Disqus - Latest Comments for margosita

Re: December 2015 | margaret lafleur

margosita — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 16:29:18 -0000

I don't knnnnoooowwww.

Re: thetinhouse: AND turning off the Wi-Fi. | margaret lafleur

margosita — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 09:45:13 -0000

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Re: I Survived College Without Consumer Debt, and So Can You

margosita — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 13:44:22 -0000

"3) I did a 6-month internship and was paid well, but I was not paid anywhere near what interns are paid today. My internship would have netted me $40k today."

LOL, what? Exactly which 6-month internship pays $40k, today?

Re: Are His Parents Putting Pressure on Us to Marry?

margosita — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 18:29:57 -0000

My boyfriend and I have been together almost 9 years. We're thoroughly each other's family, now. We do Thanksgiving together and see a lot of both families and it sounds like the letter writer is in the same place (going on vacation, late night boozy hangouts, the dads/men golfing together). We're not engaged, but there's been multiple times when we get referred to as such, or even husband/wife. It's always out of excitement and affection, or something like "This is x and her husband and margosita and her husband...err, boyfriend..."

My future FIL was a serial offender, especially to strangers and when I wasn't around. But I knew he didn't mean it as pressure. He was happy and it often seemed more fitting. When he died last year, among my first thoughts that was I regretted not being married, yet, because that would have been such a happy day for him.

I don't mean to add a serious twist to this, except to say that I'm glad he did that, now. I'm glad he knew and expressed his excitement about our relationship precisely because he won't be there when it's "official." I'd love to have him around, now, making jokes about when we're going to have grandkids.

So, maybe take it all with a grain of salt? He's not really pressuring you, and he's not even making comments TO you. All of them are different ways of saying, "Isn't it great, that my son has found his person?"

It is great! Enjoy it.

Re: I Survived College Without Consumer Debt, and So Can You

margosita — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 17:39:41 -0000

"Soon enough, though, May 1990 arrived, I graduated, and I got a Real Full Time Job, something with a Career Track. I was solidly flush! $33,000 a year sounded like a fortune! Why, that’s roughly 70 percent of what my dad was making, and he’d been working FOREVER! (For the record, that works out to $16.50/hour for a standard 2,000-hour work year. Doesn’t sound like so much now, 25 years later.)"

When graduating into the recession from college in 2007, $33,000 a year was a COUP for a lot of first time job seekers. It DOESN'T sound like much, now, especially when paying 2007 prices on a 1990 salary. Adjusted for inflation at $60,000 however, DOES sound like a lot.

It's great to get through college and young adulthood without ever needing the back-up of a credit card, but this piece seems a little self-congratulatory and a little clueless to the fact that credit cards can often be more than a way to finance frivolous spending. At times I've had to carry a balance on my credit card just to ensure that I ate during a month when the job hunt was a dead end and there was a lull in temp gigs.

Re: Will Having The Same Career Goals Hurt Our Marriage?

margosita — Wed, 11 Mar 2015 12:47:09 -0000

For a more optimistic role model of married writers you can look to Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon. They aren't perfect, but they have spoken about what it's like to be married to a writer and they are happy and make it work relatively well.

I think this is the most interesting part of your piece: "Perhaps my greatest worry is that despite Dan’s relentless encouragement, I won’t have the courage to go through the difficult parts. I will let myself become the wife of the writer, instead of the writer herself." It's so true. SO OFTEN it is easier to just give in than fight, because fighting all the time is exhausting. This is where having a good partner is key, I think. Someone who is not going to let you off the hook, even when that means disagreeing with you, so if you end up saying, "It's ok that I didn't get XYZ..." because you're worn out, he'll say, "No, it's not ok." It sounds like, and I hope it's true, that Dan is the partner who wouldn't let you count the Year of Toddler as the Year of Writing, for example.

I think the typical writer marriage advice is "Marry someone who thinks being a writer is a good idea." That probably counts DOUBLE when you are marrying another one!

Re: Girl's Gone Child: Triangles. (Giveaway!)

margosita — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 11:30:28 -0000

1. I turned THIRty yesterday (when this was posted)!
2. It's the time of year to live in boots and leggings, which is the best.
3. It's the month of the year when I get three paychecks!

Re: Girl's Gone Child: The Happiness of Pursuit

margosita — Mon, 29 Sep 2014 13:39:44 -0000

This reminds me of the myth of sisyphus and Albert Camus. His conclusion was that in order to understand life, we have to embrace the absurd and think of sisyphus, the man who was fated to roll a boulder uphill but never reach the top, as happy and not as suffering. There is joy in the struggle.

I love that.

I also am deeply uninterested in those blogs that are supposed to tell you how to live, or insist that you if you make a list or embrace life in just this way, then you'll be happy and beautiful. Some life advice is welcome, but mostly I just want to be told a story. It's why I love your blog! And it's the common thread for why I stick around in any space, really. (Thank you for your endless pages!)

Re: Girl's Gone Child: Wearing Things (and Giveaway)

margosita — Thu, 07 Aug 2014 09:42:35 -0000

I wish I were wearing a signature piece of jewelry. I'm terrible at most things fashion, and most especially with accessories. But I've always kind of wanted a signature necklace, something that I wear through ordinary life and times and once that I'll be able to trace through photos. (If I won, I'd pick the Tulla. So pretty! I love the little circles, the tiny gorgeous beads.)

Re: Girl's Gone Child: Giusta by Giusta Personalized Cuffs (& Giveaway)

margosita — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 09:35:32 -0000

I am always down for some friendship celebrating! My best friend is turning 30 tomorrow (!), and it feels surreal. Old friends are the best friends, so often, if only for those throwback photos!

Re: Girl's Gone Child: Portrait of a Family as a Young(ish) Family & Giveaway!

margosita — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 14:48:03 -0000

Lately I've been going to spin classes after work, and when I'm walking home (in the cold, here!) I'll start thinking about how I know my boyfriend is at home, making dinner. And I'll be feeling tired and worn out from work and exercise and winter and darkness, but I'll think, "It's going to be great to walk in the door and it'll smell good and then there will be food..." and then I'll walk through the door and it is great! It's a little love victory, every time.

Re: Girl's Gone Child: Smile on a Stick

margosita — Fri, 10 Jan 2014 09:30:37 -0000

This is beautiful!

Re: Girl's Gone Child: Ice Cream Truckplayhouse (and giveaway!)

margosita — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 14:26:00 -0000

If I won I'd give this to my mom and her husband, who have three new granddaughters this Christmas and counting... It would work well for the toy closet!

And you can't go wrong with the classic ice cream sandwich which you had to eat fast enough to prevent all the ice cream from melting out the sides and dripping down your arms.... :)

Re: Girl's Gone Child: TOTW: Burnish Initial Necklace (& Giveaway)

margosita — Thu, 07 Nov 2013 13:57:24 -0000

I'd like an "every day, all day" necklace, like a statement piece. Crossing my fingers it's my lucky day!

Re: Girl's Gone Child: a day in the life of a pink tulle dress

margosita — Tue, 05 Nov 2013 09:56:50 -0000

I love that last photo. I remember that feeling of shrinking down the world into a box. So fun!

Re: Girl's Gone Child: Extraordinary

margosita — Mon, 09 Sep 2013 12:20:21 -0000

"Who love without judgement and do not try to "lock up their daughters." (My dad used to hug boys when they came to pick me up for dates. Even when he knew they'd likely break my heart.)"

This made me want to cry, in the best way. What an awesome dad/man/human being!

Re: Girl's Gone Child: Colors

margosita — Thu, 05 Sep 2013 11:03:51 -0000

I met one of my very best friends at the soda machine in middle school and started talking after we both bought a Diet Coke. This is a totally superficial, unimportant thing to have in common with someone. But it was enough to get us talking and discovering other things, asking and answering bigger, more interesting questions.

I love the questions you listed below in response to another comment. Those are awesome questions and I want kids to be asked those in school (and at home!). But I also think that simpler questions can serve as a starting point. For me, I think encouraging more creativity and better questions isn't an either/or. There's a place for finding similarities and there is a place for being creative. I really like Lisa Y's comment below about the benefit of "favorites", too.

When my Diet Coke enjoying friend gets married this spring and I stand up to give my maid of honor speech, I will probably not mention soda. But I am really glad we had that boring thing in common, because it led to so much else!

Re: Girl's Gone Child: Colors

margosita — Wed, 04 Sep 2013 17:12:35 -0000

I agree with you. But I also think there can be a place for "boring questions." I keep thinking about a kid in that classroom who might be really shy or who might feel different from their classmates for another reason and then seeing Fable's portrait and finding out she likes My Little Ponies, and is able to say "I like that, too!" There can be a great comfort in sameness, even (especially?) for kids, who are can be looking for how they fit in, just as much as they are looking for how they stand out.

And that portrait is only one photo of Fable in this post. She is expressing herself other times and other ways. I don't think it says less about Fable just because it's doesn't say everything about Fable.

Re: Girl's Gone Child: The Month in Moments: February

margosita — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 09:15:44 -0000

Gorgeous!

Re: Girl's Gone Child: TOTW: A Rug and a Kiss! (& Giveaway)

margosita — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 09:05:40 -0000

I love the first coffee of the day, especially on cold winter days.

Re: Girl's Gone Child: She-Section Week 2: Not in His Name?

margosita — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 12:49:12 -0000

My argument is that personal struggles make the next generation's personal struggles on the topic easier and non-traditional choices easier. The women in my mom's generation who changed their names because that was what was expected but struggled against it, or struggled to justify it for themselves means that many of them do not join in the pressure my generation feels to also change. That's the same for me, and it's the same for my boyfriend, even if his father never had to struggle to make peace. Does that make sense? I'm not saying that men don't have to change EVER, I'm saying that my mom's internal struggle made it better for my generation (both female and male partners), regardless of what my dad did or didn't struggle with. I DO think we're on the same page, I just may not have made myself very clear. I do get annoyed when women change their names, to be honest. But I recognize that there are perfectly valid non-traditional reasons to make a traditional-appearing decision that don't make it any harder for me (or my kids someday) to make a different decision.

(And I agree that fighting for the right to vote is way different than making peace with the name issue. I didn't intend to make them comparable, just to note that sometimes fighting is required and sometimes making the peace is.)

Re: Girl's Gone Child: She-Section Week 2: Not in His Name?

margosita — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 17:26:07 -0000

It bothers me when women DON'T have to struggle to make peace with their decisions in a patriarchal society. Ultimately I don't care what the decision is, it's the struggle that counts. It's the struggle that means our kids won't have to fight as much. And that's true of names and it's true of much of our gendered behavior and understanding of society, from who gets to wear what (pants or dresses or makeup or bow ties?) to who calls themselves what.

So yes, women are discovering there are reasons to do the thing that used to be an assumption. But if we struggle along the way and make our peace, our kids will be free to make their own kinds of peace, too. So in the next generation we can see boys who aren't close to their fathers or boys with weird awkward long names or boys who just feel like it can take their female partner's name and those of us who struggled to make the peace will be happy to keep the peace and that's the end game. Women before me had to fight to keep or hyphenate their names (and to vote! and to wear pants! and to own property!), and I'm grateful they struggled, with or without their male partners facing the same struggle.

Re: Girl's Gone Child: She-Section Week 2: Not in His Name?

margosita — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 14:47:10 -0000

I'm not married, but I won't change my name when I am. Partly because I've published under my name, partly for feminist reasons, partly because I don't want to adjust to a new name and partly because, as my boyfriend and I always joke, my name is just better (prettier) than his. I know we'll get some pushback from his more conservative family, and so I think our first kid will get his last name as a compromise. But the second gets mine. It just seems fair!

Re: Get Ready, Everyone!

margosita — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 14:52:30 -0000

Actually, Obama Team, I DO want a professor.

An intellectually curious person who wants to speak well and deeply about the issues in a way that treats me like a fellow adult with a vested interest in what happens... sounds pretty Presidential to me.

Re: Girl's Gone Child: Liner Note 9/10

margosita — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 13:19:15 -0000

Sometimes I'll start getting crabby for no good reason and I'll get headaches and wake up angry and I won't know why.

And then, after becoming irrationally pissed off at a pretty benign email I'll go for a little walk to fill up my water bottle and I'll drink about half and the cloud will lift. Between my morning coffee and afternoon soda and evening glass of wine I will have forgotten to drink water and every time (every time!) I think: Oh god, I was dehydrated! That was it!

And I'll feel a little silly.

I think it's the same way with friends. As adults I think we forget how much friendships felt like water when we were kids. The thing that sustains us. We were all someone's friend before we were anyone's girlfriend or wife or mother or blogger. It's important to nurture that part of us, too.

(Also, drink water!)