Oh what a feelin'. Peel me off the ceiling.

I read this post about why CJane isn't a feminist this morning.

Equality has never done any good for me. When I try to look at the world with my equalizer glasses it leaves me empty and upset. Equality presents a scale and binds you. And when I dissect my marriage, nothing makes me more anxious then the expectation that things are equal. It makes a measuring stick out of our relationship. And I don't want to spend an entire marriage judging the allowance of equality.

Speaking of my relationship, Chup will surely remind me that this is all semantics, so let me define equality (for me) : fairness.

And life is not fair. So how can it be equal?

I could have responded right away, but I am trying to stop swearing on my blog. I let it percolate in the back of my mind all day, simmering, simmering...

I finally decided I won't address her argument directly. I am sure that some of her 400+ commenters did that more succintly and intelligently than I might.

I do, however, want to make a few points as someone who is older than she is. Because I have memories from my own life about how hard women had to work for equality and what it was like before they did:

• My 5th grade teacher actually took class time to read a list of all the ways men were superior to women. Back then that was ok. Because it was FUNNY! Ha ha! Because those uppity feminist bra-burners were trying to say women were equal, but everyone knew they weren't. He had a long list of ways men were superior to women (stronger, faster, smarter, bigger brains...)The only way, he said, women were superior was in their ability to withstand cold, because of their greater fat layer.


• It was ok and funny for Jackie Gleason to threaten to punch his wife in the face on his show every week


• It was legal for men to rape their wives


• Rape survivors were put on trial for their sexuality, with the assumption being that they "led men on" or "asked for it." Because of this, most women didn't report being raped.


• Police didn't get involved in domestic violence situations and there were no shelters for victims


• At my junior high, girls could not take shop, and boys could not take home ec.


• Girls were also excused from PE for 5 days a month due to menstruation


• Phrases like "crazy woman driver" were commonly used


• Women were thought to be too emotional and/or stupid to be judges, doctors, lawyers, ministers


• When I called the only woman gynecologist in town to get birth control, the receptionist sharply told me that Dr. So-n-So "is here to bring babies into the world, not prevent them." Yes, she was an OB-GYN who did not provide birth control services at all.


• Because my sister's school didn't offer regular sports teams for women - the assumption being that sports weren't important for women - she went to intramural girls' "Play Days" organized by the Girls Athletic Association.


• I interviewed a college vice president who said that, as a young journalist, the only beat her newspaper would put her on was "society." Because that was the only beat fit for a woman.


• The lack of safe abortion services were a major health crisis, with women dying or being seriously injured from illegal and self-induced abortions


• Getting pregnant out of wedlock was a huge source of shame and young women were kicked out of school if they became pregnant


• Women had a hard time getting credit without a man as a co-signer, preventing them from owning property or running a business.

If CJane wants to go back to those days, I wonder at her sanity.

Equal doesn't mean "the same." To me, equal means that we all have a chance to live our lives to the fullest and to express our talents and abilities as best we can, without being stopped from that by outside pressures brought to bear because we are one gender or another.

Equality for women is good for men as well as women. It isn't about taking from one to give to another. It's about creating a world that works for EVERYONE.

The best places to live on earth are those where women have the greatest equality. Those aren't just the best places for women. They are the best places for men and children and transgendered people, too. They have the best education, the best health care, are the most properous and the most stable.

Dusting off your pretty hands and saying "Equality - it just isn't for me," is a silly thing to say when you haven't experienced true inequality. If you think you don't believe in equality for women, go spend a couple months in Saudi Arabia and then get back to me.

Hi, what's your name? I'm highly contagious

On the way home, I stopped at Sears to return some ugly ass swimsuits I had bought from Land's End overstocks.

I love me some Land's End swimsuits, but these were just so wrong in so many ways. Ugly print, tied behind the neck instead of having real straps (which I need because I am jumping around like a chimp), slightly too short in the torso.

Plus, they didn't solve my low-cutness problem, which has increased lately with the recent addition of one guy in class who is incredibly unsubtle about staring at my cleavage.

The woman in front of me at Sears was returning some kids' clothing. It was taking forever because she had the wrong combination of receipts and clothing tags. She had a bad, bad raspy cough.

When she finally got done, I stepped forward.

The cashier gave me a panicked look. The kind of panic you usually don't see in customer service people outside of the Christmas season.

"I....I...I..." she whispered. "I have to go get some disinfectant. I'll be right back."

"What's up?" I said, puzzled by her aura of utter freakout.

"That lady," she said. "She told me she had SWINE FLU."

What the everloving heck, people? Who goes to return kids' clothing when they have SWINE FLU? It can't wait a week? Are people completely clueless about how disease is transmitted?

You KNOW how I am about germs. Right now I am typing this from a bathtub full of Clorox. It stings a little.

(That's a lie. I don't have a bathtub. But if I did, I might consider it.)

***********

I started working on a book today. Mmmm hmmmm. I may not have a job, but I have someone who is paying me to write a book, which is kind of a nice gig for a writer.

SQUEEEEEE!

My first Post-It Note Tuesday

Make your own post-it notes here.

This Delicious Life

I went to Marie Callender's tonight. It wasn't my fault.

I knew I was stepping into enemy territory but I did it anyway.

I had a meeting there and it involved dinner and though I tried to order as little as possible and to make it the safest-sounding thing on the menu, it was still a crushing disappointment.

I got an apple, blue cheese, pecan and cranberry salad, which can be a lovely thing if handled correctly.

But this salad was made of that slightly decomposed lettuce - the kind that you sniff in your fridge and think "Should I take a chance on that?" and apples that looked like they had been chopped by a not-particularly coordinated 8-year-old and had blue cheese in either huge chunks or tiny specks and nothing in between.

A horrorshow.

Bad food doesn't just disappoint me. It fills me with fury. It makes me want to drive my car through the front windows or set the roof on fire.

Because to me, food is life, food is love, and to put out a shitty plate of food - especially to paying customers - is to say "You don't matter to me. Supporting your life isn't worth my time. Piss off. Die."

So this salad wasn't just a bad salad. It was a life-denying symbol of Everything That is Wrong With America and Our Food - it was thickly coated in fatty, too-sweet dressing, so that eating it didn't satisfy the senses, but merely gave a feeling of dull satiety.

It wasn't just me. CC felt the same way - she pointed at the soup the guy next to her was eating and said "Look at the soup next to me. Awful."

It was the kind of soup Laura would have called "Cream of Cornstarch." Some thick weirdly yellow glop with chunks in it. Probably about 1200 calories a bowl and flavorless as library paste except for being so salty it would make your ears ring.

Contrast that with my favorite restaurant on earth, Cuernavaca. Cuernavaca is a humble taqueria, with only about 10 tables. You can get lunch for well under $8.

But Cuernavaca is spotlessly clean and the food is made with a kind of pride and love that just shines through every bite. The flavors are all at once rich and bright and balanced. The salsa is fresh and complex and has layers of tastes that add perfect notes of chile and herbs to complement everything else.

When I get a plate of food at Cuernavaca, it says to me "You're alive. You're human. We're glad you're here to share that experience with us." I mean, who knew a plate of tacos could be so mystical?

I had that experience often in Mexico, though.



People would make these humble offerings of food from the simplest ingredients, but that love and pride was apparent. I drank cactus punch from a plastic bucket in a churchyard in Zaachila that was made by these little 4'6" ladies in aprons. It was 35 cents a cup and tasted like the angels had reached down to ladle it themselves.

I sat there on this rough stone wall with my plastic cup and drank that taste of heaven and I knew I was Alive with a capital A.


I wish those cooks or busboys or whoever made that crap salad at Marie Callender's could go to Zaachila for one cup of Agua de Tuna (cactus fruits are called "Tuna") and maybe they would understand what you offer someone when you offer them food. It isn't just getting the orders out. It's more than just giving them enough fat and salt and sugar to satisfy their dulled palates.

I got home and fed Goldie and realized: I make my dog's food with far, far more care than those people made my dinner. THAT's why I want to set the roof on fire. Doesn't that make sense?

Why did I not get a Yorkie?

Goldie and I found ourselves in a very, very strange spot today. It was really like nowhere else I have ever been.

Imagine a maze. But instead of a maze made of corn or shrubberies or what have you, it is a maze made of stones.

Boulders, actually. Giant boulders from six to eight feet tall about as wide. Placed in a giant dirt field (about the size of a football field) with gaps between them. The gaps range from four inches to two feet.

In other words, some gaps big enough for a Suebob to squeeze through and just barely dirty her jeans and others that there is Just No Way.

Now imagine that there is a squirrel that lives in among the stones. And that you have a dog that loves to chase squirrels. A deaf dog.

Yes, it happened again. I lost my dog. For how long?

The answer is a long, long, long, long time. Because even if I could glimpse her briefly, by the time I found my way between the little gaps in the stones, she had moved on.

Finally her leash got stuck on the edge of a rock and kept her in one place. I saw her and had to go around and around a bunch of rocks to try and get back to her...and I got totally lost.

Meanwhile, a new load of boulders had come in on a truck and a guy on a Caterpillar D-9 was going over to get them and I just knew that they were going to crush me and my little dog in the process...

But I got the dog. We survived to walk another day.

Some people just walk around the park with their dog trotting beside them. But nooooo. Not me. I'm special.