Not on the Hallmark Calendar? - Or - Well Done Sister Suffragette?

I went to the center commercial today to restock on basics after the trip. Drove round a few times looking for a parking space. Passed up a few potential spaces that looked too small when I realized I wasn't driving the beast. It's a hard transition back.

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It’s 3 am on Wednesday morning and I’m up; another example of the hard transition back. I’m doing a load of dishes, baking banana muffins, drinking some herbal tea (to see if it really does help relax me.), reading the March issue of Condé Nast Traveler and surfing the web (it’s slow this time of night um…morning, hence the reading material).

And yet another example. This morning S left for work without his cell phone. He called me around 10:30 and suggested that if I were willing to drive the hour and half to his office to bring him his phone, he would buy me lunch. I agreed and said I’d leave by 11:00.

In a show of uncharacteristic togetherness I was dressed and out the door by 10:55. I drove the hour and a half to S’s office only to discover once I’d arrived, that I’d failed to actually bring the cell phone with me. Good grief.

We had lunch with a co-worker of S’s named Gwenola. She is a true modern French woman who is struggling with the myth that many American women have struggled with for years and have now discovered to be untrue. The myth being that you can have your cake and eat it too, a family and a career, clearly this is not really true.

In France, women in management positions are not respected and men in their work places treat them poorly; in the male opinion, they have no business in positions of power. There are no harassment laws in France and Gwenola has to put up with a lot from her French male counterparts.

During lunch Gwenola asked me if I’d heard of or participated in any International Women’s Day activities. I hadn’t ever heard of International Women’s Day since it’s probably never made it on to the Hallmark calendar. However, many countries do have International Women's Day activities to highlight the role of women in society and also to highlight the issues facing women today from job discrimination in developed countries to basic survival in war torn countries. If you click on the events link and look for events in the US you will see that there are tons of them; most having taken place ON March 8th, but many still upcoming. Now click on the link for activities in France, you will notice only one entry and that one may not have even taken place.

You think you have a long way to go ‘to make your brother understand’!

Off to bed to test the tea.