But since I have gotten married, have I lost some of that independence. We share the duty of taking out the trash, washing the dishes, doing laundry, paying bills, etc., but I still feel that I have lost some of my independence. Or is it just that I don't have to do the things I hate to do anymore, now that I have a partner to do them for me? I don't like going outside by myself at night, I'm a girl and you never know what is lurking in the bushes, right? Or do I just not want to take the dogs outside because it gets cold at night? I don't pump my own gas or pay for the bill when we go out to eat, Brian always does it for me, so am I now dependent on Brian?
I recently went to Washington DC for training related to work. My plan was to have Brian take me to the airport, but we had a big snow storm and I thought - you are going to a big city, bring back that independence you claim to have, so I took a Greyhound bus to the airport, then I went on the plane to DC where I got on a shuttle bus to my hotel. The next morning I took a shuttle bus to the training location. My plan for getting back to my hotel was to ride the metro to the closest stop near my hotel. This metro stop is not in the best neighborhood, so I was going to be sure to walk quickly and look like I know where I'm going. Don't stare at streets signs in confusion or pull out city maps, know where you are going - memorize it before you leave, don't talk to people on the streets, they don't want to know what time it is, they want to rob you, and lastly don't smile at anyone, you want to look like you live in the city and have been "hardened" by city life. I was very prepared, I knew what metro stop I was getting on, I knew what train to ride and where I had to switch trains, I even knew exactly how many stops the train was going to make before it reached my stop. I have been to Boston and New York, I knew exactly how to ride a metro-train.
Well, apparently not!
I got to the metro station and couldn't get the ticket machine to let me pay for a metro ticket, so a lady (probably in a hurry and was think - get out of my way!) told me that if I don't have a metro card, I have to use those machines over there. Then I realize I don't even know how much to put on this metro card, so I find the attendant's hut and ask him, he tells me $1.60. I put $2 in the machine because it will only allow me to put whole dollar amounts in the machine. Then I go to the access gates (I don't know what they are really called), I quickly watch what others are doing then stick my card in and the gate won't open, the card is not coming out of the slot I just stuck it in, so I shimmed through the gates and got on the train. When I proudly got to my stop I was dumbfounded to find out that I need my ticket to get out of the station. So I asked the lady in the attendant's hut, what I need to do if I forgot to grab my ticket as I went through the gate (ha ha - I didn't even attempt to grab my ticket). She looked at me as if I were the first person to ever do that (I probably was, the ticket comes out of a different slot and if you don't pull the ticket out, the gate won't open - so how I got through with out the gate sounding an alarm - I don't know) and she told me I had to pay a full fare of $4.60. The machine would only allow me to put $5 in. So my very independent self took a $1.60 ride on the metro for $7!
But all in all my trip to Washington DC was very uneventful and fun! It was nice to get out of the small town we live in. I don't think that I have lost my independence, because when Brian is not around I can and do pump my own gas and take the dog outside to go potty at night.
Now to the answers to my quiz!
1. Who said, "Well, I'm not a scientist, I'm an inventor".
Thomas Edison
(Of course, some scientists are also inventors. But there is a difference. A person acting scientifically is trying to understand the natural world, whether or not that understanding is economically useful. An inventor tries to create something new that will have practical application. In both cases there is a sense of challenge in the pursuit and a sense of achievement in the result. ~Sign at Museum)
(Of course, some scientists are also inventors. But there is a difference. A person acting scientifically is trying to understand the natural world, whether or not that understanding is economically useful. An inventor tries to create something new that will have practical application. In both cases there is a sense of challenge in the pursuit and a sense of achievement in the result. ~Sign at Museum)
2. Before speed bumps what did city's do to slow down traffic in neighborhoods?
Made the streets curvy.
(And now this gets a lot of people lost ~me)
3. Name this animal. {See old post for what the animal looked like}
Fennec [A type of Fox]
(This fox's ears measure about one-third of it's body length! They detect prey and and also help dissipate heat. ~ Sign at Museum)
4. Name the skeleton that is behind Brian. {See old post for what the skeleton looked like}
Triceratops
5. What do the letters ERA, in the picture below, stand for? {See old post for picture}
Equal Rights Amendment
(The Equal Rights Amendment was written in 1921 by suffragist Alice Paul. It has been introduced in Congress every session since 1923. It passed Congress in 1972, but was not ratified by the necessary thirty-eight states by the July 1982 deadline. It was ratified by thirty-five states, three states short. To this day the ERA or a form of the ERA has not been ratified to the U.S. constitution ~ me and www.now.org)
6. What did the Nazis do with all of the hair they collected from the concentration camp victims?
They sold it to companies who used it for mattress stuffing.
(The companies probably didn't know where the hair had come from. ~ Brian)
a CONGRATS! is in order for those of you who got the question(s) right!
~ Nicole
4 comments:
Just to add a little note to Nicole's posting. I sometimes give Nicole a hard time about how she always wants to do everything herself, she used to never let me carry any of her bags, books, etc. It took quite sometime before she took it as a token of help and not me trying to show her that she couldn't carry them because she was a girl.
Nicole and I typically share all the household tasks, there is no "man" or "women" job. But sometimes Nicole deceives me into doing something by saying its the guys job to do it. Well from now on I will kindly remind Nicole about her independence, especially the next time the trash needs to be taken out.
I don't like to think of it as a women's job or a man's job. What I do think is that somethings are just Jim's job not mine. Like taking out the trash is not my job, ever. I told that to jim before we ever got married.
Please, <;-\ it's everybody's job. You see something that needs to be done and you do it. No questions asked no score kept. You're taught to be independent so that you're not taken advantage of.
You always said you were independent but I thought you were joking! You mean you were serious the whole time?! At least you were successful once you got onto the metro because there are some metros that boy, they are confusing! Later. Dan
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