My kid brother (the baby of the family) graduated from college last weekend.

You know what this means?

This means that the incoming first-year grads, at least some of them, ARE THE SAME AGE AS MY KID BROTHER.

I can’t decide if this is more or less terrifying than when I occasionally freak myself out realizing that I’m nearly a decade older than incoming college freshmen. A DECADE. THE EIGHTIES DID NOT EXIST FOR THESE PEOPLE.

I’m old. Old and still in school. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE?????

This is complete and utter blasphemy, considering that I used to live down the street from Babcock ice cream and currently live around the corner from a Rita’s, but I think Ben & Jerry’s is the best ice cream ever.

When I was in high school and still had the metabolism of a hummingbird, I would occasionally eat an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s in one sitting. And then go have dinner.

I have chowed down happily on Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, Chocolate Fudge Brownie, Phish Food, and many others. My current favorite is Half Baked. Whoever thought to put brownie chunks AND cookie dough chunks into the same ice cream is a genius. I am eating a half-cup of it as we speak (and then I will have dinner).

I thought Ben & Jerry’s could do no wrong until I tried Cheesecake Brownie, the flagship ice cream of the ONE movement to end poverty.

Blegh.

We’ve already established that I enjoy brownie ice cream, and I love cheesecake even more than brownie ice cream. But cheesecake-flavored ice cream is…weirdly sour and unpleasant.

So keep your poverty-fighting and your ice-cream purchasing habits separate and everything will be fine.

This is what’s on the front page of the Washington Post right now:

It’s totally crass to be complaining about this given that people died, but Oklahoma is not a Midwestern state!!! And you can argue about Missouri.

I’m a Midwestern girl born and bred. Since I moved away, it’s become pretty obvious to me that the vast majority of people in media have no clue about the Midwest. So here’s a lesson.

The term “Midwest” refers to the states that were part of the Old Northwest Territory. After the westward expansion took us past the Mississippi River, this area ceased being the Northwest of the country and people started calling it the Middle-West, or Midwest. The Old Northwest Territory included Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and part of Minnesota. These six states make up the Midwest.

Most of the states to the west of the Mississippi and east of the Rockies were acquired during the Louisiana Purchase. And most of those states are part of the Great Plains and are thus referred to as Plains States.

I can grudgingly accept Iowa and Missouri as Midwestern states even though they weren’t part of the Old Northwest Territory because they’re not far enough west to really be part of the Great Plains. This acceptance is particularly grudging in Missouri’s case because part of Missouri properly belongs to the South, which is a whole different can of worms, historically and culturally.

But Oklahoma is clearly a Plains State (if not, then it’s part of the South) and referring to it as part of the Midwest is…BAH!

Updated May 11 @ 8pm

The front page now says this:

Thank you, invisible hand of correct geography.