learning experience

My facebook friend posted this meme I found so offensive yet thought-provoking.  It was advice to men on how to treat a woman.  It went like this.

***
As a man...
Lead her spiritually.
Challenge her intellectually.
Encourage her emotionally.
Protect her physically.
Take care of her.
***

I was like, puke.  She doesn't need to be led spiritually.  How about, follow her spiritually? 

And it's not like women are retarded--she doesn't need to be challenged intellectually.  Seemed really creepy, implying that women don't think well.  Men and women might tend to think differently, but there's no way men are superior.

Then I got to the next line and was like, well, yeah.  Maybe encouraging her emotionally is a good thing.  Everyone should be encouraged, really.

Things started getting confusing for me when I got to Protect her physically.  Is it wrong, that I like the idea of being protected?

Then with Take care of her, I like being taken care of too.  Ming definitely takes care of me.

So I was like, wow, maybe I'm a dinosaur. 

Then I showed the meme to Ming.  He said it's not like I want to be protected and taken care of by a man--I want to be protected and taken care of by anyone of any gender, which is true. 

I remember a long time ago, my best friend when I was a kid was tough, and I felt safe with her, which I liked.  I knew she could stand up to anyone.  Later when we were both adults we tried being friends again, and I still really liked that feeling, walking beside her, knowing no one would mess with us.

Well, yesterday Ming was traveling with friends to and from Ely all day, helping deliver twenty boxes of books to a prison.  It snowed.

I did some cooking.  I made funeral potatoes for the first time and was disappointed.  I thought something magical would happen, with all that fat, but they just tasted like potatoes in sour cream with lots of cheese.  There was no oveny transformation.  Maybe I did it wrong.

I also made veggie lasagna.  It's ok--the broccoli got overcooked, being steamed then boiled in the sauce then baked in the oven.  Oops.  The mushrooms were a nice touch, and the fake meat was pretty good, but overall I'd say it was too expensive.  The cheese was more than four dollars, and the fake meat was around three, and then the mushrooms...  I got the noodles and sauce for free, but well, it was a learning experience.

Long ago in Bishop I made something like lasagna with commodities--at the portable near the library, they'd give us huge things of spaghetti and cans of sauce and government cheese.  So I'd layer it up like lasagna and bake it in big pyrex dishes.  Those were the days.