The Friday social

{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }

1 deva by definition January 25, 2013 at 9:21 am

The Balancing Act of Being Female is why I am at my computer this morning typing away about clothes – again! I had an epiphany about why I struggled at the bars in college when I chose to go out, and why I kept getting “makeovers” from my girlfriends.

The Day Zero Post is great.SO great.

As for me, I swear I thought yesterday was Friday. The Boy was in Chicago all week for a business trip, and normally when he’s gone for more than 3 days, he’s gone for a full work week. I told him last night I was disappointed that he was home and that today wasn’t Saturday.
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2 Stina January 25, 2013 at 9:51 am

I loved that xojane post! Almost every Friday my friends and I get together and play boardgames (and sometimes they’re seriously dorky boardgames at that). We have a blast, but I often find myself thinking, ‘Shouldn’t we at least get out of our twenties before our Friday nights get this lame?’

On top of that, I feel like I need to somehow qualify my Friday night activities any time I start talking to a coworker, or someone who isn’t part of that friend group, about what my plans are.
Stina recently posted..Adventures of a Trail Runner: Frigid Fanny 5K Recap

3 Jacki January 25, 2013 at 10:00 am

This week totally flew by!

Hmm … what is this “fun” you speak of? I don’t think I remember that … I mean, there are moments. Standing in our friends’ kitchen the other night laughing about our kids’ antics and their dogs play fighting, going snowboarding last week, the occasional night out with my girl friends … but life as an adult kind of feels like an exercise in futility most of the time lately. I spend so much time braced for the next shitty, frustrating, financially devastating or otherwise obnoxious thing to happen that I really do need to rediscover fun!

We spend too much time isolated in our own relationship and family – what we really need to rediscover is friends. But finding a way to do that with a young, rowdy child who is with us on every day off we have, well, I’m not sure how to tackle that!

Something I really enjoyed reading this week was this post at Dinner: A Love Story – http://www.dinneralovestory.com/how-to-blog-my-rules/

I’ve also been reading some interesting stuff on GOMI about mommy-bloggers and their exploitation of their children. It’s fascinating, if you can set aside some of the pointless peripheral snark that gets thrown in.
Jacki recently posted..52 BITES V.4 // SCALLOP, SCALLION & ASPARAGUS SALAD

4 Rachel January 25, 2013 at 11:44 am

Thanks for sharing that How to Blog post. Great advice and it’s giving me lots to think about!

As for the mommy blogger stuff, yeah, I honestly can’t get past the pointless peripheral snark with GOMI; I stopped reading completely right around this time last year. I agree that there are some worthwhile conversations happening there, but I just can’t deal with the overall tone of the site; for me, anything legit that gets posted there is overshadowed by the mean-spirited and downright ridiculous stuff that seems to dominate.

5 Jacki January 25, 2013 at 12:10 pm: Lately I’ve been getting closer to that point with GOMI at times, which is too bad. For every interesting discussion there is a lot of ridiculousness – I do think some of the members really just look for things and people to hate, which is a waste of time IMO. So I limit the threads I read to two blogs I follow. There is some really interesting discussion of how living their lives online is going to affect the children, and whether children should be treated as possessions by their parents and splattered naked on the internet/instagram/etc just because the parents “can” … (hint, no, they should not) … but then they’ll throw in something like “and her hair is TOO LONG! GET A TRIM!” and I’m just like, um, really? This woman is putting full frontal nude photos of her special needs toddler online … and you want to talk about her split ends?!
Jacki recently posted..52 BITES V.4 // SCALLOP, SCALLION & ASPARAGUS SALAD

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6 Caity @ Moi Contre La Vie January 25, 2013 at 10:23 am

The Balancing Act of Being Female is a fantastic read – Thank you for sharing!
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7 Cassie @RedLetterDaye January 25, 2013 at 11:52 am

These are great! Seriously, What Do Grownups Do for Fun is right up my alley. I was just writing about this myself, and the concept of YOLO. Frankly, I had my (young adult) “fun,” and I don’t wish to do it again (Unless it’s fun., then I’m all over it!). The staying out til 6am. The awful boys (like the one who on our first date told me he had slept with over 50 women). The insecurities, and hangovers, and trying too hard.

I’m 26 and I think I still know how to have fun, but the difference is, I know what I want now. Back then, I had no idea, so I did everything (wrong) to figure it out. It’s like Bill Murray says in Lost in Translation, “The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” I’m just as happy going to a concert as I am staying home and watching Property Brothers for umpteenth time. I have no problem saying, “I’m too old for that.” (Or at times, I’m too old for this s**t). I wear it like a badge of honor. I’m proud to have made it out of my early 20s alive, and I’m excited for what comes next.

Hey, Betty White isn’t doing so bad, and she’s like 90. Homegirl knows how to hang.

I hope you’re doing something Fun. this weekend. ;) Happy Friday! :)
Cassie @RedLetterDaye recently posted..A case against YOLO

8 Emma January 25, 2013 at 11:56 am

I just read The Balancing Act, glanced at the author, and saw it’s a professor from my school! She kicks so much ass.

9 Emily Susan January 25, 2013 at 1:35 pm

The Balancing Act= amazing.

10 Kavi January 25, 2013 at 1:37 pm

I just read “The Balancing Act of Being Female; Or, Why We Have So Many Clothes.” The author eloquently verbalized how many of us feel (or what many of us are subconsciously doing!). I’ve always felt that men can get away with a polo and khakis to nearly any occasion… whereas women need a million different outfits to be dressed appropriately to those same occasions. Thanks for sharing!
Kavi recently posted..Recipe: Crockpot Mac & Cheese For A Crowd

11 Sarah Crowder (punctuated with food) January 25, 2013 at 1:54 pm

I hadn’t read The Balancing Act or Women in Tech … both excellent, thanks!

Re: The Balancing Act – how about women stop empowering those standards? I get that its not ONLY women, but I think we do the lion’s share of judging in that department.

“Women in Tech” could be changed to “Women in Ag” – same story, which I reinforced by bringing the other farmers cupcakes on their birthdays.
Sarah Crowder (punctuated with food) recently posted..introducing baby to herbs and spices

12 Rachel January 25, 2013 at 4:19 pm

Re: not empowering those standards. Well, I think it’s kind of important to ask why we are judging and what, in fact, we are fighting for. This gets at something bigger I’ve been wanting to write about, but basically, we know that women judge each other for both being skinny and being fat. The question is…why? And similarly, why are we judging women who don’t follow the “rules” of how to dress if you’re a woman? To me, the answer is that we feel competitive and therefore want a way to immediately categorize the other woman as less than us. So…why do we feel competitive? What exactly are we fighting for? Jobs? Men? Love? Money? Attention and social capital? I feel like we need to figure out what we feel is so scarce, what there isn’t enough of for all of us, because I do believe there must be something…I don’t think this many women would feel competitive if there wasn’t something really special at stake. Does that make sense?

13 Sarah Crowder (punctuated with food) January 26, 2013 at 10:16 am: Yes, that makes sense. Sometimes I’m self-centered in the sense that I just think “Alright, everyone, just focus on yourselves and you’ll be much happier. Now, moving on…” but you’re right to think of it as a deeper systemic issue. That’s why you’ll change the world and I’ll be cultivating my garden. I can’t think of a way to say this without being smug, and it’s not that I NEVER judge someone else, but it’s not a big part of my outlook because, well, I’m happy…and when it comes to the parts of my life that feel unfulfilled, I’m spending my energy trying to improve them.
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14 Aj January 25, 2013 at 7:33 pm

Thanks for the links! I love the xojane piece. So much socializing takes place around food and booze. And I’m totally down for that, like always. But I wish that as we got older there was more socializing around other things. Sure, that happens, but always infrequently, I’ve crafted and gone apple picking with friends. Some of us are planning to attend Richard Simmons’ exercise class (really!!! only $12!). But, for some reason, planning during the day/weekend is much harder than a dinner or happy hour during the week. And right now, most of us don’t have kids. It’s only going to get worse.

I think I feel especially bad about it because for most of my 20s I was in grad school with seriously limited funds and time. Now that I have time (and some money, which let’sbehonest does not hurt the fun having), everyone is boring happy hour/dinner folks.

15 Rachel January 25, 2013 at 7:46 pm: I heard his class was legit!! Please please please write about it here if you take it, I am dying to live vicariously through you!

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