Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Things I Have Forgotten to Blog About

1. Remember how I was going to finish up what I thought of the inauguration? Yeah, I didn't do that, but how do you sum it up in words? I still get teary seeing the pictures. Let's just say that I'm quite happy with what President Obama's been doing with his time lately, particularly doing away with the Global Gag Rule. Also, check this out on the official white house site. A lot of this won't effect me over here in yuppie whiteyville, but it's heartening to see everything laid out so cleanly. I love the paid sick days bit and wish we, as a country, could take a serious look at revising FMLA.

2. Things I Have Been Readin':
* White Teeth: I loved this book so much and was actually sad to finish it. How does she write like this? On Beauty was wonderful, and like that novel, the characters in this book are so textured and rich and sometimes unlikable. It makes me feel embarassed about my pathetic little essays.

* Then We Came To The End: I heard so many good things about this that I expected to love it. I found it hard to read because I felt like I was at work and not in a good way. The narration trick was interesting, but overall, I was more disturbed than amused. This probably says a lot about my company culture.

* The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege: A relatively short read, but an interesting look at being part of the problem. In reading the comments on Amazon, it looks like people either loved or hated it.

* Rereading Bird by Bird: I read this during college and loved it. Speaking so differently to me now. More on this later.


3. LOST! It's back. This show always has a way of making me feel like I am mentally deficient in multiple ways, but I love it so. Diva has a good recap.

4. More about the good and bad with Zygote. I don't want to turn this into an all-about-pregnancy blog, but there are some real highs and lows. Belly pic to hold you over.


5. Kate Harding's article on Salon. I loved the article, as I love most of the stuff that she writes, but I spent too much time reading through the comments and it just gets me depressed. Why is this such a hot button issue for people? Why do people object to a larger person being okay with his or her size? This excerpt of a comment just makes me cringe:

I think "mocking" is an "appropriate" reaction to make people change. The food is too available to friendly tell someone to not eat it. It's ridiculous to even try to do so. So I honestly think that the best way to approach it, at this point, is to attach a stigma to fatness. Hopefully if people are embarrassed about eating fatty foods they won't do so.


Right. Because fat never had a stigma attached to it before, AND shaming is the best way of getting people to change. :-I

6. My brother wrote about saving shit a while back and I was going to write about how I have the same weird habit and have shoe boxes filled with letters, cards, ticket stubs, deflated birthday balloons and broken Christmas ornaments. I had to move a lot of this stuff from its repository to make room for Zygote's new things and realized that in the 8 times I've moved in the past decade, I've moved ALL this shit with me. I did a massive reorg and threw away the following:

* Birthday cards that were not attached to any particular birthday and just had signatures at the end
* To-do lists circa 1999
* A garbage bag with arm holes cut into it that I used during a rainstorm in Niagara Falls
* The "wedding notebook" from my first wedding
* More deflated balloons that I can count


Things I kept:
* All the love letters I've ever received, now categorized by giver
* Letters that NN and I exchanged during summers in college, and letters that BB sent to me while I was in London
* An essay that I wrote in first grade on that weird green paper little kids write on titled, "The New Baby" about when my sister was born
* Dried roses from the caskets of my grandparents' funerals. Is this weird and morbid? I don't know.
* Prayer cards. I'm a good Italian.
* My Sept. 11 box. I was living in Brooklyn on 9/11/01 and was well on my way to work in NJ when the attacks happened. I couldn't get back to my apartment so I stayed with my parents. I had none of my stuff so I went to CVS and bought deoderant, a toothbrush, concealer, mascara and lip gloss and some sort of Caboodle-like box to keep it in. I only used the stuff for the few days I stayed with them and never touched it again. I don't want to throw it away. Or use it.
* All my old journals including the one Mrs. Forcella had me start in 4th grade.

7. Forgetting to blog about forgetting to blog.

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