Getting my MRS

So we all know that I am taking a course entitled Marriages and Families. Little did I realize, though, that this class is actually trying to gear me toward life as a wife and mother. Who would have thought? I was pretty convinced I was getting a feminist education. I mean, I'm reading about the self-esteem of middle school girls. What could get more feminist than that?

I guess Marriages and Families simply wants to balance out the feminist bias inherent in social science classes at the University of Michigan. A noble cause, I guess. For my homework assignment this week, I was asked to look over www.thenest.com. Now, I am pretty much obsessed with ridiculous websites, so I was happy, as I memorized the correct protocol in making my bedroom comfier, and how to get pregnant the first time. I even scrolled through the dining section, and read about Hosting Your First Holiday Dinner.

Apparently, newlyweds are insane.

6. Start a tradition.
After the meal it’s time to get everyone away from the table and to the family room or the backyard:

* If weather permits, get outside and play a game for all ages like Wiffle ball, soccer or Twister. Keep levels of sportsmanship high. So your niece cheats? She’s five.
* Back indoors work on a family puzzle. Buy one with a fun image and lots of little piece so everyone can start on a different section or break into groups and play cards (Go Fish, War, Hearts).
* Gear up for dessert with a custom-made hot cocoa assembly line (kind of like make your own sundae). Provide fun flavorings like cinnamon sticks, mini marshmallows, Hershey’s Kisses, mint candies, whipped cream and colored sugars.
* Get artful and make thumbprint art of a snowman or reindeer. Buy white card stock and rubber-stamp ink pads so guests can put their finger on the project (ha!). Colored pencils or felt tipped pens can flesh out the designs. Silver or gold pens would be elegant for the holidays.
* Dare we say it? Ok, we will: charades! Ask everyone to put an idea in the hat and start miming.


Do most families do this? When I am 26 and hosting my first holiday dinner, am I going to have to let my niece cheat? Make crafts with my relatives? Work on a PUZZLE?!

I guess I'm glad this is all theoretical. I'll bring this up in class tomorrow, maybe they'll help me reason this out.

Early Morning

You are so tired in the early autumn morning, but you can not stop shaking. You have felt this before, in other autumns, with other boys, but it is so complete--that moment in which there is nothing but chills shaking your body and the warmth surrounding them. Eventually, as always, it stops and you fall back asleep. It is nothing, as always, but it always feels so significant at that moment, when you can not stop shivering and he warms you.

Procrastinating

I have gotten so bad that I am resorting to updating this blog. I know, I know, it's crazy! I have a test--haha, let me rephrase that--an exam! tomorrow on the social development of children and a response paper--well, rather, response paragraphs--on both Weber and Durkheim (in their entirety, clearly), but alas! I am updating this blog. I suppose I also have to read some articles on Marriages and Families, but c'mon world, when do I read about Marriages and Families? I obviously know everything there is to know about that.

I am at an interesting point in my life right now, where my old frame of mind is being beaten against a fence, and I am left with my original dirt-level thought processes and you'd think then at that point, where I have to resort to the fundamentals of my life, that I'd be much more studious, but, of course, this is not the case. I do not even think I'm resorting to the fundamentals of my life, however, I think I am taking my ground values given to me from my family and flying through them into the clouds, while the fence-beating part of me cries, stuck in the jagged wire.

This is incredibly abstract and clouded. Let us just say, I am no longer in a very long relationship. I have completely moved on in an astonishingly short amount of time and now I can not get any work done. Good. Okay. My life is so much more easily summarized when I'm not crazy about it.

Me in a window

My dear, dear mother told me to post a picture of myself. This is, of course, the cop out way in which I can make a new blog post so hooray! picture of myself time!

I am stealing this picture from my friend/roommate Whitney's facebook, though my friend/roommate Emma took it. Yes! complications! Not really, though. Emma is also, amazingly!, in this picture, so be on the lookout for that.