-my brother came and stayed with us this weekend and he was so sick. all of my employees were sick last week. i am getting nervous and kind of ragey at all of them--for not covering their sneezes, for wiping their noses with their hands and then touching stuff, for not staying home from work and taking care not to infect everyone. usually i make jokes about hugging sick people so i can stay home from work, which is the best. but the annual leadership retreat--the one that demolished me last year, the one where i worked in the kitchen and cried the entire way home--is coming up a few weeks and i am dead set on being "sick". i've had this planned out in my mind since probably november and i've been careful not to take sick time so it wouldn't seem weird when i was sick come march. yes... this is the level i have dropped to. there is nothing that could compel me to go to that retreat. when i brought it up on facebook a while back everyone was like "stick up for yourself!" "tell them you won't go!" "tell them it's sexist and you're worth more!" and i was like "yeah!" but in reality i would NEVER do this. my boss is so tone deaf that i literally don't think he would understand what i was saying. the reality of how much they would not get it is endless. i know i should be a feminist pioneer and stand up for myself, but in an already putrid and terrible situation with my relationships and job here, it just seems like the more noble and sensible thing to do is just stay home sick. i keep going back and forth from telling myself i'm a coward to telling myself i'm taking the noble way out. maybe it's a bit of both. but i will not suffer that humiliation again.

-it makes me twitchy when parents say they are supporting their daughter's choice in being all-pink-loving, all-princesses and fairies little girls. someone told me once that i was being a bad feminist if i didn't support a little girl's choice to be obsessed with pink culture. i'm having a really hard time with it because yes, girls should be able to choose to love whatever they want but, at the same time, when three year olds are crying to their moms that they want "yellow" hair instead of brown hair, when clothing for toddlers is sexualized and when the girls are facing crushing social pressure to conform to gender stereotypes, i think there's a responsibility to teach girls to look beyond pink and to teach them that pink can be harmful. how to teach that to three and six year olds, i don't know, but let's just say there's a reason i'm not having kids right now. little girls have just as much right to identify with a feminine gender as any person of any sex, but when do you know that you're overcompensating in the case of little girls in particular?

-speaking of which, i've been thinking really seriously about being childless by choice. so, that's complicated.


-birdman rocks and i was elated that it won best picture, even though i doubt it would have won in a straight popular vote.  everyone's pretty cynical about it, saying it's the industry patting itself on the back, which i don't really see because i thought it was ENDLESSLY cynical toward the entire entertainment industry. for me it was an epic, grand commentary on social media and the way we live our lives socially these days. i saw it right when i was in the thick of my facebook hate-delete, so maybe i saw it from an angle that was really personal. but i thought it was layered and beautiful and deep and the most wonderful movie of the year. related, if i have to listen to my employees talk about voldemort or "ralph finers" in the grand budapest hotel i'm gonna lose it. i thought adam levine's performance was terrible. i think he is one of the grossest playboy sell outs of this generation. so there, i said. and while i'm at it, i've done everything i could to get into taylor swift and i do. not. get. it. maybe someone can convince me. i think her music is... bad.

-applied to another job that's a perfect fit. it closes tomorrow and i already feel like i'm going to throw up out of disappointment. the thing about this company is they hire from the inside A LOT of them time. which... i get it. but they also do this passive aggressive thing where, even if they already have someone in mind or straight up have someone picked out, they still interview applicants. not just the top applicants, but ALL the applicants. so pretty much it's a HUGE waste of time and receiving an interview isn't actually any indication that they are seriously interested in you. i don't know how it got to be part of the culture here but i frankly think it should be illegal. i'm pretty stable and i'm a whiner but i'm doing okay, but imagine if someone unemployed was looking for a way to support their family. it's pretty selfish of a company to take time and energy away from other possible applications so they can give themselves pats on the back for being nice. and i wish they would just be like "lol nah, thanks for applying."