Monthly Archives: April 2012

Finding Perspective In Someone Else’s Story

Posted in Inspiration, Life Ramblings, Reviews by

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I needed perspective.  I knew even before I found it, but it was just out of reach.

I needed something real.  That is exactly what I found. 

I’m not sure what it was about the book that made me grab it off the shelf, but I’m glad I it found it’s way into my hands.  A few pages in and it had done the job.

Signs of Life is a memoir that begins with Natalie Taylor finding out that her husband has died.  She’s 24 years old and five months pregnant.  And she chronicles, in beautiful honesty, her journey through the deepest grief of losing true love and the contrasting joy of becoming a mom.  

We hear bad news every day.  It is all around us, permeating our lives from every direction.  But this story touched me in a different way.  Because it is a tragedy completely within the realm of possibility for me.  If I gave myself time to linger on it, it would probably be my biggest fear.  Getting everything I ever wanted and then losing the person I was supposed to share it all with. 

Her story is interwoven with the new insights she’s gained into great works of literature, as well as her changed view on everyday life, relationships and herself.  The things that make the story inspiring are the little things.  She says repeatedly that there is no resolution to loss.  But her story shows that there is hope.  At the very darkest, in the very worst moments of a person’s life, it might be hidden, but as the days pass, it comes out, little by little.  There are signs of life.

National Princess Week: I Only Defend The Sparkle

Posted in Life Ramblings by

If you’ve never heard about National Princess Week, don’t worry… no one else had before either.  It’s the joint creation of Disney, Target, and Julie Andrews and this was the first one.  I stumbled across it randomly in the news, and then on the Target website when I was trying to shop for a chair.

They say “children across the country are invited to celebrate the sparkle and wonder of every princess—real, aspiring or imagined” in the official press release.  That sounds fabulous… especially because Disney and Target have a host of princess paraphernalia you can spend money on this week to help your children do that.

Let’s be real… No Target and Disney invented week isn’t going to get a ton of crap in the news.  Even if you get Julie Andrews to be the face of it.  Yes, we’ve had a new Princess, ahem, Duchess, for exactly a year this week – But unless you got Kate to personally endorse a NATIONAL holiday for a country that she has been to once?  It’s just cheesier you made it this week.

But here’s what has really annoyed me about this week: the turn the backlash has taken.  Talk about how obviously commercial and ridiculous it is, I’m right there with you.

But this week’s media has been distorted into validation for the “Cinderella Ate My Daughter” crew who cringe every time their daughter asks for something pink or sparkly.  And that makes me cringe.

The general argument is that historically, toys have represented what roles we expect kids to take when they grow up.  They wouldn’t have been advocates of the plastic kitchen I was making dinner in or the baby dolls I was taking care of growing up.  They now focuses on the Princess idea, and thinks that is also sending a bad message about what we want girls to be, and their relationship with boys when they grow up.

I guess my annoyance is this: it seems like they’re actually trying to teach their daughters that in the end being “girly” makes you somehow less admirable.  You don’t hear anyone arguing that the boys need to be less like boys, so why on earth do the girls have to act less like girls?  To me, this seems to defeat your whole feminist argument.  Don’t teach girls they need to act like boys to be worth something, teach them there is something incredibly special in their femininity.

Girls want to be princesses because they want to be special.  They want to be adored.  And guess what: they are and they should be.  I actually think that if more girls expected boys to treat them like a princess, we’d fix a lot of problems.  It’s the girls who don’t believe they’re special and don’t believe they should be adored that I worry about.

I can’t pretend I have some great affinity for a marketing campaign feigning as a national celebration, but I can get behind putting a little more sparkle and wonder in our girls, and if that means a little more princess play this week, I’m all for it.

The Ridiculous Continuation Of My Week

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Today is my last day of law school classes.  I was beginning to think I would never be able to type that sentence.  Only one paper revision and two exams stand between me and this whole experience being over.  I should be writing about how thrilled I am and how I’m bouncing off the walls with happiness… except that this week is out to get me.  So I just hid in my bed refusing to get up for a while.  First Monday’s bad day… then yesterday happens.

I had just had coffee with one of my friends, something that rarely happens lately, and I was in a really good mood.  So I sat in the window of Starbucks after she left and finished my last reading assignment for law school ever.  AMAZING. I have read probably hundreds of thousands of pages in the last three years and now DONE. So I’m in a good mood.

So I hop in my car that finally has four inflated wheels, and I head back to school.  Now doing that is easier said than done these days.  The city is installing a new addition to our light rail system, and it’s running down the main street that divides the upper part of the city from the lower part.  Every day a new street is closed, and this week, they’re all down to one lane and a traffic nightmare.

So I’m sitting in my car, stopped at a light in the traffic nightmare where I’ve been sitting for a few minutes, and it’s clear I’m going to be sitting for a lot longer, and I have my phone in my hand.  I cracked the case, so I was playing with it, trying to decide if I need to order a new one from Kate Spade.  It vibrates in my hand, so I flip it over and run my finger across the screen to see why.

BAM!

Cop pulls up in the closed lane next to me with his lights on.  He tells me to pull over into this closed lane as well.  So I do.  Before he even gets to the window to tell me why he has me pulled over in this traffic mess, A NEWS CREW GETS OUT OF THE BACKSEAT.  The photographer is in my face at my window taking pictures of me before he even gets to tell me what I did wrong.  He asks me what I was doing with my phone.  I said, checking to see why it vibrated.  I wasn’t texting, I wasn’t e-mailing.  I never even got so far as to see what it was.

So he demands my phone.  This is where law school 101 should have kicked in.  No. He couldn’t have my phone.  That would be an excessive illegal search. Or at least that would have been my argument if I hadn’t stupidly handed it over.  He opens it, and it opens to my e-mail app because I was on my e-mail in Starbucks, and he says that since it’s not a dialing screen, I get a ticket.

I try to reason with him.  There are no new e-mails, no sent e-mails.  Nope.  I show him what made the phone vibrate to verify my story that I was looking to see WHY. Nope.

Now normally, I would have been doing something wrong.  I have made a an effort not to text or email while driving lately, but I do it once in a while.  I’m not denying it.  Then I would have just taken the ticket and paid it.  But this whole thing is sketchy.  If I’m allowed to answer my iPhone, and what I did was the same motion you have to make to answer an iPhone… how is that probable cause?  And a news crew in my face? Really?!? And he didn’t ask for my phone, he demanded it.

I did take my frustration out on the news crew, who was obviously riding along ONLY to watch him pull over people and try to prove what they were or weren’t doing on their phone.  Law school crazy person came out on them. The cop was pissed I wouldn’t let them use my name or image.  Again, really?!? I can’t be the only person who thinks that’s ridiculous!

I am frustrated. This week is out to get me.

But today is the last day I will ever sit in a law school class.  At 3:45 this afternoon, I’m done.  Maybe that means my bad luck is done too.  A girl can hope.