full of thanks
In the spirit of American Thanksgiving (or you know, the cultural genocide of a whole indigenous people WHO WERE THERE FIRST DAMMIT!), here are a few things I am thankful for this week:
I love my bedroom so much! #myliteralhappyplace
Clean sheet day combined with new duvet cover day! I can’t wait to go to bed.
Spending about $100 less than usual on groceries because I went to the Real Canadian Wholesale Club for the first time tonight and I think it may be my new favourite place for food shopping because they also have other cool things like mega packs of post-it notes and more vegan options than Costco and both my other regular stores!
Buying well made clothing from local companies like Gus Sloan, because Lauren is amazing and she let me come and try on all the LBJs (Little Black Jumpsuits) until I found the perfect one for me! Pics to come shortly - because I am short and needed it hemmed! Until then, check out her website and if you are on the hunt for an easy to dress up outfit for all those upcoming holiday parties, the Limited Edition Holiday LBJ is the perfect solution to this problem!
All the Black Friday emails from every list or shop or whatever-have-you I have ever subscribed to - BECAUSE I AM UNSUBSCRIBING FROM IT ALL ON SATURDAY!
A solid plan for Christmas celebrations with both of our families, that includes everyone and, fingers crossed, keeps everyone happy! (Now to get a certain someone on board with my need for a new “upstairs” tree! I’ve got my eye on something like this!)
This one from Michael’s would be PERFECT!
Now, I hope all your dinners went off without too may hitches, no one got into a fist fight over politics, you hugged and laughed and loved all of your peoples, and everyone realized how very fortunate we are to have the things we have (food, shelter, loved ones).
Now, I am off to that gorgeous bed to snuggle my gorgeous partner and sleep a glorious sleep!
Goodnight.
XOXO,
N~
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I’m taking part in National Blog Posting Month, which means I’m posting on this blog {almost} every day throughout November. You can follow along and see who else is posting this month by checking out these hashtags on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter: #NetPositiveBlog and #NaBloPoMo.
soul medicine
Music takes me to good places.
Places where I move, and I am moved, and then cry, and love, and remember, and then cry some more.
Music can also gets me out of a bad place, and for various reasons, this week, I’ve been in some bad places. Sad places, mad places, places that make me want to curl up and not participate in the regularly scheduled program that is my life. (You get that these “places” are in my mind right?)
Today I wanted out of those places.
And so this day is brought to you by two albums I have been listening to on repeat all damn day long.
The first is the re-imagined soundtrack of The Greatest Showman. A beautiful movie, incredibly well-done, about a super-duper problematic white dude who abused and exploited many of his performers and animals.
AND RIGHT NOW I DON’T CARE ABOUT THAT, because I LOVE this soundtrack. These reimagined tracks, recorded by various wonderful artists is SUPERB! I am particularly in love with the Panic! at the Disco version of “The Greatest Show”, Pink’s ‘A Million Dreams” and the Missy Elliot/Kesha/Keala Settle version of “This is Me”. I mean, talk about personal theme songs!
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Album number two is of course, the soundtrack from A Star is Born. I mean, come on! THIS MOVIE! I cried so much and I loved it so much and I want Bradley Cooper’s Jackson Maine to be my personal folk/country/rock singer boyfriend FOREVER! I literally fought with my music industry professional brother-in-law this past weekend when he deigned to try to tell me that Bradley didn’t play the guitar in the movie or sing and record the vocals live. I TOTALLY WON THAT ONE - because no one messes with my make-believe, messed-up, drunken, country/folk/rock singing, guitar playing boyfriend!
And GAGA was a GAWDAMMN phenomenon in this movie. A vision, a star, a freaking super NOVA. Umm, yeah, so…
I’m a bit of a fan-girl.
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It worked.
Like it always does.
Music is like medicine for my soul and today I needed a big IV bag full of that medicine delivered straight to my insides. (via my lovely Bose noise-cancelling headphones - good gawd do I ever love these things!)
Happy listening people.
Remember to take your soul medicine!
N~
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I’m taking part in National Blog Posting Month, which means I’m posting on this blog {almost} every day throughout November. You can follow along and see who else is posting this month by following these hashtags on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter: #NetPositiveBlog and #NaBloPoMo.
#thepersistence
I am mad today. And I’ve been vague-stagramming on my IG stories.
Because shitty men continue to be shitty.
Case in point:
Last week the Canadian magazine Maclean’s, published this front page cover.
AKA Canada’s mediocre white frontmen.
I mean, have you ever seen a more tone deaf and fucking WHITE AF cover? I think The Beaverton put it succinctly in their satirical post about it…
“ ...we are hoping that by appropriating a term currently used to describe disenfranchised communities trying to fight for their survival and instead applying that term to a bunch of powerful politicians who are doing their best to make the world burn, we can once again really show people how out of touch Maclean’s truly is.”
The internet dragged Maclean’s quite mercilessly over it, AS IT SHOULD HAVE, and you can read some of the best of the tweets and one-liners in this article from Vice. One particular response and reimagined cover photo from Janet Eremenko, the NDP candidate for Calgary-Elbow, was particularly inspired and oh, so, true.
True because while everyone was recoiling from calling a bunch of rich, powerful, white dudes The Resistance, this may in fact be the most honest thing said about them. Because they ARE resisting. Resisting the waves upon waves of PERSISTENCE (particularly that of women) that keeps coming and coming and coming. Relentless, unwavering, unstoppable, PERSISTENT. Nevertheless and always.
And I am not sorry to say this, (and you knew it was coming)…
{this kind of} RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.
I was so inspired that I made this. Me. The not-very-crafty one. (Truth - I made a ton of mistakes, had to redo the P and correct a typo, yes, A TYPO. But yeah, I MADE THIS!)
I wore my newly embellished sweater today and felt those waves of persistence building in me. And then I checked the internet and stumbled across this article in the Atlantic titled The Nancy Pelosi Problem and felt those waves getting even bigger and stronger. You’ll have to read the whole thing, but here’s just a taste of what the “problem” is:
“The more successful Pelosi is—the more she outmaneuvers and dominates her male adversaries—the more threatening she becomes. And the easier it becomes to tar the male Democratic candidates who would serve under her as emasculated yes-men. Which makes it harder for Democrats to retake the House.”
It is not that Nancy Pelosi is not qualified to do her job, if anything, she’s a bloody genius as a House Leader and Speaker. The “problem” is that she is a woman in control. A woman in control of men. A WOMAN WHO PERSISTS, while all around her, people keep trying to make her feel and seem less than she is. And she refuses to let them. Look, I don’t know everything about Pelosi and her politics and there may be many reasons to not like her, but her being a woman who has climbed to the top and realized her ambitions and worked her ass off, is not one of them.
Ladies, (yes, I am talking to only the women now, men, go scroll through The Chive or something) It’s not just the Nancy Pelosis and the Hilary Clintons and the Elizabeth Warrens and the Rachel Notleys of this world who have to fight this “resistance” of men who are threatened by the very same attributes they value the highest in themselves. It is you and me and all of us. Fighting the messages that we are “less than”, or “not enough”, and all the other garbage that we are fed a steady diet of from birth until death because of our gender. (And FYI, this goes double for anyone who identifies outside the binary of male/female, POC and LGBTQ2S folx).
I’m so done with this shit. I am done saying what I have to say while coddling the feelings of the men who may not like to hear the truth so plainly put. I’m tired of people making funny “feminist” jokes around me, because they know I’m the LOL Stay at Home Feminist. I’m tired of doing the all too familiar workaround of convincing men of a course of action by manipulating the conversation to make it look like it was their idea all along. And I am so very tired of stunting my emotional growth to accommodate anyone else’s schedule.
Oh, and you know what else I am tired of? Shitty men, being total harassing douchebags to women and thinking that in this day and age they are gonna get away with it. #TIMESUPMOTHERFUCKERS
THESE WAVES OF PERSISTENCE ARE GONNA CRASH HARD AND THEY WILL WASH THIS BEACH CLEAN! (I don’t know, it’s a metaphor, just go with it.)
Like I said.
I am mad.
I think this is my baseline from now on.
Deal with it.
Join #thepersistence.
We have cool sweaters.
N~
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I’m taking part in National Blog Posting Month, which means I’m posting on this blog {almost} every day throughout November. You can follow along and see who else is posting this month by following these hashtags on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter: #NetPositiveBlog and #NaBloPoMo.
Board-Approved Non-Instructional Days
Our school system has established this weird “November Break” where the kids are off for a total of 5 days (including the weekend). It’s a bit frustrating actually. It’s not quite long enough to take a full on vacation (although quite a few folks I know do and just take the whole week anyway) and it is also not short enough to just be a super long weekend kind of thing. Nearby places to take off to (ie, the Rocky Mountains in Jasper or Banff) are in the shoulder season and while you can find some good deals on hotels during these times, many restaurants and shops in these towns are closed and the weather is completely unpredictable - some years there is enough snow and ice to do winter activities, other years you can hike the more popular trails easy peasy and with far less tourists around.
I am sure if I had my shit together, I could have figured out something for us to do, but in the end, I said “Fuck it, we are just staying home and chilling this year”. Probably because I am kinda tired of being the planner of EVERYTHING and also….
Hmmm….
Nope, actually that is it. I was too damn tired and fed up to book anything and have it all on me to be the family travel agent. AGAIN.
So we’ve been staying home, watching movies and Netflix shows (we are all totally into The Dragon Prince right now), the kids are probably playing WAY too much Fortnite and Roblox, and I am trying to maintain my regularly scheduled activities and giving them some independence while I am at it. Oh, and my friend Marissa also gave them a job this week and they have been delivering handbills all over our neighbourhood for the AMAZING #MadeinAlberta On the Spot Pop Up Show happening this weekend in Edmonton. (They were motivated to do this mainly because one of our “Family Gaming Rules” is if they want money to buy anything from an App or Game, they have to earn it, it can not come from their allowance.)
Go to this and do ALL your Christmas shopping this weekend!
You’d think with all of these “days off” I would’ve had plenty of time to write and keep up with #NaBloPoMo. Well, you’d be wrong. Days off for kids ACTUALLY means days ON for parents. I mean, I know I should not complain TOO MUCH about them wanting to hang out with me. I know this phase won’t last much longer. And yes, I am digging the past few lazy mornings cuddled up in my bed and their dad coming to give us all kisses goodbye as he heads out to work. But I am a Capricorn people! Order and routine are my JAMS.
Come to think of it though, I’ve actually accomplished quite a few things in the past few days, with some help from the kids and my handy dandy paper To Do lists. I picked up what needed picking up, returned what needed returning. Finished a template/sample of a new crafty thing I am working on. Made a trip to IKEA - IN AND OUT in under 45 minutes - WINNING! And rearranged the whole basement in order to make us a new workout/practice/home gym space.
If I build it, I will come (use it). Right?
I really have no point to this post other than, LOOK, I wrote all these words just to tell you why I haven’t been getting my posts written and up on the blog, But, look, LOTS OF WORDS. And I am about to hit publish.
So there.
I only missed three days.
I am NOT throwing in the towel on this thing!
XOXO,
N~
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I’m taking part in National Blog Posting Month, which means I’m posting on this blog {almost} every day throughout November. You can follow along and see who else is posting this month by following these hashtags on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter: #NetPositiveBlog and #NaBloPoMo.
sassy dragon says go to bed
Life is busy.
Kids have dance, and sports, and music, and school.
Grown ups have meetings, and social commitments, and sports, and the gym, and driving the kids to and from the list above, and that is not even including work.
Today was one of those busy days for us.
One kid was just DONE by 7 PM, and showered and in bed, completely passed out by 7:30.
The other one shortly thereafter.
We grownups watched a movie on Netflix, and literally forced ourselves to keep our eyes open for the last 32 minutes of it.
In hindsight, I probably should have gone to bed at 9 PM myself.
It was a busy day, but a good day. We spent it with family and friends. I wanted us to go and do one more thing, but in the end, that didn’t happen.
I’m happy that we have such a full life.
And I’m happy for my new piece of art courtesy of my nephew.
The best part is that the googly eye moves and if you tilt it a certain way, this dragon is a total sassy-pants!
Sassy dragon says it time to say,
Goodnight my lovelies.
N~
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I’m taking part in National Blog Posting Month, which means I’m posting on this blog every day throughout November. You can follow along and see who else is posting this month by following these hashtags on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter: #NetPositiveBlog and #NaBloPoMo.
#followfriday: The Instagram Edition
Since we are going all old school with this blogging thing this month, how about a good ol’ #followfriday?
It’s safe to say that Instagram is my favourite social media platform. If you don’t already, come on over and follow me: @stayathomefeminist.
With our further ado, here are just a few of my favourite accounts:
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1. @sukiicat
Yes, I follow a cat on Instagram. Suki might just be the most beautiful Bengal cat I have ever seen and she loves outdoor adventures. Her mama is a photographer and this account is just pure beauty. It’s Meow-valous! (I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist).
90.9k Likes, 836 Comments - Suki Cat (@sukiicat) on Instagram: "Professional meowdel for hire 😹"
2. @jengotch
Jen has it all. A wildly successful business (you might’ve heard of @shopbando), amazing friends, a really awesome podcast, and depression and at times debilitating anxiety. She’s not afraid be vulnerable on her IG and tell us all about the later, and I love her for all of it. I think we would be super duper friends if we ever met IRL. I mean, just look at her glasses!
10.7k Likes, 194 Comments - jen gotch (@jengotch) on Instagram: "Just a picture of A lady in a cute coat working hard to identify her value and gain self worth...."
Are you really surprised that I follow a house on Insta? I mean just look at this place! I love the colours, the mid-century design, the way the owners (Dani and her partner from @dazey_la) have decorated the place, ALL OF IT! Oh, yeah, and it’s available as an AirBnB for anyone looking for a fabulous place to stay while visiting Palm Springs! I’ll be visiting once the Orange Nightmare is out of office. Until then, I love just looking at this amazing place.
511 Likes, 6 Comments - Dazey Desert House (@dazey_desert_house) on Instagram: "Gotta love a good breakie nook for weekends spent in 🍳✨ #dazeydeserthouse #palmsprings..."
4. @sarahb.h
Sarah is my go to #hairinspo person. She rocks her pixie hair in all different shades and has a kick-ass personal style to go with it. She is also about to launch her very own styling pomade (@pixiechickbeauty) this month and I can’t wait to get it on my own pixie head!
11.8k Likes, 480 Comments - Sarah B. (@sarahb.h) on Instagram: "Giving my hair a break from bleaching for a bit - sooo I went back to my natural color! It's such a..."
I’ve been a fan of Jenna and her sister-in-Law Aimee (@hobbs_photoandfilm) for a few years now. I was honoured to be chosen to participate in their A Mother’s Beauty campaign this year and meet these two talented women in person. Jenna’s farm life as documented on her personal IG account is the thing of dreams. A simple life. LOTS of Kids. Animals. Love. And happy, dirty, faces.
362 Likes, 3 Comments - Jenna Hobbs (@thehobbsfarm) on Instagram: "Who needs a playground. #thehobbsfarm"
Go check out these wonderful Instagram accounts and let me know in the comments who else I should be following!
XOXO,
N~
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I’m still going. It’s November, and in November we write. Almost every day. Follow along at #nablopomo and #netpositiveblog on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to see who else is in on this. Let’s get back to sharing our stories and writing just because. Because we can be the light, because we need to really SEE each other more now than ever before, and because good things will happen when we do.
swimming in ickyness.
Yes, I know.
We all have US Midterm Elections emotional hangovers this week, and maybe you don’t want to hear anything more about it for a few days. It’s OK. I get it. It was a lot to take in and you are allowed to take a break from all of it.
But before you do, I want to share with you something that happened in my world post-election coverage.
Today, I had to call someone IN.
What the heck does that mean, you ask?
You are likely very familiar with what calling someone out means, i.e., the public shaming often done via social media to someone for their behaviour or words or actions that hurt others. A call-out can be necessary at times, but, in my opinion, is not always the best way to get someone to change their behaviour or to see the error of their ways.
Calling someone IN, on the other hand, is done from a place of love, from a place of wanting the best for this other person and it is asking for them to sit back and reconsider how their words or actions affect others.
I prefer to work from a CALL-IN frame of mind when I can.
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Back to the elections.
The numbers coming from Texas Tuesday night in the Senate race between Beto O’Roorke and Ted Cruz were especially disheartening. As we all know, Beto lost and this was a big blow to many people, some whom I know personally and were on the campaign trail with him. I posted this status on FB before I collapsed into bed with post-election-viewing-exhaustion.
What's on my mind Facebook?
59% of white women in Texas. That's what's on my mind! And OH. MY. GOD. do I ever want to give every single effing one of them a giant piece of my mind!!
Below is the updated graph and breakdown of how folks voted in Texas. And yes, I know it isn’t just white women, but for today’s lesson, let’s pretend it is. (‘Cause, IT IS!)
This is why we can’t have NICE THINGS!!
I went to sleep and when I woke up Wednesday, I checked my FB notifications. Yes, yes, I know, terrible habit to have first thing in the morning, but whatever…
And I saw it.
#notthiswhitewoman
And I cringed.
I knew what I had to do.
But I avoided doing it right that moment. It was uncomfortable, I didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings first thing in the morning, I wasn’t sure exactly how to do it.
I put my phone down and went and had a shower and got dressed and made the kids lunches and then drove them the 2 minutes to school because for some reason snow pants INSIDE the backpack makes so much more sense to tween-agers than on your actual body when it’s -14 degrees outside.
When I came back and had made my coffee and reopened Facebook to try to figure out how to address this comment, a WOC had done what I didn’t (have the guts to) do earlier and had already called out the hashtagger. The exchange had started to get ugly as these things often do in the impersonal world that is FB.
I don’t want to mention names, because they don’t matter to the grander conversation. What I want to do is point out are the key take-aways from this exchange, that happened both in public and via private message, in the hopes that going forward, we can all be better at Calling In our people when they err, and also at understanding why we feel so personally attacked when we are called out.
First point: ANY iteration of the #notall hashtag (#notallmen, #notallwhitewomen, or the ever popular #alllivesmatter) is hurtful and not at all helpful. It is the equivalent to pulling out your DIVERSITY BINGO CARD and waving it around screaming, “Look at me, I’m one of the good ones!”. And in case you think I am being preachy, let me tell you, I did this once and OOOOOWWEEEEE, did I ever get called out! So, yes, I know first hand that it doesn’t feel good to be told that you are actually not the special unicorn you think you are because you did the most basic/decent thing.
Point two: Instead of the knee jerk reaction of pointing out how YOU didn’t do “the bad thing” and are therefore not to blame, this is the moment to sit down and think about WHY so many people who look like you DID do “the bad thing” and try to figure out what to do about that. If you aren’t part of the 61% of women who voted for Cruz, good on you, just don’t expect special cookies for your vote for Beto. (Although, I bet he would probably give you a cookie - because he’s that GOOD!)
HEAR ME MY FELLOW PROGRESSIVE WHITE WOMEN, it is up to us to realize that even if we are not part of the subset of our group that is being criticized, in this instance (and many, MANY others), the white women who voted for the white man who is actively working to HURT so many people, we don’t get to point this out. The people being hurt do not need to hear this and see us patting ourselves on our own backs. What they need is for us to put on our big girl pants, and possibly some safety gear, and dive into the shitty mess of all these other white women and try our best to pull them out of the literal poop they are swimming in.
When I took this particular convo with my friend offline and into private message, she expressed how, as a white women, it is so frustrating to feel as if she can’t be mad too, or can be blamed for the actions/inactions of others. She was upset because she felt that framed that way it all feels hopeless, and no matter what white women do, it will never be enough.
I think we both had an #AHAmoment then and realized that THESE FEELINGS RIGHT HERE, are EXACTLY what is meant by the term white fragility. It’s not comfortable. It makes us feel ICKY. It’s not easy to acknowledge that we have benefited from the white supremacist patriarchal system that upholds our whiteness above all else.
No one likes to feel icky.
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For those of us who want to see REAL CHANGE in our world, we need to come to terms with this as our new normal. These uncomfortable icky feelings. We have to GET comfortable with them. Or at the very least, get to the point where we recognize them for what they are. And yeah, truth be told, it may NEVER be enough to make up for everything that has been done in the name of whiteness.
For my part, it also means we deal with this stuff as soon as we see it. I messed up in this situation by letting a WOC start a conversation I knew I needed to and I own that mistake. I want to apologize to her and to so many WOC who do this on the regular for white women.
POINT THREE: NONE OF THIS MEANS WE GET TO SIT BACK AND GIVE UP EITHER.
It means we suit up and get ready for a long swim in the poop-water.
We’ve got a lot of sister-collecting to do WHITE LADIES!
N~
{hopeful} for not quite a deja vu
I’m sitting here tonight trying not to have nightmarish flashbacks of November 2016.
It’s Midterm Election night in the United States of America and I am this guy…
My husband doesn’t get why I get so worked up about these elections. I tell him that I love and care for far too many people south of our big-ass Canadian border to NOT be invested. Their lives matter to me and under the current administration, their lives, and well-being, and for far too many, thier very basic human rights are in jeopardy.
So yeah, I’m just over here refreshing my twitter feed. Retweeting EVERY TIME A WOMAN wins her race and rejoicing in the incremental gains that are coming out of this election (Yay Florida for reinstating voting rights for ex-felons). I don’t know if this is going to be the giant Blue Wave that everyone wanted or predicted or what have you, but I can tell you that it is bloody inspiring seeing the voter turn out numbers being reported and double-tapping and giving big hearts on all your proud #iVoted posts on Instagram and Facebook all day long.
source: this hour has 22 minutes Facebook page
This is also me right now. And also last week as I watched The Haunting of Hill House. Only tonight I am screaming, “DO NOT FUCK THIS UP FLORIDA!” at my screen, instead of “DON’T GO IN THE DUMBWAITER LUKE!”.
(Also, I may have a bit of a Netflix-watching problem. I’ve mentioned it twice in the same amount of posts. Will report back after I finish a few more episodes…)
I’ll leave you with this, because we could all use a bit of a tension release. Bless this child.
Oh and just so you know, I truly believe that regardless of the results of this election, I think one thing is very clear, The ReVOLuTIoN has indeed started….
Just in time for me to read this…
Book review coming soon!
Also, Florida and Texas better some damn recounts!
Okay, enough.
Try to get some sleep everyone.
Tomorrow we get up and we keep fighting.
For all of our friends and loved ones.
N~
I’m taking part in National Blog Posting Month, which means I’m posting on this blog every day throughout November. You can follow along and see who else is posting this month by following these hashtags on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter: #NetPositiveBlog and #NaBloPoMo.