Equal work for Equal pay! GO OBAMA!!

Obama just signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act!! I'm SOO happy. I posted about the 2007 supreme court ruling a few months ago which made my blood boil.

The short recap: Lilly Ledbetter had worked for goodyear tires for 19 years when she found out she had been paid significantly less (more than 360,000 less) than male co-workers. She sued but the supreme court decided that employees needed to bring suit within the first 180 days of the discriminatory practice. Since the company was able to conceal their discriminatory practices for more than six months, Ledbetter was out of luck.

The court argued that their ruling was protecting these poor companies from a wealth of law suits. Just a thought, BUT maybe American companies could protect themselves by paying their female workers the same as their male workers instead of the 78 cents to the dollar that they currently do. Would that be so hard? Well, now they're going to have to try that route since that their Republican friends are out of power. Hurray!

Stress Dreams

I'm a dreamer. But in the bad way. I have incredibly vivid dreams almost every night. Usually it's not a problem because I'm used to them. But my mind is just creative enough to keep me on my toes. I'll get a real doozie probably every other week. You know, the kind of dream you wake up screaming to.

Luckily I also have a sleep disorder that causes night paralysis so my screams are rarely heard. After a bad dream or when I'm stressed, I'll wake up but my brain doesn't switch my body on. If you don't know what's happening it feels like someone or something is pinning you down. It's easy to think you're possessed. But you're not. It's actually pretty common. It runs in the family.

I've been a tad stressed lately and I have to say stress dreams are the worst. Does anyone else have stress dreams? Here are my top five most common stress dreams.

1. My teeth start to ache, become loose, then fall out. - I consequently brush and floss vigilantly in the real world.

2. I'm back in high school. When I was pregnant these dreams took an interesting twist. I was back in high school and trying to hide that I was pregnant.

3. I'm back in college and have a test or project that I just found out about.

4. This is probably my least favorite. I rot alive. I look down and huge patches of my body are rotting and gangrene. Very gruesome. When I wake up from these dreams I always feel my leg, arm, whatever piece of my body I'm sure is diseased, and make sure it's whole.

5. I'm in the water with sharks. I had this dream last night. I was stranded in the Pacific ocean, floating on a thin slightly submerged raft. Any movement sunk it deeper. And there were big tiger sharks patrolling around bumping into it.

Going Medieval

I'm not having a great week. But I'm trying to stay on top of three things: taking care of Reuben, working, and my own personal well-being, hygiene being an essential part of that. This morning I ran into a major road block. In the recent frigid cold and snow storms, our water heater has been on the fritz. So after I got up, checked in with work, made breakfast, fed Reuben, I approached the icey cold shower. Other mornings I've made myself get in. If you've never done it, an ice cold shower can make you feel amazing. The life threatening chill makes everything afterwords feels so warm and comfy. But today I couldn't make myself get in.

I stood in front of the shower for like five minutes and tried but my will power failed me. I kept thinking about how Europeans thought bathing was evil and bad for your health. I've scoffed at that view before but I decided if they lived in the frigid Northern Latitudes they were probably right. I can't think of a quicker way to die than immersing yourself in 40 degree water. No wonder the church decided that baptism by immersion was a bad idea. So I've gone medieval. I'm not showering til things warm up.

Westward No

We will not be moving to Texas. I hope nobody got too excited about that idea.

How Stuff Works

I often enjoy listening to podcasts while I work. Lately I've been enjoying the podcast "Stuff You Should Know" and "Stuff You Missed in History Class" both produced by the website How Stuff Works. It's a great way to learn something new everyday. I think if I keep listening to it I may one day be able to win a game of Trivial Pursuit. Here are a few of the recent topics:
How Redheads Work (according to the podcast redheads need more anaesthesia than non redheads)
What Are Urban Explorers
How Does Body Armor Work
How to Survive a Plane Crash - Your chances of surviving are better than you might think. I was pleasantly surprised.
How Midnight Regulations Work
How Contagious Yawning Works
and much much more

Happy Sad

Growing up my family had a tradition. At the dinner table we would go around and each of us would say one thing that made us happy during the day and one thing that made us sad. I often cheated and my happy sad was often a happy, sad, sad sad because I was a glass half empty sort of teenager.
Anyway, a fair amount has happened in the last week so I thought I'd post a few of the happy sads.



Happy: Aaron and I went to the American Art Museum last Saturday and we got to enjoy a lot of great work, including an Andrew Wyeth painting. Aaron asked if Wyeth was still alive and I said yes and it warmed my heart that crazy, incredibly skilled Andy Wyeth, heir to the great illustrator NC Wyeth, was still living and breathing in this world.

And we saw this Walton Ford which is like 15 feet tall and incredibly awesome. That made my week.


Sad: Six days later Andrew Wyeth died. In memory Aaron and I dragged ourselves through a lonely winter field. Not really. Instead we read the NY Times article remembering his life here.

Sad: Reuben has started teething at two months which is really sad. He's so little he doesn't know how to chew. We try to give him a chew toy to ease his pain and he sucks on it pitifully.

Happy and Sad: Aaron's job ended. Woo-hoo!!! He turned in the black berry and has spent three whole days with me and Reuben. It's amazing. I love having Aaron around. On the sad side, Aaron isn't so excited about unemployment.

Sad: And we still can't find the camera.

The Sidebar

I haven't updated my sidebars in Forever and since I have some very important things I should be doing I thought I'd do a little work on it now. I've added a few links and since not everyone knows everyone I added a short description to give you an idea of the person/blog. If anyone hates their description or has a better idea let me know.