When Life Gets in the Way

First of all I'm not sure if I ever actually mentioned it here (I can barely remember what I ate for dinner last night) but I have moved my Pagan Blog Project blogging to a tumblr.  This was always meant to be my personal blog and while my spirituality is a huge part of my personal life it just felt like since that was all I ever got a chance to post that this had become a spiritual blog that may have bordered on preachy so if you're interested in seeing the rest of my posts for PBP (which I'm behind on, again.) Please head on over to my Sanctuary.  ^w^  Thanks and blessed be.

The following contains whining.  Feel free to skip it.

So recently we took a few moments to entertain the possibility of moving back home to Eastern Colorado.  Now I was reluctant to even talk about it because I was afraid it would get my hopes up but because there appeared to be only a question of jobs it seemed like enough of a possibility to talk about it.

Yeah... I realize now I should have just stuck to my not talking about it policy because I totally got my hopes up and now the reasons it was brought up aren't as definite as they sounded.  >.<  I hate the city.  Funny thing is for a while I thought that maybe there was really no way that we could do it.  We're used being able to run to hellmart in the wee hours of the morning if we have to or have several options for eating out, etc.  But then as we got to talking about it I realized that most of the things I'd miss are pretty much already gone or something we can't afford anymore anyway like Hastings is closed, eating out at a restaurant only happens once in a great while and we're too broke to go shopping anyway.

So really the only reasons I wouldn't want to go is reasons that have to do if we were to have another baby.  Other than that there's not a whole lot of reasons to stay I realized but there are so many reasons moving back would be good, like Darius growing up around his grandparents and great grandparents.  Oh and getting out of the house once in a while because we know people down there.  Here?  Pretty much all of our friends graduated and got the hell out of this craphole.

*sigh*

So last weekend we went back home for a long weekend to help throw a party for my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary and coming back to Greeley sucked.  It was so depressing.  I was ready to get back to my own bed, see Takara and that kind of stuff but I wished that those things were there so we wouldn't have to go.  Now I know that he'll grow out of it and before we know it and D will remember who his grandparents are and stuff like that but right now he only sees them once a month if we're lucky so it makes it really hard on all of us.  We need a break, they want to snuggle and play with him and he wants to know who the hell these people are that keep bugging him.  It's depressing.

So on top of all this is the fact that I keep trying to think of ways I can help out with the whole money situation and that's not working out well either.  Have a mentioned lately how big of a waste of money college was?

Oh and I lost my wallet, my awesomesauce NES controller wallet, last weekend too.  What kills me is I lost it a day that I know my every last step and it's nowhere to be found. WTF?  It makes no sense.  Best part is if even if someone honest has found it my license has the wrong address.  SWEETNESS.  Mostly annoying but it just kind of added onto everything else ya know?

So there's my whine-fest for a while.  It's just some stuff I wanted to get off my chest before my head explodes from it.  

Also, I fully intend on trying to post more.  It's just by the time I get my internet time at night I'm too tired to do anything more than veg out on tumblr and Sims Social and not do anything that might require any kind of thinking or editing, lol.

Destroying Ourselves

Alright... so I wrote this a while back and it's long and ranty & probably doesn't even make sense by the end because I'm terrible at keeping my ideas organized, my essays in college are horrific.  So yeah... Just a warning.

Again I'm taking a Women's Studies course.  Not my favorite class by a long shot.  Well today we were talking about how media affects women and then how it's just women being oppressed more and more.  (a little of which I believe is someone reading into ads a little too much, but whatever)  I hate this class simply because it feels like 24/7 male bashing.  It's also full of poor unsuspecting little freshies who are fresh out of Mommy & Daddy's arms to the big world on their own to develop their own ideas and opinions and they're having this crap shoved into their impressionable little heads.

*headdesk*

Yes, let's teach women to hate men, that sounds like a great idea.

Maybe I'm odd. I married a man who every day tells me I'm beautiful and looks at me with nothing but love.  (balls, now I'm tearing up, lol)  I'm not saying that women aren't oppressed or being treated unfairly in the world.  Yes I'm angered by the fact that I only make 74 cents or so to every dollar a man makes, that's unfair BUT I don't feel this is only the fault of men.  I'm also angry that women are expected to be rail thin and perfect, but this also isn't only by the fault of men.  They don't deserve to have all of that placed on their heads.

Women are largely responsible for the pressure on women to look "perfect".  Don't believe me?  Come on ladies let's be HONEST here, we've ALL done this.

You're with friends and a skinny "good looking" woman (by America's current standards) walks by.  What gets said?

Things like:

"Those can NOT be real"

"There's no way you can eat and still be that skinny"

"That's not natural."

Now a thicker woman walks by:

"Someone eats their feelings."

"Has she looked in a mirror?"

"She can't be happy looking like that."

I know this happens because I myself am guilty and I have overheard other women say these types of things every damn day.  We have all at one point talked shit about another woman for her looks for one reason or another.  We are more guilty than anyone for what ads have come to represent.

A Twitter friend Nanti_SARRMM sent me this article while I was ranting and raving on Twitter (poor Tweeps who follow me get that kind of stuff a lot, lol) Worthless Women and the Men Who Create Them and it's a great blog by a man and how they make women feel worthless and how they need to make a change to their behavior to help women realize they are NOT worthless.  And yeah, men are partially responsible for women and their skewed vision of themselves and other women, but they're not the whole problem.  Women are ridiculously critical of each other and ourselves.  I think we've all seen something we've pointed out on someone else in ourselves, which then just makes us feel worthless.

So my point, which sounded really good in my head but now doesn't seem to be being made very well as I write this, is that men are not the only ones responsible for women having a terrible self image of themselves.  Women are just as much, if not MORE, responsible than men.  ALSO, men feel pressures of advertising too.  How often is a man in an ad without a shirt, a guy that doesn't have a 6 pack?  Yeah, almost NEVER.  Both men and women are being shown what someone (who needs their damn head examined) thinks is the ideal man or woman every day.  It's all over TV, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and the internet.  Pretty much unless you're blind, or maybe Amish or something, you're going to see these things every day of your life.

and...

/rant.

Please, tell me what you think.  Are you a guy constantly feeling the pressure to be a muscular stud?  A woman sick & tired of not even being able to feel comfortable in her own skin because society keeps telling her that a healthy weight makes you unhappy?  Who do you blame?  A week or so ago my photo prof mentioned readers being upset with Sports Illustrated for using healthier models and how they lost business as a result.  Who's responsible?