State of the Belle

Since I've last blogged, nearly a month ago, these things have happened:

• I'm still alive. No, really.
  
• I discovered that I make really great pudding and custard, but do not how to work with gelatin. Panna cotta FAIL.
  
• I baked challah and offered some to my Jewish friends, who politely informed me "thanks, but it's Passover." Consideration for Jewish people FAIL.
• We bought a portable gas grill, which I have named "Gary." As in, Gary the Gas Grill. He has changed our lives, and we are really blessed to have Gary. Not so much healthier though. Instead of grilling vegetables and say, tofu, we grill sausages and steaks. Mmm.
• I traveled out of town recently and had a lot of fun with bloggy friends.
• I really hated that "Ghosts" episode of Dollhouse. Also, hate sex looks so terrible and violent and and creepy. Agent Ballard takes a dark turn.
  
• I decided that 30 Rock is one of my favorite shows, and that I will repeat the funny lines as often as I can. Such as "Am I in a barn full of horses? Because all I'm hearing is naysaying. Wordplay!"
  

• I experienced a crisis of dissonance and felt like a total housewife with the shopping and the cooking and the research on gender in the workplace and work/life balance and threw a fit and refused to cook.....for a day. We cooked together, which is what we do when he is not working 16 hour days. We had a nice dinner out. This is what it's like to date me. Occasionally I get fits of "what does it all mean" and "how can I be a feminist employment discrimination and organizations scholar if I do most of the housework and shop at Walmart" panic. Then we go out to dinner and I relax over a drink and some not local/seasonal/sustainable/fair trade food. Then I consider it a bit, and realize that my one person consumer boycott isn't that effective, and breaking that boycott to buy my beloved Gary the Gas Grill doesn't make me a bad person, and nor does my failure to be completely ethical in every consumer choice (I try. I don't try hard. I am okay with that.) Then I realize that equality for equality's sake doesn't mean much, if it makes us fight. The principle of the thing is not as important as getting the thing done, especially if it's something valuable, like having a nice, normal, no-argument dinner.
  
• I decided that sweeping twice a day in my Neverending Battle Against Dust might be considered OCD, so I went all week this week without sweeping. Result: Grossed out, but sane.
• My Neverending Battle Against Dust generally results in several discussions with TD about my disappointment in myself and the cleanliness of my apartment, and I asked him, as a person who grew up with shoes in the house, how it is that American babies survive and do not die. He says that the dust makes his people of hardier stock. We decided that a blog called Stuff White People Do That I Don't Get, with a picture of myself throwing up my hands in confusion, would probably be offensive. That's when he called me OCD and said that dirt is good for babies, so having a sterile baby inside a hermetically sealed bubble was out of the question. Knowing that if I posed such a debate to The Internet I would lose this argument, I decided not to blog about this.
  
• I got really sick of blogging. Then I half-composed long essays in my head, and forgot to write down the ideas. Then I got overwhelmed by the idea of drafting long, 1,000-2,000 word posts about yuppie guilt, enviro-sanctimonialism and how it thwarts its own good goal, lobbying vs. social movements, fashion, friendship, love, why first generation Americans are more patriotic than fourth generation Americans (based on my limited study of N=2), etc. So I just didn't blog. I'm sorry. Maybe if I just blogged links to articles I found interesting, blogging would be easier and not so draining and taxing before I even set cripply fingers to keys. But then I would just be a link-dumping blog, which I find boring and antithetical to my typically verbose, moderately insightful self. But being verbose and trying to be insightful is what exhausts me about blogging, and so maybe I should give up that schtick anyway, or else give up blogging entirely. Maybe I should move my "article of interest"micro-blogging from Twitter (yes, I'm on Twitter) back to my blog.
  
• I'm preparing for the Law and Society Annual Meeting at the end of May. You should email me if you're going and want to meet up.
• I am now going to sweep my apartment and work on my paper.