Barbie Is not My Role Model

I would like to clear something up. Lots of people get all worked up about Barbie and her unrealistic appearance and superficial little careers and enormous boobs and so on. They say that she's a role model for girls and they're negatively affected by her unattainable figure and fancy career choices and that's why we're all fat and self conscious and insecure. I say no.

I spent countless hours of my childhood playing with Barbie and never once considered her a role model. She's a doll. Something I could dress up in ugly 80's dresses and give atrocious, non-reversable haircuts. Not something that gave me my self-worth or influenced my feelings about myself. I really didn't care if my Barbie was a flight attendant or doctor or garbage woman because seconds after I opened her, her "career" clothes were tossed into my ever growing mound of Barbie clothes and she was instantly as naked as the day she was born.

If anything, I projected my dreams onto my Barbies. Sometimes I'd make them singers. Sometimes I'd make them moms. Sometimes they'd be marrying Ken. And most of the time they were all three. I dressed them up the way I wanted in outfits that probably didn't match. I made them live out the little pretend life I chose for them.

It never once occurred to me that Barbie was skinny. Or that I should ever even look like that. Or that I should be a doctor because my Barbie was. She was just my doll that I could put lots of dresses on and make all pretty. That's what dolls are for. It's the people on TV and in movies that make me feel fat. Real actual living people. Not a doll.

I often wonder if the people who think Barbie is evil ever actually played with them as kids because they clearly have no understanding of the fun of Barbie. I suppose it's possible that they're just the Lisa Simpons of the world who, as 6-year-olds, sat around analyzing the affects their Barbies were having on them, finally deciding they were causing feelings of inadequacy before moving on to less offensive toys. This sounds like a depressing, boring childhood.

So everyone needs to just calm down. It's just a doll. Barbie was never such a destructive force until we made her one. Let's just let her be a toy instead of some big commentary on our society. There may be some young girls out there who have been adversely affected by their Barbie dolls, but if this is really happening, it seems to me that would only be pointing to a deeper issue. One that can't be fixed by something as simple as taking away a kid's dolls.

Ok, I will end my rant now. Let's just talk about how fun Barbies are. All my old ones are still in my mother's garage. I had a Little Mermaid one whose legs turned green after I took her in the bathtub with her fin on. It was worth it.

Then there was the one whose hair I cut so short (maybe by accident) that I started using her as a Ken doll instead. This sounds disturbing, but it's not. A little girl never ever has enough Ken dolls, so we do some crazy things out of desperation.

More recently, I've collected a few of the My Fair Lady Barbies. Scott bought me two of them a couple years ago for my birthday, shortly after we started dating. That might be when I knew I was going to marry him.

These are special to me because as a child I was obsessed with My Fair Lady and all I wanted was an Eliza doll. Apparently they were impossible to find in 1987, so I never got one. Now I have four. And it's heavenly.

Creepy Easter

Here are some things that creeped me out this Easter:

This hilarious picture from Awkwardfamilyphotos.com


And this lamb cake that was left on our free food counter at work:


It's been there for probably 4 hours so far today and nobody has touched it except for when I pulled it out to take a picture and ate one jelly bean. This, of course, is unheard of as most food on that counter is gone within an hour.

When did Easter get so creepy?

Special Delivery

Tonight I came home to a package waiting for me at the front door. It was some super cute shoes I ordered last week. Then, much to my horror, I noticed something sitting on top of my package: a baggie filled with dog poo. There was also a note that read:

It is against city ordinance to let your dog run around with out a leash. And leave turds in everyone's yard.

After laughing at the word "turd" for a few minutes, I realized I was going to have to remove this bag of poo from my package. The worst part was it wasn't even closed. It was just an open bag of poo sitting on my shoebox. I gingerly picked up the bag and placed it onto another package sitting next to mine, belonging to our famous, creepy, insane downstairs neighbors.

See, they're incredibly annoying and they just so happen to have this incredibly annoying dog. He barks all the time and they never bother to put him on a leash so he just roams free around the neighborhood. And apparently poos. Well, I've left many angry notes on their door in the past so I'm glad someone else is getting in on the action. Even if it does mean a bag of poo on my new shoes.

I'm A Mac. With A PC.

I did something disturbing last week. I purchased my first non-Apple computer. This is disturbing because for almost twenty years, I've been a loyal Mac user. When I was about ten years old, my mother purchased our first Mac—a Macintosh Performa 630CD. Yep, it had a CD player. And like a 32MB hard drive. Pretty cool.

Anyway, since then we've had a couple other awesome Macs and I bought myself an iBook in college. Then one day, disaster struck and my iBook died. It's seriously dead. I've tried reviving it a number of times with no luck.

So I've been without a laptop for some months now and it's been painful. Once you get used to a laptop, it's hard to go back. So when my mother informed me that her work was selling some Dell netbooks pretty cheap, I was tempted. So tempted that I really wanted one. Mostly because they had a purple one.

So I did it. I bought a PC. I had some moments of doubt and painful guilt, but I got through them and was satisfied that I paid less than 20% of what a new Mac would have cost me.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not giving up on Macs,. I fully intend to get another one when I'm not also trying to pay for a wedding. Plus, my wonderful future husband (and not a Mac enthusiast like me) has assured me that someday I will have another Mac. And to appease me in the meantime, he fancied up my little PC to make it look, quite successfully, like a Mac. Brilliant!



Meanwhile, after this ridiculous iPad business, I don't feel quite so guilty about punishing Apple. When they're ready to come out with a tablet that can multitask, use Flash, and doesn't sound like it should be sold in feminine needs aisle at the supermarket, I'll be all over it.

Subject Line Stress

For the past year or so I've basically stopped using subject lines for my emails whenever possible. Anytime I email someone who I know will open my email no matter what, I just leave it blank. There's such pressure to come up with a creative, clever subject line, that I just gave up (because that's how I roll). I also occasionally have to come up with subject lines for our newsletters at work which causes even more anxiety. I just couldn't take it anymore.

But this blank subject line business has started to make me feel boring and lazy, so I decided to go back to subject line writing. Only this time I decided my subject lines would be painfully literal ... not creative or clever. Oftentimes, this means that I don't even decide on a subject line until after I've finished the email so that I can come up with the most accurate subject line possible. Gone is the pressure to trick people into opening my email with a witty play on words or clever phrase. What you see is what you get.

I'm sure you're wondering, Couldn't this literal subject line writing someday become as stressful as the clever subject line writing? The answer is yes, maybe, but it's not as likely so quit bugging me!

So for now, I'm no longer feeling overwhelmed by subject line pressure and, I have to say, it's made me pretty happy. Now what to do about my blog post title anxiety ...

Cabin Fever

Over the weekend, I enjoyed my first trip to Galena, IL. The downtown was cute, we did a little shopping and some eating and some walking around. The most fun part, though, was the cabin we stayed in.

Our friend Matthew works for a fellow who owns a cabin in Elizabeth, IL, outside of Galena and we got to use it for the weekend. It's super cute and quaint, sitting on a dirt road. But most importantly: it has a hot tub.


Highlights of the weekend:

- Creepy Cows. On our first evening there we went on a night walk and ran into a herd of creepy cows. Maybe it was more the darkness that was creepy. Either way, they were in a field next to the road and soon we saw the silhouette of one of them coming towards us. Then we realized the entire herd was following us as we walked. I've never been so creeped out by cows.

- The Guestbook. The cabin had a guestbook with comments by others who have vacationed there. It was filled with stories of people getting locked out of the house in bikinis and meeting weird people, but the best stories were those of "Sue & Allen." Sue & Allen made at least 6 appearances in the guestbook and each one got longer and more disturbingly personal. We learned that they came to the cabin to get away from the busyness, "love each other" ("more and more and more ..."), and share many "special hugs." And each time, Allen lectured the reader about the need for peace and quiet and getting away. Thanks, Allen.

- Hot Tub. Yes, the hot tub was great, but it was even greater when the guys moved a small TV outside so we could watch What About Bob? in the hot tub. However, I do not recommend sitting in a hot tub for 2 hours.

- Trailer House. I was particularly entranced by this abandoned house with a trailer attached. Or was it a trailer with a house attached? I'm not sure. At any rate, it was abandoned and hillbilly and awesome.


Here are some other special moments:

Garbage Sled

You know what's great? When something you pick out of the garbage turns out to be awesome.

Last spring, I went on a garbage picking extravaganza with some friends of mine. It was truly amazing and I plan to do it again this year. But anyway, during our garbage picking I grabbed this old wooden sled. It wasn't in the best shape, but I figured it could be fun.

So Scott and I decided it was time to fix this thing up and get it going. We sanded down the rustiness and spray painted the metal blades a lovely, bright red:


It looks pretty sharp and we just have a little more painting to do. Then we took it out and gave it a try. I thought the blades might just get stuck in the snow, but it turned out to be fabulous. We went pretty fast and it was nice and smooth, unlike those dumpy plastic things they have today.


I know, I'm pretty cool. And I didn't even fall off once!