Forgive my oversight; I forgot to celebrate International Women’s Day. I truly meant to, but whatever LLM is powering International Observances on my calendar must have been hallucinating because it confused International Women’s Day with International Mother Tongue Day, which was in February, and explains the dirty looks I got while speaking French to random passers-by for a full 24 hours (note to self, French Language Day was March 20).
Also, I see that on April 6, Education and Sharing Day conflicts with Tartan Day. I’ve reached out to confirm whether I can share educational information while wearing a kilt, but am deeply concerned about the ramifications of such actions and feel, for the record, that underpants must be worn on all occasions, even in the shower.
Then, because important international days don’t preclude household chores, I vacuumed and had to spend a full hour excavating said vacuum with paleontological precision to find the baby tooth (not mine) that had fallen out after breakfast. There was a long discussion over whether the Tooth Fairy understood vacuum cleaners and whether the vacuum could be a proxy for ‘under the pillow,’ but it turns out that’s not the case. We need a new vacuum.
After school drop-off, I fully intended to focus on International Women’s Day to raise awareness, take action, and make a positive impact. I thought about trying gender-responsive budgeting, which is one of those things that theoretically sounds great but also sounds like the logistics of implementation would be complicated at the international level, and anyway, there was no line item for Pilates.
I mistyped IWD while googling, and ended up reading about IUD’s1 and how sneaky funding cuts for contraception are on the horizon as fringe conservative groups funding the anti-abortion movement try to yank “Title X, a federal program that provides birth control to millions of low-income people in the United States… [as well as] efforts in Congress [that would] restrict access to contraception in foreign aid spending bills.”
All that feels deeply opposed to the tenets of International Women’s Day, a day about gender equality and progress. I just don’t feel like there is that much to celebrate, plus a third-grader told me hashtags are out.
So I’m looking for something else to do.
World Malaria Day is coming up, but I think I’ll bow out of that one, especially as it’s almost spring break. Also, I’m putting in a motion for either a name change or an extension because National Pet Month (April 1 to May 31) is technically two months, and I love our dog all the time.
https://www.vox.com/24087411/anti-abortion-roe-dobbs-birth-control-contraception-ivf
Thanks for the entertaining and informative comments Sasha,
I hadn’t noticed that you forgot IWD. My iPhone informed me of IWD and it was all over the news.
However, it was not aware of malaria day.
Hans Dankers
In the US National Library Week starts tomorrow! You can go a library and check out a book about malaria written by a woman and check off three celebrations ✔️✔️✔️