Indy had a dentist appointment today. The dentist, who is a woman, and who keeps up a pretty constant stream of chatter to reassure her child patients, made no fewer than four separate comments to Henry about how “girls talk a lot.” By the third I was livid. What I do not need is a woman–perhaps ESPECIALLY a professional woman, A DOCTOR–reinforcing stereotypes that my six year old son has *certainly* never come into contact with from me, and which I wish him to be armed to resist when he…
I have terrible knots in my shoulders, and a perpetually over-stretched subscapularis nerve under my right shoulder blade. I mean, like, this is a decades-old injury. My friend E, who is a massage therapist, used to tell me she wanted to spend some quality time with her fingers in my armpit, which I always thought was a joke until she got her hands on me and spent some quality time with her fingers in my armpit. Turns out that, since the subscapularis is entirely covered by bone, the way you…
My mom was a dancer, and we’ve decided to offer a dance scholarship in her name, as a memorial. We’ve set up a GoFundMe page, the Rosie Murphy Dance Scholarship Fund, and if you’re inclined or inspired in any way to donate a little to the fund, my family and I would be profoundly grateful. Our immediate goal is to secure $2500: enough funds to create a five year scholarship. Our longer term goal is to create a scholarship in perpetuity, which is possible if we can get $15,000 into…
I’ve spent most of the past several years a lot more checked out of the news cycle than I think I should be, because so much of it is toxic or religious wars in politics and I simply have not had the emotional bandwidth to deal with it. I *hate* that. I grew up in a very political family and I feel like it’s my duty to be informed and aware and able to formulate an intelligent opinion. I also grew up in an era when the news cycle wasn’t…
I was invited last week to see the Abbey Theatre‘s new play, Donegal, which is billed as a light-hearted play with music. I think the Irish have a different idea of what constitutes ‘light-hearted’ than I do. I mean, nobody dies in it, and there are moments that are funny, so I think that’s why it qualifies as ‘light-hearted’. But the play is about an Irish country-western star whose peak has passed, her son who left Ireland to very successfully pursue his own country-western career in America away from his…