June 2013
Everyone's asleep but me.
“There is a collective consciousness that can detect the presence (and approach) of something good or bad, in society or the world, before any hard “evidence” exists. It’s happening now with the concept of “rape culture.” Which, by the way, isn’t a concept. It’s a reality. I’m just not the one who’s going to bring it into focus. But I’ve read enough viewpoints, and spoken to enough of my female friends (comedians and non-comedians) to know it isn’t some vaporous hysteria, some false meme or convenient catch-phrase.”
—Patton Oswalt has written the first thing about rape culture in comedy that I felt better for having read afterward (via christinefriar)
Play
A year ago I went to bed feeling accomplished; certain that I had resolved all of my physical ailments… and woke up pregnant*.
Never a dull moment.
*feeling weird in a way that compelled me to take a test
On minor disappointments.
We were set to take our first family road trip this weekend, to hang out in Richmond and see The National play at The National theatre.
It seemed like a good idea — we’ve already taken the kiddo to two shows and to see Dan Savage speak at the New York Public Library; she’s patient for car and train rides — but with consideration to the storm, we didn’t want to be on the road or out of town during it and nixed plans.
We were really looking forward to going but it was also too easy to decide not to: it gave us our only free weekend in June. We’re going to take it easy and attack the back yard with some neighborhood pals.
A longer trip is in store during better weather, when we can have playdates with some friends’ kiddos… and there will be another new arrival out in the world (ahem, Tess!), so it’s all good.
It’s awesome being back on the east coast where I-95 takes you everywhere, but man, hurricane season is a bummer.
May 2013
Just thinking about having seen Dan Savage speak (with Andrew Sullivan) at the New York Public Library on Tuesday evening and how the best thing about it was, without a doubt, watching the ASL interpreter.
Towards the end, the words “penis,” “vagina,” and “plunger” were used in the same sentence, so… there was that.
Move the fuck over, bro. →
movethefuckoverbro.tumblr.com
This is great.
When I was pregnant and riding MTA, I was lucky to find the handicapped seat unoccupied by an able-bodied a man taking up the whole thing with his legs spread out.
I was lucky to have anyone offer a seat to me and mostly it was another woman, who was tightly squeezed into her space by an open-legged man.
I even had a man sit ON me in order to bully me out of the handicapped bench and then open his huge newspaper across my space and into my face, since I didn’t give up the seat but did slide over to get him from sitting on me.
Now that I have ~16 lbs of child strapped to me in a carrier, the personal bubble is larger and I spread out.
And when I do snag the little solo bench, stop after stop, man after man hops on board and comes over to my personal space, looks at me and the little bench my child and I are occupying, and bumps my foot or taps their umbrella near my foot; paces about, stands as close to me as they can, glaring, and more often than not, I’m staring over at other empty seats; at the man seated across from me in the other handicapped bench, wondering (but not really!) why these men don’t glare at that guy or take those other open seats.
“It’s not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It’s our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.”
—L.R.Knost (via wendesgray)
that picture of you with a shadow - where did you get those shoes?
They are Clarks Wallabees in beeswax leather (waxed nubuck). They make them for men and women.
There’s a Clarks shop in Austin at Barton Creek Square (that’s where I got those; I like to try on and hand-pick, I guess…), and also there is the entire Internet for deals and home delivery since driving in Austin anywhere is rarely a good time!
Either I’m losing my brain or there are some weird app issues going on with Tumblr and with Instagram-to-Tumblr. Photos that weren’t supposed to post to Tumblr did, yesterday and today, and then a map image that I cropped down to show just the walking distance showed the full uncropped map view.
- New rice cooker: [melodic dinging song]
- Me: What is that?
- Peter: The rice cooker!
- Kiddo: [looking concerned]
- Rice cooker: [song continues]
- Peter [to kiddo]: Welcome to your Asian heritage!
- Me: Can I get rid of all my clothes down to a uniform of boots, jeans, and a loose black button-down top over a black nursing tank [what I'm wearing now and have worn every other time I've left the house since February]?
- Peter: Yeah.
- Me: You won't be bored with it?
- Peter: No. And we can turn the closet into a library...
Wanted to say Happy Birthday! Have a wonderful day with your family!
Hey, thank you! :)
“
“Don’t you know that slavery was outlawed?”
“No,” the guard said, “you’re wrong. Slavery was outlawed with the exception of prisons. Slavery is legal in prisons.”
I looked it up and sure enough, she was right. The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution says:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
Well, that explained a lot of things. That explained why jails and prisons all over the country are filled to the brim with Black and Third World people, why so many Black people can’t find a job on the streets and are forced to survive the best way they know how. Once you’re in prison, there are plenty of jobs, and, if you don’t want to work, they beat you up and throw you in a hole. If every state had to pay workers to do the jobs prisoners are forced to do, the salaries would amount to billions… Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren’t planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third World people.
” —Assata (via michellehuxtable)
I tell my students this every single semester.
(via notesofanativesister)
FBI’s most wanted for terrorism, everyone.
(via so-treu)Birthday: the thing that you almost forget, between having a kid and losing a grandma. It’s tomorrow…! Wah.
I can’t believe it’s not February anymore.
I can’t believe it was already a year ago that I flew from Austin to spend the month with Peter in New York.
I can’t believe it’s already almost a year that we’ve known about our little one.
Last year was a tumultuous blink. This year I’m working on keeping time from flying.
