Turning to chocolate.

Today I turn to chocolate. A dangerous choice, I know. Those yummy chocolate stars have been starring at me for days from the top of the fridge. I shoved them into the back of the cupboard hoping to forget their existence, but they still called to me. So, with my head and heart burdened, I turn to them. Asking them, please to not make me crabby or angry, asking them to comfort me.

I paused my writing to throw the rest of them in the garbage. The reality hit me: these chocolates are only going to surge me with discontent and longing for something more. Something more that can't be defined, and then I would spend my day wallowing in my own misery. Of course the damage may already be done - I ate at least a dozen before the rest landed in the garbage.

There are times in life when I just have to stop, throw my hands in the air and say "I give up!" Life take me where I need to go because I am at a loss. Nothing is easy right now. Nothing makes sense in my mind or heart. I love, I live, I am at a loss for words.

Gender Roles.

One of the benefits of being a non-traditional student is that I take a lot of online classes, and online classes often have online discussions. This gives me a great opportunity to work on my writing and communicating effectively through my writing. (It also gives me the opportunity to critique and rip apart other students' lack of writing skills. Is it really that hard to write "are you" instead of "R U"? For God's sake this is a college course!)

Tonight I had to answer the question: How did you acquire your gender views, and to what degree are you satisfied with them? Here is my reply:

Wow. Um. My parents have very traditional gender roles to some extent. My mom stayed home, made meals, changed diapers, cleaned, went to school conferences, etc. My dad worked, and disciplined once in awhile. I was lucky to have two college educated parents who saw value in teaching their six kids critical thinking skills. Dinner time was family discussion time and I learned at an early age to examine my limited boxed view of the world and discard anything that didn't work. This fostering of openness to challenging myself was the foundation for later change in my view of gender roles. When I went to college right out of high school I got a work placement in the University Women's Center. This position opened my eyes to a whole new sea of views about women and gender and sexuality. Without this experience it may have taken me a lot longer to get to where I am today. I dropped out of college and eventually went to massage school where I met a lot of modern day hippies and empowered (and sexual) women. After massage school I met my husband, a liberal feminist who studied women's studies in college. All of these things helped to collaborate my view on gender and gender roles. AND with that, I am very satisfied with how I stand on gender roles.

So, are "Wow. Um." just as bad as "R U"... not sure. I guess I was going for the communicating effect. Like I just was asked this question in an interview and just had to follow it with "Wow....um...." ...Touche.

Confrontation.

My prompt today will be the first word that popped into my head: Confrontation.

In my Community Psychology therapy technique class we end up discussing confrontation regularly. And, as to be expected, all my classmates hate and avoid confrontation. I have a love-hate relationship with confrontation. And sometimes, with certain people, more of a love relationship. I have to tone it down for Shane because he feels like I am beating him up with all the confrontation and bluntness I provide him with. The thing is, I LOVE when people tell me how they really feel (although I hate it when people decide to tell me how they really feel when I am trying to tell them how I really feel). I grew up somehow becoming a very passive person, believing everything that everyone else said and never standing up for myself. Something changed when I had kids. Confrontation became this mama bears biggest challenge. I was determined to overcome. I would become, I told myself, a master at confrontation. And therefore I took every opportunity, and despite fear, I dove in, sometimes ending up feet first, head first, or completely belly flopping (that can sting!). But I never gave up. I refuse to give my daughter, or my sons, an example of a mother that doesn't stick up for herself and her family. So I may hate the actual physical act of confronting someone, but I know that I love the results... usually (read: when my husband doesn't end up being ticked at me for two weeks, or when I can actually wave to my neighbor because she doesn't avoid me at all costs).

Live to write or write to live!

I took a memoir writing class last Saturday after having been encouraged by multiple people to write. The instructor (a witty and overly chipper actress from the Guthrie whom I immediately fell madly in love with and wanted to make my best friend)challenged the class to write for five minutes every day using a prompt or idea. So, even though my plate is already. Way. Too. Full. I am going to try. I actually found that I can write quite a bit given only five minutes. Some of my writing I may post on here, and some I may keep to myself, and given that I am in a very emotional and introspective phase right now, I will perhaps benefit from the writing more than any reader.

Committed to... the library!

I finished Committed in a about a day. I loved it. I actually feel glad to be married and that I am married to someone that I care about, who cares about me and agrees with me most of the time. It could be so much worse!

I have discovered the library. Both the public library, which I have barely used in the last ten years, and the university library, which until last week I could count on one hand the number of times I had entered. So, on Sunday I ventured, coffee in hand, to study in the pure and blissful silence of the university library. I decided quite quickly that I need to pack up and move in (silence is a rarely experienced luxury in our home). The public library is amazing too. I have been filling my brain with books and ideas. In fact, I am taking a memoir writing workshop at the public library on Saturday. I thought it might be an interesting hour and half, and I really do love to write. Just as much as I love to read. I am rekindling my love for fiction and quickly becoming an addict.

As a child I went to the public library after school two or three days a week. I got in trouble at school once for walking to the library after school without a parent permission slip. My mom was not upset with me because she knew I was supposed to go to the library, but she did write a note for the rest of the year that gave me the option of riding the bus home OR walking to the library. In the small town that I grew up in we had a small one-room library that is linked with the Great River Regional Library system. I remember when we first got a library in our town. The first thing I loved was that I could rent movies... for FREE! My love grew from borrowing movies, to the art books. I checked out every single drawing book from the library and would draw every picture. Then I fell in love with fairy tales, especially the ones from other cultures. I read through every fairy tale book at least once. Then I read the entire juvenile fiction section book by book, followed by the science fiction section. By sixth grade I had worked myself into the adult fiction section and was reading John Grisham. Throughout these years I would check out an average of about fifteen books a week and read every single one of them. My addiction actually got so bad that my mom grounded me from reading for a whole week. I was DEVASTATED! What happened to me between then and now? Well, I've read fiction off and on until I had kids, and then... nothing. Don't get me wrong, I've read books, but just not fiction and not much variety. So realising that there are books and books and books waiting for me is exhilarating. And I not only want to read fiction. I want to read memoirs and history books and learn about music and politics and.... well, everything. I feel like a sponge. I want to bath in books. And, as hard as it is right now with school, I am reading for fun again!