I've always had big feels about last names. I have parents who have never legally married, and didn't have the same last name, and I had a childhood resentment because I was given my father's last name. I strongly preferred my mothers because it was exotic sounding and I could spell it long before I learned how to spell my father's very boring English surname. I never really liked or identified with my last name, so when I got married at 22, I was very eager to have a new last name. The name change came when I was fairly young, so all of my professional life I've been known as that name. When I divorced, I kept my ex's name because I liked how it sounded more than my maiden name, plus the paperwork to change it is a pain in the butt. If I ever remarry in the future, I might consider changing it again if I felt some affinity toward the name.
As a fellow burlesque dancer, I found myself nodding a lot to this post. Burlesque is art form that explores a lot of things that our culture finds taboo... Sensuality, sexuality, women's empowerment.... and those topics tend to evoke reactions in people, in some it's support, in other's it's fear, and often it's somewhere in between those things. I found one of the things that was challenging when I started doing shows was reconciling how *I* felt about the art I was producing vs. the emotions and reactions that it was evoking from friends of mine.
And it was such a range of emotions and reactions, too...
I had friends be supportive, but decline to go to the show because they felt it was something that crossed a boundary that they weren't willing to cross. I had other friends who it was completely no thing, and they had a great time supporting what I was doing. I had other friends who came, and couldn't see the art past the boobs.
I find that I have to step back and let others have their reactions, for better or for worse.... and just focus on my own reaction to what I'm doing.
How exciting! I feel like I'm hearing about so many people heading to Paris recently... It's kinda funny.
I usually sleep with two. One under my head, one in my arms. Both are memory foam.
I'm totally inspired by the slowly warming weather (although it didn't feel that way today in NYC... It was spitting snow). I can't wait until I can go outside without a jacket again.
I think this can be a difficult balance to strike. I don't really know it from the parent side of things, but remembering back to what my parents did when I was a child... I didn't generally have a lot of choice in what activities my mother signed me up for. In some cases, that was a good thing... I loved music lessons, dance lessons, arts and crafts groups.... and in others, not so much. For example, I look back and am completely baffled as to why my mother insisted I play three seasons of each sport my town offered before she would accept that I was absolutely miserable doing the activity.
I think it's really good to introduce kids to a wide variety of activities because that's how they're going to figure out what they're into... but I think it's important to pay attention to whether or not your kid is actually enjoying the activity and not trying to repeatedly force something on them that they genuinely don't enjoy.
Yep. That's totally how my home is. Clutter free one day, total mess the next... Oh, and one room is only ever clutter free at a time.
I just have to say.... I was SO like that when I was India's age. The biggest drama of my youth was that I wasn't an adult. LOL.
Lately I've been mildly in love with Bic Velocity pens... I love the grip on them, and they're easy to write with quickly. When I first got into them, I only liked the straight ballpoint. I bought the gel version by accident one day and hated them.... but they've grown on me a lot, possibly because the more I've been journaling by hand, the more my muscles have been loosening up and I no longer have a death grip on my pen... which seems to not work well for gels, they stick if you press to hard into the paper.
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nikkiana 
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