was i sleeping all this time?

i quit smoking in may.
i've had a fuzzy head and mixed emotions for months.
i suddenly feel like i've woken up.
at first i felt better about that.
my head seems to have cleared, like i pulled it out of a stormy rain cloud.
but now i feel as if i let all this stuff happen and nothing is the way it was.
i've somehow gotten fatter...not even my body is my own.
i don't even know how i managed to pull off school this past semester while still maintaining a GPA of 3.5
it's like driving for 20 mins only to realize you don't remember the past 5 km, never mind changing lanes...complete auto pilot.

funded by the national nuclear power organization

i always get weary about stories like this.
who has funded the writer's grant?
a story about how nuclear waste is not good, but atleast it's better than coal ash?
for real?

things my boyfriend says

"stop taking pictures of me!"
"stop being so gorgeous"

talk about ego booster.
he definitely has a way with words.

a chilly climate

so in 2005, the head honcho at harvard, lawrence summers, basically says that women are naturally not as smart as men.
and while i appreciate his idea to state something so simple as that intelligence is innate so you can't blame the victim, i don't appreciate the poor little girls as victims approach, as this totally absolves society of all of its failures.
and while i appreciate his gall and bravery for saying something that would surely put him under attack, i will attack not him, but rather the magazine that i am so fond of, for pretty much emphasizing summers' idea.
the whole article to address this issue spends the first 2/3 going over all the biological and innate reasoning, and the differences in boys and girls spatial/mathematical/cognitive skills...which reinforces the dominant ideology that men are just better at techy stuff than women.
not until the second last page does the article make reference to the idea of choice, and even still doesn't even suggest that perhaps a woman's choice not to choose fields of math/science is because of a chilly climate. yes, the glass ceiling, as mentioned, is a definite probability for choice, but it goes beyond pay and promotion. working in an environment where women are inadvertently made to feel inadequate and less worthy is frustrating.
and the sheer fact that even as young children we have begun to think that this is alright because of the differences in the way girls and boys are taught. school is an institution after all--an institution that reinforces men's and women's roles in society and conditions us for those roles.
and the idea of a woman's double day gets the honour of a measly little paragraph at the end.
if the article really set out to refute summers' statement and challenge the ideology of men excelling at science and math, surely it would have given equal discussion in all possible factors.
i love science and biology and physiology and the amazingness that is the brain, but if we're talking biological psychology, then other contributors need to be considered in they way we perceive things and the way society's dominant thinking has conditioned us to believe things.

~
music to my ears - slow news day

summer and sandalwood

today, as you sat across the table, eyes tearing, remembering that boys don't cry.
"hey, i'll give you something to cry about", you said, explaining your father's fine parenting skills.
all those years spent with a bottle, more recently a pipe.
overwhelmed and wondering if it will ever end.
kids who think you're the biggest loser--can't be good for the psyche.
and i remember summer and sandalwood.
a not so distant past where i didn't even know you existed.

~
music to my ears: Radiohead - Hail to the Thief