The animals we love

My sister volunteered at Petsmart last weekend for Adoption day, and my boyfriend and I went to support her. My sister told me she was going to persuade my dad into getting this rat terrier, and I'm thinking, of course not, they already have a dog, 8 cats, and a wild bunny. Well, they ended up getting the dog anyway, named Dixie. It's like a zoo at my parents' house. Our other dog is a mixed terrier, and his name is Milo. The new dog, Dixie, is 6 years old, and Milo is only like 2. Dixie is very interesting though, I guess because we've never adopted an animal a pet as old as she is; not that 6 is old, but it's older than most of our animals. We've also never adopted an animal from Petsmart, we've only adopted animals from the pound. But either way we're saving a life. The good thing about Dixie being older is that she is already trained, set in her ways, which may not be such a good thing, and LISTENS, unlike Milo, who is not so trained well by my parents. Milo likes to do his business in my parents' house. When Dixie is taken outside, she has no problem doing her business, so obviously she was trained well; she acts like a real dog, unlike Milo, but that's also the trainer's fault: my family.

It's clear, though, that Dixie has never been that close to cats before. She likes to chase them around the house, but that's after the cats have hissed at her, so she probably feels threatened. She likes to bark loudly at them if they try to run away, but that's just what animals do, especially when they're not used to each other. One of my kittens, Bootsie let Dixie get close to him, and at first it was going good because Bootisie didn't get scared like he did before. But Dixie was shaking, and stared at Bootsie for what seemed like an hour. It was weird but probably because I'm not used it. Milo is much different with the cats. He cuddles with them and acts like he's a cat himself, but of course he was the only dog with 8 cats, so I can understand that. It's so cute because as soon as we got the kittens, he acted like he was supposed to protect them, as though they were his babies, and other times we would find him putting his mouth over their entire head. Anyway, I'm sure it's because Milo started with cats from the beginning, and Dixie is already 6 and probably hasn't been around cats before. We're certainly not going to give Dixie up like her previous owner did, so she's stuck with us, and we're stuck with her.

Everything changes

I can feel the holidays coming around, and I'm so excited. I can definitely feel that the weather is changing, and it's getting colder because my allergies are going crazy. Other things keep changing such as the stock market fluctuating, and gas prices are almost a dollar less than they were in just a month. Elections are coming up, and it's my first time to vote for president, and things will definitely be different after the election. It may be the first time to have a black president or the first time to have a female vice president. It's just amazing how our world can change so much in just a few months. My life will change a lot in just a year. I'll be graduating next May and hopefully will be in graduate school by this time next year. My boyfriend and I will hopefully be getting engaged within the next 6 months. My boyfriend's sister is having a baby girl in about 5 and a half months, and I'm super excited! I'll be an aunt! Well, sort of....These changes are good, but it seems life keeps getting more and more complicated every few months. In about a month and a half, instead of receiving an awesome birthday present, it seems I'll just be losing my insurance, and I'm not too happy about it. It seems we have to grow up so fast these days, and I know that sounds negative, but I miss being a kid sometimes when we didn't have to worry about as much.
Do you remember the time before computers and cell phones and all this other new technology stuff? Can you imagine what it would be like to not have a computer, your blackberry or an Ipod? My boyfriend just turned it to "Little House on the Prairie" for some reason, and he told me he wishes we could be in those times because life seemed so much simpler. The way we live today is much different than how they lived back then, and the more advanced technology we come up with, the more complicated and confusing things seem, and it's hard to keep up with all the new stuff. But that's just my opinion. I often think of that country song where she sings, "Life's about changing, and nothing ever stays the same," because those words are so true. Life is also changing, and sometimes I wish I could go back in time to those special times that are gone now, and just press pause.

Work troubles

I work at Chick-fil-A, and I had to close twice this week at work as the closing manager because one of the other closing managers was on vacation. I closed on Tuesday night, which is my regular night of closing, and I had to send two people home because they just wouldn't listen. I had warned one of them, and gotten on to them for a few things, and they didn't get it! So I didn't want them there and sent them home. So that was Tuesday night, and I also had to close Thursday night, which is spirit night for a certain school, and we were pretty busy. Thursday night was special because we had to do some extra cleaning due to the fact that corporate was coming the next morning to look at our store. The store needed to be spotless, basically, and most of us stayed there until almost 1:00 a.m. when we usually get out at about 11 p.m. Well, we worked our little tails off, and yes forgot to cut and squeeze lemons, but we still did a lot considering how many people we had closing; obviously, the manager doing the schedule needs to relearn how to make schedules.

I felt a little guilty for not doing lemons and getting out at 1 in the morning, but my crew and I worked hard. Naturally, though, we, excuse me, I got criticized for leaving so late, and not praised for doing extra cleaning, which needed to be done for a while. As soon as I walked in to get my check today, all I heard was we got out too late, we shouldn't have payed attention to so much detail, and my boss asked who made the list of extra "chores" for us to do, and one of the other managers just said that I wanted the list made, so of course it was all my fault, and I just kept my mouth shut and left. So I realized I just don't get paid enough to deal with all this mess! Things such as babysitting a bunch of kids, it feels like, trying to get the store cleaned, and dealing with all the money and of course the rude customers who have nothing to do but complain. People just don't appreciate things anymore! And I think to myself now, I am so looking forward to finishing college and getting a "real" job, and how much my job now is just a little fraction of my life because there are more important things in life than this cruddy job, and that I won't have to stay there forever. Thank God!

Society's expectations

We were discussing the topic of gender roles in educational psychology the other day, and my teacher brought up some very interesting points. She brought up a point of how we treat boys and girls differently. Most societies have expectations of how boys, girls, women, and men "should" think and behave. For example, in the U.S., men are expected to be strong, aggressive, and decisive, and traditionally women are expected to be weak, passive, and indecisive. Well, I think that is crap! These expectations or stereotypes combine to form gender roles, which are the set of social norms that dictate what is socially regarded as appropriate female and male behavior (McCammon, 267). Well, today of course traditional gender role stereotypes are changing because women are now more expected to be more ambitious in seeking a career, and men are now more expected to be more caring and nurturing. In my opinion....I think it just depends on the person, not whether you're male or female. Each individual has a different personality, different wants and needs. It should not matter if a male is sensitive or if a female is decisive and takes charge.

I often notice how some males try to be a macho (including my lovely boyfriend) probably that is the stereotype that society labels males. It's the way we raise our children, that is the problem! Now think about this...if your little girl fell and hit the coffee table, a lot of parents would be like, "Oh honey, are you okay?" and they baby their precious little daughter, and sometimes it gets as ridiculous as the parent saying, "bad table!" as if it's the table's fault, and there's no way their daughter could have ran into the table. But if a little boy falls down or runs into the coffee table and starts to cry, then usually parents say, "Oh, you'll be okay, you're a big boy, don't cry." Or a parent will go as far as saying, "Don't be a baby, show me those muscles." It's the way we raise our kids by treating them this way. You expect a girl to act one way and the boy to act another way, and thus begins a whole new cycle of stereotypes and gender roles. Society's gender roles influence pretty much every aspect of our public and private lives, and that's just sad.