Happy Birthday to you!

I have one of those daily calendars with fun little facts on each day by my bed, which I got for Christmas. It is called The Left-Hander's Calendar and has facts about famous lefties and famous left hander's birthdays. Today, my handy dandy calendar informed me that it is the birthday of Lewis Carroll (his 179th to be exact), author of The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland and other books such as Through the Looking Glass, And What Alice Found There. Alice in Wonderland is one book that has thrilled me and terrified me my whole life. The scenes that Lewis Carroll creates are so vivid and strange, I can't help but get the chills when I read them. But Alice's story is one of childhood imagination, retold through the words of an adult. Today in class we were talking about how an author creates characters and tells stories through them. Clearly, shrinking to a size smaller than a mouse and being swept up in a river of your own tears is fantastical and not a big T truth DocOc has been talking about all year, but a broader, little t truth can be drawn from the chimerical pages of Carroll's writing. Carroll is giving his truth about imagination, the worlds we go to when day dreaming like Alice (or tripping like he was) and the glories and dangers of dreaming your life away (and drug use). Alice visits the fun side of dreaming at the Mad Tea Party, and the dangerous side when she meets the testy Queen of Hearts. This story, like the ones we've read in class, have a very important little t truth from the author, being told through a character of his design.

MetaBlog round 2!

I would like you guys to reivew my What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You blog, it was a blast to write... no joke.


Wow this quarter is already over. I feel like my writing has gotten a lot more informal. Instead of going to NPR for every post basis, I reference things I see everyday. I have goten to finding connections in movies and TV show I see, like in my most recent post about Say Yes to the Dress, to things we discuss in class. I am not quite sure if this is a better way to blog, but I am a lot more engaged in it than just forcing connections like I did first quarter.

During my day I continually look for things to connect back to class. This morning for example, I was making pancakes and Aunt Jemima on the box (yeah, I can't make pancakes from scratch...) looked a lot like the Norman Rockwell Jim we saw in class and I was trying to think about why that was and if I could make a blog post about it. I tend to now think in terms of blog posts, whether people would enjoy reading what pops into my head and even if I don't think they would, if I find it interesting, I'll blog about it.

Next quarter I want to insert more of my personality into my posts. I started doing that this quarter, but I would like to strike a balance between putting myself into my posts, but also making them a little more informative and give my opinions more. I also want to start commenting on different peoples blogs because I have a tendency to just comment on the blogs of people I'm close with in class.

How Young is Too Young?

I am an avid watcher of the TLC show Say Yes To The Dress. This past friday, the new season started with back to back episodes. One of them was the normal plot line, girl finds dress, loves it, buys it. But another episode made me stop and think about our discussions from class this week. One girl, couldn't have been older than 22, was shopping for her wedding dress. The weird thing was, she met her 40+ year old husband on a golf work trip... he is her boss's boss's boss. The entire thing gave me the shivers. This girl was marrying a man almost twice her age, and she was just beginning her adult life. In class we discussed how the average marriage age for women has gotten higher in the past 10 years, for women it is up to about 26 (according to the USA Today article). On this show, I see first hand the age of these women getting married for the first time. Some are younger, around 24, some older at 30, 22 is very young. Usually with younger brides on the show, they have been dating their fiancee for since high school, so they really know their mate well, but this girl had barely dated this guy for a few months. We talked this week about why people get married young, why so young before their lives have really even started, and why so quickly? Someone shared a story this week about her cousin who got married at 18 and people kept asking questions about why they weren't going to wait, and they're reply was simple. We don't want to wait. Maybe when you're really in love, time and age don't matter, but its still surprising when I see someone only a few years older than myself committing their life to someone, becoming someone's wife.

Here is a link to the full episode if you'd care to watch... she is looking for a piratey dress... whatever that means haha

The Language of Friendship?

In class today we were talking about parenting styles and how differences in parenting styles affect children. I started thinking about how language affects not just how I view my relationship with my parents, but how language affects all my relationships. With one of my best friends, we usually speak in hyperboles (examples from break include her saying "oh my goodness my soon to be step-dad and his daughter are coming on vacation with us and things are STRESSFUL AND TERRIBLE I AM GOING TO DIE"; and me saying "Half my bumper just fell off in this crash I am never going to be able to drive again"). We both know that she will not be dying and that I will (in 22 days) be able to drive again and our lives will go on, but we always talk that way because we have such an emotional friendship. We've been so close for so long, we're almost family. Everything we've ever gone through we've gone through together so we continue to say what we feel, even if we know its an exaggeration, because we know the other person will understand. With my guy friends however, we are never dramatic. We keep things grounded and real. When we talk, we are straight to the point without beating around the bush, which works for us. Being straightforward and brutally honest won't work for every friendship, but when you find the way that works for you, you keep going with it, just like parenting. If one style of parenting doesn't work for one of your kids, you change it to fit what that child responds to and makes your relationship best. If I were to go up to my guy friends and say "OH MY GOODNESS MY LIFE IS OVER MY PARENTS HATE ME" they would probably freak out and think that my parents hate me and I am going to die. You have to find what language and tactics work in the relationship and know what doesn't.