So I decided to do Relay for Life with my work. If anyone wants to donate to my team you can go to this link  .

Thanks,

I'll take any help I can get.

When I was growing up I hated being a girl. When I went to Gloria Dei for school I had to wear a skirt or dress to chapel on Wednesdays. When we moved to Alsip and I started going to public school I refused to wear a skirt from the time I was eight until I was 14 or 15. I had quite the imagination and in our games I often played the part of a man. The only time I enjoyed playing the part of a girl is when my cousin and I were pretending we were Super Jenny and Super Kimmy. We were powerful girls who brandished tinkertoy weapons and and flew after the bad guys. Our arch enemy was Ravenway and her two henchmen, whose names I can't remember. (Kim do you?) We were powerful there. We fought crime and I lived on the moon. I can remember being frustrated that in the cartoons all the cool characters were boys. There were no females in Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny, or old cartoons that I liked and in shows like Ninja Turtles, Tiny Toons and Popples and Care Bears all of my favorite characters were boys. I babysat a girl in Jr high who had the guts to be on an all boys baseball team and I really admired that.

As I got older I got more into sports than make believe so I was still with the boys. I wore baseball caps and huge Starter jackets. I was teased for being a lesbian or too boyish (before lesbian had really entered our lexicons) for most of my life. In high school I finally made the jump to cutting off my long hair. I have only really started to enjoy being girly ever. It's still only in spurts. I would rather watch football than do many more "female" activities. Sometimes though I love skirts. I will never again have long hair, that's for sure. But I think now I am becoming more proud to be a woman. It makes me unbelievably happy when I walk into a sports store and see little pink baseball mitts and soccer balls. I'm not a fan of the color pink, but maybe girl themed sporting goods would have made it seem more normal.

I have been getting into feminism a lot and also thinking about when I have kids how to treat gender rolls. Andrew and I are really not a fan of them. He got the gay teasing for being sensitive as much as I got the gay teasing for what I wore and what games I played. I guess I have finally gotten comfortable being a woman. I guess my goal will be to make my kids feel comfortable in the skin they are in regardless of what they like to do.

Holy hell I got the interview

I'm feeling restless the last few days. I don't know if it's the snow or the upcoming election, or the fact that I am listening to a lot of very political music while reading international news stories, but I feel the need to escape. I want to go hiking somewhere, I want to start a revolution. I want to protest. I want to organize people. I want meaningful political discussion. I want to raise awareness to several issues. I feel like jumping out of my skin or maybe just lighting a Hummer on fire. I want to teach kids to read while showcasing that white male privilege is still very much alive in our country. I want to raise awareness for mental illness while housing the poor. I want to fight the power, burn bridges, and sing from the rooftops....

It's days like today that I really wish I lived in Hawaii.

A few months ago I caught a guy using stolen checks at my store. He was on probation for robbing a home. I just found out the other day he got 6 years in jail for the check thing. Wow.

So I have been making it a thing to work out everyday because I am trying to get rid of the extra pounds. Last night it was 65 degrees. Being January and in Illinois I decided I needed to take advantage of the odd weather patterns. So Andy and I decided to go play some tennis. Unfortunately, being January, 10PM and with none of the students around none of the tennis courts on campus were lit. So I came up with a great idea. We ended up playing tennis on top of a parking garage until it started to lightning. It was a blast.

We gave my Grandma the TV we bought her. First she said "but I have a TV" and then when my aunt said, "Jenny said it's turning green." My grandma relented, "Well I guess the color is starting to go....and the picture really isn't that crisp anymore." Then when my uncle told her he would take her out to get a TV stand she said that she had already decided she wanted a wall unit...so I guess this was something she was already thinking about. So all in all I think she liked it.

Happy Christmas Everyone!!

It took me an hour and a half to drive home tonight....it's a 17 mile drive. That probably goes in the top 5 worst experiences of my life.