Tracy's thoughts on things

Dear Vegetarians/Vegans,           I hate cruelty directed at animals. I have a dog of my own and I love him more than a lot of things. I was feeling extremely uncomfortable reading "Consider the Lobster" by David Foster Wallace. I was feeling horrible until I got to the sentence that said, "There's a part of the brain in people and animals that lets us feel pain, and lobsters' don't have that." I felt relief but that moment lasted for about a second because then I read that, "it's incorrect in about nine different ways." The fact is, animals feel pain. I get it, the chicken strips that we are eating, a poor little chicken pecking away at the ground had to die for it. I know you just can't believe that us "civilized" humans could do something so "savage" to animals that never did anything to us. But rest assured that I am against animal cruelty... yet I still eat meat. I eat meat along with the 88% of Americans. I ...

Back in the day-  I hope I'm living with my husband and kids in a massive house- completed with a pool- that was bought when we were just married. Of course there will be some expensive looking landscaping that everyone will drive a little slower to see. I want it to be the most grand house one will ever walk into, that wasn't owned by a celebrity. Obviously my husband will be paying for that. He will have to buy the biggest and best house for me because he has to show me he loves me somehow. I mean what is he supposed to do? Buy me chocolates? That isn't even acceptable on Valentines day. On Valentines day I expect pink elephants that are the size of horses to come out of my 5 door garage. There should be confetti and a couple of hundred flowers. And that would be the minimum. I would laugh and cry and kiss him thank you. Thats how a Valentines should go. I want my husband to be THE family guy. He should be what other fathers and husbands aspire to be. He should read to my...

I've been saying the phrase, "Don't put me in a box!" quite a lot these days. As I'm growing up and finding myself I don't want people putting a sticker and labeling me when I do something. I go to the library and I hear, "Why do you like to read so much? You're such a nerd. You're so boring." If I go shopping and I spend a little too much I hear, " You're so spoiled. Why don't you care about saving money?" I can't pick between desserts, " You are so indecisive". It never ends! People like to put you in a box and never let you out. And if you want to do something out of the ordinary, you feel like you can't! People are deciding who you are and that's just not right. Its a lot like Deborah Tannen's "There Is No Unmarked Women". When the women in the story wore something, they were automatically judged by others around them based on the type of shoe they wore! They were labeled on their hair...

Imagine a world where people didn't have to "take precautions to make themselves less threatening." That would mean no middle eastern people being stopped in the middle of checkout by airport security. They claim it's a "random selection" but everyone knows it's because they look a specific way. Almost every time, they are simply minding their own business and hoping to get across without any trouble. Even when they do get by with out any trouble they are feared by the passengers on the plane. I have witnessed this happen multiple times as I travel frequently on planes. My family and I were on the board of a plane and we heard loud voices coming from the back. We turned around to see a women asking the flight attendant if she could have another seat because she would prefer not to be seated with a middle eastern women and her two kids. I was grossed out by what I had just witnessed. She didn't even have the decency to ask the flight attendant somewhe...