It's called SlutWalk Chicago and it takes place on Saturday June 4th. From Newser.com: It all started with some ill-considered advice from a Toronto policeman. To prevent rape, he told a group of law students, “Avoid dressing like sluts.” That gaffe sparked a...
It's Mother's Day and my husband will be working in a very busy restaurant all day. I'll be visiting my mother later this month and my friends are all with their mothers, so I'm thinking of taking myself to the creepiest museum in Chicago: The International Museum of...
Would someone get this walking carpet out of my way! (What's your favorite Star Wars quote?)
I am a 44-year-old Mexican American woman who has lots of friends, but most of them have never been married. Also, most of my friends are not mothers. I somehow manage to seek out peers who have not followed the socially prescribed life path. Sunday, May 8th is...
I'm re-posting this photo from last year's Easter post because it's a party cake in the shape of an instrument of horrible torture and death. And could there possibly be more frosting on this thing? What a festive-grim holiday. Happy Easter! Fight the grimness!
I don't like Easter. It seems to me like the sad little cousin of Christmas, destined to live in the shadow of the biggest American holiday. Easter has no compelling and uplifting narrative, like the story of Jesus' birth. Instead it has the story of Jesus' torture...
At the age of 44, I know I am middle-aged. I don't have a problem with this. It's only logical: middle-aged means you're roughly halfway through your life. In fact the next time someone tries to argue that being in our 40s -- or even late 30s -- is not middle-aged, I...
Bilingual brain
It occurs to me that anyone who has just started reading my blog might wonder why I have chosen to stay child-free. The reasons appear in a post I wrote over five years ago, at the age of 39. Take a look. This post also contains the phrase "at the...
Have you heard of Heart Attack Grill in Arizona? The founder and owner, Jon Basso, used to work for Jenny Craig, encouraging people to eat well and slim down. According to the interview he did with Nightline a couple of weeks ago (you can watch it here), he is...
I've noticed a change in how people respond to my statement, "I don't have kids." When I was in my 20's and 30's, people took this comment in stride, maybe because I seemed young enough to still have children or maybe because they knew I wasn't married, so it seemed...
December is my favorite month. I've been telling people that and I'm stunned by their response. Each person has replied, "Why?" I don't understand this question. We are neck-deep in Christmas decorations, Christmas music, Christmas goodies, Christmas parties and...
Because we weren't conflating food with emotional fulfillment enough.
Images of Halloween invoke death, decay and the unknown. They're the taboo subjects that spooked us as over-imaginative children and that we'll fear again as we get close to our own physical collapse. But the reason Halloween is my second favorite celebration is that...
I'm drawn to horror stories, horror movies and all things dark. When I was seven years old and first learned to read, I started with the ghost story books at the library. I kept going until I had read every ghost story book for my age group in the place. In my teens I...