"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.