My thoughts turned to my friend at work who had given birth that day, and her baby who would always share a birthday with this tragedy. I thought of my other friend who is planning on welcoming twins into this world in October and taking the rest of the school year off to be with them. I thought of my childhood best friend whose daughter is almost a year old. And I thought, I am so lucky to not have children. Granted, their children are all too young to understand these heinous events, but they will grow older, and if this year is any indication, the world will only get worse. How do you deal with questions from a young child about why and what happened when these tragedies inevitably take place? I wasn’t even sure what I would tell my high school students in class the next day.

They say the eight-year-old boy who died in Boston that day was waiting for his dad to cross the finish line. They say his mother and sister were critically injured, as well. This could have been us. My husband, a marathon runner, has always wanted to run the Boston Marathon. We could have been there, and being in our late 20′s, we could have easily had a couple of kids in tow. We could have been cheering Dad on. And all I could think of was that I was so glad we weren’t.

Go read the whole thing, though. I think you might be surprised at the conclusion I eventually come to.

You may recall that we have two dogs. You might also assume that since we have a backyard and a fence with a gate that latches, that we often let the dogs out in the backyard instead of walking them. Usually they are unintended.

I woke up on Sunday morning, the day after Tim mowed the lawn, and packed my stuff for yoga. I bought a Groupon for the yoga place down the street, and I have been really excited to get back into the yoga game. I’ve missed it a lot, but it’s really expensive when you’re not taking classes through your gym like I used to do. Sunday was to be my first yoga class in a long time. So I got dressed, packed my stuff, got everything ready to go and realized I still had about half an hour before I had to leave. I let the dogs out of their crates (if we have to leave on a weekend morning, we sometimes leave them for whoever is staying behind, who is still asleep – it’s not cruel, I promise!) and let them outside. I made some tea and sat down to get started on a crossword puzzle.

The doorbell rang. At 9:10 on a Sunday morning. Very strange, indeed.

I cautiously answered the door (You really never know who is going to be on the other side of it, and we don’t have one of those peep-hole things since our door is mostly window covered by curtains. We really need to replace that door.) to find my neighbor standing there.

“Hi, do you have a beagle?” he asked.

“Yes…” I responded.

“Well, he is in my back yard and your gate is open. I think he got out.”

“Thank you! We’ll be right over to get him,” I said, closing the door. Then, “TIM! THE DOGS GOT OUT! OH MY GOD!”

He came running down the stairs as I ran out to the backyard to see if Penny was being the good girl she is and was still there. She was not.

Tim and I ran across the street to get Bailey, who was rigged up to a makeshift leash and drinking water from a tupperware bowl (we seriously have the nicest neighbors). I carried him home and Tim ran off to find Penny. We had no idea where she was, and the neighbors hadn’t seen her.

He was gone for 30 minutes. It was the longest 30 minutes of my life.

When he came back carrying her, I felt relief like I had never felt before. When he put her down inside, Bailey was overjoyed to see her, too. He must have known that she had been gone for a long time; maybe he even sensed my worry. I pet the two dogs vigorously, and gave them both hugs, then I turned my attention to Tim.

“You left the gate open after you mowed the lawn yesterday?” I asked.

“Must have,” he responded.

“I. Am. Going. To. KILL YOU.”

He hung his head in shame.

You can’t be too mad at that, so I made him come with me and the dogs on a 3-mile walk since I missed my yoga class I was so excited about and all was forgiven, but this wasn’t his first epic homeowner fail; in the fall, he bumped a knob on the gas stove as he was putting food in the microwave and left for something while I was still asleep. I woke up smelling gas in the bedroom, totally freaked out.

I will probably never let him forget the gas or the gate incidents, but it is more in the nature of good-hearted razzing or whenever I really want something than anything else (except when I’m super angry at him, and then I will bring these things up as proof that I am an all-around better person than he is). I do think, though, that this brings up some interesting questions. When I tell people about these incidents, I get the sense that people generally take an attitude of forgiveness: “Oh, no one is perfect! Don’t be too hard on him! He tries, bless his heart!” whereas when I screw up it’s dismay: “Oh, Ashley! Didn’t you check the gate when you left?” or “You mean to say you don’t triple check the stove and anything you might have plugged in or turned on before you leave the house every day?”

Actually, I do triple check everything I might have plugged in or turned on (and, now, I also triple check the stove) every day before I leave the house. I used to think that this was mostly paranoia with a dash of OCD, but I’m really starting to think that it’s what society tells me to do. If Tim leaves the gas on or gate open, he can just take comfort in the fact that nothing bad happened, whereas if I do something like that, I fear for all of the things that could have happened, even if they didn’t.

Is this a difference in our upbringing? In our personalities? In society’s influence on us?

It might be a little of both, but the media plays a huge role in this. When we see married couples on television or in movies, the husband is generally a doofus, always screwing up, while the wife is neurotic and perfect, always cleaning up after him. We tend to expect the same from real-life couples, even though that shouldn’t be the case.

As for me and Tim, our journey is one of mutual growth. I’m working on checking the house once before I leave, and Tim is also working on checking the house once before he leaves, though in a different way.

Do you find that, in your relationship, you are less likely to be forgiven than your male partner? If so, why do you think this is?

My office is in one of the bedrooms of our new house. I chose that location because I wanted to make the downstairs den into a library, and Tim had chosen the basement for his “man cave.” A bedroom seemed the perfect place for my office, and I definitely needed one because I do a lot of work from home, whether that’s grading papers or writing articles.

Recently, I’ve also started doing a lot of crafts. I like to have things to do, and I love making new things like jewelry, scarves, coasters, wreaths – you name it. If it’s a simple craft project, I’ll try it. (I don’t do things that are too difficult; I don’t have that kind of patience!)

My office already had a desk and a reading chair in it from when we furnished it this summer. The desk was moved from my bedroom at my mom’s house, and the chair was a birthday present from Tim. However, when I did my crafting, I either took over the entire kitchen island and the card tables in the basement to let things dry, or I had to move all of my writing stuff off of my desk to craft there.

Here’s the closet before:

So, I did what any crafter would do – I took the doors off the closet and put a cheap table from IKEA (seriously, it was $20) in there:

Then, I hung up some shelves and organized all of my craft materials in boxes and put them up on the shelves:

Then, I decorated and voila – a craft nook!

I absolutely love it. I have a space to craft that doesn’t require me to mess up other areas of the house, and if I make a mess, I can just close the curtain and pretend it’s not there. The card tables are also now set up in the unused bedroom next door instead of the basement, so I have drying space very close by.

Have you ever turned a closet into something more useful than simple storage? Tell me about it in the comments!

Tim has always been a runner. Since his high school days, he’s been on cross country and track teams. He gets up early in the morning to pound the pavement during the summer and, during the school year, he runs right after school before he loses momentum. His 30th birthday gift from me was a treadmill. His Christmas gifts from my mom have always been running-related, from new shoes to GPS fitness watches. His Christmas present from me was the fee for his next marathon.

As a runner, his goal has always been to run a marathon. He ran the Chicago Marathon on our first anniversary, and it was quite an experience for both of us. Watching the spectators get so riled up for the runners – for their friends and family, and for people they didn’t even know – was inspiring. Watching the runners was also inspiring. A few days after the marathon was over, I remember thinking that I could probably run a 5K. I started trying to train, but to no avail. I literally couldn’t run a mile before it hurt my entire body. I’ve walked seven 39.3-mile Avon Walks for Breast Cancer, but running wasn’t for me. Just knowing that anyone could run 26.2 miles – that my husband could run 26.2 miles – was mind boggling. They take themselves to the limits of physicality, and survive.

The running community was also new to me. Everywhere we went, Tim would find someone who was also a runner, and they would become instant BFFs. They talked about shoes and technique and the grueling training runs. They welcomed anyone with open arms, whether you ran a mile every day or were training for a marathon.

I think the best thing about marathons is that it isn’t about winning. You sign up knowing you aren’t going to win the race. It’s about doing something you never thought you could do, and being proud of yourself for doing it. No matter how many marathons you run, it’s always the same. It’s never any less of an accomplishment. And you get to share in that accomplishment with the running community as a whole, and with your friends and family who come to cheer you on.

As a marathon runner (I consider anyone who has run even one marathon a marathon runner), Tim’s other lifelong goal has been to run the Boston Marathon – the holy grail of marathons. He knows he probably will never qualify to run it, but when we were in Boston this summer, we met a woman who told Tim he could run without qualifying if he ran for a charity. Since he would run for a charity anyway (he ran for Ronald McDonald House in Chicago, which had nothing to do with whether or not he was allowed to register), he decided this was the way to do it. He even looked into it, but then life got in the way and we just forgot. We loved Boston so much when we visited, and I idly brought up his running the marathon there a few times because I desperately wanted to go back. For this reason, I’ve also suggested he run marathons in Napa Valley and Paris, too. Being married to a marathon runner might mean lonely Saturday mornings while he is out on his 20-mile training runs, but it can also mean traveling to great places to cheer him on.

I didn’t even realize the Boston Marathon was Monday until one of my students asked me if I had heard what happened. He saw the news on Twitter. As they were working, I quickly looked up some information and, immediately when school let out, I texted Tim and my mom to find out if we knew anyone there. We always know someone who runs the Boston Marathon, but strangely, luckily, this year no one went.

When I got home, I hugged my marathon runner tightly, just as I did when he crossed the finish line in Chicago. I felt so fortunate to be able to do so. I felt so fortunate that he had not signed up for this year’s Boston Marathon. And then I felt guilty for being happy he wasn’t living out his dream.

I watched the news in horror on Monday, and I walked around like I was living in a dream yesterday. I couldn’t even comprehend what had happened, and it didn’t make it any better that our nation has no idea why it happened. I cried many times, unable to think of why anyone would attack spectators at an event that is all about the human spirit and camaraderie.

This tragedy hits close to home in the same way school shootings do because, frankly, it could have been me or Tim or our families. I think it has also struck me so deeply because this was an event that was all about the human spirit and camaraderie. Who could possibly think of attacking spectators anywhere, let alone at a place where they are there to cheer on athletes who are neither celebrities nor wealthy because of their athletic prowess? Who could possibly think of turning an open event that champions endurance and perseverance above all else?

I doubt we will have answers to these questions soon, if ever. My hope is that there was, in fact, a reason behind this and it wasn’t just someone looking for attention. There is no reason that will justify this carnage, but I think some kind of explanation would be better than simple attention-seeking behavior. Maybe not. I don’t really know.

I don’t know much of anything right now, to be honest. The thought of Monday’s events depress me completely. If I’m being completely honest, I should say it scares me a good deal. Tim is running another marathon in November, and he will probably run Boston sometime in the near future; he’s already talking about it as a possibility for next year. I’ll go, and I’ll cheer, but I’ll also be careful, and I would be lying if I said I won’t be worried. But the most important thing we can do right now is continue to run, and continue to cheer, and hug our runners and our cheerleaders a little more tightly, and take our cue from the running community: celebrate perseverance, be astonished by endurance, champion camaraderie, and nourish our spirits in whatever way we can.

Though I do believe that many liberal people listen to WBEZ – and NPR in general – I wouldn’t even necessarily call it a liberal station. Part of its refreshing nature is its unbiased reporting. For example, they ran a series not too long ago about gun owners and their various reasons for having guns. They didn’t push a gun control angle or anything, they just interviewed people about their guns. The viewpoints were amazing and eye-opening, especially for a liberal, pro-gun control activist such as myself.

It’s also wonderful to listen to WBEZ because of its lack of advertising. So much of advertising today is all about pushing, pushing, pushing using whatever techniques work. Ads have gone from hilarious and smart to offensive and disgusting in a very short time, and I don’t think this is just my heightened consciousness since I’ve become involved in the feminist community.

So imagine my surprise when, as I’m listening to Pandora radio and crafting in my new craft nook (post about that coming soon) and I hear an ad for WBEZ asking listeners to create more babies in order to make more new listeners for the station. The ad directed listeners to a website – gomakebabies.com (I wish I were making this up) – which is a sort of dating site for NPR listeners.

Aside from the obvious questionable implications of asking users to hook up with each other, this ad campaign brings up a host of issues that I don’t think their marketing people anticipated. It can be seen as a comment on birth control, abortion, family planning, fertility, heterosexuality, and a demand to create more babies – something women (particularly those my age) are all too familiar with.

The underlying assumption here is that everyone wants babies, everyone can have babies, and NPR listeners should conceive those babies in heterosexual relationships. Furthermore, it seems that WBEZ doesn’t care if its a sustainable relationship or a one night stand.

While many have argued that this is pure satire, I disagree. Dictionary.com defines satire as: “1. the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing,denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.; 2. a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.” WBEZ’s marketing campaign may be using irony or sarcasm, but they are not denouncing or deriding vice, and they certainly aren’t scorning or ridiculing human folly. They are, in fact, making the completely logical assumption that children are often exposed to WBEZ by their parents and, if listeners had more babies, they would in turn become listeners themselves. This isn’t satire; this is logic. Satire isn’t asking people to have more babies, it’s asking people to eat their babies to avoid famine. Satire is something so ridiculous it couldn’t possibly be true. Since it is so logical, WBEZ’s attempt fell extremely short of satire.

Attempts at a literary technique that seems simple yet is ridiculously difficult to complete correctly aside, part of what I love about independently funded media is the reprieve I get from the constant baby push. It seems that everywhere I turn – blogs, shows, movies, advertisements, friends and family – has something to say about my bearing children. WBEZ was one place I could go where I was confident I wouldn’t have to suffer yet more pressure to pop out some babies. Unfortunately, this no longer seems to be the case.

I truly expected more from WBEZ. I expected them and their marketing people to be more attune to their demographic, who are “Interesting People” according to the billboard pictured above and, as such, are probably educated. It’s a well-known fact that educated people are waiting longer and longer to have children and don’t want to be pressured to hurry up. Regardless of demographics, I expected them to have more empathy for people who don’t want kids or who can’t conceive or who identify as LGBTQ and are completely overlooked by these ads. Apparently my expectations were too high.

I will probably not stop listening to WBEZ, but I am wholeheartedly disappointed that it has joined the ranks of horrible marketing we see every single day.

Photo Credit: Nico Lang, WBEZ

We need hosts for future editions, so if you are interested, contact me or leave a comment!

One of my students was using an article titled “The Trouble with Bright Girls” by Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. In it, it states that we as a society treat our bright girls differently than we do our boys:

Researchers have uncovered the reason for this difference in how difficulty is interpreted, and it is simply this: more often than not, bright girls believe that their abilities are innate and unchangeable, while bright boys believe that they can develop ability through effort and practice.

How do girls and boys develop these different views? Most likely, it has to do with the kinds of feedback we get from parents and teachers as young children. Girls, who develop self-control earlier and are better able to follow instructions, are often praised for their “goodness.” When we do well in school, we are told that we are “so smart,” “so clever, ” or ” such a good student.” This kind of praise implies that traits like smartness, cleverness, and goodness are qualities you either have or you don’t.

Boys, on the other hand, are a handful. Just trying to get boys to sit still and pay attention is a real challenge for any parent or teacher. As a result, boys are given a lot more feedback that emphasizes effort (e.g., “If you would just pay attention you could learn this,” “If you would just try a little harder you could get it right.”) The net result: when learning something new is truly difficult, girls take it as sign that they aren’t “good” and “smart”, and boys take it as a sign to pay attention and try harder.

I find that this is probably very true of my students. They have been treated so differently – and continue to be throughout high school. As a result, it is much more likely that I see a girl completely give up and never turn it around, but I see boys fluctuate between good work and bad work all the time.

Now, this is anecdotal and not researched evidence, but that doesn’t matter because my students are not what made this article interesting to me. What made it interesting is how it made me think about how Tim and I treat our dogs.

Our first “born,” Penny, is an incredibly bright terrier mix. She is a wonderful, loyal dog who is full of energy and needs constant mental stimulus. I’m also almost positive that she understands literally every word I say to her, so when she doesn’t do what we want her to do, we are almost positive that she is willfully disobeying. She is definitely our “bright girl.”

Her younger “brother,” Bailey, is a lazy, cuddly beagle. He is perfectly happy sitting in an entirely different room than the pack, either staring wistfully out the window (and occasionally howling at passersby) or sleeping on his favorite blanket. His laziness sometimes comes off as unintelligence because he doesn’t ever quite get what we’re asking him to do. In these instances, instead of the expression of overt defiance that Penny gives us, Bailey’s expression looks more like, “Huh?”

With Penny, we often treat her as if she either gets a command or she doesn’t. If she does, she’s a “good girl.” If she doesn’t, we get a little frustrated. With Bailey, we often treat him as if the effort is the thing we are looking for. If we tell him to come to us and he makes it halfway, we praise the initial decision to follow the command, not necessarily the follow-through.

Now, you could argue that we do this because our dogs are so incredibly different and, therefore, require different training. Terriers are inherently very smart and quick to learn. Beagles, on the other hand, are notoriously low-energy. It’s possible that, if Penny were a male and Bailey were a female, we would still be treating them as we do now because of our breed, but what if we are treating them differently because this is the way we have been socialized to treat boys and girls?

I’ll never know the answer to this question, but it does make me think about how we will one day raise our child. Will we inadvertently treat him or her differently based on his or her gender, or will we be able to overcome that and encourage effort and success regardless of gender?

Only time will tell, but it definitely is food for thought.

I truly had every intention of writing a legit blog post today, but now I find I’m writing-ed out after doing all that writing for those other places, which happens often, and is why I’ve neglected this poor site this year. So, instead, I’d like to share with you a bit of what I’ve been reading today as I’ve been catching up on the internet. Enjoy!

How do you get teenagers to think feminism is cool? by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett and Holly Baxter

As far as we’re concerned, the jury’s still out as to whether or not the word itself needs, to slip into publicity speak for a moment, a “rebrand”. We certainly know from what young women are telling us that “feminism” is a dirty word, for a variety of reasons, perhaps most significantly because it’s “angry” it’s not “sexy” or “feminine”. Young women also expressed the feeling that feminism wasn’t really “for” them – that it was too complex and alienating and that they didn’t have the correct terminology. If you’ve read anything else we’ve written then you’ll know that we don’t see anger or verbose pomposity as effective recruiting tactics, but we need to go further than this and try and think about ways in which we can get young women thinking about gender inequality.

Infertility and a wedding: what if I can’t have children? by Anne

Six pregnancies and seven miscarriages later (one set of twins) we find ourselves facing the very real possibility that I simply can not carry a child to term. Three months seems to be average, though one pregnancy was lost at five months.

This opened up a whole host of questions. What if I can NEVER have a baby? What if he leaves me because I can’t have children? What if he doesn’t leave me but then is unhappy forever? What if we adopt? What if we try IVF? What if we decide to not have children, but end up feeling like we never fulfilled part of our lives? What if I can’t be happy without a baby? What if adoption/IVF is too expensive? If I do manage to get the money together, would it be more sensible to “buy” a baby or a house? What if buying a house means I can’t afford to adopt?

Reasons Girls Are Encouraged to Fail – and How to Change This by Regina Barreca, Ph.D.

Today, I am responding to the #femfest day two questions at fromtwotoone.com. The questions are as follows:

What is at stake in this discussion? Why is feminism important to you? Are you thinking about your children or your sisters or the people that have come before you? Or, why do you not like the term? What are you concerned we’re not focusing on or we’re losing sight of when we talk about feminism? Why do you feel passionately about this topic?

To participate, write a post and link up here!

Feminism is vitally important to me as a human being, a woman, a teacher, a friend, a sister, a daughter, a wife. Feminism has given me a voice, a vote, a reason to hang up the apron, a way to work and have a husband and have kids should I choose to do so. Feminism has given me a choice.

I don’t mean that feminists have given me all of these things in the literal sense, though that is also true. What I mean is that the knowledge of what feminism is has empowered me to better understand my choices, and to make choices I would not have otherwise made.

To that end, feminism is important for me, but it is vital for my students. I am reminded of an article I wrote last year, “Personal Connections Empower Students”:

I stood in front of the class, introduced myself and told them a little bit about myself: I’m married, we have a dog, I like to cook—the usual. After this, they had to fill out a form and put my name on it, so I wrote it on the board: Ms. Samsa. A hand shot up in the air.

“But I thought you were married,” the student called out.

“I am,” I responded.

“So shouldn’t you be Mrs. Samsa?”

I told the class that I didn’t change my name when I got married, and I briefly explained the difference between Miss, Ms. and Mrs. Then, I noticed a hand raised in the back of the room. It belonged to a girl who hadn’t said a word all day. I called on her and she paused for a second to search for just the right words before asking, “You have a choice to keep your name when you get married? I didn’t know that.”

My students have the choices and empowerment feminism has given every woman since the movement started, but what good are those choices if they don’t know about them? Just as my feminism has evolved over time, theirs must, too, and it starts with being made aware of the fact that they don’t have to blindly follow societal norms. They don’t have to change their names or have babies or even get married if they don’t want to, no matter who tells them otherwise.

If I can teach one girl the importance of the choices they have – the choices feminism has allowed them to have – I will consider myself successful.