"honey, can you do the dishes tonight?"

This week I was particularly drawn to the paper on housework, mostly because that's like 75% of my life now. So, this stuck very close to home. I have an apartment in Richmond, a rather nice one too, but really I stay with my boyfriend. I haven't stayed once at my apartment since I moved here. Sure, I "visit," I grab some lunch there or watch TV, but I always end up back at his place.
Today is Tuesday. Tuesdays and Thursdays are my days off, but today was anything but. Last night I went to bed at 3:30am. I woke up at 10:00 am, as asked by my boyfriend. I told him to get in the shower and I got everything of mine together to go back home. After his shower I made pancakes for breakfast and we hurried to leave for the car didn't get towed. We went to Walmart. I bought only a few bags full, mostly food because I really will be staying at my place this weekend. Only because he's going home. We drove back and I carried his many, many bags up stairs to his apartment and put the cold stuff away. He said he'd put everything else away, which he did. We drove to my apartment and while he sat in his car I carried my five bags of groceries, large very full basket of laundry, back pack and whatever else I had up my wooden, pretty broken fire escape. I stayed there while he went home to do whatever he does when I'm not there. My bet is he played video games. I unloaded my stuff into my disastrously messy apartment, thinking the whole time that I need to clean. I eventually walked the long 3 1/2 blocks back to his place where I washed dishes (yuck!) and swept the floor with the new broom he bought me. Later I cooked dinner for us. He was nice enough to grudgingly say yes when I asked him to do dishes.
This brings me to my point. In the paper the author mentions something about the fight that ensues when it comes to house hold chores. So, is it easier to bypass the fight and do the work yourself or is the downtime really worth the battle? My answer: don't fight. What do you think?

So I have an Idea...

I was flipping channels a few months ago and came across a show on some kids channel called Handy Manny. I miss heard and what I heard was Handy Mandy. This made me excited because finally a portrayal of a girl that is handy with tools and such. But, of course I was disappointed to realize I heard this wrong. So, I have a plan. First, I'm going to find out what network it is on. Next, I'm sending an email or real mail depending on what I can find on the website. I want to know why it couldn't be Handy Mandy. I'll update you with a copy of my letter and any thing I hear back from them. This should be interesting...

As for the White Priviledges Paper...

So, I read some of this today. I say only some because I was flipping through and saw a list and had to read it. I started highlighting what I could answer yes to. I feel slightly bad that I could answer yes to 36 of the total 54. That's 66%.

:(

A Blog Post with Extra Questions, kind of a rant...

When I started reading this Oppression piece, nothing really sank in until I read her definition of press. It's kinda a random place for it to start to stick, but something happened. kind of like an eye opening experience.

Why do we have to be molded?
Every person has their "type," so why do others (either out significant others/friends/ colleagues etc) want to morph us into something we are so clearly not?

Why can we only fit into two extremes. You're either a whore or you're a "lady," you either choose to curse like a sailor or be a "lady," you can do whatever is defined as bad or you can choose to be a "lady." Why can't there be middle ground? I consider myself in between the two, so I guess that makes me totally irrelevent along with the majority of all other women in the world.

The topic of cages. This paper came down to cages. Keeping us reduced to what we "should" be, what they want us to be. So, last question. Why do we need to either be a crazy escapee or a prisoner; why can't we be good law abiding citizens? (Because that would be boring, who would oppress us then? Oh, well, I'm sure they could find some other reason to oppress us.)

No Post

So, I'm supposed to write one more post tonight before class. But, I have no idea what to write about. I thought about it all day today, but nothing became of that... So, there's one less real post than theres supposed to be. Sorry.

Classism: then and now.

As a history major I think about history tons, so it's natural that I would relate what I learn to history. When I was thinking about the different neighborhoods where different classes live, I thought first about where I grew up and second about the beginning of Virginia. Kinda strange, but that's just how I think.

As I have previously mentioned, I grew up in a middle class neighborhood across from a higher class neighborhood. The higher class neighborhood was around a lake. Next, was the lower class neighborhood; a bit further past our high school. So, I thought about VA. Tobacco was the cash crop in VA and what did you need to transport it? Ships, which need water. Who lived around water? The upper class. Who lived further past them; the middle class and lower class.

Question: What's really changed?

Time for New Rules

What's the one place on the Monopoly that you always try to own? Boardwalk. Why? Because when you own it and others land on it, you make massive amounts of money. You make others lose their their places, hotels and houses. You are in a "higher class" when you own Boardwalk.
What's wrong with owning Baltic Avenue ("lower class") or New York Avenue ("middle class")? They make less money, especially if you can't afford to own all of the properties in that set.

So, enough about monopoly rules. Real life, that's what we have to worry about. We don't pay, if we can actually afford to pay, rent in monopoly money. We have to work our butts off to pay for anything. We meaning the Baltic Avenue and New York Avenue people. We can't always afford college, which results in a job that makes less than expected. ((Major side note- Take teachers for instance. They go through so many years of college, just to do a job that pays no good amount of money at all. They deserve to earn the most in my opinion. The first advice I got when I said I was going to study to be a teacher -"You don't do it for the money."))

We need to break these bonds that hold us in the class that we were born into. We ideally need a classless society where everything is equal. But, maybe I just dream too much. We need to start from the inside, break barriers in your community now so maybe in the future people can actually move forward.

Go on, start the change.

Thoughts on "Tired of Playing Monopoly?" or not...

I don't know why I'm so interested in the classism writings. I guess it's because it's something I know first hand. I read this article yesterday and finished it off this morning. I have a lot to say about it, but knowing tomorrow is Tuesday and I don't have classes I thought I didn't need to do anything else today. But, I was wrong and I have a blog due by 3am. That's not going to happen because I'm at my boyfriends apartment and I'm not about to walk 3 1/2 blocks alone in Richmond at 11:10pm to get my textbook. So, I guess I'll have to do it when I get home tomorrow. Which sucks cause I was kinda looking forward to it... :(

Chicken and Peaches Make the World Go Round

Today while I was supposed to be folding the laundry I didn't fold two days ago I was instead reading over the blogs that people have written. Much better than folding laundry if you ask me. I was struck my my relation to Professor Hollidays second part of her first post. Kitchens. I, like her, love them too. It relates only to the fact that I love to cook. I'm actually way better at baking, but that really has nothing to do with this.

Let's start with the fact that the reason I live in the apartment I live in is because of the kitchen. I took one look at the kitchen and said "this is it," went to the bank and gave the landlord the money. The three apartments I looked at before had closets in them bigger than the kitchen. This one has no closet but it has a nice open kitchen. It's beautiful. The first thing I found most important to buy for my new apartment? A new knife set. Very important. It sits proudly on the microwave I haven't used lately because my stove gas was finally turned on (YAY!).

Second, everywhere I go I have to look at the kitchen. I went to a party a few weeks ago and sat in the somewhat amazing kitchen the whole time. I'm boring, I know. But the bad part is that I picked apart what I liked and didn't. Sure it had new appliances, but there was hardly any counter space. Where would I put my mixer? This is what I think about. Weird.

My third thing relates to my parents. My mom worked all the time, so my dad stayed home and watched my sisters and I. He would cook and clean and do everything else in the house. I remember a few nights my mom would cook. That was just bad news. She had her "specials," but they still weren't as special as Dads food. (side note: I'm glad that my mom can't work a computer to save her life, because she would kill me if she read that!) My dad made amazing food. My mom was an amazing baker, but that was only for more special occasions. The smells that filled my house every night when my dad cooked were intoxicating. My favorite food, his chicken and peaches. Sounds disgusting, but it's fried deliciousness. Still to this day I have never been able to make it as good as his. I just don't get it. I follow the recipe perfectly, still nothing like his. So, really I think the point of my third reason was the show that it's not always the mom that has the nurturing instinct; they don't always cook and clean and take care of the kids. My dad did everything for all fourof us and will always do anything for us. I don't have any idea where I would be without him.

Kitchens are an integral part of our lives, not only for what they are meant for, but for the fact that they are so much more than what they seem.

Feeling older?

I went with my dad to surprise my sister at school today. Standing in the high school I graduated from in 2007 made me feel old. Then I thought about it. I'm not old at VCU but I'm old at home. I got old then I moved out. That's just what happens. It happened to my older sisters and it will happen to my younger sister.

At VCU, I'm not old. I'm just grown up. I do grown up things like laundry and dishes. I go to classes in hopes of graduating and getting a grown up job. Everything I do is grown up. And now I wonder what happened to that little girl that swore she would never move out of her house, swore that she would never get a job or swore that her parents would do her laundry forever? She now attends VCU, along with tons of others that swore this same thing.


Now, a comic. Random, I know. But, atleast it goes with my topic.

http://xkcd.com/150/

Why We Should be Quakers....

Yes, you read that right. Quakers. Like the guy on the oatmeal container. I found it surprising how equal the Quakers were, including being really progressive in women's rights. I first read about this in my history textbook and I was going to quote some on here because it explained it so well, but I forgot it in my apartment. So, now you get the link to wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaker_views_of_women

Plus, take a look at the "Testimony of Equality," pretty interesting for their time...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testimony_of_Equality

Am I Supposed to be Here?

Today for class I read FFF chapter 13, A Quick Academic Aside. Despite the fact that I love this book ( so much so that I leave it as the last thing I read, kinda like a reward), I found this chapter more boring than the others. One chapter I won't be interested in at all.
That was what I believed until I read the part about classism, something I really didn't think affected me until I read and related to the story she told. I'm going to talk about my boyfriend again, even if I feel like that's all I ever talk about. Bryan and the beginning of our relationship was what I thought about when I started reading the classism part.

We grew up together. We've gone to school together since kindergarten. We rode the bus together from the first day of middle school to the last day of high school. The only difference is that Bryan got off the bus in Lake Barcroft, the community surrounding our high school. Lake Barcroft has huge houses and a Association, needless to say you have to have money to live there. Which my family doesn't. I got off the bus in Bel Air, which is nothing like the Bel Air in California. It's middle class and all we have to our neighborhood is a newsletter that says who got married and who had a baby. In my mom's words Bryan and I are "from two different sides of the tracks."

My parents didn't go to college and don't have incredible money making jobs. I was always ashamed of this, which made me extra nervous when I had to meet Bryans parents. What if they hate me? What if they look down on me because my family doesn't have money? I've loved Bryan since third grade, what if I just don't belong in Lake Barcroft? I pushed my fears aside and met them. They loved me. They still do. I love them. They didn't look down on me then and they don't now. Actually, we are way more similar than I ever thought.

So, it makes me wonder why? Why was I so nervous to meet them? They really aren't any different than me. Money, that's all I was thinking about, the difference in wallet size. We are all just people and there's no changing that. The happiness I found with Bryan was free. All the money in Lake Barcroft couldn't buy that happiness.