Post from Miguel

 The readings for this week didn’t really stand out to me as much as last weeks readings. I feel like this weeks readings were less weird in the way last weeks readings had more magic realism involved, but this weeks didn’t as much. The reading about the woman faking her pregnancy and then suddenly the baby turns out to be real confused me so much. I know there were missing pages, but the jump from her researching about pregnancy and then her feeling a kick in her stomach was a very confusing turn around. The reading about the surveillance job was to me a bit boring because the narration overall was detailed and monotoned. In part I felt there really wasn’t much of a meaning to the story. The woman in the purple skirt was very creepy, but not in the way like last weeks stories were. The stalking and all had me questions the narrator. I found the bodybuilder story the most interesting to me because the situation was one that I felt was common to read about, well to some extent. The wife and husband in the story both lacked self esteem and it reflected on each other. I felt that even when the wife began to become a body builder she still lacked a sense of self esteem, this was backed up when she couldn’t do anything when she saw those two dogs fighting in the store. She wasn’t confident in her muscles and thus froze. The ending of the story to me was also somewhat predictable as I felt the two depended on each other. They fed off of each others validations in order to feel better about themselves, the husband needed to hear that his wife would not leave him for those boxers and the wife looked for the husband to notice the change in her appearance. So when they stayed together at the end I felt although the wife was sorting of moving in a more independent way it made more sense within the structure of their marriage for her to stay with him.