whole life ahead of me! There is so much to do and to learn!

But really, Girls and the daily diatribes against "my generation" just doesn't really do it for me. Fancy that.

damn, girl

I am tired.  This is mostly because I am a woman about town.  I'm struggling to frame this post as more than just a sort of dazed review of what I've been up to lately.

Thursday nights have turned into Zumba-and-Applebee's nights with my girl Kristy.  We get our dance on, and then cart our sweaty selves up Kirkwood for half-price drinks and appetizers after 9pm.  It's great.

This week, though, Kristy was in Ohio, so I went to Zumba solo and then went to the late show of This Means War with J.  The movie was pretty much exactly what I was looking for: sexy, funny, mind-numbing enough but with some satisfying original twists and well-placed explosions.  The relationships and character motivations could have been more satisfyingly developed but the movie pretty much did its job so I can't really complain.  Here's the trailer, if you're interested.

Friday night the youth group at church had a lock-in.  (For legal purposes I must clarify that we were not actually locked inside the church; it was pretty much just a sleepover.)  It was actually a lot of fun.  Strange, though, that I am now officially a youth chaperon rather than a youth group member.

(Also... is chaperon really spelled without an 'e' at the end?  I never knew...)

I was really tired from being out so late on Thursday and working all day Friday, and dinner took forever to cook...  So I kept trying to get everyone to sit down and watch a movie so I could casually pass out.  But everyone wanted to play games, which ended up being way cooler and a riotous amount of fun.  One of the best games of Cranium I have ever played.  Also, C for Cool was the best team.  Way to go Chris!

Finally we staked out our sleeping spots (everyone, of course, trying to claim the couches hours in advance) and put in Secondhand Lions, which is a great movie.  Unfortunately our copy is a little scratched and the DVD player is old and missing a remote, so it was tough to get it going; finally I managed it (who put me in charge of running any kind of technology, I don't know) and promptly passed out.

An hour or so later, 15-20 minutes from the end, I got up from my slumber, turned off the TV power, and immediately fell back asleep -- leaving my dad, Andy and Roberto sitting in the dark saying, "Um... I guess we're not going to see the end of the movie..."  I didn't remember this in the morning, but I won't be forgetting it any time soon seeing as they will never let me hear the end of it.

Last night was girls' night.  Kristy survived the trip back from Ohio and Carly managed to make it up from Dover to go out with us.  We are the perfect trio since all of us are perpetually late for everything.  So no pressure.  After our divine classic Charlie's pizza, we rock-paper-scissorsed to see who would drive blindly toward Trolley Square, which none of us had ever successfully visited before.

After a bit of aimless weaving through dark downtown Wilmo streets, we managed to find Trolley Square, and, more specifically, Catherine Rooney's, an Irish pub apparently featuring two dance floors.  And we'd been told there is no real dancing in the entire state of Delaware.  I mean, it wasn't a rave, but it was a lot of fun.  None of us have gone dancing in forever, but we've definitely still got it...*

*See title...

The weird reality check was that we got 3 rounds of drinks for about $60.  We're not in Northfield/Newark anymore, Toto.  (So hold the line -- because like Kristy, Carly, and myself, love is almost never on time.)  We're in a city, at a grown-up bar.  And this grown-up bar featured a startlingly wide range of ages.  A middle-aged couple pretty much gettin' it on on the dance floor, for example.  Lots of meticulously curled hair, too.  I think our trio was pretty well-matched as far as badass, down-to-earth, really cute and fun girls go.

Ever since Audrey's and my encounter with the Santa Crawl back in December, I have been wanting to do the Wilmington "Loop" -- where school buses are provided to take patrons to bars all over downtown Wilmington.  Somehow I have managed to never do a pub crawl, and our Rooney's adventure only reinforced my desire to do one.  Even if the drinks are $8 apiece.  Shamrock Shuttle, here I come!

Maybe.

Back at Kristy's we decided to make some Ghirardelli chocolate chip brownies to go with our G&Ts that only got strong down at the bottom.  I guess I didn't stir them well enough.

We slept well enough, though, and in the morning discussed our different family structures, passed around the cats, and conceptualized a few memes all before breakfast.

Breakfast, just the way I like it at the Marsh Road Diner.  A classic diner for a classic Sunday brunch, classically decorated with posters of Italy, Italian art, and other proud specimens of Italian heritage.  Delicious omelet, peanut butter/chocolate chip pancakes, home fries, scrapple, tea, endless coffee refills...  I love my Sunday mornings.  Love my diners.  Love my girls.

Coming up: Wanderlust tonight at People's Plaza (another first-time venue for me), Jess' birthday tomorrow (not getting out of that one, girlfriend), and nachos on Tuesday.  We'll see if I can keep my head.

cover art

I was browsing the stacks at Barnes & Noble a couple of weeks ago, pulling out a book here or there to look at more closely.  Now, we all know how much I love metaphors, and I wish I intended to use this image as set-up for some profound revelation.  But, perhaps also in line with some literary affection, I am going to stick to a skin-deep, felt-up cliche.

And now, as the Great Professor Williamson so wisely suggests, I will stop telling you what I am going to do and just do it.

The thought that came to me suddenly in a fit of passion was the proverbial warning: Thou shalt not judge a book by its cover.

In all honesty, I have no passion for this proverb.

Not true.  (I lied to myself before, unintentionally.  I never intend to mislead you, dear readers.)  I do have passion for this proverb.  But in no universe would I hold it as any realistic standard.  Because, come on, what else are we supposed to judge a book on, but its cover?  A decent number of people are paid a decent living to create book covers that consumers will judge favorably enough to pick up, and exchange cash (or the theoretical equivalent), and take home.  And then the really good covers will be spotted casually perched upon a coffee table by the consumer's friends, who will say, "Well doesn't that look interesting," and the friends will go out to their preferred book vendor in search of a copy all their own.

I know what you're thinking: "Clara, for someone who professes such great love for metaphor, you have altogether missed the point!"  So, I will humor you and take this into the real world (because who really reads anymore, anyway?  Raise your hand if you just collect e-books on your Kindle).

The number of people who are paid an [in]decent living to create metaphorical book covers that fall favorably upon consumers of all types of goods is even greater than the literal cover designers.  And even those of us who are not paid to create an appealing product strive to create an appealing product every day.

Believe me, I commoditize self-presentation here with the utmost critical respect.  I am the Queen of Internal Battles Over Self-Presentation, that is, I care altogether too much what people think.  Or I strive simultaneously to blend in and to be unforgettable.  Anyone would tell you that this level of contradiction can only portend failure on all counts.  But I understand how important it can be to appear a certain way, to conduct oneself in a certain way, and oftentimes it is beneficial to follow the rules to get what I want.  On the other hand, one who only roams within the parameters of the game can only ever hope to achieve the average payoff of the game.  (Here comes my inner economist.  Quick, out the side door!)

The side door being, in this case, a brief foray into creepiness.  Senior year of high school the guys I hung out with had read whatever it was that talked about having a "woman-suit," and their way of processing this misogyny was to make fun of it -- ironically at the expense of their female friends.  I won't go into details, but today the word popped into my head under a totally different connotation, in a liquor store, of all places.

I stopped in to pick up a 6-pack of beer because I'm almost out, and because we were having company for dinner tonight and I thought it might be good to have some beer around just in case our guest wanted some.  I learned long ago that the best way to avoid questions is a confident sense of direction (which in my case is usually a complete facade) so I walked in, greeted the proprietors, and made a beeline for the beer cooler.

I set my choice on the counter with a smile, and the clerk snapped, "ID!"  Still smiling, I pulled it out with no particular urgency, so the two of them (husband and wife, a pleasant-looking Indian couple) could pore over it in search of my DOB, inspect my face for lies and wrinkles, and tilt the license to see the watermarks.  Finally, finding nothing to suggest I was duping them, the man handed the card back and with those eternally unnerving green Indian eyes, smiled weakly and apologetically.  "You look very young, ma'am."

I laughed.  "I know.  Everyone says that."  This is true.  People are constantly failing to hide their surprise when I tell them that Maria and Asha are 4 and 6 years younger than me, respectively.  They look less shocked if they happen to run into me in my work clothes.  I try to make them feel less awkward by joking that I can only hope I still look young when I'm 40, 50, and so on, but I doubt if any of them ever fully believes that I'm not 17.  The other day I was exchanging ages with someone and his response to my youth was, "You look young, but you act much older.  Women are like that, though."

I of course gave him a hard time for implying that I am just another average woman, and he weaseled out of the chokehold with a very meta rendition of the "unique-snowflake-just-like-everybody-else" joke.  And since I love meta at least as much as I love metaphors, I let it slide.

So all of these instances, far from making me feel insecure about my green-dom, have done more to force me to wear in my "woman-suit" of sorts.  I am learning to carry myself more like a woman, less like a college girl.  More importantly, I am learning how to navigate my own personal carriage without wobbling, faltering, or turning over in a ditch.  Knock on wood -- because we all know that overconfident drivers are at greater risk of accidents.  (Don't quote me on that, though.  It's mostly circumstantial.)

This is progress, and I am starting to feel more comfortable than ever in my very own skin.  How very refreshing.  (Also in my very own family...  But that is perhaps a story for another day.)

OK, not a story for another day.  I'm just going to say yet again that I love them, and I could not be happier to be spending this time with them.  This afternoon my sisters and I and our dinner guest laughed so hard for so many hours that Maria's and my throats hurt by the end of the evening.  Good times.  Remember what I said about how crucial hilarity is...

Now, speaking of being of legal drinking age, and being comfortable in my own skin, and laughing a lot, and judging books by their covers, for that matter...  I am coming to terms with my indecisiveness surrounding beer lists.  I have a few "favorite" beers (New Glarus Totally Naked, Old Dominion Oak Barrel Stout, Mudpuppy something-or-other -- if only on Wisconsin mornings) but I don't really do the go-to thing.  Maybe I just haven't found it yet, but I like to try new things.  I like to judge a new beer by its label, or by its name, more like.  I like to weigh reputation, context, recommendation, and creativity of presentation, and then top it off with a flourish of impulse, and get something I sometimes can't even pronounce.

Saturday night at the Homegrown I further solidified my unexpected growing infatuation with interesting stouts, by haphazardly ordering a bottle of North Coast Brewing Co.'s Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout.  My companion fortunately warned me of its high (9%) alcohol content and predicted that it might be too heavy for me, but I actually really liked it.  Partially because of the creepy picture of the creepy dude on the bottle, partially because I actually love that deep stout color, partially because it was full and good.  This stout wasn't very bitter, and I found it warm and almost sweet.  A very pleasant drinking experience.

We left after just one, though, because I had to drive home before the cows beat me to it, and walked around the UD campus a little.  It was really cold, but I love campus greens (the quad, to all ye Oles) and clear skies at night between those classic buildings pillared and painted for academia.  Also, the green was still strangely green, even in the dark, and even in January.  It was a lovely night.

The beer I chose today was from Dogfish Head, a Delaware brewing company located down in Dover.  Their big thing is pale ale, at least that's the impression I get, and that might be a seasonal technicality.  Whatever the case, their motto is "off-centered stuff for off-centered people," and most of what I've tasted from them makes me want to err on the side of normal and centered.  But, I really want to like some of these beers since they are local.  (Oh no, here comes my hipster ego!  Quick, out the side door!)

So, I'm still trying.  I chose a mahogany ale because I love the color and concept of mahogany, and because the brew is called Raison D'Etre.  Too good.  Dogfish Head caps come in a gorgeous golden-bronzey color, with a sharky fish silhouette, so this is also exciting.  It should provide fodder for some jewelry for my beer-loving 'Sconnie mates.  As for the drink itself, it looked beautiful in my clear-bottomed mug, swirling with foam and those mahogany tones I like to see in people's eyes.  It was a bit too heavy for my tastes, and Maria commented on its strong winey smell.  But I enjoyed it well enough.  I might have to invite a friend or two over to help me finish it, and I really need to hold myself to the task of not buying 6-packs of ale.

Every day I learn something new, and while covers and labels and titles are there to help us navigate our lives, I do need to remember that sometimes the best books come in an understated cover; sometimes, they come highly recommended but you would have never picked them up on your own.  The best beers taste even better when you have someone to share them with, and some beers just taste bad regardless.  I don't have to like all of them.  The best me, though, likes myself and doesn't drive into a ditch.  She holds her carriage steady and walks around the green while the tipsy wears off.  She arrives home safely and sleeps comfortably knowing that, when it comes down to it, there is nothing worth worrying so hard about that time stops.

body of work

The days are filling so that when I turn around three times and curl up in bed on Sunday night, I barely believe that Sunday morning was within the same time frame.  So that when I filled out my first time sheet for my social media job this afternoon, I was surprised at how few days I had to account for.

I got back from Zumba with my mom and two pizzas about an hour ago, and neither one of us could get over how good we felt.  We had both been feeling so tense, from the half-hour-plus of driving and 7 hours of staring at a computer screen that I do every day, and whatever Mutti does that has the same general effect.  And walking out of there, we both felt so light and loose.  I love Zumba, the hilarious parts, the really fast parts that make me wonder if I'm going to be able to keep going, the aggressive parts that remind me to deal with my frustration ("never go to bed angry"), and the slow, deep plunges and stretches that remind me to breathe.

It was somewhat less comfortable for my mom, who doesn't really ever dance -- it was a feat to get her and Papa out for the electric slide at my quinceañera 7 years ago.  She said she struggled with the coordination, the quick switching between salsa and cumbia steps, and the really hippy stuff -- not free-love-hippy stuff, but cadena-hippy stuff.

It occurred to me that Zumba is good for more than just women's bodies (because, yes, it appears to be mostly women who do Zumba).  As Mutti mentioned, we don't do those kinds of things very often: we don't move that way, we don't laugh that way...  We don't ever feel that way.  I think it's great for body image because I'd put money on most of those women being super shy.  We hardly look at each other when we all walk in and carve out a space for ourselves, and pretend like we know what we're doing when it takes almost everyone a few seconds, at least, to figure out when a new step starts.  By the end, we're giggling, we're tired, our guards are down and we're feeling good, and I catch the eyes of the two women next to me.  They both came alone and they both smile shyly when our eyes meet, and we are laughing, and suddenly we have reason to suspect that none of us are comfortable throughout the majority of our daily lives.  We all feel equally stupid doing those moves, and equally exhilarated, and we all chose to come there and we are all beautiful and strong and we all want to care for our beautiful strong selves.

We almost didn't go, because of course I came home from work and asked every member of the family to go to Zumba with me at 7:30, and everyone was busy or tired or something else...  And then I decided to use my time productively and start sanding the tacky blue paint off this big cedar chest I bought yesterday.  So before I go at it with the belt sander, my dad warns me that the machine has a mind of its own and if I don't control it then it'll just fly straight off the end of the trunk.

No kidding.  It took my whole neglected core to keep it on the wood at all, and I barely managed to make it go where I needed it even by the end.  Not to mention the paint melts in stripes onto the sandpaper, smells like poison, and makes the sander almost completely ineffective.  After an hour I was sweating and sore and covered in paint dust, smelling vaguely like burnt rubber, and ready to go to the Y...?

I'm working backwards here.  Yesterday, along with the big cornflower blue cedar chest with bird decals on it, I picked up a U.S. Navy Captain's sea trunk and a giant squishy green chair/loveseat at the Family Thrift Store right up the street.  The sea trunk still has oil paper inside, and it smells like salt and cedar and oil paper, and ships.  It's a little rough around the edges, but it charmed me right off the bat.  The chair -- well, that was love at first sight.  It reminds me of rainy days, and mugs of tea that are far bigger than you could possibly need, but it just makes you feel more cozy because you won't have to get up for hours...  This chair matches. Also it is a beautiful color, and it lives up to the Greco Living Room Couch standard, which means you sink into it no matter what angle you come at it from.

So, it is my first furniture, for the basement apartment I was promised.  It's haphazard for now, with unfinished drywall and cement spackling on two walls, a curtain for the third wall, and brown paper ceiling -- but it's comfortable and eclectic and highly appealing.

Plus, my loveseat could not look better down there.