Intro post?
I keep meaning to make a good pinned post for this blog that includes links to find your way around my stuff, and I keep putting it off, so here’s a slightly messy index for now.
The CDC is in fact very good at counting, they have enormous data sets. And I would argue that Halakha is into veggies, especially this time of year. (lettuce and bitter herb and parsley and....).
However, I have not seen footnotes on Sesame Street.
Twenty years ago, February 15th, 2004, I got married for the first time.
It was twenty years earlier than I ever expected to.
To celebrate/comemorate the date, I'm sitting down to write out everything I remember as I remember it. No checking all the pictures I took or all the times I've written about this before. I'm not going to turn to my husband (of twenty years, how the f'ing hell) to remember a detail for me.
This is not a 100% accurate recounting of that first wild weekend in San Francisco. But it -is- a 100% accurate recounting of how I remember it today, twenty years after the fact.
Join me below, if you would.
you want to read this
Sorry, still not over Darcy critical-failing that proposal! Not that sorry, though. I have no idea why Pride and Prejudice hits so hard when most of Austen's other novels are like "They're fine! I like them! Anyway..." for me.
But, here's the thing. Darcy is being an asshole. Darcy isn't an asshole, generally, but he's really being one about his whole Regency Era situationship with Lizzie. Like, he rolls in on day one with this giant fucking chip on his shoulder, acts like he's too good for everyone, and why? Well, he's rich, and he's got lofty connections.
Except who's he rolling with right then? His spineless dustmop of a bestie and his bestie's godawful sisters. Bingley's the sort of guy who can be peer-pressured out of being in love!
Like, you know that thing where you have a friend, and they introduce you to another friend, and that friend is such a wet sock that you find yourself reevaluating your friend because they're hanging around with this guy? Like, okay, Darcy, do you have friends, or do you have toadies? Is this your bestie, or did you find a gentleman's companion that you didn't have to pay?
Later on we meet his aunt, who's the goddamned worst.
Like, we all hate Mr. Collins, right? This woman has Mr. Collins over twice a week for a quiet evening of performative dickriding. That's the kind of taste Darcy's family has. Voluntarily spending hours with Mr. Collins on a regular basis.
There's no talking about Mrs. Bennet's lack of decorum or matrimonial grasping or entitlement without talking about Lady Catherine flying in on her broom to scream at her nephew's fiancee, right? Especially considering that her basis for doing so is a cradle engagement that she seems to have never spoken to her nephew about as an adult and a fucking rumor that she assumes pertains to Lizzie.
She doesn't even talk to her fucking nephew before spending half a day in a carriage to make a blazing spectacle of herself in front of the entire Bennet household! He finds out she did that afterwards when she tries to make him break off the nonexistent engagement that she's announced to half the fucking kingdom by that point.
I mean, unexpected point to Mrs. B, who notably did not even walk down the road to Netherfield to act disappointed at anyone.
Also hard to get on too high a horse after Georgiana's near-elopement with the country's biggest asshole! Like, oh, the Bennet sisters are embarrassing? The Bennets lack propriety?
Buddy, you hired a sex trafficker to look after your sister and then your sister almost fucked the one-man-crime-wave son of your late property-manager. And you didn't even manage to hush it all up properly! Sure, he's keeping your sister's name out of his mouth, but he's running you down like a dog in every other respect to the whole county!
Like, "Oh, look at me, I'm Fitzwilliam Darcy! I'm not going to lower myself to correcting any of The Plebes who now think I deliberately misadministered a will to fuck over The Help out of cheapness and spite, especially when all it would take is one conversation with That Fucker's commanding officer, but god forbid I ever have to go out in public with a Bennet! I might die of shame and secondhand cringe!"
So he's got all of that going on, and then he busts in on Lizzie with a proposal that's got huge "I don't consent to being attracted to you" energy and runs her entire family into the ground. This is after Lizzie's spent approximately three centuries being negged by his mannerless nightmare of an aunt, so that's at least one extra level of "Really, bruh?" in there.
And then he fucking claps back at her rejection! Instead of going "Oh. Huh. Whoops. Guess I'll just have to go marry one of the other ten thousand women lined up waiting to marry me!" he's like "What the fuuuuck did I ever do to you, you fucking menace?". At which point she checks him so hard he spends the next three months bluescreening and looking up how to be polite to people you haven't already known for five years.
So like I said, he is being an asshole here. He knows how to act right, he just hasn't bothered to do so once since posting up in Netherfield because idk, he's on vacation or some shit.
Critically! However upsetting Lizzie finds The Proposal Incident (half-hour crying jag, spends the rest of the day hiding in her room), she is at no point worried about Darcy's subsequent behavior.
This is while she still thinks he genuinely did Wickham dirty and before she's had a chance to get character references from the 500 people working at Pemberley. This is the guy about whom her dad later says "Kidding-not kidding I can hardly say no to this rich fuck, can I?" when asked for his blessing. This is after Mr. Collins literally said "I've heard no means yes these days" to her fucking face and then her mother tried to make her marry him anyway.
She preached a full on sermon about the man's shortcomings to his face immediately after saying she wouldn't bounce on his dick if it was the last one on earth and after the adrenaline crash wasn't like, "Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuuuck my entire life, he's going to burn down the vicarage and frame my father for tax fraud."
Everything that she's seen with her own eyes about this snobby bastard tells her he's not going to go crying to his aunt and get her cousin's patronage revoked. He's not going to go out of his way to fuck her or her family over. He's pissed, and he was definitely playing the ass with that proposal, but he's not going to lash out over it.
So this is Lizzie seeing Darcy at Peak Asshole, with extra assholery that he didn't even do but he couldn't be bothered to tell anyone he didn't do, and Lizzie's still like "omg you're such a fucking prick, how do you even get out of bed in the morning" instead of "Well, RIP to my prospects, there's no way that man doesn't have the lot of us consigned to a convent by parliamentary decree now."
This is also great Pride & Prejudice posting! Darcy, like many rich people, has trouble with the fact that others have feelings and viewpoints as valid as his own.
Darcy presumably sees his aunt Lady Catherine through affectionate eyes, softening her faults, but doesn’t consider that Elizabeth sees her family through affectionate eyes. Interestingly, we the audience regard Georgiana with sympathy - Darcy’s beloved baby and only sister, admiring of Elizabeth - while we tend to be far less sympathetic to Lydia (Elizabeth’s sister, but with about 5 years and 2 other sisters between them, which gives more scope for annoyance and competition than Darcy’s approximately 12 year age gap with a little girl who’s no threat to the heir or the near unlimited resources in their huge manor).
But Darcy, to his credit, is shown knowing Lydia is a victim like Georgiana, both 15 year olds preyed upon by Wickham. While society at the time meant Lydia marrying her seducer was bad yet the alternative might be worse, I always liked that Darcy’s first impulse was to march in calling ‘Lydia get your coat, we are blowing this popsicle stand!’ It also tells us that had he come too late to save Georgiana’s reputation, he still would’ve tried to get her away from Wickham and make sure she was safe. Perhaps his immediate reaction to Lydia tells us he’d thought about that.
Darcy, a principled guy at bottom, and yes! Elizabeth can either subconsciously sense that despite Wickham’s claims or can tell (possibly by noting his affection for his sister) that if this guy cares about you, he won’t hurt you. And he could have without framing her dad for tax fraud. All Darcy would have to do if he really wanted to marry and/or punish Elizabeth was something entirely legal and socially acceptable: go ask her parents for her hand.
Think how hideous her mother made refusing Mr Collins. As OP says, we see Mr Bennet go ‘oh I can’t refuse Darcy anything, but you—my 20 year old dependent daughter—you can go say no to him after I’ve already agreed to give you away.’ His reaction is whatever at that point because Elizabeth loves Darcy, but earlier in the book Mr Bennet defends Elizabeth from Mr Collins. We know Mr Bennet wouldn’t defend her from Darcy. Mrs Bennet would never stop hassling her. Jane got jilted, all the Bennet daughters have no prospects at this point. Whether or not Elizabeth caved, she would be under unbearable pressure and nobody would think Darcy had done a thing wrong.
But of course Darcy would never. Man has too much pride, for one thing.
In Darcy’s defence re popping the question abruptly, he did think they were taking romantic strolls.
ELIZABETH: I love walking in this particular place.
HINT: Stop coming here.
DARCY: oho my lady and I have an assignation.
DARCY: we now regularly rendez-vous to appreciate nature. I 100% understood her charming flirty hint and am a prodigious loverboy.
ELIZABETH: oh no our 5th awkward surprise meeting. How does this keep happening!
It is hilarious to think of Elizabeth returning proposal fire with ‘I do not rejoice in a connection to Lady Catherine, whose wit and manners are so inferior to my own, but I GUESS I’ll marry you.’
Why did no one tell me that Streit’s has charoset premade in a jar?!
Not that I could buy it since Ashki charoset conflicts with several family allergies but please do report back with opinions!
When I was a kid I kept failing classes because I'd lose my homework. I'd finish it, but between the dining room table and the classroom it would just walk away. Sometimes it ended up in my backpack, sometimes it didn't; sometimes I finished the homework at school and it got home in my backpack but wasn't there the next day.
To attempt to address this, my parents got me a neon orange folder to put in my backpack; it was my homework folder, all homework was to go into that folder and that folder only, and it was to only come out of that folder when it was being worked on. I was to put homework in the homework folder as soon as it was assigned and if I'd worked on it, put it back in the folder as soon as it was finished. The logic here was that using the folder was supposed to be automatic, and you wanted a bright color so it wouldn't get lost in the depths of a backpack.
I think I lost about eight of those before my parents stopped buying orange folders.
So it was very frustrating to search "how to be organized at work as an adult with ADHD" only to get a list that said "set alarms and write things down and try to make friends with a more organized person" which was immediately followed by tips to help your ADHD child stay organized and the one right at the top was to put their homework in a bright folder so they couldn't lose it.
If you have been harmed by the ADHD Tips Industrial Complex you may be entitled to a packet of fun-dip and a cactus cooler as consolation for losing your homework folder again.
