'it's for you'

my students have a particular speech pattern i have begun to pick up in that instead of phrasing something as a question, they say it as a statement and tack a questioning lilt on at the end. for example, "you have the homework?" as opposed to "do you have the homework?" i'm not sure i want to speak like this but i have caught myself doing it quite a bit recently.

i really can't handle jada pinkett smith.

my father and i are going to thanksgiving dinner at family friends', the same place we've celebrated for the past couple years. the keatings are a total offshoot of my own family and we have done so much together in the past year. i call margaret my "other mother." jon and jen (the hosts) have a 2 year old and a brand new baby, so i'm looking forward to babylust outlets. my part of the cooking will be my mom's broccoli casserole and a recipe for chestnut stuffing i found in a williams-sonoma catalogue. i'm not sure i even like water chestnuts. or stuffing, for that matter, but for some reason the recipe sounds appealing to me. i am using fake meat and it shall be an interesting culinary experiment.

my dad is in charge of the beer (i think jen likes to make him feel like he has a part in the preparations) but just in case, i think i will be bringing a case of brooklyn lager. the men on my dad's side of the family are quite fond of cheep beer, so i am not 100% sure i'm ready to trust my dad with his task. my grandpa prefers beast ice he keeps downstairs in the basement to stay cool. but he's 93 years old, so far be it from me to criticize.

i'm watching the last hour of the american music awards, and paris hilton's credentials during for introduction were, "she is one of the most talked about women in the world." i wonder if she was embarassed by not being able to have a title like actress or musician, or if she thinks about things like that at all. or if maybe that's how she prefers to me known…?

i sent my beautiful niece alison a little thanksgiving package with forest green pajamas covered in cute little mooses. i got an email from my sister today that said:

thank you for thinking of allie and sending her the package. i hope you don't mind, but i'm going to return it, though.
she wears blanket sleepers because they are supposed to lower the risk of sids (it's a really heavy jammie that they sleep in and then they don't need a blanket). the one you got her would be too chilly, since she doesn't use a blanket. i'm sticking to "girly" clothes, as opposed to gender-neutral clothes. it didn't use to bother me, but the 100th time someone thought she was a girl (because of her short hair) it really started to annoy me. so, girly clothes it is, until her hair gets more "girl-like". i know this is all my issue, and allie coulnd't care less, but oh well.

it hurt my feelings (though of course not the SIDs part - i didn't know that!). in the past year about half a dozen times has she said something that has really smarted about me in relation to allie. first there was the boppy pillow thing, then a month or so ago she asked me not to send out pictures of allie to our relatives because she feels it steps on her toes as the mother. maybe she thought twice about this latest slight, because the initial email was followed almost immediately by a second:

i guess i was "traumatized" as child and am projecting that on allie-
as a kid, i felt like my clothes alternated between too gender-neutral and too girly (dirndells!). it always seemd like everyone else had different (better) clothes than me. i loathed my bowl-cut hair that lasted for all of elementary school and some of middle school. i thought i looked like a boy. i don't want allie to be mistaken for a boy, even though at this age, she doesn't care.

i just really don't know how to deal with this but i am tired of tanja hurting my feelings. but by not addressing it, am i allowing her to continue doing it?