I�m hungry. Feed me.
10:41 a.m.
I was feeling so rotten yesterday and wanting to take it out on someone. I was mean to Hubby, who doesn�t always understand that I�m not upset with him, just having to vent my own inadequacies. I apologize if I offended anyone with my own particularly skewed vision of motherhood and housewifery. I meant everything I said, but I didn�t mean to upset anyone by it. I really thought I should apologize to harri3tspy, but she came back with the nicest entry that made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. So I guess no apology is necessary there.
After searching high and low, I finally found my clay in the garage. I feared for a moment that Hubby had chucked it, thinking that anything in a green garbage bag was garbage, but luckily it was still extant, and still slightly moist. I�ve added more water, and when it is pliable enough I�ll get to work on my lamia. I�ve saved the mesh bag that the oranges came in to press into it to simulate snake scales. Also, I�ve decided on the basic form of the cobra with flared hood, so that from the rear that�s the impression you get. Frontally, though, the head will have a woman�s face, and somehow I have to put breasts on the thoracic area (question: do snakes have thoraxes?) so they don�t look like an afterthought. Then I�ll make a three-piece mold (I�ve only ever done two-piece ones at most before), since I fear that it would be too fragile for anything less. Perhaps it would be a good idea to discuss the concept with my sculpting professor first before I get too far into it, n�est-ce pas?
As you can tell, I'm feeling better today, although all the same ailments as yesterday still stand, augmented by a runny nose which I stupidly didn�t bring kleenex for and have had to run to the bathroom for toilet paper at irregular intervals. The cough is a little easier, and I�m still aching a little in my ear, but at least the headache is gone and the sinuses don�t hurt quite so much. As a singing teacher, though, I�m kind of useless. I think a raven is the closest animal approximation I can find for the sounds I�m producing.
I actually gave my student this morning a lecture about ethnic and racial stereotyping. He was having trouble with pronunciation in Schubert�s Die Forelle that we were working on, and made some comment about Germans which I found offensive. So I told him that if he had prejudices and stereotypical ideas about national and linguistic groups in general to keep them to himself because I didn�t appreciate them. I also admonished him that if he was going to be teaching children (which is his goal) he can�t go about saying this kind of thing out loud. He recognized that, of course, and admitted that he does censor himself in the classroom. Well, he�s got to start doing it all the time. He himself is a member of a visible ethnic minority, one that suffered much discrimination at the hands of the Canadian government during the last world war, and I always think someone like that should be more tolerant. But the truth is that that is my own shortsightedness, that a victim of prejudice would be less prone to that error himself. I�m wrong. It usually works exactly the other way around. Wishful thinking on my part, I guess.
Anyway, I hope that by censoring himself, he will in effect change his own way of thought. He agrees with me that people should be judged on their own individual merits, not on their membership in a community, but when we have preconceived ideas, we tend to let those biases influence us before we can make an adequate assessment from personal interaction. In other words, we are influenced by stereotypes. I have to battle this in myself constantly, so I don�t claim to be a paradigm of virtue.
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