are you there, dog? It's me, kerensa

We have all been there, in the throes of self- flagellation, our children leaving hurricanes of crumbs and syrup, our spouses closing a door on us, either literally or figuratively, and we make the ultimate mistake. We open up Facebook. We do it in search of validation, or friendship, and we end up falling deeper into the spiral of self doubt, and I am angry. I am angry that women are already told how high the bar is set from an early age. We should be this thin, this smart, this athletic, this strong. We must be domestic, but not too domestic, as our feminist foremothers would have fought for naught. We must work, but not too much, or our children will suffer. We must live for our kids, and our spouses, but always remember to put ourselves first. The lists of suggestions on how we should be better mothers, better wives, better females is endless, and the pieces of advice seem to contradict each other so fast and so furious, that we realize we must make up our own rules. What we see ...

This blog will not be about religion- Christian or Muslim Fundamentalism, and how often extremist beliefs cause war and death. It will not be about politics, though it could be easily, and will somehow be misconstrued as such anyway. It will simply be about guns. And in an effort to clarify- not my desire to remove guns from all citizens, as my utopia would dictate I do, but the assault rifle and why protests against gun control are counterintuitive. In 2012, a young gunman walked into an elementary school, where small children were reading Harry Potter in a library, and singing America the Beautiful in music, and struggling through multiplication in math. Like Columbine, the young gunman was a white kid, pretty well off, and a little "misunderstood". In a short amount of time, he opened fire with a Bushmaster AR 15 Assault weapon and killed 20 kids and 6 grown ups. In the same amount of time it would take most of us to wash a sinkful of dishes, or put on our makeup, or driv...

My mother has given me many gifts throughout my life, but I think one of the most valuable was the gift of knowledge, most specifically of female friendships. I was raised seeing the rich tapestry women weave amongst themselves and with each other. My mother had many kinds of friends, almost all were artistic or creatively motivated. One friend designed her whole house from things she found on walks, one went on mini road trips with my mom to pluck quills from roadkill porcupines to make jewelry. She had a friend who didn't like children, and who spoke to us as adults so as to trick herself into believing we weren't children. She had friends with whom she smoked, with whom she drank, and on one occasion, with whom she skinny dipped. Many of my childhood memories are of my mother laughing, sitting at our  table in what we called the breakfast nook, surrounded at all sides by windows that used to cast our kitchen in an ethereal glow in the late afternoon. Sometimes, she was on ...

This workout story is retroactive, which, as we chubby girls know, is perfectly acceptable. After all, we can justify grocery shopping as cardio, sex as calisthenics. giggling as aerobic (3 calories per minute- look it up!) Several years ago, some friends (whose identities shall remain hidden for reasons henceforth explained) and I decided to check out "spinning" at the Y. Mind you, this was years before there were whole businesses devoted to such evil practices. I had tricked myself into believing that there may be a whole workout devoted to spinning in leg warmers to tunes like "Spin You Right Round". I. Was. So. Wrong. We will start with the music, which, as we saw previously, is a spot of contention with me. If I were the one running a class like spin, which would only happen if proverbial pigs flew, we would be listening to songs by Justin Timberlake, because if that curly haired youngster tells us to Rock our Bodies, we will most certainly do so, but also be...

So, I will start out with the positives of the Hot Yoga experience. Number one- It does good things for my body. I think. I really don't know since I have never been here before, but it is probably better for you than donuts or drag racing, which are both more fun. Number two- There is a man in my class whose body belongs on the cover of a naughty romance novel. This can also go in the Con category, because it is distracting, and also because it makes me less likely to downward dog for fear of dog-like gas. Number three- The heat. I actually prefer 96 degrees. It is one of my favorite degrees of all time. It is why I moved to Arizona, and why I often question why I moved back. Number four- the friend on either side of me. You're not allowed to talk, which goes against everything I stand for, but knowing they were there gave me some kind of good chi, or happy vibes, or what have you. They also fall under the Con category, because they are both thin and pretty and bendy. No...

I have always been a bit nervous about traveling, I suppose it's the fear of the unknown. Although, at age 18, I moved across the country to a place I had seen only twice in my life, alone, so I'm not always a scaredy cat. Having gone to Italy in February, and now Costa Rica this week, I believe the wanderlust within me has awoken. The two trips were as vastly different as they could be. In Italy, we spent a week viewing man-made treasures, art in opulent and majestic galleries. We feasted on cheese and wine and pasta, and then feasted again on the rich sights of the Vatican. We took trains to the beautiful cities of Pisa, Florence, Milan, Rome and Montecatini. The days were filled from morning till night, sometimes blending into each other like watercolors, where we had forgotten what we had seen until we could process it days later. It was a week of history, and art, and beauty and family. This week, in Guanacaste, has also been about beauty and family, but entirely differ...

Coming up on my fourteenth wedding anniversary, I've had a bit of time to reflect about not only our nuptials, but about the wedding process itself, and in doing so, I've found that retrospect has provided me with certain tools in which I could assist future brides. First, the ring. If you are with a man who loves you unconditionally, who can put up with your bullshit for an entire lifetime, and whose bullshit will only drive you to drink occasionally, but who isn't exactly cash rich, it would seem to make more sense to put aside the shallow need for diamonds, and accept his proposal, and his promises for a beautiful future at face value. The baubles and bangles can come later, when they won't put him (or you both) into debt.   Speaking of debt, don't begin your married life drowning in it. While I understand that putting one's self into debt is currently America's favorite past time, it is a terrible thing to be saddled with maxed out credit cards during...