Saying Nothing Charmingly

Alexis Goggins, remember her? Update

2011-04-27T16:45:00.001-05:00

"As for Alexis, she's in 5th grade and is doing well. She still has a lot of doctor's appointments, but for the most part she's a normal kid."

http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/detroit/7-y_o-shot-six-times-continues-miraculous-recovery

2011-01-22T11:20:00.001-06:00

This Needs More Than a Couple of Sentences

2011-01-07T13:04:00.002-06:00

First, the trigger warnings. This post is about depression and rape.

Second, go read this. That is the suicide note of Bill Zeller in which he talks about why he's doing what he's doing. What he does is gives a crystal clear look into the thought processes of someone ready to commit suicide. He was successful in his pursuit of death. May he rest in peace.

Third, I've been there. I have felt that--THAT--that darkness, that blackness, that evil thing inside me that made the things that happened to me happen--the reason I was targeted for the things that happened to me, just as he did and somehow also transmitted to me by what was done. I have felt that I infected others around me with whatever that evil is. I have felt that distance and separation from others because surely everyone else could see this thing. It's why I was targeted, right? So obviously it could be seen by others.

The hardest lesson to learn and keep before me always is that what happened, happened *to* me, not *because* of me. There was nothing about me that made me deserve what happened. There was nothing about me that caused me to be the target. I was there and I was unprotected--neither of those are things inherent in my person but merely circumstantial.

Truly, being raped as a child messed me up mentally in ways that being raped as a teenager did not and I cannot help but think that one, in some perverse way, led to the other. But kids do that, right? Take on responsibility for things they can't possibly be responsible for in order to exert, even retroactively, some control over the situation?

"If I hadn't been bad, Mom and Dad wouldn't be divorcing. It's my fault."

"If I had been there, the bad thing that happened to her wouldn't have. It's my fault."

"I knew the bus was going to crash and didn't say anything. It's my fault."

If I weren't such a bad person, she wouldn't have wanted to hurt me that way.

To learn and accept that I had no control, no part in this except as a thing upon which she acted out her forbidden desires, was the key to escaping Mr. Zeller's hell for me.

BTW, she was not a relative. She was from a strict "Christian" family. And I understand 100% Mr. Zeller's anger at his family. See, their job was to protect him and they failed to do so in a big way. For a long time, I was more angry with my family for failing to protect me, despite the secrecy and threats around all of it, than I was with her for doing it--because she "couldn't help herself". [See "all my fault" above.]

At one of those dark moments where one fork in the road leads to death and the other to life and some kind of healing albeit a lifelong process of work and re-work, I chose the latter. I was 23.

Mr. Zeller chose the former. He was 23.

RIP, Mr. Zeller. I understand your choice but I'm really glad I chose differently.

How to Say X, Just Nicer

2010-12-17T10:51:00.004-06:00

How to say this:

But in a modern, woman-positive way:

On the surface, I’ve got it easy as a parent—my wife and I have two sons. “Boys will be boys” goes the conventional wisdom. We’ve come to expect—and often excuse—their bad behavior. That means it falls on a girl’s shoulders to have the self-confidence and self-esteem to create and protect boundaries in respect to her sexuality. While I think it’s important to teach girls how to be empowered gatekeepers of their own sexuality, I also believe that we have to focus on the boys, not let them off the hook. If girls operate in the male gaze (both actual and internalized), then we need to change that gaze. Boys need to learn how to see girls differently.

New Blog post over at the other place

2010-11-26T14:47:00.001-06:00

You know the drill.

Ben Roethlisberger punched by Richard Seymour HD 1080p

2010-11-24T09:16:00.000-06:00

In Which I Write Letters to Football Players

2010-11-24T09:12:00.004-06:00

The Oakland Raiders
Attn: #92, Richard Seymour
1220 Harbor Bay Parkway
Alameda, CA 94502

feedback@raiders.com

Mr. Seymour,

I would like to personally thank you for your performance on Sunday with regard to Ben Roethlisberger. I'm absolutely certain that you knocked the man in the mouth for whatever it was that he said to you (and I can understand that it might not be politic for you to announce what it was he did say) and not because of Roethlisberger's past. However, as a woman with two sisters and the mother of a daughter, as well as many, many friends who happen to be women, it truly did my heart good to see him on his rear-end on national TV.

The fact that this man is still playing in the NFL, with only a 4 game suspension for being a serial rapist, is indefensible and truly makes me consider that perhaps the NFL isn't all that interested in having my half of humanity for fans of their sport.

The Pittsburgh Steelers used to be my favorite team until they kept Roethlisberger on the roster. I've been in the market for a new favorite team but I've found my new favorite player...Richard Seymour, #92.

Thank you again and I have sent through snail mail $20 to help defray the cost of the fine that you received. I am hopeful that others will do the same. Whether you keep it and thereby only receive an ejection from the game as punishment or whether you donate it to some worthy cause, I care not. It's the principle of the thing.

Sincerely,

Christina M. Jones-Barnes
Grand Prairie, TX

Hey, at Least Be Glad You Aren't as Wretched as THAT Person Over There

2010-10-19T11:47:00.005-05:00

One thing I've heard most of my life is "Well, at least you aren't as bad off as that person" or "You haven't had it nearly as bad as my mother/sister/aunt/cousin, you should consider yourself lucky."

I don't. I never did. I thought that what I was going through sucked and that what they were going through sucked harder and that both of them were unnecessary. It didn't make me feel better to know that I was 'luckier' than some other poor wretch. No. It pissed me off--because now I'm pissed off for the crap I'm having to deal with and I'm also pissed off for those other people, so I'm twice as pissed. Thanks for that, now I feel worse! And I'm pissed off that this other person is being used as an example of How Bad Things Can Really Be. How embarrassing and demoralizing is that shit?

So I'm feeling the writer of this little rant 100%. Her experience is not my experience. I'll mark mine appropriately like she suggests. Hell, I'm not shy about this stuff.

So here's something every woman hears in her life, over and over and fucking over again, until it's drilled into our heads and falls from our mouth as automatically as our eyelids blink. "I'm grateful; it could be worse." My entire fucking life, I've had this statement flung at me, been subjected to mental and emotional and sometimes physical violence until I parrot it faithfully for people to hear. And I am done being grateful for things that a reasonable human being would take, not merely for granted, with all the patronising permission of that bloody word, but for deserved, for being a thinking, feeling being.

Are there women out there who have had it worse than me? Of fucking course. I am not going to argue that for a moment. There are millions - billions - of women out there who have experienced horrors that I can only extrapolate my reactions to, from what little financial, mental, physical and sexual harassment I have had happen to me.

This should not, and will no longer, make me grateful to the men around me, and the society I live in, that these things have not happened to me. These are not things that should happen to anyone, and asking me to be grateful for them is a slap in the face to all the women who are working and have worked to ensure that it does not. It is a slap in the face to the best humanity can be, for saying that the default of every rational being on this planet is to rape and pillage and murder and spiritually crush each other in a bloody frenzy, all their lives. It is a slap in the face to the very concepts of equality and freedom and justice, by making them inaccessible privileges instead of inalienable rights. Being grateful for the fact that I've been spared these things is implicitly accepting that I probably deserved them. Thanking society for its gracious mercy for not subjecting me to horrors most men never have to contemplate in their lives, for sparing my worthless self the abuse I so clearly deserve for being female. And I am done perpetuating the existence of this outrageous and disgusting concept, even by a second.

I am not grateful that I have never been raped. *
I am not grateful that I have never been abused by a partner.
I am not grateful that I have never been sexually abused. *
I am not grateful that I have never been assaulted by groups.
I am not grateful that I have never been forced to marry against my will.
I am not grateful that I have never been forced to carry a foetus to term, or abort a foetus I wanted to keep.
I am not grateful that I have never been forcibly impregnated or sterilised.
I am not grateful that I have never been subjected to corrective rape/assault for my sexuality.
I am not grateful that I have never been threatened with having children taken away from me if I did not comply with the community's religious requirements.
I am not grateful that I have never been made to defer to men simply for being men.
I am not grateful that I have never been stripped of my rights as a human being in favour of according those rights to a man.
I am not grateful that I have never been forced into any profession - or out of one.
I am not grateful that I have never been forbidden from seeking employment.
I am not grateful that I have never been denied education.
I am not grateful that I have never been denied food, shelter, water, clothing.
I am not grateful that I have never been barred from appropriate and timely medical care on legal or religious grounds.
I am not grateful that I have never been denied freedom of movement.
I am not grateful that I have never been religiously coerced to abandon any of my basic morals.
I am not grateful that I have never been denied access to the outside world.
I am not grateful that I have never been denied access to friends and family.
I am not grateful that I have never been denied appropriate and necessary sex education.

*These have happened to me so...add them to the list below instead.

None of these things that have not happened to me make any of the things that have happened to me one bit less wrong, less twisted, less damaging. They are far less severe, less dehumanising than the things I listed above, but - and this is an important but - the fact that that is supposed to make these things okay strikes me as remarkably like an abuser saying "What's the matter, baby? I could have broken your arm instead of twisting it, you know." So here, have the flip side. These things are not all right, will not ever be all right, and I refuse to ever think of them as appropriate again. Not all of these are still happening - most aren't, in fact - but the fact remains that they have happened.

It is not all right that I have been beaten, slapped, pinched, bitten and hit in the head with hardcover books.
It is not all right that I have been thrown in cold showers in winter for disobedience, or denied a change of clothing when wet.
It is not all right that I have been forced (at the age of eight) to witness my mother prepare for a suicide attempt because it would "teach me to talk back".
It is not all right that I have been denied sleep.
It is not all right that I have been denied access to the toilet for extended periods in order to "better my attention span".
It is not all right that I have been forced to go without appropriate and timely medical care, even when it was available.
It is not all right that I have been denied the use of painkillers even while suffering from migraines or intense pre-menstrual cramps.
It is not all right that I have been forced to hand over control over money I have earned to my family.
It is not all right that I have been forced to share sleeping space with others against my will, even when other accommodations were available.
It is not all right that I have been forced into prolonged physical contact with people I have openly asked not to have to see because of their sexual advances towards me, even when there were other options available.
It is not all right that I have been denied permission to close my door all the way, or go into the bathroom without informing others where I am.
It is not all right that I have had family walk into changing rooms with me to "see if my underwear fit" without my consent.
It is not all right that I have had my complete and private contact information revealed to a man who sexually harrassed and stalked me, on casual request.
It is not all right that I have been forced to ensure that my room and my person were at all times available to be checked for "appropriate behaviour", and forbidden from closing or locking my door.
It is not all right that I have had my possessions (books, clothes, jewelry, CDs, toys, musical instruments, bicycles, and on one memorable occasion, a pet I'd had for a few weeks already) given away to anyone who asked, against my will.
It is not all right that I have been consistently denied the opportunity to hold onto mementos or souvenirs or letters that are precious to me unless they are considered important by the family.
It is not all right that I have been forced to listen to lectures about how fat and ugly I was, while I ate.
It is not all right that I have been forced through my teenage to wear clothes I did not want and which were restrictive and weather-inappropriate in a way others' weren't.
It is not all right that I have been forced into the closet.
It is not all right that I was denied choice of religion, despite vocal and reasoned protest.
It is not all right that I have been forced to allow my diaries to be read, my private writings to be accessible to everyone.
It is not all right that I have been forced until very recently to allow all my correspondence to be read at will.

My list:

It is not okay that I have been beaten until black and blue from neck to ankles with a 2x4.
It is not okay that I know what real hunger feels like.
It is not okay that I have known neglect.
It is not okay that I have less hair on one side of my head than the other from having a hunk of it ripped out when I was 5 to remove a knot.
It is not okay that I could never have friends over in case one of The Fights happened...again.
It is not okay that I learned to ignore my own needs and feelings in order to keep the peace.
It's not okay that in order to survive, I learned to dismiss myself.
It is not okay that I have been used for maid service, among other services, for years and given zero respect, dignity or assistance.
It is not okay that I have been lied to, cheated on and stolen from for decades.
It is not okay that I have been made to feel like I should accept this as 'normal' and expected and my due for a decision made while still a teenager.
It is not okay that people with whom I should feel safe think it's okay to feel superior to me and show it in both word and deed.
It is not okay that I'm supposed to swallow that without complaint and remain pleasant in a way others are not.
It is not okay that my acceptance has always been predicated upon my good behavior when others' are not.
It is not okay that any random person feels it is perfectly appropriate to tell me how to arrange my face for his** pleasure, ie. "Smile!" (To which I say, "Dance and I might." or "Unzip and I probably will." Depends on my mood.)
It is not okay that I am held to a beauty standard that is impossible to meet, expensive to attempt and takes away time, energy and resources better spent on saving the world---or playing video games even.
It is not okay that I was expected to maintain a relationship by myself because that's the woman's job.
It is not okay that the failure of that relationship is automatically my fault and the assumption is that I must not have 'kept my man happy'.
It is not okay that being single means being a failure as a woman.
It is not okay that exploring my sexuality and/or "sowing some wild oats" is unacceptable for me but acceptable for others.
It is not okay that the way my children turn out is a reflection on me in a way it is not on their father.
It is not okay that the cleanliness of my home was a reflection on my worth as a person in a way it was not for the Man of the House.
It is not okay that there are so many more entries in this list that I could be here all day.

**and it is ALWAYS a man who does this. I have never had a woman do this to me.

So, well, that was a rant that's been building for years. Ahem. Anyway. Please, if you are a woman who cares about these issues - who will have been subjected to some of these, even - repost this in your journal. Add what you've experienced, take away what you haven't; and talk about this, because it needs talking about. --macavitykitsune

If the best we can do is merely be better than some hell hole on the planet, we are failing. If the only way we can feel okay about where we are is by feeling superior to some poor abused other person, then we aren't anywhere good ourselves. If the only way we can justify what is happening to us is by telling ourselves that something even worse could have happened, we are being fucked and there is no making that right.

New Blog to Read and /Sheepishly/ Has it Really Been that long?

2010-10-08T19:43:00.005-05:00

There's a new blog in the blogosphere. Babette is a tattoo artist, a mom, a business woman, a wife and a subject in the book Chick Ink * and she's just so kick ass cool that she can make living in a backwater Texas town like Dumas interesting. Go check her out.

*which I own, because not only am I a Facebook Friend and a follower of her blog but I'm actually a crazy stalker weirdo fan. Not really. Well, not much...but it is her husband I want to have do Lulu when I can get to Dumas. I wish it wasn't quite so far in the backwater as it is.

Now...uhm...it's been a while, huh? Yeah...long time no see....uh...what have I been up to? Well...

10. I changed jobs. I'm back with Dr. R, the guy I was working for before I worked in Hell. I love my job now.

9. Which means that most of my life is 100% awesome.

8. Dave and I are still seeing each other. The last 7 months have been fantastic with him. He's amazing. I could go on and on. I won't. Suffice it to say, he's a great guy and I count myself lucky to have a relationship based on respect and communication. I guess all that need be said is that I look forward to seeing him and I'm sad to see him go. Oh, and I adore his family--his mother and sisters are just as kind and sweet and funny and interesting as he is. I've already told him that no matter what happens between him and I in the future, I'm keeping his sister Brittney. I mean that. And she has a little girl, 8 months old...I'm in love with this baby. She's just so dang cute...well, lookee here:

'Nuff said.

7. Rebecca is still my roommate. She's still batshit insane...but in a good way. Really. I adore this woman. She's teaching me the fine art of bitchitude. Apparently, I needed it more than I thought. I didn't realize how much of a doormat I was.

6. My family is good. The Girl moved to Tampa but I still speak with her regularly. She's doing okay and you know, if she's going to get a wild hair and move closer to the ocean for no better reason than she wants to live near the ocean, 18 years old is the age at which to do it. The Boy is doing well at school-he was finally diagnosed with dyslexia and is receiving the services he needs. And they work. He and Dave have a deal--if The Boy gets an A average, he gets $50; a B average is $25; a C average is the break even point; a D and an F mean The Boy owes Dave money. The Boy is dying to "prove Dave wrong" and get an A. Dave is hoping The Boy does too.

5. Keith? How's he, you ask? Well, we don't speak much anymore but he's fine. He's seeing someone new, gets The Boy every weekend he can and pays his support as much and as often as he can. He lives in the next town over and works at a new place making better money. All I can say is I hope he's as happy in his new life as I am in mine. I wish him nothing but the best. I wish we could have at least been friends, for the sake of our kids, but that simply wasn't to be.

4. Speaking of Dave and Dave's family and so on, I'm going to meet them face to face at the end of the month. I'm not nervous about meeting his mom or Brittney--that's more like old home week. I'm mildly nervous about his sister, Kim and I'm really nervous about his cousin. I'm mostly worried that my new bitchitude might show up. It's still rather unpredictable but it's too soon to show my ass like THAT with his family...I'll let you know how it goes.

3. So what isn't working, you ask? Well, I'm scattered about school and not getting shit done so I'm not doing well grade-wise. I waited 20 years to get back into school and now that I'm there, I'm blowing it again. I can't understand it either. And the second thing is that...well, I went to the doctor today. I think I'm anemic and that perhaps 10 years of taking 400-800mg of ibuprofen a day might be catching up with me finally. I won't be sorry for that; it's allowed me to walk. So, it is what it is and I'll deal with it.

2. Leaving this blank so I can make it to #1 because stopping at 2 would be just silly. So...make sure you vote in November, just say no to drugs and use a condom. Oh, and hey kids, stay in school!

1. Steve is coming in October! Steve is coming in October! YAY! He's going to have pizza at UTA with me and meet Rebecca also and maybe, we can all get together and he can meet Dave too! I love that man. He's the big brother the universe denied me.

http://www.sharenator.com/Cyanide_and_Happiness/

Hi!

2010-08-03T19:53:00.002-05:00

That last ended up being the eulogy. Yeah. I delivered the eulogy. It wasn't easy but I made it through. I'm glad I did it. I miss Grandpa.

But, today is a day that Grandma and Grandpa would have been so proud of me for--it's been one year since I quit smoking. My dad said he was proud of me--first time he's ever said that to me. I'm really proud of myself. I smoked for 27 years! A pack a day!

And my buddy, Steve, is just about the sweetest man in existence. Steve ROCKS! (and yes, I did notice. Maybe I can rub off on you and you'll give it up.)

Money is tight but my life is sweet. I'm happier than I've ever been--I can't even begin to tell y'all how different my life is now and how much I just love my life.

I have the world's best roommate and both Rebecca and I are going to nominate Dave for Consort of the Year. He's freaking awesome. I should write a blog post about all this. I will.

But, know that I'm doing well and I'm so very happy.

Me and Mrs. Jones are Just a-Swinging

2010-06-30T12:01:00.001-05:00

83-year-old Wurtsboro driver dies after being ejected from vehicle recordonline.com

[I'm not trying to be maudlin, y'all. Really, I'm not. It helps to talk/write it out, that's all.]

For those of you who know me at all, you know how much Grandpa meant to me. Thank God, he did too. I was obnoxious about telling him how much I adored him. He was my hero and if I ever get to be even half as awesome person as he was, I'll be doing okay. For those of you who knew him, you know what I'm talking about. Grandpa was a kind and gentle soul--the kind of person you just don't meet more than one of in your lifetime. I was so lucky to have him for 39 years.

Grandpa was my hero from birth, actually. When I was 1 day old and in the Arden Hill hospital nursery, crying, Grandpa told the nurses, "She hungry. Feed her." The nurses said, "We just fed her 2oz of formula!" Grandpa said, "So? She's still hungry. Feed her." So they did. I had 2 more oz of formula and fell asleep. He and Grandma were happy to hear of my impending arrival and loved and wanted me from that moment despite the less than socially acceptable circumstances of the whole situation. That was Grandpa, though. Family was everything to him. He was the only member of his siblings who would still talk to Aunt Margaret despite the whole money and Great-Aunt Maude (?) stuff because to him, money was not important--family was. It was silly to write off your sister over money. Let the lawyers sort it out.

So when my parents divorced, it damn near killed him. He just didn't understand it. He fell in love with my grandmother at first sight and despite all the bickering for 56 years, he never stopped being in love with her even after she passed away. He's been lost the last 6 years without her. He continued to love and care for me and my sister and my mother. He never stopped loving anyone, he just added more and there was always enough love in his heart go around generously. He regularly drove from Chester, NY to Waretown, NJ to pick us up--even just for a weekend. Any time he could see us, he did, right up until we moved to Georgia. When the decision was made to send me to live with my dad, he drove a half-broken down old VW with my dad from New York to Georgia on the Trip From Hell to get me and bring me home. I lived with them from that point until Dad married my mom and we moved into the apartment. Yes, the same apartment my parents had lived in when they were married, the one over the garage about 50 yards from Grandma and Grandpa's house. I never did get far from Grandma and Grandpa while I was young, thank God. I waited for the bus with Grandma, came home from school and got a snack at their house, waited until my mom got home from work cuddling with Grandma on the couch (until I got too big for it) watching whatever soap she had on (usually Another World at that time of day), did my homework and then slept at the apartment. On weekends, I went to Lloyd's with them, we stopped at Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips and had lunch. That's where my love of shrimp and chips and hushpuppies and tartar sauce comes from. We would go to Aunt Mae's house in Pine Bush on Sunday and stop in Maybrook at the ice cream stand for sundaes. I loved the butterscotch sundae. Too sweet now but I did love it when I was a kid and Grandpa would reach back from the drivers seat and pat my leg and ask, "How's my Big Cutie?"

When Dad moved to Texas and my mom, sister and eventually my brother once he was born, moved in with my mom's folks, I stayed with Grandma and Grandpa from January through June of my 8th grade year so I could finish the school year. It was the 2nd happiest time of my childhood. I had so much fun with my friends but the true reason for my happiness was that I was surrounded and immersed in unconditional love every day, all day long. That was the real gift of my grandparents. They gave me unending, unconditional love without reservations. No matter how much of a smartmouth I was, no matter how much of a brat, no matter how much I failed to appreciate them properly, they never once stopped loving me or being proud of me. Hell, my grandfather never so much as raised his voice to me in my life and even when I was a teenager, 6ft tall and towering over my grandmother, she always had a lap for me to lay my head in and cry if I needed it. They never once gave up on me. Not once.

The happiest time of my childhood? I was 16 and living with them again, having a ball with my friends just like before but this time, really appreciating it so much more. Not as much as I should have but certainly more than I had when I was 13. Grandpa bought Suzy for me, my '80 Chevy Monza. Grandma and I stayed up until midnight watching M*A*S*H every night. Paul and I ate Grandma's donuts and did our pre-Cal homework that Mrs. Grammas was brutal about assigning. Weekends were for heading down to Kristen's and getting hammered and neither of my grandparents were as clueless as I thought they were.

I grew up and moved far away, fell in love, got married and had kids of my own and missed them always and couldn't go home to visit as much as I wanted or even as much as I needed. I called often. It wasn't enough but it was the best I could do.

As of yesterday, I'm no one's Big Cutie anymore. The person perhaps most responsible for the happiest times of my childhood is gone. The one person who had never disappointed me, never let me down, never once failed me, loved me always and taught me kindness and compassion and love and what family means had a heart attack while driving, the police think, and left us. He's with Mrs. Jones now, and he's not just hangin' in anymore; they're just a-swinging. Someday, I'll see him again and the first thing he'll say is, "Boo! Did I scare ya?" These things I know.

http://islandofmisfitblogs.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-mundane-matters-with-names.html

Catching You Up 2

2010-06-09T11:26:00.004-05:00

* The Girl graduated. I would have had pictures if I hadn't forgotten the camera at home. /sigh/ I suck. There are pics on my phone but no way to upload them anywhere. There are also pics I paid for and need to pick up so those'll have to do. This means Keith has to buy a motorcycle for her.

*The Boy made it to third grade. YAY! This means Keith has to buy a pocket rocket for him.

* Keith and I are getting along fabulously, like best friends. ++ It's really nice and it's great for Richie. He's really adjusting well. I'm thinking that the motorcycle and pocket rocket are going to cause friction though when it comes time to pay for it all.

* Rebecca is still around so she's now officially my longest-lasting roommate ever. We're becoming good friends and I really love having her living with us. And since this study came out, I'm thinking Richie is getting the best of things. Not that Rebecca and I are sleeping together. Not that there's anything wrong with that or that she's not attractive...I'm just gonna stop digging now.

*I didn't do well this semester. I got a B and D in my two courses that I didn't drop. It brought my GPA down to a 3.4 so I'm doing another semester at Mountain View and I've got to get 4 As to bring it back up so I can get my transfer scholarship money. I'm not giving that up.

*Dave and I are still dating. He's still wonderful. I still hate his schedule--or mine, whichever is the one that keeps us from ever having a day off at the same time. The few we've had, we've had a great time. This last time, he took me target shooting and I did really well. I'd kinda like to go again, now that I know what I'm doing.++

*My birthday was...interesting. Good, fun, strange, exciting...interesting. I got in a bar fight. At my own birthday party. With Rebecca's ex-husband's new girlfriend, Nicole. She started it by hitting me first and no, I don't know why. She's a kid though, like 23, 24 or so...in other words, dumb. I walked away with all body parts intact and non-bloody (if not my dignity, being in a dress and all) while she did not. I think that means I won. Best of all? Keith was there with his girlfriend and I was there with my boyfriend and we all partied together. No, we aren't legally divorced yet. That part of my life is a Jerry Springer Show. Everytime Keith and Dave are in the same room, they seem to futher male bond--this is disconcerting, to be honest. Pretty soon, Keith'll be giving Dave advice on how to "handle" me and at that point, they both die.

*Then, I wrecked my bike in the rain that following Monday. I wasn't hurt but my bike was damaged, $1200 worth. I'm supposed to get it back today. It's supposed to pour-down rain today. Lovely.

*I'm done with the psychologist. She said that I have a clean bill of health--I'm certified "sane". (Shows what she knows.) I learned a lot about myself and I learned a lot about how to be emotionally healthy. I've had a bunch of temptation to return to the old ways of handling things, i.e. by...you know...not, but I've been good about checking in with myself, being real about how I feel about stuff, being kind to myself, not letting myself get wrapped up in anyone else, addressing issues as they arise instead of letting them fester and create resentment, chilling out about some stuff and generally taking care of myself. I've dealt with my past as much as possible and fear no longer rules my life at all. I wish I had done all this stuff years ago. Less than a year ago, I was suicidal. Now, I'm happier than I have ever been in my adult life and nothing has really changed except for my attitude and how I deal with setbacks and disappointments.

*Politics: Couldn't care less. Truthfully. I'm watching what's going on in the Gulf and feeling sick about it. I'm paying attention to the primary challenges out there and I see that DINO Blanche Lincoln won her primary. I see that the White House still doesn't get that the base is getting turned off by the bullshit promises followed by the attempts to out-Republican the Republicans because that's the only way to appeal to independents, blah, blah...It's almost as if the most popular, most beloved and well-respected ex-President in history, the one most fondly remembered as a man ahead of his time, the one many say saved this nation as surely as Lincoln did, who was elected to office four times, wasn't a progressive--even a /gasp/ liberal (!) Democrat. You know, like Lincoln was a /gasp/ liberal (!) Republican according to the times. Yes, boys and girls, liberal Republicans existed once upon a time. They are extinct now. DADT--people are so stupid and small. I'll never understand the controversy over this. I just don't. We can send 18 and 19 year old kids across the world to kill and die for their nation but we can't trust them to be able to handle Teh Gay in their units? As if there aren't gays in the units now? As if gays haven't always served? According the vets I know, no one gives a shit. No one cares if Bill has a husband waiting for him at home. What they do care about is whether or not Bill will have their backs and that has nothing to do with what Bill does with his penis on leave. It's a ridiculous mess and can drive a person to drink. That's why I don't care. Truthfully.

*Starting a diet now. I've been out at restaurants entirely too much. I've managed to be smoke-free for 10.5 months now. It's time to start on another goal and this is the other thing that's annoyed me for quite some time. I am hoping to lose somewhere around 100#. Yes. I don't know if I'll get there but it would put me at the weight I was in high school again. That would be nice. I'll keep a tally. It worked for the cigarettes. It should work for this too.

++ For more on these topics, check the other place.

The Evil That Men Do

2010-04-13T11:50:00.002-05:00

The other day, I drove past the biggest Catholic church I've seen south of Maryland. I was tempted to stop and go in--so tempted I actually pulled in the parking lot and saw that mass was in progress. It's a good thing I didn't, I guess, what with the being married to one man and sleeping with another, my crazy liberal ideas of personal bodily autonomy and the fact that I voted for Obama. I miss it sometimes, though, the smell of the incense, the hush of the sanctuary, the feel of the kneeling bar under my knees, the taste of the cracker and wine on the tongue, the sound of the rote 'and also with you', the music. I do.

Then I see what has come out of the hidden recesses of my Church and I am sad.

LOS ANGELES - The future Pope Benedict XVI resisted pleas to defrock a California priest with a record of sexually molesting children, citing concerns including "the good of the universal church," according to a 1985 letter bearing his signature.

link

Hartford, Connecticut (CNN) -- A bill in Connecticut's legislature that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases has sparked a fervent response from the state's Roman Catholic bishops, who released a letter to parishioners Saturday imploring them to oppose the measure.

Under current Connecticut law, sexual abuse victims have 30 years past their 18th birthday to file a lawsuit. The proposed change to the law would rescind that statute of limitations.

The proposed change to the law would put "all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk," says the letter, which was signed by Connecticut's three Roman Catholic bishops.

link

Rape and sexual molestation were "endemic" in Irish Catholic church-run industrial schools and orphanages, a report revealed today.

The nine-year investigation found that Catholic priests and nuns for decades terrorised thousands of boys and girls in the Irish Republic, while government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rape and humiliation.

link

BERLIN — A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop. The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.

link

The Vatican is investigating 14 cases of alleged child sex abuse committed within the Spanish Catholic Church over the past nine years it emerged today.

The incidents of abuse are alleged to take have taken place between January 2001 and March 2010. Charles Scicluna, the promoter of justice in the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said today they amounted to "less than one case every year".

link

A Catholic priest who fled Minnesota for India after being accused by two teenage girls of rape continues to serve as a priest in a Catholic school system five years after his case was brought to the attention of the Vatican, according to documents and testimony in a lawsuit against the Church.

link

Madeline Kahn had it right

2010-03-31T10:03:00.002-05:00

Lili von Schtupp - "I'm Tired"

J. Rho | MySpace Video

So far this week, I've forgotten my charger at Dave's. Then, I forgot my keys in my bike and killed my battery. Twice. I forgot to get gas in the bike and ran out. Then I forgot to get my keys out of The Boy's backpack and had to go hunt him down to get them. Then I forgot my work keys at the house this morning. I'm just wondering, at this point, what I have forgotten that hasn't made itself apparent yet.

This isn't even funny anymore. I took a stress questionnaire yesterday and it said:

"While answering "Yes" to any of these question would indicate that there is probably a stress imbalance in your body, a friendlier way to score it would be:

0-8 = low level of stress.

9-13 = moderate stress level that you should seek treatment for.

14 and above = you need immediate evaluation and treatment for stress hormone imbalances before something really bad happens to you, if it already hasn’t."

My score? 34 Now, lots of my stress is good stuff--new relationship, new friendships, moving to my own place, school--but some of it is not--divorce, job, moving, school, lack of sleep.

Basically, I need to get more sleep, eat better, handle my shit and get on top of things again and just all around do a better job of taking care of myself.

It's hard, though. Dave is awesome and when we get the chance to be together, I don't want to waste a second of it sleeping. And when we're not together, the phone is all we have and so I don't want to hang up and we end up talking for hours and hours.

In other words, I'm not getting any sleep. And so, we end this where it began.

I'm tired. LOL

Sorry, Folks

2010-03-25T13:51:00.003-05:00

I had to turn the captcha thing on again. I'm being inundated with crap comments for Avodart and some porn site purporting to be an ex-boyfriend putting up pics of an unfaithful girlfriend...

...because of all people, I am going to be just fine and peachy with that! Yeppers.

When I was a teenager (16), I was stupid. I allowed my then-boyfriend to take pictures of me. When we broke up, he threatened--seriously threatened--to have them blown up and plastered all over the school. I managed to get the negatives and the photos before he could pick them up from the photo processing place but only because I had a friend who worked there and she put her job on the line to let me get them out of his photos before he paid for them.

It just so happened that the negatives with *my* photos on them had *his* photos as well.

Y'all know me so well, you know what I did.

Of course I threatened to do to him what he'd threatened to do to me and "serves you right, you worm." As far as he knows, I still have the negatives.

I burned them the day I got them. From that day to this, I've never allowed any photographic evidence to be taken that might be identifiable to me. And I think anyone who would do something like that is an infected pustule on the ass crack of humanity.

So, yeah! Let's click that link! /shaking my head/

Catching You Up

2010-03-16T10:37:00.002-05:00

Bullet post!!!

**Who the heck is this J.D. Hayworth guy and why is he allowed to be stupid on TV? It never ceases to amaze me how many people just don't get the fact that a woman is not the same as horses or turtles or children or even a gaggle of women brainwashed into accepting polygamy (face it, polyamorous relationships don't require "compounds"...just sayin')--no...we're SENTIENT HUMAN BEINGS WITH THE ABILITY TO CONSENT--unlike all of those I just named and therefore equating marriage equality with any of those things is insulting to homosexual people AND women or, by the numbers, about 56% of the population of the US. Asshat award.

**I'm tired of the health care reform bill shit. Burnt smooth the fuck out on it. I know it's not going to do me or mine a damn bit of good according to the word coming out of D.C. so I don't give a shit. I can only hope it becomes like Social Security--a crappy law that got better over time and did not mean the end of the world or socialism run amok like Saint Ronnie said it would.

**Can I just tell you how much I love Rep. Alan Grayson (FL-D)? Yeah. LOVE. I think I shall send a couple of dollars to his re-election fund because Washington D.C. needs people with his sense of humor and intellect.

**Speaking of sense of humor, Jesse Taylor is someone I want to meet. Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant.

And now for something completely different:

**I'm more often to be found on Facebook if you're tired of waiting for me to update here. I also have the "other" blog which you must e-mail me to get the password/link for but that may be a bit more of my personal life than you want. Up to you.

**I'm coming out of a funk that's lasted me since January or so--maybe a bit longer. I'm catching up on schoolwork, have my house in order and I'm doing better with all that stuff. It's the schoolwork that's the real issue, though. I've fubared this semester. I'm doing my best to try to rectify it as best I can. I may have to stay at the community college another semester to get my GPA back up over a 3.5 to get all my money though. I have no one but myself to blame. I let it get out of control like this.

However, now that I have let go of what was weighing me down and keeping me depressed, the blessings have rolled right on in.

**I have a fantastic new roommate. Her name is Rebecca and she's kick-ass. She's an Iraq war vet, east Texas country (that's REAL Country, folks), red-headed and cool as hell.

**The Girl and I are doing better, we're talking more at any rate and that's an improvement. I measure success with her in millimeters. (waves to The Girl)

**The Boy and I are doing pretty well too. He's settling in to the new routine but I worry just a little. He seems to be kinda folding in on himself and not wanting to go out and do stuff much anymore. He plays with his friends outside, I don't mean that. I mean, he says he doesn't want to go to Boy Scouts anymore (something he does with Keith) and he stopped wanting to go to karate entirely (something he did with me). I'm starting to wonder if he might be a little depressed and I'm watching him closely.

**My bills are paid. I'm broke but let me repeat that--my bills are paid. I'm over the moon about that.

**Lastly, I've met someone. (For those who have already heard me talking about him incessantly, feel free to skip this bullet. This means you, Ranuel. That woman deserves a medal.) His name is Dave. He's ex-Army and ex-National Guard, works for Lockheed and does okay, rides a Fazer (his is an older one. He prefers the older body style, frame composition, etc. and what he doesn't like he redesigns (!) and fabricates (!) himself. /swoon/), has a hotrod Firebird he did himself (/swoons again/), is a gamer, reads scifi/fantasy like me, leans liberal, doesn't mind admitting that I'm tougher than he is (comes from a conversation about wearing gloves and warm things on motorcycles and how I rode in 17 degree weather this winter. He just didn't argue. "You want me to say you're tougher? Okay. You're WAY tougher than me." Smart man), and just rocks my world in ways I can't say. I wasn't expecting this or looking for it at all but I'm damn glad I found it. I don't know where it's going or how long it will last but I'm enjoying the ride and squeezing every bit of joy I can out of it for as long as it lasts. He feels the same way. We talk! About stuff! And agree!

We know that things have moved really, really fast. We also know that it's not okay to introduce new Significant Others to kids too soon. He's been in the same room with The Boy (not by my choice or design or his) but we're not allowing any sort of relationship to develop at this point until we've been together for a while longer and know this is something that's going to last. That he not only understands this but approves, facilitates and accommodates this is something that means more to me than I can say. When he said that he felt bad because he's "taking The Boy's mom time away" and we need to restrict ourselves on my weekends made me near about fall over. Also? He's well aware of the fact that when/if he is introduced to The Boy and develops a relationship with him, that's a commitment independent of anything going on with him and I and that if he and The Boy get close, he'll be maintaining that relationship even if he and I hate the sight of each other. You just don't do that to kids--get close and then disappear. That messes with them bad. I know he will do this because he has done it. He dated a woman 10 years ago who had an 8 yr old girl and things didn't work out with her mom but Dave has maintained a relationship with her daughter all these years, just recently driving her back from college damn near cross country. For all intents and purposes, Dave is her dad because her dad passed on. So, yeah, he knows what he's getting into--The Boy has a dad, of course, who is very much a part of his life yet I still refuse to bring even an Adult Friend into The Boy's life who won't be reliable.

He's so adorable when he tries to take care of me, too. He wants to just come in all "This is how it's going to be" in (stereo-)typical male fashion, you can see it. But he never does. He tries to logic me into it, bless him, or he...well, here's an example. He saw my bike for the first time up close this past weekend and he went over it. See if you can spot the pattern:

"Hmmm. Nice bike. I like it and it fits you. Now, we'll need to get that back tire replaced, though. You know, so it corners better. How about when we do that, we can get some performance brakes on it? It'll really improve the way it handles and stops. The look of it is good but I'm thinking that we might want to black out the muffler to right about here (points at a spot that just happens to coincide with the spot where my leg will no longer be liable to burning on the damn thing)....hmmm, maybe you should look into new cables for it, too. I mean, the performance enhancement will be amazing if you replace these, which swell, with brake cables that don't. We can replace your 7" headlight with a 9" LED high-intensity and put on some fog lights--you'll definitely be seen...be able to see with those..." and on and on he went. I started grinning and he's like, "What?"

"You aren't subtle. I've noticed that all the 'performance enhancements' just happen to coincide with all the safety equipment. Thank you for trying to take care of me."

Most adorable thing of all? When he got caught, he turned red. If I hadn't already been smitten, that would have done it. I'm smitten enough that I wear my helmet for him--I can't stand the damn things but it's important to him.

**I'm getting much, much closer with my family and it's really a fantastic feeling. I'm closer to them now than I have ever been. They rock and I owe them so much for sticking with me. They've helped me out, bought me groceries, held me while I cried, kept me strong when I felt like falling apart, pulled me up short when I started down a dumb path and generally loved me though all of this. They are fantastic and I love them so much.

**I've gotten in touch with some old friends I haven't spoken to in years, through Facebook mostly. I'm so grateful that I've found them again and with some of them, I'm closer now that I was back then! I'm very thrilled I'm back in touch with Shay. I had such a girl-crush on her back in the day and so wanted to be just like her when I grew up. Funny. Still do. Now, if we can just freaking find time to actually talk to each other when we both have a free moment, that would be *fantastic*.

So, that's it, ladies and gentlemen. You are now caught up on my life and what's in my head these days. Drop me a comment and let me know how all y'all are and what's up with you these days.

Beating a Dead Horse

2010-02-22T10:07:00.004-06:00

It's an ugly metaphor, isn't it? But it does describe the concept very well. And I do this in real life. A lot. Some of it is just me working out my thoughts in my head as I speak and so I repeat stuff when I go back to where I knew I was on solid logical footing and rethink, but that's not all of it. It's not even most of it.

I know why I do it. I've always known why I do it. It's an attempt to get people who do not value me or what I say, who will not just believe me when I say something, to do so anyway based on logic and reason. I've always hoped that if perhaps I can just show the logic of my argument that would carry the day, even if the person to whom I am speaking doesn't care about just doing it because I asked him/her to do so since there is no respect there. It's a hope that *this* time, my concerns, knowledge and feelings won't be simply dismissed and ignored.

It never works. I'm going to stop doing it.

WANT

2010-02-19T16:23:00.003-06:00

I want this clock

http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/lights/aef3/?cpg=froogle

I'm going to keep it for when I have a husband again or for when The Girl gets married and I'll give it to her to give to her husband. What better gift from one's mother-in-law than a clock that says, "Let us seize the day and take it roughly from behind..."

Because my son-in-law is going to know I'm a nut. Besides, he'll love me. I'm going to always take his side, just to piss off The Girl.

Until/unless he screws up really bad--because I'll always have her back. That's my girl.

You know, if we ever speak again, that is. /lolsob/

My Next Book

2010-02-18T14:57:00.004-06:00

By the suggestion of the shrink:

http://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-Legacy-Divorce-Landmark-Study/dp/0786886161/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267048879&sr=8-1

We were talking about some of these issues today. Not only will this be a painful read based on my current situation but it's also a painful read based on the fact that I am a child of divorce myself. I'm 38 years old and I have never gotten over my parents' divorce. Was it for the best? For them, yes. For me and my sister? No. It wasn't. For me, it left me completely vulnerable to the predators of the world as my parents spent their time and energy worrying about who was in their bed and what that person was doing and who the next person in their bed would be and if the one they had now would stay and dealing with the drama of second marriages. I was forgotten and left without protection. My parents' divorce is the catalyst for everything that came after. It was the first huge disaster followed swiftly by other disasters, large and small, that could not have happened without that one. If there is a right way to divorce, and I think there is, my parents missed every.single.mark.

But, it was 1975. Back then, "kids are resilient" was the cultural story about divorce and everyone was just convinced that the kids were better off in homes with happy parents. And that is true to a degree. The best scenario is a home with two parents happily married to each other. And I don't think it has to be the biological parents--it has to be the parents the child views as being his/her parents. But I digress. After that, all that's left are varying degrees of bad choices, some worse than others, some that can be mitigated with knowledge of how to do things and how not to do things, some that are bad no matter what and I think living in a loveless marriage is one of those last. That's just not ever a good idea. So do I think my parents should have stayed together, given the accusations of infidelity and the fact that they probably should not have married anyway? No. I wouldn't wish that on them. My mom is happily single and my dad has been married to my step-mom for 30 years this March. That was a blessing for him and she's a wonderful woman--more a mixed blessing for me, though, but that's a story for another day I think.

I guess the final analysis of my thoughts on this will have to wait until I read the book but I can say that going into it, the platitudes that are thrown about regarding divorce and kids get on my nerves. No, they are not resilient. No, they do not "bounce back". No, it is not "better for them" inherently. No, they do not look at it as having two new families. No, they do not see your new spouse as being a great new family member/friend. No, no, no. All of that shit is said to soothe the guilt of those who are making decisions for their own happiness to do what they want to do and sometimes need to do and want it to be okay for everyone else, especially their kids, as well. It's bullshit. Sometimes what's best for the adults is not what is also best for the kids. So, I'm inclined to see divorce as an evil--sometimes necessary but many times not, done for the benefit of the adults in the situation to the detriment of the kids, especially when the kids are not prepared and considered in the situation, as is what happens most of the time. It's the rare person who makes sure, even while making what is ultimately a selfish decision, that those who are most likely to be affected by the decision are helped through it professionally.

And I'm hopeful that this book will give me the knowledge I need to go through this the right way with my own kids.

(Special note to BP: Girl, amazing. I told you in comments it was coming around and it is. The doc made a point today that is gelling as we speak on that very issue.)

New Look!

2010-02-17T13:38:00.001-06:00

What do y'all think? It's seems fitting since I'm using this space very much as a diary. Is it working okay for everybody still reading?

Anger is Deadly

2010-02-17T11:53:00.007-06:00

I've been faced with the fact that anger is a killer several times recently--once by someone else who might or might not be doing something incredibly foolish in an "I'll show 'em! I'll show 'em all!" mentality and once from my own error. I went back in time in my blog to read some of the stuff that I wrote way back when all of this began and looking at it now really brings home to me how twisted my thoughts were, how twisted I had the facts of the matter and just how unkind and unforgiving I was.

I did this in reaction to things that happened long, long ago. He did those things because of stuff I had done prior to that and I did those things because of things even older...this is old anger, y'all. The roots of all this go back 17 years or more.

I said horrible, degrading things long, long before all of this happened--long before he did anything "back" and I called it 'telling the truth'. How in the world could my spouse have heard the things I said, in public, in front of him to others, to him and also behind his back and say with any pride at all, "Yep, that's my wife"? How much must it have hurt to hear these cruel things? How much a fool he must have felt and looked to continue to be with someone who would treat him so unkindly. I know it must have hurt about as deeply as it is possible to hurt.

“Honesty is the cruelest game of all, because not only can you hurt someone - and hurt them to the bone - you can feel self-righteous about it at the same time”--Dave Van Ronk

Ouch. I found that quote a few weeks ago and it's been rattling around in my head since. It's amazing how, when you are open to it, the smallest thing can have a profound effect. As I said to someone recently, "There are lots of clever and intelligent people in this world. There are not a lot of kind people and that's what I want to be."

So, I'm learning kindness and respect both for myself and for others. I cannot profit from beating myself up for the stupid things I said and did but I can admit my fault to myself and others (all y'all) and make an honest pledge to do better from this day on. I may not be perfect at it but I'll do my best and my best is pretty damn good. And while I look for a person of whom I can be proud, I will first make sure I am a person of whom someone else can be proud. While I look for someone who will not make me look or feel a fool for being with him, I will be sure that I do nothing that would make him look or feel a fool for being with me.

Lesson learned: Kindness and respect are a valuable gift--both that given to the self and that given to others. "Truth" is not worth doling out if one must be unkind or disrespectful to do it.

Breakthrough*

2010-02-05T11:04:00.003-06:00

I made a pretty big breakthough this week. I know why I avoid being outside of my own terrority now. Okay, that was a bit of understatement but you get what I mean. The reason why is a very, very ugly story and I'm not going to subject you to it--bad enough I had to live it.** However, now that I know why, I'm not sure what that'll mean in practical terms. I mean, I doubt that just knowing the reason will solve it. It also doesn't explain the fear of crowds but that might just be a claustrophobia thing--no way out, you know?

But I'm tired. I'm going to just tread water for awhile and keep doing what I've done so far and not push myself anymore for now. I'm going to get comfortable where I am before I go farther. So far that means going out on Monday to hear the band, taking karate with The Boy on Wed. and Fri, and going out to public places like the mall without doing the "dash in to get what you need and dash back out" routine.

One of things that I'm practicing is being kind to myself. I've been so very hard on myself, outright mean really, and part of that is pushing myself to the point of harming myself. I don't forgive myself and I don't give myself a break. I'm hard on those around me but I'm 1,000 times harder on myself.

So, treading water for now it is.

*I'm not deliberately trying to be narcissistic with sharing all this stuff. Well, no more narcissistic than having a blog at all is and I make no apologies for that. I'm hoping that by speaking of these things, if anyone reading sees themselves in any of this stuff, s/he might get something out of it. That and I need some place to write this stuff out and journals don't get it for me--there's no accountability and so I don't keep up with them.

**It is a story I've told in pieces 100 times. I never really thought anything of it. But in discussion, Dr. B was making a point about how it makes total sense that I do this and she summarized all the bits all at once. Hearing the story was jolting. If someone else told such a story I would be heartsick and supportive and kind and all those things that you are to someone who is struggling with some horror from his/her past. I've not been that way to myself because to me, it wasn't that big a deal...until I heard my own story repeated back to me. That's when I realized how much of a big deal it was.

Insights: On Fear

2010-02-02T13:08:00.003-06:00

Well, Bejeweled is actually helping me almost as much as the therapist's couch. I just came up with something interesting and I'm sharing it so that if anyone else is living like this, they a) know they aren't alone and b) maybe see that if they want, they can break out of it.

For all this time, I kept so many of my fears inside. I never showed anyone how frightened I was all the time. Now that I'm being more open about it, I'm sure that people with whom I'm sharing are surprised by it. I was disgusted by my own weakness to be honest. And I did see being frightened as a weakness, and hence a moral character flaw. And if *I* were disgusted by it, the people around me, the people who I loved would also be disgusted by it and wouldn't love me anymore and so I hid it very, very carefully. I avoided situations where I would be triggered. I made all sorts of excuses why I couldn't go/do/be. If I couldn't make an excuse (and believe me, I was very good at excuse-making) I would white-knuckle my way through it, joylessly and feeling as little a possible. Repress, repress, shove, shove, repress, repress.

But even that wasn't enough. I was particularly intolerant of fear in others, like my kids. I was militant about not molly-coddling that behavior--mostly because I didn't want them to live the way I did (95%) but a secondary reason was that if I "hated" fear so much, I couldn't possibly be feeling it. (5%) I covered fear with anger--lots of anger. As my friend Shay said I covered all the best parts of me with cleverness and anger--because I was also covering the parts of me of which I was ashamed.

I didn't do this to myself, not really. But it's past time I undo it. "Even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility." — Terry Pratchett (A Hat Full of Sky) While there are some people who might be disgusted by the fact that I have anxiety attacks just going to the mall*, I hope there will be others who are proud of me for facing up to these fears and dealing with them in a positive, productive manner because the most important thing I've learned through this process is a fear faced and dealt with is a fear that goes away forever. For example, I'm no longer afraid of heights. So, maybe I am a big ol' cowardly thing right now, afraid of every damn thing, but it's temporary. I'm working on it. I wasn't working on it before but now, it's time to exorcise those demons.

*Yeah. I don't know what freaks me out at the mall but it does. The mall. Bars. Concerts. School functions. Political rallies. Parties. Pretty much anything that is a) not on my turf, i.e. my home or someplace very familiar to me and b) with more than 5 or so people.**

**Tangentially, sometimes I wish I had come to some of this before Keith and I split. I could have simply considered him my "familiar turf" and gone with him anywhere and still been on my home turf. He would've been supportive--he was when we went to his favorite bar. Then I realize that by doing that, I would have been 100% dependent upon him and that's not healthy either. So, while doing it then might have been easier in some ways, perhaps it's better that I'm doing it alone. It's harder--much, much harder--but it means that I am able to be independent in a way I would not have been otherwise. Now...when I get a handle on the fear thing, perhaps I can work a bit on the obsessive need for independence that I have.

Have not disappeared!

2010-01-26T13:47:00.002-06:00

School started. I must've been smoking crack when I decided to take Govt II, Hist II, Creative Writing and Engl II all at once. Ranuel tried to warn me but I did not listen.

She tries, y'all. Really, she does. I'm just impossible.

Went to my 3rd appointment. It was pretty standard fare, nothing very deep, I guess. I don't know whether I'll have enough to go to my appointment this week. I'll have to wait and see if my renter pays his rent early. If so, I can go. If not, I can't.

That's about it, y'all. I've become rather boring. And you know what? I don't mind that at all. This is a time for me to pause in my life and listen to myself. I'm trying to stretch myself into a new shape and that takes a lot of energy and it hurts sometimes, too. I went out last night, by myself, to Theo's to listen to the Monday night band. I really like him, wish I knew his name. But still, just the fact that I faced my terror and went out is pretty damn amazing. There is no way I would have even thought of doing that a year ago and if it had occurred to me, I would have been unable to draw a breath for the panic. Now, here I am doing it when back then, I couldn't even manage to go out with Keith. I'm really proud of myself. It's not the triumph it could have been, the one I had always dreamed of having when I could finally work on this stuff, but it is the best I'm going to get now. That's just going to have to be good enough.

Second Appointment: Question for my friends

2010-01-14T14:58:00.002-06:00

I've heard from a number of sources lately that it is time to put down the shell, prickly exterior, armor, whatever metaphor you choose that I have kept around me for protection for most of my life. I happen to agree, actually. It's served to numb me, keep me distant from those who would love me and kept me isolated. It did save my sanity once upon a time; it no longer serves any useful purpose now and instead is causing pain and difficulty. As my very wise friend Shay said, I use my brain and my anger to cover up the best parts of me. That's not right--not for me or my family and friends.

It scares me to death to just give it up. I don't know how to process emotion at all and with that numbing agent along with others, I never had to. To just leave it behind with nothing to replace it would be the emotional equivalent of putting a toddler on the street with $20 and a "good luck! Write when you find work!"

So, my question to you is: What gives you the courage to navigate the world without armor? How do you navigate the world without armor? What is the alternative? Because seriously, people, I don't know.

Went To My First Appointment Today

2010-01-08T16:20:00.003-06:00

I have the sneaking suspicion that my doctor might be a feminist. This is a good thing.

And I think that this journey into my own mind might be very interesting and also, quite painful. We'll see. If I find myself boring, that will really be sad.

I like this woman, though, and I find it very difficult to pigeonhole her into a type. That also is a good thing--it's actually a necessary thing because if I could, I would immediately dismiss her.

Incidentally, this journey might also make me a better person--the kind of person that doesn't pigeonhole other people and only maintain friendships with those who can't be stereotyped in my head and then dismissed as boring and "one of those" people. Because I suck like that.

This is just amazing!

2010-01-06T15:46:00.002-06:00

I've reached that point in my quit (see: quitmeter over <----there somewhere) where all the emotions that I have been suppressing for 20 years all come out in a flood. I think that's what it is. Or, I think that's part of what it is. It's also that:

*** I'm not overwhelmed.
***I'm not stressed out.
***I'm not sick.
***I'm not injured.
***I'm not depressed.
***I'm not in crisis mode.
***I have a lot more energy than I did before I quit smoking and when I was all of those things above.
***I've started working on certain issues within myself, with all that new energy, I had to find something to do right?

So I decided to start digging into my social anxiety and the left-overs from my rapes. You know, since I have nothing better to do. Oh, and my failed marriage because if one is going to dig around in an open wound, best go for the fresh ones first. (That one is going to require some professional assistance. Well, they all are but different types of assistance. )

And what to my wondering eyes should appear but a lifetime's worth of emotions! Anger and fear, love and panic, happiness and joy and pain and sorrow, passion and lust and disgust and all the rest. Sometimes all within five minutes. The weirdest thing about it is that these emotions are very, very strong. The way I felt these things before was like a wispy shadow compared to these colorful, robust, LOUD feelings.

It's amazing and sometimes frightening. The sheer volume is fantastic. I'm actually rather enjoying it, to be honest.

Read This Now and you'll understand Washington

2009-12-23T10:36:00.001-06:00

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=31665#comment-1498911

Hello! Here I am!

2009-12-18T12:48:00.002-06:00

I'm here! And you know what? I'm doing okay. I did well in school. I got 3 As and a B so my GPA is 3.77. Not bad for an old woman, I say. Next semester all of my courses are online so no running for Dallas from Arlington at 5pm. For all those who staked out a spot along Abram/Jefferson to watch the crazy motorcycle lady ride by like the demons from hell (or bill collectors--wait, that's redundant) are on her tail, I'm sorry. You'll need to find a new spectator sport.

The Boy is doing better in school. He's having a tough time with the whole divorce thing but, you know, what kid doesn't? Some things you just have to deal with, unfortunately. He has no control over what other people do. I've done what I can but I don't have any control over what other people do either. There comes a point when you just have to accept that and move on. I guess this is my opportunity to teach him that fact.

The Girl and I seem to be mending fences and working on our relationship and I'm so very, very glad. She's stayed with me for the last week and it's been really wonderful to have both my kids with me. I've enjoyed it so much. She and I have fought and talked and just shared the same space and been present to each other and I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

I have a new roommate, a shirt-tail relative of my last roommate. He moved in two nights ago. Jim seems like a really nice guy. I'm hopeful that everything will work out and we'll both be happy with the arrangement.

How am I handling this divorce thing, you ask? Well, I seem to have turned a corner at some point this week--I think it was this past weekend. For sure, it was already in motion by Monday when there was another fight. First, I am very particular about certain things and one of those is that I don't want anything if it isn't mine. I do not share, much to the chagrin of my parents and the annoyance of my kindgergarten teacher. When another kid would take the toy I was playing with, I would walk away from it entirely rather than share it with the other kid or fight over it. When someone told me that my grandmother hadn't wanted me to have the rocker she gave me but felt pressured into giving it to me, I didn't want it anymore. I gave it away, despite the fact that I loved that rocker and that it was the only thing of hers I had and now she's gone. She didn't want me to have it, therefore, it wasn't mine and any enjoyment I had out of it just evaporated. I'm just that way. Second, I was told that I had made my bed and should stop trying to make other people lie in it. Now, I think that's a bit of projection but it made me stop and take a look around at the bed I'm in...my bills are paid, my kids are doing well, I'm in great health, I'm feeling good, my house is clean and not overwhelming me with work, I have this AWESOME new motorcycle that I just adore riding, school is going well, my job is actually going pretty good, I'm working on my issues, getting out and doing things, meeting people and making friends...this ain't bad. This is actually pretty good. I rather like this bed. I think I'll lay in it happily and thanks to the person who suggested it.

Now, please, don't get me wrong. The reason I hadn't noticed that I was basically pretty happy is because I had been concentrating on the 6'5" hole in all of this happiness. I do miss him but then when I think about it, I have been missing him for a really, really long time. So, I'll just stop looking at the hole and perhaps, given time, it will go away or someone else will come along to fill it. I don't know. But, either way, I'm okay.

Laughing at This So Wanted to Share

2009-12-18T12:45:00.001-06:00

or this:

I have a new favorite word!

2009-11-30T13:23:00.003-06:00

	Mansplain http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Mansplain
	To explain in a patronizing manner, assuming total ignorance on the part of those listening. The mansplainer is often shocked and hurt when their mansplanation is not taken as absolute fact, criticized or even rejected altogether. Named for a behavior commonly exhibited by male newbies on internet forums frequented primarily by women. Often leads to a flounce. Either sex can be guilty of mansplaining.*

*but one of them rarely is and hence the name

Ringtone Meme!

2009-11-25T15:37:00.003-06:00

I'm making it up, I think. I don't know.

But anyway, name your ringtones.

For my alarm, it's Rob Zombie Living Dead Girl.

For my general ringtone, it's The Addams Family Theme Song.

For Keith, it's 3 Days Grace Pain

For my family, it's We Are Family by Sister Sledge

For Brian, it's Ozzy's Mr. Crowley

For The Boy it's The Bare Necessities

And for The Girl it's My Chemical Romance Teenagers:

Now I tag: Steve, Jen, Bob, Gine, and Ranuel.

I'm Sorry

2009-11-23T08:38:00.003-06:00

I've had to turn on the word verification because the damn Viagra-bots (in French and Italian, no less) are driving me insane with the spam. I know it's a pain in the ass but as soon as the barrage ends, I'll turn it off.

Did you know that too much beer will turn you into an ass? I do. I mean I know that from long past but I was reminded of it quite clearly yesterday when I made a total fool out of myself and completely destroyed even the sad, pitiful remnants of my marriage on which I was surviving. And I did it in front of two innocent by-standers. Poor Brian and Claudia. I was a big ol' pile of pathetic and I wouldn't blame them if they never spoke to me again. Keith never will and I don't blame him.

So, my weekend sucked, my week has started out even suckier. I must look really scary considering how people are taken aback when I look at them. I know my eyes are swollen and red but it's not that bad, I didn't think. /shrug/ I dropped my bike this morning, fell in the parking lot. The kickstand wasn't all the way engaged and when I tried to get off, it collapsed and down went the bike and me with it. The day is not looking good, not good at all.

The Grossest Thing I've Seen in Awhile

2009-11-17T15:02:00.002-06:00

Get it? Because women are totally inanimate objects with the purpose of servicing men. How do I know it's about what men want? Because the file name is "what every man wants.jpg"

I should show this to any guy I might think of dating. If he finds it funny, he can hit the road.

Finally

2009-11-09T13:34:00.002-06:00

Where I said I'd write at the other joint? I finally did. It's not as titillating as I might have made it but the place is called Christina's Whines NOT Christina's Sexual Experiences because really, I can't imagine that anyone would want to read that. There's a lot of flapping things that didn't used to flap and things that make noises they oughtn't and so on. No one in his/her right mind wants to know the details of 40 year olds having sex except the 40 year olds involved.

But there is whinging and lots of it!

Just Pretend This is Sunday

2009-11-04T11:13:00.002-06:00

Sorry.

Well, what to say? Maine sucks, blows, bites--pick a verb. Virginia and New Jersey have lost their minds but truthfully, I'm not surprised. It's an off-off year. It's not even a "mid-term" year. So, who is more likely to get out their 'base'? The herd of cats (D) or the herd of sheep (R)? Right.

So, I got an A in History. I'm running an A in Gov't and in Geology. I'm still struggling with Algebra. I get 90-100 on my quizzes but the two tests I've taken so far have been a 70 and a 61. Third test is this week. I have to get a really good score on it so I've been studying.

I don't think I told y'all but Steve sent me a housewarming box--two actually. He's so freaking awesome, isn't he? Bath towels, pots and pans and a spice rack and a Dallas Cowboys blanket that The Boy snatched right away. I would take pics but the digital camera broke. I'm working on it but that's not even close to the top of the list. Thanks again, Steve. You are the best.

Speaking of The Boy, he's doing so much better in school these last couple of months, it's not even funny. He's being tested for dyslexia still and I will have him evaluated for ADD but the fact that he's really putting forth an effort and making progress since the stress levels in the house have gone down is significant, in my opinion. So, good news there. He's learning that Mom means what she says these days so when she tells you to get out of bed or she's coming in with the squirt bottle of cold water in 5 minutes, get out of bed with alacrity AND that being disrespectful to your mother will get you jumped on by Dad, Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle, Aunt, Roommate and pretty much everybody so perhaps it's not just Mom who has an issue with it. So good news there was well. Perhaps with enough time, I will have the brattiness gone.

The Girl? Well...we're hoping she makes it out of high school but really, why in the world would she need to go to school? She already knows everything. Keith has had her 100% for one month and he's ready to pack her shit and put her to the curb. Amazing, innit? I've been dealing with the recalcitrant child for 17 years, mainly on my own. Well, mostly, that's my fault. I've spent an awful lot of time running interference between Keith and the kids, trying to minimize their mistakes in his eyes, covering for them and making them look better than they actually are. I did so in order to minimize what I felt were Keith's overly strict reactions but what I actually did was skew the consequences for the kids. Little errors went uncorrected, medium errors were made to seem smaller than they were, big errors were where I threw up my hands and said, "You're on your own, I don't care anymore" and I was looked at like I was crazy because my partner had no idea why I was reacting so strongly to what, to him, was a relatively infrequent screw-up on the kids' parts. So, now, The Girl tends to put the bare minimum of effort (read: none) into every single thing she does and she's been allowed to get away with that for 17 years. She puts zero effort into her relationships, schoolwork, friendships, life-in-general. If things get hard or she makes a mistake, she lays down and gives up. No matter how much we've told her otherwise, she won't listen (see: she knows everything) so...the world can teach her otherwise because out here, giving up means starving and living outdoors. The consequences are much more strict than anything Keith would have ever doled out had I not interfered. Sorry, kiddo. Good luck, though. (Yeah, I suck but she has a 38 AVERAGE, k?)

Keith and I are developing an interesting relationship and we're doing okay. I am discovering parts of myself that were closed off or shut down for years and exploring who I am. I thought I knew but apparently, I really didn't know some things. For example, I did not know that I was a jealous person. Really, I didn't know but it seems that I am if I'm feeling at all insecure about my place in the relationship. Other things are a bit too TMI for this venue. I'll write at the other joint about s-e-x.

I have a roommate. See, my apartment is a 2 bedroom, 2 bath apartment but I didn't have furniture for my bedroom. I bought living room furniture and furniture for The Boy's room only and figured I'd work on the rest over time. One of Keith's closest friends was living in a place that was making him profoundly unhappy and so I figured what the hell? The room is empty anyway...and I offered to rent him out the back bedroom, which has its own entrance and bathroom and walk-in closet and so on, for $300 less a month than where he was staying at the time. So, for now, I'm sleeping on the couch and either this week or next I'll buy a futon for The Boy's room. He'll have a couch in his room during the day and I'll have a place to sleep at night that will allow Roommate to use the living room to entertain his Girlfriend of the Week. So, yeah. Keith's wife is living with his best friend in seemingly a county music fashion but there is no hanky-panky and there is no drama. It's as if the sister isn't pregnant but just has gas, the dog didn't die but was just sleeping, the pick-up truck did not break down it just ran out of gas 50ft from a gas station. It's a win-win-win. Roommate gets out of a miserable living situation into one much more to his liking; I get some extra cash for a room that was just sitting empty anyway; and Keith gets to have a One Stop Shop for both best friend stuff and for...whatever the hell I am stuff.

Saturday after my test, Keith is taking me out on a date. We're going to lunch and then to the Fort Worth Stockyards. It's going to be lots of fun. We've never been on a real date before. I mean, we've gone out together before but a Date, where he says, "Do you want to go on a date with me to X place on Y day?"then picks me up at my place of residence at a specific time and we spend time together--you know, the way most of you met and developed a relationship with your spouse...nope, never. You know what this means? It means the heck with whether or not to sleep with someone on the first date, I slept with him BEFORE the first date--lots of times, as a matter of fact and he married me anyway. So much for that whole "cow...milk...free" shit, huh?

I'll let y'all in on how it goes...I think I might get lucky. He has a reputation for being easy. ;)

Lunch With Steve

2009-10-24T09:45:00.003-05:00

It's like Tuesdays with Morrie but it only happens once a year. And we didn't even argue this time about who was going to pay--I didn't even bring my purse. I completely caved this year. If y'all were expecting another epic struggle about who paid for lunch, I'm sorry to have disappointed you.

Steve and I went to Long John Silver's. There's a story.

See, the story is that when Keith and I first married, so lo! these many years ago! (about 17 or 18 years) Long John Silver's was giving away Christmas glassware with every entree sold. One entree, one glass. And there were many different types of glasses. I liked them and wanted a complete set of all of them and I was more than halfway there with a set of 8 wine glasses, 8 Irish Coffee mugs, and 4 regular coffee mugs when Keith had a bit of a breakdown about Long John Silver's. He went to the store, looked at the young man behind the counter with a bit of desperation and said, "How much would it cost me to get 4 more regular mugs and 8 drinking glasses?"

"That would cost $35.00, sir but you can get them FREE if you just buy a meal," said the child.

"That's exactly the problem. Give me the glasses."

"Are you sure you wouldn't like to purchase a meal with that and at least get one of them free?" (You have to admit, he sure did the suggestive sell thing really well, yes?)

"GOOD GOD, MAN, NO! Just the glasses, thank you."

He brought them home and said, "Here. Now, I never want to eat Long John Silver's again as long as I live."

And from that day to this, he never has nor has he allowed me to bring it home. EVER. If I even mentioned Long John Silver's, he would give me That Look, scowl and growl at me.

Steve and I were talking on the phone one night about a year ago now and when he heard this story, he said, "GREAT! Then I'll take you to Long John Silver's!"

And that is what he did. The End.

Well, not quite. We had a lovely conversation over lunch, we hugged and I gave everyone's wishes and hugs and stuff. Sorry, Lisa, no tongue. Steve got an extra hug for his birthday which is today, by the way. (Hint, Hint, click the link, wish the man a happy birthday. Thanks.)

Now, the best part? When I came back from lunch, Steve walked back with me and came up to my office. Our webmaster was there, looking for her keys and introduced me to her boyfriend, (/waves at webmaster and boyfriend/) after Steve left and said, "Was that Pidomon?"

I nearly died. Steve's very first public recognition!

On another topic, I'll probably do what Lisa is doing and only update once a week on Saturday or Sunday. It seems to be when I have the most time. The rest of the time, y'all can follow me on Facebook. I'm there pretty often.

And things are going really well for me and the kids and Keith. We're all doing okay and things are just working better with Keith and I living apart. Truly. When we remove the glacier weight of expectations from our relationship, the isostatic rebound of the love and caring that we truly feel for each other comes to the surface. Yeah, I'm a geology geek now. What of it? ;)

Thoughts on Art, Faith, Love

2009-10-15T20:49:00.004-05:00

(I have no idea where this post is going so this will be a very stream of consciousness type thing.)

In the last week, I've been shown two different pieces of artwork that for the people who showed them to me were depictions of pure love. They are each very different in style but I think there is something in what these folks were saying.

First up is Steven Prince's Faith Posture 2:

I love this--it is a mother's love. I know the emotion she's feeling at that very moment. It's a warm, tingling, head-to-toe, almost violent feeling of never wanting to let go but knowing you will because you must because it's never at all about you but always about this other person and that is what is best for him.* I've been in that pose very recently with The Boy and many years ago with The Girl. As a mother, one must take it on faith that our children will be okay, that the love we shower upon them will be enough to see them through. It is love in a pure form and in that I see God. I see that posture of worship as being much more "of God" than being on one's knees or prostrate upon the floor. If God is love, then a posture of this sort has God in every single moment of it--within and without and surrounding.

The second is David Mann:

Now, when I first saw this painting, knowing it's a David Mann and how sexist most of his work is (as well as the biker culture from which it originates) I saw the posture of this painting as servile because, of course, I placed myself in the woman's place. I saw her wrapped around him and my quick, dismissive glance took in that he seemed not to be acknowledging her presence at all and rolled my eyes. The person who brought it to my attention as one of his favorites asked me to look again and he was right. If you really take the time to look, you see that she's perhaps asleep, totally relaxed and trusting. If you look really hard, you see that he's smiling, relaxation shows in his arms, his head is tilted to sort of caress hers while on his shoulder. He is feeling a warmth wash over him, that feeling that I equate with uncomplicated love. It is love that has no agenda, no expectations but just is. It is love in the moment, no thought of tomorrow or yesterday. It is love that we so often forget to feel for any of the people close to us and it's love that we so often forget to give--to make sure our loved ones feel from us. This is a posture I have also been in recently (I wasn't asleep, though) and I know that I was not feeling at all servile. Sure, the guy in front had his hands on the handlebars most of the time but once in awhile, he'd let go on the clutch side and caress my calf or hold my hand and draw me tighter against him. It was intimate, it was fun and it was love--pure, fun, present and a posture of trust and faith on the one hand and responsibility and dependability on the other. Who knows what happens when the ride is over but for that one moment in time, she trusts him with her life completely and he proves himself capable, responsible, dependable, worthy--in love and so also is a posture of God, within, without and surrounding these two. God rides motorcycles, who knew?

I think what these artists are reminding us of is really, really important. We talk a lot about being in the moment and living just one moment at a time but truthfully, we hardly ever do. But then we don't have these moments. We don't have the moments when our loved ones can actually feel our love for them wash over them like a warm bath. We miss that--both the giving and the getting. You can say "I love you" all the time but if the other person doesn't ever feel that from you, they begin not to believe you and then begin to question their own feelings for you and the next thing you know, you're in a relationship that is supposed to be intimate, such as parent/child or lovers with someone who is essentially a stranger to you and of whom you are not confident. That makes trust and faith and responsibility and dependability and worthiness and selflessness much, much harder to achieve.

I guess, my point is for all y'all to go be in love right now--whether it's with your husband or wife, you children, your parents, whomever--go be in the moment, and allow God (love) to be there with you.

*I'm aware that there are all kinds of other layers in this due to the subject matter of an African-American woman and an African-American male child which I can articulate but never feel not being of that culture. In this post, I'm discussing what I feel when I see it and think about it.

Triggers

2009-10-06T12:32:00.003-05:00

I know there's been a lot of talk about triggers lately online with both ends of the spectrum being just a tad ridiculous on the issue. This post isn't about blog wars.

Sometimes, some things are triggering and sometimes, being triggered isn't such a bad thing--it tells you where the sore spot is and you can deal with it. But this post isn't about triggers in general.

I was triggered today by this article:

Pete Campbell is a rapist. On Sunday night's episode, he met a young au pair living in his building and helped her out of a difficult situation with her employers. He propositioned her; she refused. Later that evening, undeterred, he knocked on her door, forced her to let him in to avoid a scene, followed her into her bedroom, closed the door, and kissed her, leading her towards the bed. Apparently, for some people, this wasn't clearly a rape. I'm here to tell them: it was.

Apparently this scene happened on the show Mad Men which I do not watch. So, this isn't a post about Mad Men either.

No, this is a post about some of the supporting statements that were made in that article. Things like this:

The au pair is slightly afraid of Pete throughout. She doesn't want him in the apartment. She recoils when he kisses her. That she submits, ultimately, is irrelevant to the question of whether Pete rapes her. She didn't want to sleep with him; she made it clear; he didn't care. He wanted to have sex, and she was there, and she owed him, in his mind. So he raped her. End of story.

That is what real rape looks like. It's not the stranger behind the bushes that we're all told to carry our keys in our hands to prevent. It's not the person who grabs us from behind and stuffs us in the trunk that we take classes to learn to fend off. It's the guy we know. It's the neighbor or the date or the friend or the lover who is known to us. It is not screaming and kicking and scratching. It is fear and however that manifests itself. Maybe it does manifest itself by kicking and screaming. Maybe it manifests itself as submission. After all, that's what we're trained to do from childhood, isn't it? When we're "in trouble", parents invoke fear--(by yelling or what have you) of being spanked or punished in some other way--and the child's job is to be submissive otherwise it will get worse, won't it? Like Pavlov's dogs, we're conditioned through repetition to be submissive when we feel fear, especially women/girls. It's not surprising that most women behave this way. What is amazing are the women who, despite a lifetime of training to behave differently, do physically fight back especially when it's someone they know. To quote the quote:

It’s a rude fucking awakening when a woman gets raped, and follows the rules she has been taught her whole life — doesn’t refuse to talk, doesn’t refuse to flirt, doesn’t walk away ignoring him, doesn’t hit, doesn’t scream, doesn’t fight, doesn’t raise her voice, doesn’t deny she liked kissing — and finds out after that she is now to blame for the rape. She followed the rules. The rules that were supposed to keep the rape from happening. The rules that would keep her from being fair game for verbal and physical abuse. Breaking the rules is supposed to result in punishment, not following them. For every time she lowered her voice, let go of a boundary, didn’t move away, let her needs be conveniently misinterpreted, and was given positive reinforcement and a place in society, she is now being told that all that was wrong, this one time, and she should have known that, duh.

But, this post isn't about "most women" and what they do.

This post is about me and one incident that happened to me and how I reacted.

It was some 20 years ago or so now. I was dating a boy in high school. He wasn't the town jock. He wasn't the smartest kid in class. He wasn't the most popular. He wasn't the biggest nerd or really much of the -est of anything. He was just an average teenage boy. We made out one night and, in 1988, that meant we were going out because those were the rules back then. A girl could make out with a guy as long as they started dating after that. If they didn't, she was a desperate slut. Weird rules but that's what they were. So I dated him.

He was nice enough. It wasn't a deep meeting of souls at all but we had a sexual relationship. That's another post-worthy issue but to put it shortly, I had already 'gotten rid' of my virginity so there was no reason to hold out so why not? That was the whole reason, in a nutshell, that he and I ever had a sexual relationship to begin with.

Back in those days, I was as regular as a Timex. Every 26 days, Aunt Flo would arrive. One month, Aunt Flo was 2 weeks late. I was pregnant. Scared to death and pregnant, so scared as a matter of fact, I didn't even tell him. It was another of my Scarlett O'Hara moments.

I went over to his house one evening and he had some of his friends over. His dad and step-mom were out of town and everyone was drinking. He was drunk as hell. I didn't drink. We went to his room and he began trying to kiss and touch me. I said I didn't want to. He backhanded me. Then he said it was an accident and, "C'mere, baby." I went. He started in again. I was a quick study. I submitted and didn't say I didn't want to again. I laid on my back, stared at the ceiling or to the side, never looking at him pumping away on top of me and waited for it to be over. I thought of nothing. My mind was a complete blank. I was somewhere else. When it was over, I got dressed and called my grandfather to come and get me. Then, I stayed there until he came. My boyfriend walked me outside and I said something to him. I said, "I can't believe you just did that to me." He said, "What? We just made love."

The aftermath was a nightmare of insanity for a very, very long time. I've said that I didn't fight back because I was pregnant and didn't want the baby to get hurt, as if I had made a rational, logical decision. The truth is that the thought to fight or scream never entered my head. This was Cujo*, my boyfriend. And when I knew what was happening, I was scared blank. There was no thought there at all.

Between being pregnant and now the aftermath of rape, I walked around in a fugue state for awhile, doing all sorts of flat out crazy shit not the least of which was holding onto this relationship with this guy because if we were still dating, I can't possibly have been raped. I wouldn't date a rapist. Ergo...it's an excellent example of rationalization and circular thinking, don't you agree? I was a ping pong ball, reacting to this and to that but never once stopping to think about what I was doing or why I was doing it. It was almost like a state of mania.

It was toward the end of the school year and so we had to run the mile in PE. I didn't mention to anyone that I was pregnant and ran the mile. I hadn't been taking very good care of myself to begin with and that was just the trigger needed. I miscarried in the bathroom stall in the girl's locker room. Once again, the second worst thing to ever happen to me to that moment and like the first worst thing, there were people all around me and I said nothing. I did not call out for help. That day was my 17th birthday.

Cujo is a rapist. He doesn't think he is, of course.

..."rapists" are not monsters: they are human beings. They are human beings who have been taught, time and time again, by this culture, that they are entitled to sexually use other people. They are not outliers; they are not blips on the radar; they are not deviants. They are, often, just men who have gotten so caught up in themselves, so blinded by the ego they are told from birth they must develop as a symbol of virile masculinity, that they have utterly forgotten that women are human beings. They have forgotten that women are not there for their sexual use.

Or they never knew that women were human beings--just like them--and not animatronic blow-up dolls there for their sexual use. They were never taught what 'making love' is and so can't recognize the difference. As a friend recently said, "Making love is something women do while [men] are fucking them." That's the attitude that creates rapists like mine and apparently like the character on Mad Men. When we teach an entire group of people that they are to take what they want, we should not be surprised when they do. And so, to quote the quote again:

For anybody who has ever watched the gendered social interactions of women — watched a woman get browbeaten into accepting attention she doesn’t want, watched a woman get interrupted while speaking, watched a woman deny she is upset at being insulted in public, watched a woman get grabbed because of what she was wearing, watched a woman stop arguing — and said and done nothing, you never have the right to ever ask, “Why didn’t she fight back?”

*names changed to protect the guilty.

I Did It!

2009-10-06T09:34:00.004-05:00

I did it. I can't believe I did it, but I did.

* I took my government test first and got a 101. Yay!

*Then I did my history test and got a 96. Yay x 2!

*Then, I did my geology stuff: two quizzes and a lab. I got an 80 on one quiz and 100 on the other. The lab has not been graded yet. It was on topographic maps and there's this one system of pinpointing a position on the map called the UMS...UMV...UVL...URKIDDINGMERIGHT...I forget, but it's about measuring in millimeters and taking the percentage of that measurement as a % of the total size of the grid box, blah, blah. I don't get it but Keith did and thank you again for helping. I'm not going to do well on that lab to begin with because two of the maps needed to do it are not in my lab manual. I have a different (read: cheaper) edition. So every point is crucial on that one. I am thankful that he understands that arcane nonsense.

*Then it was time to move. That, ladies and gentlemen, was an epic disaster. It rained all weekend, so we did it in fits and spurts in between the rain. It took a total of 3 days and counting. We finally have pretty much everything except the computer. That comes over today. My dad, my brother, Keith and Jeff (The Girl's boyfriend) actually did the bulk of the work to be honest. My sister helped me pack.

*Also? It seems that in the great state of Texas, you can just randomly cut off other people's electric service. If you put in an order with another company at any address you please, that order will go to the other person's company and they will shut off the electric at that address. If, for example, your management company puts in a cut-off notice for your address after you have put in a "switch" order for your service, the electric company will cut-off the service and will NOT cut on the service in your name--and they will not tell you that your order has been cancelled. It will take the electric servicing company a minimum of 3 more days to get out there and turn it on. This information is important if and only if you plan on having electric in your new home, though. Just thought you might like to know that.

*As a result of having learned the information above, The Boy and I spent a few extra days at the house. Last night was our first night at the new place. It went really well but we do need to build the bed I bought for him. It's still in a box and I'm dreading the hours it is likely to take to put this thing together. He slept on the mattress on the floor last night but he slept really well, judging by how hard it was to get him up this morning and the fact that he didn't come in the living room where I was.

We're all getting along better than we have in years. It's nice. It feels more like a family now, more like people working together as a team, than it ever has which I just find sad. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying this and happy it's happening now--better late than never, I guess. But I can't help but wonder how much different things might have been all along if *this* behavior could have been the norm rather than the exception. It's that feeling that makes me sad. It's the what-might-have-beens that are getting to me and the demonstration that all of this, ALL of this, is and was completely unnecessary which also makes me feel guilty about what we've put the kids through with our bullshit. Keith and I know how to act. We know what's expected of us in the job description of "wife" and "husband". We just choose not to do it and the million dollar question is, "Why?'' It's a question we're going to have to answer because if we don't, this pattern will repeat with others and I don't think others will be as forgiving or patient as we have been. I think the cycle that takes years with us will take months with other people and there will be no second chances. That simple three letter question is huge and complicated in practice, though. And to be honest, I'm not feeling like I'm ready to begin untangling it right now because it will take a lot of work, a lot of introspection, perhaps a bit of counseling even, to decipher whatever the hell it is that causes all this and get an answer to "Why?"

Instead, I'm just enjoying the moment and suspending the parts that are problematic. In short, I'm doing a Scarlett O'Hara and worrying about it tomorrow. I think we'll be okay and in time things will settle in and we'll be comfortable here. I have a good feeling about this place and this move, come what may.

Conflicted

2009-10-05T12:08:00.003-05:00

I've gotten an account on Pandora Radio (y'all, it rocks. Get one now.) and it plays songs based on your demonstrated preferences.

Well, it is now playing Our Song--mine and Keith's that is. I don't know whether to dislike it, skip it for now, or like it. So I'll do none of them, listen to it.

And so shall you.

Funny but Kinda Not

2009-10-01T10:37:00.004-05:00

(click to go to larger size)

This comic strip today reminded me just how much I loathe lies and lying. I can't tolerate it. It actually makes me nauseous when I hear one or discover one. It's as if my very soul retches at the presence of the manifestation of evil before me and make no mistake, lies are evil. All lies. Every lie. There is no such thing as a "little white lie" or a harmless lie. They all cause harm; they are all big, fat, evil things. They destroy trust and so destroy relationships and families and friendships.

Even the so-called little white lie causes harm. When a friend or loved one tells another s/he looks fantastic when in reality that person looks stupid, that person goes around all day thinking s/he looks great while making a poor first impression and being laughed at all day. That's not harmless in the least.

And lies by omission? Oh, honey, please. I'm well acquainted with those and let me tell you, the first one you find, you spend the rest of forever wondering what else this person is keeping from you and how else you've been taken for a fool. They are actually the most damaging because they aren't just lies--they're sneaky lies. "I didn't lie. I just didn't tell you all of the truth." And with these, the potential for mental and emotional abuse is huge. "Well, if you weren't so X, I could tell you this stuff/wouldn't need to do this stuff." for any character flaw value of X such as irresponsible or jealous or spendthrift or frigid or overbearing.

I wonder and marvel at the arrogance it takes to lie. A liar has to think to him/herself that s/he is the smartest person around and no one else is nearly as smart as s/he is. HAS to. Otherwise, this person would be too afraid of being caught to lie. A liar has to think everyone else is stupid in order to believe it is possible to get away with it. That's some crazy arrogance right there.

The disrespect is mind-boggling. It's a denial of the person's intelligence, their right to be angry when done wrong, their right to forgive--it takes away the other person's right to make a decision based on the facts and that's a most basic human right. It steals the other person's agency--their very humanness. Shouldn't your loved one have the option of going to change his shirt? Shouldn't your partner have the option of deciding whether or not your collection of amateur porn shots is okay with him and what the rules are regarding this?

I think it requires a real lack of empathy, almost a sociopathic thrill of 'getting away with something' with no real guilt about how the other person will feel when the truth comes out--and the truth ALWAYS comes out. The pain, the betrayal, the shame, the disappointment, the confusion...the person lied to will feel all of these things and the closer this person is to the liar, the more keenly s/he will feel them whether deserved or not. Besides, remember that "smart" thing up above? Well, chances are, the liar is not the smartest person in the room. The really smart people already know that lying is a) wrong, b) fruitless and c) causes more heartache and damage than just being honest and upfront will. There's a good chance that the people to whom the liar is lying already know all about it and are just waiting to see what else is coming down the pike or that those folks have already caught the liar in so many lies that everything s/he says is suspect and so simply assume if his/her lips are moving, s/he is lying. Sad, that. There's really no hope when things get to that point.

Gah, I hate lies. I'm not real fond of liars either and I'm not at all optimistic about their chances for redemption or change.

Addendum: Let me be clear here. For me, 'liar' is a person who either withholds pertinent information or deliberately tells a falsehood, knowing it is false. A person who is simply factually incorrect is not lying--s/he believes it to be truth and is simply wrong. That is not the same as lying.

File in "Things I Didn't Know Until Just Now"

2009-10-01T05:49:00.002-05:00

My friend Miceelf (who you may have seen comment here on occasion) has a blog! Who knew? I didn't until just now. And now, you do too!

He's a psychologist too and who among us doesn't need some contact with a psychologist, right?

So go check him out and try to encourage the man to post more. It's been a year, after all. He just needs some encouragement (Read: nagging), I think. ;)

And I have no idea what the Latin means.

Facit indignatio versum

I'm So Screwed

2009-09-30T16:58:00.002-05:00

I'm moving Saturday.

I don't have enough boxes.

I haven't gotten things packed yet.

I'm out of money and I haven't even been paid yet.

I'm not going to have enough.

I have three tests and a lab due by Satuday.

I have no time!!!

I'm so SCREWED!!

(hears voice of Gine saying, "Breathe, Christina.")

/breathing/

NOPE, STILL SCREWED!!!!

Confession: I'm a Nice Guy(tm)

2009-09-28T12:23:00.004-05:00

Yes. I know, doesn't seem possible and yet there it is.

I'm a Nice Guy(tm).

When having a conversation with The Girl last night, after having it said to me several times by more than one person that my demeanor during debate is the exact same as my demeanor during actual anger*, I caught myself saying, without irony, "I guess I'll just need to learn to care less about stuff and not be so passionate about my beliefs."

granted, we all have our annoying quirks (yes, really, we all do), but the need to have someone else justify our own existence is the single one that most normal people (of either gender) can’t get over. i want someone who has original thoughts, who disagrees with me, challenges my assumptions. they’re just a lot more fun to be around.

--cpinva

(Emphasis mine) But truly? This. I want this. I want people who will stand up to me, stand toe-to-toe and argue with me. Walking away means you don't care, to me. The only time I can say, "Okay, whatever." and not argue is when I don't give a shit about either the topic, the person with whom I am arguing or both. I want to argue it until it's done and we've started to laugh and get ridiculous. Sooner or later, in any argument, someone is going to say something ridiculous. It's gotta be a corollary to Murphy's Law.*** And that's what I argue for, I think. Yeah, I like to "win" but really, I'd rather get to the point that someone like Keith says something like, "And THAT'S why I'm really a Roman girl!" or The Girl says, "But MOM, you're wrong--you were right!" or to catch myself saying something like, "Thou shalt not chase suitcases!" That's the fun part of debate and argument to me--to get to the ludicrous. "I love you!" /smack/ "Snap out of it!"

But it's harder to get someone to hang in there with me and get to that point than it is to achieve a multiple orgasm.

I'm just too good at it for 'em, I guess. /ducks/

(This is not to be confused with a lack of trust in a person. They *are* two separate and distinct issues. If I don't trust someone, EVERYthing they say will be wrong or a lie until proven otherwise and that's not arguing or debate--that's a real, deep, serious problem.)

*I disagree. I can certainly feel/tell a difference but apparently, it's more subtle than I thought. And it's not like THEY're going to pay close enough attention to notice it...er...oops.**

**Scary how easy that comes to me, isn't it?

***

"One good turn gets most of the blankets."

--Very, very true, especially if you hold the corner of the blanket under your chin.
And the answer to this one is 'yes, of course. Stupid question.'

"If a man speaks deep in the forest and there is no woman there to hear him; is he still wrong?"

A Song

2009-09-24T16:25:00.002-05:00

Nickelback - Feelin' Way Too Damn Good | Music Videos | SPIKE.com

(Sorry about the ad)

Still Here!

2009-09-24T13:02:00.002-05:00

Hello again! I'm catching up on all y'all's blogs and stuff. I haven't disappeared again.

Random thoughts:

* Is it better to work on a person who is an unbelievably over-the-top racist or is it better to just cut and run? Is it hypocritical to continue a friendship with a racist if one calls oneself an anti-racist? I'm afraid it might be. But, I can always cut and run later if I can't influence the racism, right? /sigh/ I don't know.

* Love is a difficult thing, y'all. I have to say it's the hardest activity I've ever attempted. Getting up every day, deciding to love this person today no matter what the day brings, always trying to put the other ahead of myself, failing, always trying again , being hurt when the other fails or quits...I don't know if it's all worth it. What is the payoff for it all? You just get to do it again tomorrow and every day after that. What's the point of it all?

* Check my quit smoking meter. I will make 8 weeks on Monday, 2 months on the 3rd of October. You may send gifts. ::cough::

*October 3rd is also my move-in date for my new apartment. Again, you may send gifts. (I was kidding above. This time, I'm kidding on the square.**) I'm scouring Craig's List for furniture and I may have found a living room set. Not really my style, I like Mission Style the best but for $300 for all of it? I can deal. I also need a bed for The Boy. I can sleep on the couch for awhile if I have to (and it looks like I will) but he needs a bed.I'd like to get him something like this but, you know, without the ridiculous price tag of that one. I've seen them for a third of that. I'll keep looking. One will hit Craig's list eventually.

*This is amazing. They do not mention even once that the guy's body "disappeared probably as a result of snacking". They don't even mention gators but the once in a safety kinda way.

*I got my winter gear and my bike is ready to be picked up. I will not freeze this winter. Yay! I damn sure did last winter. I got gauntlet gloves, a new helmet, a face mask, a leather jacket with zip out lining, boots and chaps. Perhaps I shall take pictures of me in my new gear. I will be sure to wear pants under the chaps in the pics. No one wants to see that. Trust me. No one. I had to have this stuff, though. I probably should have bought furniture but y'all just don't know how bad it is to try to ride in the cold without the proper gear--it's beyond miserable. Remember: wind chill is real.

**If you have any spare plain or solid color linens, particularly curtains, I'll pay for shipping if you want to get rid of them. When I say I need everything, I'm not kidding--shower curtains, curtains, sheets, towels, pots, pans, baking pans, casserole dishes, baskets for storage, hangers, just anything and everything, pretty much.

There Are Reasons

2009-09-18T11:38:00.003-05:00

There are reasons why a woman might be willing to say she's been raped but not be willing to name her famous rapist.

Here's one: she knows that 1 in 4 of the women *hearing her will have the same experience but also know that the fans of her rapist will tear her apart for pointing out the tarnish on their idol.

Here's another one: In a society where it's perfectly reasonable to some to expect that a woman who is experiencing pain or discomfort during sex should "wait 10 seconds for him to finish" (personal experience on that one) rather than object to the pain or discomfort, perhaps it's not exactly a safe thing to name names.

Here's another: In a place where 1 in 4 women are raped but many of those raped are raped more than once, it might not be prudent to say too much lest one be considered "careless" in having the audacity to be a victim of other people's bad behavior.

Or perhaps Ms. Price feels that simply having the courage to say "I was raped" in this atmosphere is radical enough without opening herself up to all that would go along with a name.

I mean, I was recently asked if I'd heard from (one of) my rapist(s) in passing conversation like it was the most natural thing in the world--as if we'd kept in touch. And it was well known what had happened to me. It was the talk of the town, so ignorance is a bullshit excuse. Naming names and speaking out opens oneself to being reminded of that shit 20 fucking years later. I can't blame Ms. Price if that's not something with which she intends to deal.

So, to the clueless person who sanctimoniously berated Ms. Price for her decision to protect herself, I give a good rousing one of these:

*By the way, I would like to point out that those statistics are skewed. 1 in 4 overall but I'm telling you, if you only count minority women or working class women or poor women, that number would go up significantly. I do not know nor have I ever known more than a small handful of women in 38 years in 5 different states, in several different regions of the nation, who have NOT been raped. As a matter of fact, I could name the names of the women that I know for sure have never been raped because that state is so remarkable among the women I've met.

This is White Privilege

2009-09-18T10:41:00.002-05:00

..and this is white privilege on steroids. Any questions?

(h/t Jo Tamar of Wallaby)

Please Fill Out a Survey for Me

2009-09-18T10:20:00.002-05:00

Giggles' kids are doing a homework project for their 3rd and 4th grade class. Please head here and fill out the survey for your particular part of the world.

Thanks.

It's Everywhere

2009-09-16T16:56:00.002-05:00

Eve Teasing--That's what groping and pinching and verbally harassing women is called in India.

Echnide gets it dead right here:

This type of sexual harassment is one of those life experiences which is completely different for those of us who have memories of being a frequent target of it and for those who never practice it and never get exposed to it. Note that when you get repeatedly groped, pinched or commented on you start thinking of going out under certain circumstances as a run through the gantlet.

You start suspecting all men, for example, because that's the way you stay safe. In the subway you find a carriage with no men who look like they might cross your boundaries and exhibit their power to rank you, try to stand against the wall, ...so that your butt is [in]accessible, or try to sit next to another woman. And always, always, avoid groups of young men, because they are the very worst.

Now, couple that with fear because it isn't always just gropes, pinches or comments--sometimes it's much, much more--and you start to understand why some folks would rather just stay the fuck home.

I'm talking about an invisible hand pinching your butt or boob so hard that you get tears in your eyes, about someone telling aloud what they would do to you in bed if they could, about the angry reaction of construction workers when you walk past NOT reacting to their comments. You see, you don't have the right to be silent and scared. You should have smiled!

Try that on a couple dozen times and see if you want to go hang out in a bar or other places that are as rich in the asshole factor.

And you know what's really awesome (read: stupid at a level that should denote drooling and slack-jaw-edness)? When someone says, "Well, he just thought you were cute! It's a compliment! Really!" No, no it isn't. What it is is a) painful, b) humiliating, c) presumptuous (as in, is my body public property that random men feel the right to comment upon/touch it?), and d) full of middle-school level frustrated entitlement. It really is the same deal as the kid in your 7th grade class who thought you were above dating him and so he was angry about that and put gum in your hair. It's an effort to make him feel superior by bringing you down. "I may be a total social reject who just had his boss's dick in my mouth and/or his foot up my ass but I can ruin your entire night with one quick hand up your skirt. I win." It's hatred, pure and simple.

And God help us all, it's everywhere there is any patriarchy left at all.

In Rush Limbaugh's America...

2009-09-16T13:23:00.003-05:00

Rush Limbaugh (p-thewy) said, "in Obama's America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering 'yeah, right on, right on, right on.'" about this story.

A student on a Belleville West High School bus was beaten for his choice of seat, not because he was white, according to a witness and police.

"The incident appears now to be more about a couple of bullies on a bus dictating where people sit," said Belleville Police Capt. Don Sax, who originally said Monday's attack may have been racially motivated.

Well, in Rush Limbaugh's America, black women are beaten nearly to a pulp for objecting to a mullet-sporting redneck damn-near hitting her 7 year old with a door at the local Cracker Barrel--while all the white people look on and do precisely not a fucking thing.

A man beat an Army reservist in front of a Morrow, GA. Cracker Barrel, yelling racial slurs at her as he kicked her in the head, Morrow police said. The assault happened in front of the woman’s 7-year old daughter, who stood there, crying, witnesses told police.

Rush Limbaugh can kiss my "Rather Be in Obama's America Than in Limbaugh's that's for damn sure" big fat white ass.

Just in time for Christmas

2009-09-16T11:37:00.001-05:00

This has been making the rounds on Facebook.

The 7 Most Inappropriate Products for Children

My personal fav is a toss-up between the plushy STDs and the pole dancing doll.

xkcd Is Awesome

2009-09-16T10:56:00.004-05:00

Of course, as usual, you know...

It's the scrollover that makes this one funny which says, "Well, sex is like a velociraptor: despite your movie-fueled lifelong neurotic obsession, unlikely to be found in your house."

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

2009-09-16T09:14:00.002-05:00

By Shane at No, No Not You. Via Alas, A Blog.

Sexual Assault Prevention Tips Guaranteed to Work!

1. Don’t put drugs in people’s drinks in order to control their behavior.

2. When you see someone walking by themselves, leave them alone!

3. If you pull over to help someone with car problems, remember not to assault them!

4. NEVER open an unlocked door or window uninvited.

5. If you are in an elevator and someone else gets in, DON’T ASSAULT THEM!

6. Remember, people go to laundry to do their laundry, do not attempt to molest someone who is alone in a laundry room.

7. USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM! If you are not able to stop yourself from assaulting people, ask a friend to stay with you while you are in public.

8. Always be honest with people! Don’t pretend to be a caring friend in order to gain the trust of someone you want to assault. Consider telling them you plan to assault them. If you don’t communicate your intentions, the other person may take that as a sign that you do not plan to rape them.

9. Don’t forget: you can’t have sex with someone unless they are awake!

10. Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone “on accident” you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can blow it if you do.

And, ALWAYS REMEMBER: if you didn’t ask permission and then respect the answer the first time, you are commiting a crime- no matter how “into it” others appear to be.

I think it quite nicely captures the condescending nature of all those "safety tips" for women to keep in mind at all times while also making the point that it's not the victims who are responsible for sexual assault--it's the rapists who are responsible for raping people. Duh, right?

I Apologize

2009-09-15T17:01:00.003-05:00

...to you my friends, for neglecting you lo these many weeks. I haven't been paying proper attention to your blogs and so missed out on the 2 month birthday of a cat and the desired, near attainment and subsequent loss of an all-together home (with the hope of another to come along shortly!),a crisis of grief and lots and lots of mail, the beginning of school, a defense of me (and also just a good point all around--not all about me at all), a new layout for the blog of the Experience and generally, all around life.

Y'all were living and I missed it and I am sorry. That is my punishment--that I missed it, so no need to ground me to my room although if you want to send some hottie * to me and ground me, I won't object.

I've started school and I'm doing well. I'll be looking at an apartment soon and I hope to have my own place with The Boy in two weeks. I really can't wait. My cardiologist says that I have nothing to worry about. Still not smoking. The Boy is doing really well in school this time around. The Girl is a teenager, the angst doth runneth over but otherwise she's fine. Life is, more or less, on an even keel for me and for the kids. We're getting accustomed to the new way of things and are actually doing really, really well. Better than usual, in fact.

*Doesn't it look like he's looking right the hell at you? Damn. Oh! And this. I know, I know, I'm becoming a real fangirl. I can't help it. This guy...as one person wrote, is "sex on a stick". He is the male Angelina Jolie. (For my readers who like women--which in her case might even be me for a minute because DAMN. Anyway...)

A song.

I Win

2009-09-12T21:17:00.002-05:00

I'm more stubborn than you.

:P

So there.

Why Look! It's Irony!

2009-09-08T14:36:00.002-05:00

Harvard Business Review did an article recently. Good stuff, really.

Here’s what we found, in brief: Women feel vastly underserved. Despite the remarkable strides in market power and social position that they have made in the past century, they still appear to be undervalued in the marketplace and underestimated in the workplace. They have too many demands on their time and constantly juggle conflicting priorities—work, home, and family. Few companies have responded to their need for time-saving solutions or for products and services designed specifically for them.

It’s still tough for women to find a pair of pants, buy a healthful meal, get financial advice without feeling patronized, or make the time to stay in shape. Although women control spending in most categories of consumer goods, too many businesses behave as if they had no say over purchasing decisions. Companies continue to offer them poorly conceived products and services and outdated marketing narratives that promote female stereotypes.

All very true.

But, for whom is this new information? Why...men! Thank you, Harvard Business Review for being an example of pervasive Male Perspective and doing so in such an ironic fashion--in an article about how women are underserved and ignored in business.

Logic Fail

2009-09-08T12:28:00.003-05:00

Pregnant women donating organs for months against their will while alive=Good

Dead people donating organs without explicit consent=bad

The Catholic Church talks about 'disordered thinking' a lot in their theology. People who put animals ahead of other people are said to have disordered thinking, for example, and that is a sin.

How disordered is the thinking that puts dead people's bodily integrity ahead of living people's?

Our Meeting

2009-08-27T06:33:00.008-05:00

[disclaimer: This was written in a state of anger, denial and sheer misery. Please do not take it as fact or truth but simply as a snapshot of a transitory emotional state. Thank you.--The Author]

We had our meeting last night and the futility of it all was on parade. I felt like I was being gas-lighted. We can't even agree on reality, y'all. We can't even agree on facts.

If a person does not remember doing something in the heat of an argument after close* to a half a bottle of whiskey, despite any evidence presented that person does not, in fact, have to admit that it happened. And, being the owner of a penis means never having to say you're sorry anyway even when it is demonstrated that one is factually incorrect. It must be nice on that planet.

How then, you ask, did I get the bruises on my arm? Apparently I must've thrown myself at the floor (thank God I didn't miss) and then made it all up to make him look bad--because simply saying that he walked out on his wife and kids for the fifth time doesn't make him look bad enough. Also? The fact that I didn't call the cops and have him arrested is not, in fact, a sign that a) I need him working so I can pay the bills, b) a sign that in the heat of the fight I was not thinking clearly or c) that I was in shock that after 18.5 years, he actually did something like this. No, no. The fact that I did not have him arrested is proof positive that it never happened. I need to talk to my dad because, since I wasn't arrested for taking that Bazooka gum when I was a kid, it never actually happened. /sarcasm

This kind of thing drives me straight crazy. When I have proof in my hand that something is A and someone is standing right in front of me saying, "No, it isn't"...what can one do with that? I mean for example, I'm standing there with proof in my hand that he was unfaithful to our marriage--in full-color--and he stands there and says, "No, I wasn't." Zuh?? That's like me walking in on him on the downstroke, saying he's fucking around and him saying, "No, I wasn't." This kind of illogic is just infuriating to me. I thought the purpose of lying was to not get caught and since I sucked at that, I just stopped lying. Apparently, I was doing it wrong so it's no wonder that I sucked at it. Is it a difference of definitions? One of us is crazy? What? I don't know but I think I should listen to the person who said to stop head-tripping about it because I'm the only one who will.

I swear, my personals profile page is going to look weird because I'm going to have to ask people to define things like "good family name**" and "unfaithful***". I'm going to have to make sure that those folks do regularly and routinely say they are sorry when they have accused someone of something and are proven factually incorrect, despite owning a penis. I'll have to give people a test with Scantrons. I think I'll just invest in something sparkly for my freezer. It's easier, it's cheaper and I'll never have to deal with temper or mood or different realities, for Christ's sake. Bonus: I will then own a penis and will never have to apologize for anything ever again.

Seriously? When I said we had little to nothing in common, I was talking about the fact that he likes maudlin and treacly country music and monster truck rallies while I like punk rock and ballet. I was not thinking we didn't even have the English language in common or live on the same planet or that we lived in different space/time continuums. (I wonder what color shirt I'm wearing?)

Can someone please define the word "is" for me? Thanks.

BTW, Blog Note: I'll be starting a new personal blog. It will be a private journal. If you wish to hear such scintillating things as above (and below), ask for a link and yadda yadda. It seems, after years of having precisely no interest in what I've said...well, 18.5 really but several years of internet speech...suddenly my blog is of immense interest. /sigh/ I know, I know. I said not to read it lest someone's feelings get hurt and so it was done out of respect, not disinterest. So, that means reading it NOW means...what?

*we're talking an RCH less than half.

**another word for family reputation, meaning the actions of one's forebears and how those actions have created a reputation inherited by the later generations. It is not one's own individual reputation. 'Family name' can be influenced somewhat for better or ill by one's own behavior but it is not of one's own making.

***full of a lack of faith, in the most denotative sense. In a marriage, the moment one looks outside the marriage for solutions to the problems within the marriage. Granted, most people do not find out about their spouse's unfaithfulness until they catch them screwing someone else but that is not, in fact, the moment of unfaithfulness--that happened well before anyone's pants came off.

By Special Request

2009-08-27T06:12:00.003-05:00

[disclaimer: This was written in a state of anger, denial and sheer misery. Please do not take it as fact or truth but simply as a snapshot of a transitory emotional state. Thank you.--The Author]

The rest of the text conversation of the other night because apparently, knowing the rest of it (that happened after I posted below) will Change Everything:

[a few hours after the conversation below]

Me: Call me at your earliest opportunity so we can decide the fate of four people and an eighteen year marriage over the phone. Waves to Brian. Sorry about the repeat.*

[several hours later, in the evening, after work]

Me: This? What you're doing right now? (text sent prematurely. /shrug/)

K: What are you talking about?

Me: This is exactly why I am so full of rage and why our marriage is dead. Will you please act like an adult and for once deal with a situation before it's unfixable. I'm trying to do what is best for these kids and maybe help you out too. Can you co-operate, listen and be honest?

K: I'll call you tomorrow around 7:00pm

Me: Make it 7:30. I have class and I have to put The Boy to bed not long after that. Tonight is better for me.

K. Tonight's not go for me, I'll call tomorrow about 7:30pm.

Me: What or who can you possibly be doing that is more important than the future of your kids?!

K: I'm not going to respond to this line of questioning!!! [ed note: see definition of "rhetorical"]

Me: I guess that's my answer. Glad to see your priorities are still in order. You, first, last and always with everyone else not even on the radar, not even your kids.

[next day]

K: Where do you want to meet at tonight, I'll do this in person.

[a few hours later]

Me: 7:30 at my parents' patio. I've cleared it with dad already.

K: The first sign of yelling or teaming up I'm out.

Me. We will be alone. And there is nothing left worth yelling about. Yelling is for things that have some value and so are worth fighting for.

K: Well with that said what is there to talk about then?

Me: To repeat myself, we have several option on how we can move forward from here. We need to discuss those options and decide the best way forward for all.
__________________

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the entirety of it.

*My phone is super sensitive. If I hit the wrong the button, it will send when I'm not even halfway through with the text. That's what happened here. Three times. What?!

A Text Window into Why My Marriage is Ending

2009-08-25T14:10:00.003-05:00

[disclaimer: This was written in a state of anger, denial and sheer misery. Please do not take it as fact or truth but simply as a snapshot of a transitory emotional state. Thank you.--The Author]

[conversation about the kids starting school, then...]

Me: Would you like me to ask my folks if we can use their patio to talk?

K: Don't think that's a good place to talk.

Me: Whatever. We need to get some things settled and I just don't care. It's private enough that we can discuss personal stuff but public enough that we aren't likely to start yelling.

K: What do we need to settle?

Me: We have some options. I would like to discuss them with you since it is impossible to make decisions that affect four human beings by myself. Or at least rude.

K: Can it be discussed over the phone?

Me: Seriously, after 18 years you can't have this conversation face-to-face? Just once...forget it. If you were capable of it, we wouldn't be here. Phone it is.

Rage

2009-08-25T09:40:00.006-05:00

[disclaimer: This was written in a state of anger, denial and sheer misery. Please do not take it as fact or truth but simply as a snapshot of a transitory emotional state. Thank you.--The Author]

Given the smallest opportunity, it comes creeping out to turn me into a harridan and I can't seem to control it. I can watch myself acting this way and I know it's just nuts but I can't seem to stop it. It's pure, utter, full-to-the-brim RAGE. Beyond anger, beyond disgust, beyond contempt, beyond hate--that's where I am and I can't deal with it the way I normally would--with the people who have *caused* it. I can't confront them and say, "You are beneath contempt for putting your happiness ahead of your children's well-being, you big ol' baby, without even TRYING to fix it first" or "I cannot believe that you would betray the one person who has never, ever walked out on you, you disloyal little twit." I can't smack him in the face and say, "How DARE you cheat and lie and steal from me!" I can't knock her in the head and say, "What did you THINK would happen to our relationship when you kept secrets for him for MONTHS? And how dare you take his side when he CHEATED, LIED and STOLE from me!"

I need to release it somehow for my own sake. I need to let it go and let God handle it. I want to

do so but it sneaks up on me. This morning, I woke up and was just furious for no specific reason but then...well, I was given a reason. When one can't give me the amount of money I said was needed to keep the house running, taking a day off for no damn reason is not LOGICAL! When I log on to the computer and see the eAlerts for our old bank account showing more money moving into and out of that account than one said one was paid, that's LYING and STEALING from one's own children! Un-fucking-believable.

I know that I wouldn't be enraged like this if it wasn't really deep pain at the core of it. I know that only those people whom I love deeply and trusted completely could ever possibly hurt me this deeply and cause this much rage. Therefore, I know that under all of this is love betrayed. I know that under all of this is a deep hurt. I also know that unless I can burn this rage out and get to the hurt, I can't heal it--as much as it will ever heal. Give me some ideas, y'all. I need some way to release this monster within me.

Interesting

2009-08-19T08:47:00.005-05:00

[disclaimer: This was written in a state of anger, denial and sheer misery. Please do not take it as fact or truth but simply as a snapshot of a transitory emotional state. Thank you.--The Author]

I have a tendency to sometimes take an emotional vacation from whatever is going on in my life. I step back and analyze and assess a situation from afar, attempting to do so with some eye toward the patterns I see, without the clouds of emotional attachment. It's a little like looking at a bug tacked on a table and one of my more annoying traits when I do it to the people in my life (see the post before the previous one) when I'm upset with them but there you have it.

I've seen a couple of interesting things in my current situation.

1. Among the people in RL*, 100% of the people who are telling me to give Keith another chance if he's willing, for financial reasons or whatever reason they give, are men. 100% of the people asking me why I didn't drop his ass and commence to wailing on him with the cast iron frying pan after his little stunt are women. I find that fascinating. Are the men doing so because they don't understand just how dangerous it might be for me? Are they counseling this because they hope that were they to drink half a bottle of Ezra Brooks and do something so phenomenally stupid, their wives would give them a chance to make up for it? Are the women being so militantly violent about it because they hope that if it were them, that's how they would behave? Is it an attempt to distance themselves from the possibility that it could ever be them?

2. In order to receive any kind of legal help to get out of a marriage, one must show an on-going history of abuse. It cannot be "just" one incident. Yet, what is the first thing that is asked of a woman when she leaves an abusive situation? "Why didn't you leave the first time he did this?" Quite the Catch-22, isn't it?

*My internet friends, by comparison, are much more sensible and are simply supportive of whatever decisions I make while being outraged at all the right parts. Thank you for that.

Oh, God help me

2009-08-16T14:53:00.004-05:00

[disclaimer: This was written in a state of anger, denial and sheer misery. Please do not take it as fact or truth but simply as a snapshot of a transitory emotional state. Thank you.--The Author]

The Girl is dead set on living with her father. She thinks, so she says, that she'll be helping me. She thinks that it'll be easier for me to support two rather than three. She thinks that Keith will pay me child support for The Boy despite the fact that we'll each have one kid so it'll be "even" out of the kindness of his heart because he's such a good guy. She thinks she's helping me by leaving me right along with him.

I wish she would quit "helping me" because she isn't helping me. She's helping him to bury me. Let me play Cassandra once again and predict the future and have no one believe me.

She'll move in with her dad. He'll refuse to pay me anything but he won't let that slip until it's too late. I'll have to try to support two people on my salary alone which, seriously y'all, can't be done. Then I'll lose both my kids because I just won't be able to make it at which point I will then owe him child support and I won't have enough money to even support myself.

Besides which, the important part--I will have lost both my kids.

I've explained this to her and apparently, Keith is better at lying than I am at telling the truth because she just won't believe it. He's good. He's very, very good.

Looking Around at the Damage

2009-08-15T22:29:00.008-05:00

[disclaimer: This was written in a state of anger, denial and sheer misery. Please do not take it as fact or truth but simply as a snapshot of a transitory emotional state. Thank you.--The Author]

I've had a lot of time to think and assess this situation and the series of unfortunate events (all apologies to the author) that led up to this moment. I've discovered a few things or at least I have a few theories.

Now, understand that my marriage has never been stellar. It's always been, even at its best, marginal. We've always had to work at communicating with each other better; we've always had to accommodate our vastly different personalities, tastes and interests. It was always work and has never, ever been easy.

But 5 years ago we made a mutual decision to really take it seriously and to truly make a go of it with everything we had. If it worked, great. If it didn't, we could hold our heads up high knowing we really did our best. It was working. We were, if not happy, at least well on our way to happy. Our communication was improving. We were finding common interests. We were making room for each other to do the things that we liked to do and wanted to do. We were supporting each other's dreams and goals. We were, in short, finally behaving like grown folks in a marriage. When asked, we would characterize ourselves as "happily married" despite the fact that there were still some issues that seemed almost unsolvable--the division of labor in the house, the lack of attention to things needing to be done around here, some communication issues, the lack of attention to sex and physical displays of affection, the lack of desire on my part to be a part of the outside world and his need to be a part of a couple in that world.

Then, things went bad very quickly. I can pinpoint the moment for you--when he wrecked the Kia. Afterwards, if you'll recall, I mentioned that he had a headache for months. I don't remember if I mentioned that his personality started to change but it did and I remember mentioning it to him--he seemed to be having some trouble controlling his temper. Well, after that, things got so bad so fast that I simply forgot about that and put everything down to the stress we were living through. It took us a really, really long time to recover from that disaster. By the time we were on an even keel again, our marriage was a shambles. It didn't start in August of last year, which would have been his 40th birthday--it began in April of last year. By April of this year, things had gone completely off the rails and there was a serious incident of parental behavior that was completely inappropriate which was a wake-up call for me. Unfortunately, I hit snooze instead when he simply refused to talk about the incident at all. If I had an ounce of sense, I would have insisted he get help then for whatever the hell was going on in his head and maybe we wouldn't be where we are now.

But I didn't and so here we are. I don't know if his erratic and illogical behavior is due to some kind of medical issue resulting from that wreck or if it's that he really is just a prick. Truth is, it would be easier on me if it were the latter. I wouldn't feel so guilty about divorcing him if he's just a jerk but I will feel guilty about divorcing him if it's a medical condition--all that 'better or worse' and 'in sickness and in health' garbage but divorce him I will regardless. He's just too big a guy for me to take any chances. I don't think he'd hurt the kids and The Girl is old enough to leave on her own. He hasn't physically harmed either of them but some of his parenting "techniques" could be considered mentally abusive. I think that as long as seeing the kids is an event for him, a once-every-other-weekend kinda deal, rather than a day-to-day grind thing, he'll be okay with The Boy. Considering how much The Boy has missed his dad in the last couple of days, for his sake I have to err on the side of facilitating that relationship. The only one with bruises is me but I'll be watching closely since at 8 years old, The Boy is not at a point where he can defend himself or leave by himself. Further, I have every intention of negotiating a "no corporal punishment" clause in our divorce agreement.

In the final analysis, I can't help but think that the universe is correcting my mistakes. It feels like the fabric of the world around me is snapping into the shape it was supposed to be in but which I tried to force into a different shape. It seems to be me that it was a mistake to allow Keith to come out here to Texas. It feels as if we should have called it quits right then and perhaps none of the rest of it would have happened. I don't know of course but it's the feeling that I have. I'm going with the flow, taking care of my business and my kids and myself and allowing the rest of it to just flow naturally. I don't know where the current is taking me but we'll see. I know it's taking me away from this marriage, though. I hope that y'all will still be reading when I get back to the larger world and the issues in it but in the near future, expect a divorce blog. That's what this will be--my journal and a way for me to release the frustration and anger that is sure to come.

I'm relying heavily on you folks, my friends. When I begin to feel a bit weak, when I begin to question my conviction to give up on this, when I feel like the fear of being alone and being poor and being single for the first time since I was 19 begins to overwhelm me, I go back and I read the things y'all have written and I no longer feel alone or quite as scared. It really seems that as a feminist, I'm more talk than action. I understand that intellectually I don't need him and I can make it on my own but emotionally I still feel like this relationship was my responsibility and the failure of it was my failure because a "good woman" puts up with whatever she must to keep it together "for the kids". You folks saying things like you have really helps, believe it or not. I feel like I'm not the one who is batshit insane.

I'll be okay, come what may. All I need is my kids and my friends and all will be well.

Oh! And some D batteries. ;)

Letters I'll Never Send

2009-08-10T15:35:00.015-05:00

[disclaimer: This was written in a state of anger, denial and sheer misery. Please do not take it as fact or truth but simply as a snapshot of a transitory emotional state. Thank you.--The Author]

Dear Husband,

I'm miserable. Our marriage is falling into a shambles around us, as it has been for the last year and it's your fault. You saw that right. It's your fault. Harsh but true and strangely I'm not feeling like I need to spare your feelings since you have been so callous about mine. See, you turned 40 and looked around at your life and were dissatisfied with what you saw. Your dissatisfaction had to have a target. It wasn't enough that this is just life and that's how it is. Then, it's just the world and no one is to blame. And heaven forbid the idea that you might be to blame. So that leaves me. Of course. Instead of being your support, instead of treating me as a member of the team to get you where you want to go, I'm the scapegoat. It's my fault you are unhappy--in your head. It's my fault you are dissatisfied with the state of our marriage. Never mind that you've walked out 4 (four) times before and each and every time you've found that, no I'm not the cause of your unhappiness. In fact, you are the cause of your unhappiness and mine as well since I've done everything you've asked of me, tried to get you hear me when I've warned you, desperately tried to get you to see what you were doing to yourself, to me, to our kids and to this family each and every time you've done it and you've ignored me every single time.*

You've done this every 3 to 5 years for the last 20 years and frankly, I'm a little sick of it. No, I take that back. I'm a lot sick of it. I can't even remember a time when being with you didn't mean swallowing my pride and my dignity and allowing others to believe I was stupid for believing in you, for trusting you, for letting you come home yet again, for taking the chance that THIS time, you've learned. I can't recall a time when I was with you because being with you made me happy and made me feel good about myself. If there ever was such a time, it was a long, long time ago. For as long as I can remember I've done it for the kids, for economic reasons and so I wouldn't look like a failure yet again. Hey, I may be stupid but at least I'm not flighty!

Now you're filling out Yahoo Personals profiles and telling me that it's my fault that you did so--I'm not putting out enough. You aren't getting enough attention. Your needs aren't being met. No apology. No regret. No shame. Not even a little twinge. You had to know that what you were doing was going to hurt me deeply. But no remorse whatsoever and you have the gall to lie and say you love me? People don't deliberately hurt the people they love, so stop lying. And then you say to me that you could cheat on me and I'd never know about it? Really?! How can you be so confident unless you think you've managed it already?

Or how about you getting all dressed up to go to your friends' house to "have a few drinks" and forgetting how to get home? No call to tell me you're alive and not in a ditch somewhere. When I called you at 8:30am, you shuttled my call to voicemail. At 10:30am, you hit ignore. I had to blow up your damn phone to get you to answer so I could tell you that our daughter needed a ride to work. You couldn't manage to make it home in an hour to take her and had me give her the keys to your bike. Yeah, I had to put a 17 year old on an 1100 cc motorcycle for the first time so she could drive it in one of the busiest sections of Arlington. Nice. And, apparently, when you finally managed to drag your sorry ass home at 3pm the next afternoon, I was supposed to greet you at the door with "It's okay honey, I'm just happy to see you. Here's a beer. Would you like a blow job with that?" Instead, since I'm a human being and not the wank material living in your head, I was totally pissed. You didn't stick around or apologize or anything. You left and talked to my father--MY father--who, being a complete moron, told you to walk out in the middle of a fight and get a hotel room so you could decide what you wanted from our relationship. After all, it's not like I have abandonment issues at all. Nope. Not a one. Truthfully, I don't know whether the man is smoking crack or trying to land your ass in divorce court but those are the only two logical possibilities to explain such piss-fucking-poor advice I can manage to come up with.** Besides, contrary to your opinion, I'm not stupid. I know what you are doing. By playing into my family's conviction that I'm a total bitch and nearly impossible to live with and just being totally unreasonable, you are making sure that when you do pick up and leave for the 5th time***, I have absolutely no support system whatsoever. Thanks for that. And how, pray tell, do you 'decide what you want from this relationship' absent the other half of the relationship? What was the plan? You would just come home and make your pronouncements from on high and I'm supposed to just...what? In your head, how was that going to work? Seriously, I don't know what kind of Promisekeepers-type shit you're listening to on FM radio but the only way that shit works is if I agree to take a second-class status in my home and in my marriage--and I never agreed to that and I never will. Do you remember who you married at all?! Honestly, maybe my dad isn't the only one smoking crack.

I think the final straw was this past weekend when I discovered that you'd opened a secret bank account. When you attempted to say that you did it for us--to save for Christmas--I was incredulous at the sheer size of the balls it takes to look someone in the face and say something so patently absurd without cracking up or anything. I'm tired of feeling like I've been punched in the gut every time I turn around because I've caught you doing something else that is phenomenally stupid, sneaky, destructive and then watching you lie about it. Seriously? Saving for Christmas? Then why not a Christmas club or savings account at our bank? Why a checking account at a completely different bank? And why a month after you'd already made the unilateral decision to have money deducted from your paycheck for that purpose (so you tell me)? Please tell me, just how stupid do you think I am? A little smarter than the cocker spaniel but not quite as bright as a box of rocks?

You know, I don't even care anymore. My needs have never been met in this marriage. I've asked and asked and begged and pleaded and got nothing from you. Nothing. "But...he says he loves me. So...he can't possibly be deliberately hurting me. That would be psychotic. He must not have heard me." "Okay, he's not listening. Let me try again." "Okay, I'm just not using the right words. He doesn't understand." "Okay. Let me try again....and again...and again...and again..." For damn near 20 years it's been the same complaints: the division of labor is unfair, you are lazy and won't do any of the things around the house that I ask you to do, our communication sucks (and flat out refusing to discuss something? What the FUCK was that? How the hell is that appropriate in a marriage?!), I am not only not treated like an equal in our marriage, I'm treated like a prop in the movie of your biography playing in your head. I'm not a real person to you. I'm simply "your wife": a role, a set of services performed and all is well as long as I stick to the script for the fembot you have cast in the role. I'm tired. I'm fed up. I no longer trust you and I no longer believe in you. I used to think that as you matured, you'd be a better husband. I don't think that anymore. I think you are always going to be just what you are now: a bully and an overgrown spoiled brat. You want all the benefits of being married with none of the responsibility or work and you want all the positives of being single with none of the sacrifices. Good luck with that. You are still the same prick you were at 22. The only thing that has changed is me--I no longer think being with you is worth it. It took you damn near 20 years but you've finally, FINALLY, wore me smooth the fuck out.

So go. Stop torturing me and just pack your shit and go--for the last time. You will never enter my home again as anything more than a very temporary guest. You can believe that because this time, you aren't coming home. I'm done. Love is not enough to keep a marriage together when only one person is behaving with love. Life is too short to put up with this shit.

I quit because this job sucks. The partner who thinks he's the boss is an asshole.

With all my heart and soul,

Your wife

*Either that, or you bumped your head harder than we thought when you had that wreck...

**Turns out you were lying about that too and Dad never said that. /shakes head/

***Which you did last night. Which is fine, really. I went to the Emergency Room because I was having chest pains. I was admitted. I asked to be released so I could save us some money. Funny thing, though. My chest pains came back when you showed up and when I asked you to leave and go home and take care of The Boy, they went away. Yeah, I still have a super-low heart rate and super low blood pressure and edema but the chest pain--that's been explained. And, apparently it hurt your feelings that I didn't call you first thing and that I asked you to leave. So your answer to that was to come home, get blindingly drunk and do nothing. You didn't make the kid dinner, you didn't clean up--you just got drunk. When I came home at 8:45pm, nothing had been done. We fought. You called me a bitch and a whore and pretty much everything but a Child of God. The real deal breaker? When you plowed me down--physically pushed me down to the ground with your body--and walked over me like I was dirt under your feet. I couldn't believe my ears when you said right afterwards that if I touched you, you would have me arrested for assault while I'm still picking myself up off the ground! That was surreal.

It was also the end. Next time, I'm well aware, it might be your fist in my face or a kick to the ribs and I can't go there with you. So I think I'm going to let all those other women out there who are just chomping at the bit to properly appreciate such a fine specimen of manhood as you are that you keep telling me about have all the chances in the world to do so.

Those lucky, lucky women.

Day 3: Quick Hit

2009-08-05T17:11:00.001-05:00

Day 3

Pro of quitting smoking:

I can taste blueberries again. They are good.

Con of quitting smoking:

I can smell my feet. When the HELL did that happen? How long has THAT been going on?!

Quick Hit

2009-08-03T16:56:00.002-05:00

Totally flunked Day 2. Keith and I had a fight* and I started smoking. Terribly stupid since I'd already made 27 hours at that point and then had to turn around and start all over again this morning.

So, today is Day 1, Part Deaux. I've done fine so far. Let's see how well I do when I get home and get around Those People With Whom I Live.

*totally his fault, as usual.

Reasons for Quitting

2009-08-01T09:19:00.003-05:00

1. Money. I'm spending $55/wk on cigarettes just for me.

2. Ever since they added that 'fire safety' shit to the cigarettes, I've had the MOST foul backdrip. I smell and taste (what I would imagine) ass (smells and tastes like) all the time. (I warned you.)

3. Stains on my fingers and on my teeth.

4. Cigarette burn holes in the furniture and my clothes because I'm such a damn klutz.

5. chronic sinus infections.

6. asthma, caused by the cigarettes. I'm still hopeful that if I quit, I can reverse that.

7. constantly being sick. I really believe that the daily dose of 400 poisons is suppressing my immune system and helping me to be sick all the time.

8. The kids breathing all that second hand smoke. That isn't good for them and I know it.

9. I want to be able to be more active but as long as I can't breathe, that's a bit difficult.

10. I want to live to see my grandkids and great-grandkids graduate. I'm nosy.

11. I saw my grandmother die from lung cancer. It's not a pretty way to go.

12. Improving the smell of both my house and myself. I know that I and my house smell like an ashtray. I'm tired of being embarrassed by that.

13. Being able to smell and taste stuff! Wow! I knew I loved blueberries, now I remember why.

14. Getting rid of the constant low level pain in my sinuses. I didn't even know it was there until it just wasn't there anymore.

(I'll add more as I think of more)

Updated II: Ultimate Navel Gazing

2009-08-01T09:04:00.004-05:00

Day 0

So, I decided to quit smoking as of August 1st. Today is August 1st so...it's now been two hours since I woke up and despite having on a (low dose) patch and a nicotine lozenge I still want a cigarette. I had my last cigarette last night at about 11 or 11:30 with Keith.

I'm going to use this blog as my quitting journal.

I can already feel some of the side effects. I'm jittery. I've already had an asthma attack. My stuffy nose hasn't cleared up like it usually does when I wake up. I understand that it'll get a bit worse before it gets better. That's okay. I'm ready for it.

Keith is not quitting. He's agreed to smoke outside but I am doing this with ashtrays around the house and a carton of cigarettes on top of the fridge. Pray for me. Or whatever it is you do.

This next post is going to be for me: My reasons for quitting. I'll need to refer back to it often when I hit a particularly rough patch in this process. It will contain grossness. Consider this your trigger warning. Heh.

Aww, Jayzus Krist...since when are hiccups a side effect?!?

2:46-- I've made it 8 hours now...meh, close enough. By the time I'm done typing, it'll be 8 hours. Y'all, this shit is kicking my ass. I finished all the housework so now I'm at loose ends. This might be the toughest part. I need to keep busy. I've figured that much out already.

I can tell ya this, though. My sense of smell is coming back. Wanna know how I know? I walked into The Boy's room and smelled dog piss. Normally, I can't smell it and end up stepping in it. Is that a good thing? I'm not sure, to be honest. Sugar is regressing--she can't seem to stay off The Boy's carpet and she's been digging in the trash. She hasn't done dumb shit like that since she was a puppy 15 years ago. How do you tell if a cocker spaniel has dementia? She was dumb as a box of rocks to begin with.

9:52pm--15 hours. I'm exhausted. I've been battling the cravings like I'm fighting a war with Vikings. The Vikings are kicking my ass but they haven't won yet. I am ready to go to bed and hopefully get some sleep so I can get some relief from this shit. My nose is beginning to run and I'm coughing a lot. 25+ years of tar and crap...I don't think this is going to be pretty at all, at all. Here's to hoping that Day 2 will be easier than Day 1 and so on and so on. If I could go back in time, I'd find my 11 year old self and kick her in the ass really hard. Really hard. Stupid git.

2009-07-24T17:05:00.002-05:00

"As you know, I'm pro choice. But I think we also have a tradition of, in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government funded health care." President Barack Obama, our Hope and Change President

Oh, Good Lord...

2009-07-24T14:55:00.000-05:00

Here's someone who will make all of us feel like geniuses.

Class Wars: The Reality

2009-07-16T15:44:00.002-05:00

What Echidne said.

(What _____ Said concept shamelessly stolen from Duncan Black.) via Jeff Fecke.

I'm Messing With Your Mind

2009-07-11T12:23:00.003-05:00

This week has been a stellar week in Various Examples of Racism. First, there was the swim club that decided that the "complexion" of their club would be negatively changed if they honored their contract with Black and Brown kids but did you catch the second type? You weren't supposed to see it.

The swim club example is just beyond blatant. It's the sort of thing we don't see as much of these days. The second example is the more common type. Do you know what it was?

It was the pictures of Obama "ogling" the women at the G8. You don't think so? Let me explain how it works and perhaps you'll see it.

America has a long and (as one friend termed it) bloodthirsty tradition of black men being characterized as lecherous sexual threats to white women.* Black men were lynched for so much as looking at a white woman in a way that the white men felt was inappropriate. The idea of black men having sexual access to white women was a scare tactic used to oppose emancipation, repeal of Jim Crow, opposition to Civil Rights and school integration. And it hasn't been so long ago that the fear doesn't live on in our lizard brains, in the subconscious and immediate reaction to a BM/WF interracial couple before we engage our more evolved minds to the situation. Some of us check ourselves and some of us rationalize our reaction but I've yet to meet anyone white who grew up in the US who does not have that split second reaction. It's not under our control--it's something that was absorbed by osmosis simply by being a member of this society at this point in time. It simply is.

Political campaigns playing on this fear has a long history as well. Willie Horton was used against Dukasis in 1988. Harold Ford in Tennessee felt the sting of this tactic. Strom Thurmond was a master at this American tradition. Each of those ads plays on fear while deliberately leaving it unsaid. It's in the subtext, the same way that Reagan's "State's Rights" speech in Philadelphia, MS doesn't contain any overt racism but instead relies on the listener knowing what was meant. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Are you beginning to see it? Our African-American President is seen supposedly leering at not one but two young women. The first is light-skinned woman, not immediately identifiable as "not-white" from the photo and the second is a woman as white as me bending over to pick something up she dropped at Obama's feet. Greta Van Susteren viewed the entire video of the first photo and found that it was a ridiculous contention. It simply never happened. The second photo, if one looks closely, is just as misleading. He's looking at a point somewhere between her and his feet but not at her. And besides, he's a human being in good health. So what, right? Shit, if I had someone following me around with a camera, snapping photos of all the men I so much as look at, I'd be in big trouble.**

But it doesn't matter. That's right. It doesn't matter. The damage is already done. That fisson of fear, of wrongness, has already been felt while viewing a photo of Barack Obama. The connection has been made in our lizard brains between that feeling and Barack Obama. And there's just one cure for it.

Like all things evil, this type of racism depends on the shadows. It lives in the space beween words and in the spaces before words. It depends on never being seen, skulking around in the places never noticed, let alone examined.

The cure? To shine the light in the shadows, to expose those places to examination. To call attention to it makes it melt like ice on a Texas sidewalk in August. I just did that to you.

You are welcome. After all, the alternative is to end up the kind of person who denies a five year old a swimming pool in the hottest days of summer. It means ending up the person who sits in a dark room, looking at videos of the President frame-by-frame in an attempt to find something that "looks bad". And, I don't think any of us wants to be that person.

*To disentangle the racism and misogyny in this meme could be a doctoral dissertation and I'm writing a blog post, not a dissertation.

** I work at a university. I may be a fat, married-for-decades, old woman but I'm not blind nor am I dead. Hell, I look at Keith like that, too. He's a fine, fine looking man. Appreciation of beauty, like one appreciates the beauty of the sculptor's work on the David or the Venus di Milo, is not inappropriate. It's in how you do it and in your actions, in my opinion.

Welcome to My Nightmare

2009-07-11T10:09:00.002-05:00

This situation is just messed up. How could they get it so messed up?

Wait. Am I missing something here? Am I wrong on this? Is there something I don't know about this situation that changes everything?

No...I'm not seeing it and I've looked.

Let me look again.

Still...no.

So, I'm right. Or am I? Am I being stubborn and crazy and blinkered about this?

Well, crazy people never think they're crazy and I'm willing to admit to the possibility so I must not be crazy.

Wait. I might just be rationalizing and I might be crazy.

No. I don't think I am.

So that brings me back to this situation. I'm not crazy and I'm not wrong so how could they have gotten it so wrong?

But, maybe I am crazy and wrong and there's something I don't know....

All day, every day. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Does That Make Me a Redneck?

2009-07-08T20:45:00.004-05:00

I've read this post by Amanda several times and all the way through the comment thread more than once and I keep coming back to it because something is nagging at me. First, I'll get the Best Comment Award out of the way, though.

Being the only liberal in my family was always tough. It’s gotten easier since I moved away. Although I still say things that get me in trouble when I go back to visit (i.e. “eat shit you fucking redneck” - I’ve been trying to come up w/a nicer way to say that - maybe “I’ll pray for you”?).--Mark on 07/07 at 12:37 PM

Because? Damn. I've lived in the South for the last 20 years and y'all just don't know unless you've been here for a time. (BTW, "bless your heart" really does mean, "Why are you so damn stupid?")

Now, to the meat of it. I'm not piling on Palin. She's not the only Republican that does this--Bush anyone?--and they all piss me smooth the fuck off. If a one of them have ever had to make the choice between buying groceries or paying the electric bill, I'll eat a moose myself. If they have ever had to ration the food in their homes and tell their kids that they cannot have a second helping for dinner, I'll eat a moose AND a grizzly bear. These people aren't working class, never have been, never will be. They do not understand us. They are not "one of us". So to see these privileged assholes stand up and fake their working class cred and in so doing become a caricature of what it means to be working class just makes me hot--and not in a good way.

Now, Amanda is talking about Red State America and the rednecks when she says:

Hey, I can turn on the shiny female specimen act if I have to---broaden the grin, thicken the accent, send of signals of total harmlessness to get past the radars of angsty rednecks who are always alert to a woman who’s acting out of line. Sure, Palin lives the act, and I mostly use it to minimize hostility when pulled over by state troopers, but I know what she’s doing. I wear cowboy boots, have owned pick-up trucks, eaten and helped prepare food shot by family members, drink cheap beer while standing barefoot in the yard, say “y’all”, and even have a weakness for some country music. I’ve danced in honky tonks and took a shot straight out of a bottle of Jack while standing in front of a rednecky small town bar that has a bonfire in the parking lot during the winter. I know how to two-step, and can probably sing every word to ”The Chair”. I’ve shot beer cans off fences, slept on trampolines, and I’ve had friends that don’t have indoor flushable toilets. I use the phrase “pepper belly” without a trace of irony.

Shiny female specimen? Check. Owned pick-up trucks? Check. As a matter of fact, my dad owned a pick-up truck in which you could see the ground going by looking through the rust hole in the floorboard. Eaten food from family members? Sure. Neighbors, too. Milwaulkee Beast cheap enough for ya? Genny Cream Ale is my favorite, though. I didn't wear shoes in the summer. Small town red-necky bar? Oh, hell yeah. Friends with no indoor plumbing? Remember Downtown Chester pre-gentrification? Yeah.

But, I grew up in Chester, New York. And our working class ethic is less of this:

and more of this:

My people had already been angry for 150 years from generations of being fucked by the rich when the rednecks lost their family plots of dirt and traded in their mules for pick-up trucks. I come from a long line of working class people and have inherited the anger that passes from generation to generation along with the lace curtains*. My family tree is full of truck drivers, mechanics, factory workers, union shop stewards, farmers who had their land taken from them, people who starved from potato famines and Clearances and Welsh history for the last 1,000 years. I watched my grandfather ruin his body and his health and damn near die any number of times, working for Ford. Then, they closed the Mahwah plant and Grandpa was looking for work in his 50s. And his pension is a joke. Now I'm watching the same shit happen with my dad, as the fat cats steal his company piece-by-piece, take their golden parachutes and run while Dad is hoping the company survives until he's locked into his retirement. I've seen my husband go to work sick and hurt because if he doesn't go, he doesn't get paid. I've seen my mom have neck surgery because a little woman shouldn't be throwing pallets of freight but all the soccer moms sure are happy with their new floor tiles.

I've seen them all educate themselves on issues and topics when they had the energy to do so. I've seen my mom, pregnant in a New York winter no less, wear flip flop sandals and tell me, "I just don't like shoes much" so she could put food on the damn table and save back a few dollars for Christmas and continue that right through giving those of us they could the opportunity for a college education. Anti-intellectuals? Not on your life.

Sexist? Right. Tell a Yankee working class woman she can't do something because she's a woman and she'll do it, in front of your face, flipping you the bird with both hands and yelling "kiss my ass" at the top of her lungs. (A Southern woman does it, too, but she does it quietly, without the salute or the hollering but with the extra dose of rat poison in dinner.)

Racist? Some, I'm not going to lie but you know, working class folks are more in tune with multiculturalism than these country club wankers. We have to be! We work side by side with people from every walk of life, nation, culture, race. It's a matter of survival for us and always has been. Racism is a conceit we cannot afford.

So where does this caricature of Real American Working Class come from as racist, sexist, anti-intellectual dumbasses? It's not from us. It's from people pretending to be like us to give us a false sense of connection. Chester was a town of working class folks or people who came from working class. Many of us were of Irish decent but there were a few a couple generations out from Italy, too. Some from Iraq, some from Russia, but all people whose roots were in poverty and those who get dirty for a living. There were so many of our parents who were New York City firemen or policemen, people who actually put their lives on the line to provide a 3 bedroom split level in Arcadia Hills or Surrey Meadows. Many more were mechanics and factory workers who struggled to survive just to pay for the basics. Our town was surrounded by onion farms and dairy farms and horse farms. But, we don't count as 'rednecks'. We were 'hicks' to the City folks. I'm not sure we called ourselves anything special. We didn't look down on rednecks that I can recall. They were a mythical people, kissing cousins to us but they lived in hot, steamy places and said 'y'all' instead of 'you guys'. And our parents sent us to college when they could--lots of us. And we ALL graduated from high school. Drop out rate? Are you kidding me? Zero%. Any one of our parents would've killed us.

So, to my redneck brothers and sisters, this hick is just as pissed at being mischaracterized as you are, of having our cultural markers pre-empted for some rich assholes political campaign. No, I don't hate Sarah Palin because she's pretty**, I don't hate her at all. That would require too much time and energy to devote to a fake like her. Or the Shrub or any of them. But they aren't fooling me and I'm not buying the big pile of shit they're selling.

"I’m not in because I’m not a believer in sexism, racism, or American imperialism. I don’t believe white people are better than everyone else, I don’t think that it’s such a great idea to force women to bear children against their will, and I don’t rally round the flag when some politician starts coming up with excuses to invade another country to steal their resources and/or start a libertarian experiment. I don’t bitch about Mexican immigrants, think that Title IX is an act against the god of football, or go on self-pitying trips about how affirmative action is out of control because I saw a black person holding a professional job. I don’t make cracks about woman drivers or black athletes. And I didn’t vote for Bush. "

You know what, Amanda? Me, neither.

*and if you get that reference, you might be Irish-American. Just sayin'.
**does anyone else think of Hot for Teacher when they see her? No? Just me? Okay then.

England, WTF?

2009-07-08T20:17:00.003-05:00

I'm hugely anti-hypocrite. You know this, dear readers. And I know that America has been dumping its trash all over the rest of the world, figuratively and literally, for decades. But this? This is just really shitty, my English friends. (Sorry for the bad translation. I do not speak Portuguese. But Bill does.)

Approximately 300 tons of trash collected in England were found in containers in the port of Santos, 72 km from Sao Paulo on Monday (6). The cargo was sent by two companies, and should contain plastic for recycling.
Veja o site do Bom Dia São Paulo See the site of Bom Dia São Paulo

The containers arrived in Brazil last week, but were only opened on Monday. A team of Ibama went to the site to check the load, and it took a scare when the doors were opened. "This is a disrespect to our country, we are not the landfill in the world," said one supervisor.

The part that really made me mad, though?

Inside one of the trash-filled containers included a note which read “Here are toys for the poor children of Brazil. Please wash before using.”

Because these kids, and these kids:

...really need some privileged asshole sniping at them more than life already does.

I know that the folks reading here would never be okay with such a thing. I hope y'all can find out the company and make their phones, mailbox and inboxes overload with complaints and calls to find out who did this, have him (why do I have the feeling it's a "him" who wrote that note) join the ranks of the recently unemployed and perhaps have the company send over a few truckloads of REAL toys for the poor children of Brazil.

Happy 4th of July!

2009-07-04T11:17:00.002-05:00

Today, there will be some of this in my future:

As well as some of this:

with a dip in one of these:

Provided I can find one of these:

That doesn't make me look like one of these:

What are y'all doing for the 4th, fellow Americans and/or People Who Happen to Be in American at the Moment?

I Don't Think These Folks Meant to Vindicate Dworkin, Did They?

2009-07-01T08:22:00.002-05:00

One of the professors, biologist Randy Thornhill, had just coauthored A
Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion, which argued that
rape is (in the vernacular of evolutionary biology) an adaptation, a trait
encoded by genes that confers an advantage on anyone who possesses them. Back in
the late Pleistocene epoch 100,000 years ago, the 2000 book contended, men who
carried rape genes had a reproductive and evolutionary edge over men who did
not: they sired children not only with willing mates, but also with unwilling
ones, allowing them to leave more offspring (also carrying rape genes) who were
similarly more likely to survive and reproduce, unto the nth generation. That
would be us. And that is why we carry rape genes today. The family trees of
prehistoric men lacking rape genes petered out.

Since we all have a common male ancestor some 60,000 years ago, and since the Y chromosome is passed unchanged from male to male, generation to generation, then that would mean that all men have this "rape" gene and therefore, Dworkin was right according to evo psych. Yes?

Not so fast, says Kim Hill. "It [the data] wasn't even close: the cost [of rape] exceeds the benefit by a factor of 10. "That makes the likelihood that rape is an evolved adaptation extremely low," says Hill. "It just wouldn't have made sense for men in the Pleistocene to use rape as a reproductive strategy, so the argument that it's preprogrammed into us doesn't hold up." This concurs with data from matrilineal, matrifocal, and matrilocal societies all over the world. In these places, rape is completely unheard of--until we patriarchal types arrive.

[E]vo psych's claims that human behavior is constrained by mental modules that
calcified in the Stone Age make sense "only if the environmental challenges
remain static enough to sculpt an instinct over evolutionary time," Pigliucci
points out. If the environment, including the social environment, is instead
dynamic rather than static—which all evidence suggests—then the only kind of
mind that makes humans evolutionarily fit is one that is flexible and
responsive, able to figure out a way to make trade-offs, survive, thrive and
reproduce in whatever social and physical environment it finds itself in.

Now, this makes sense to me--way more sense than "Darwin made me do it." Sharon Begley, in her article in Newsweek, takes apart the most commonly known evo psych bullshit, from the "men are pre-wired to rape" to "men are pre-programmed to kill their step-children". (And they say feminist hate men! Wow.) Strangely, the studies she quotes and, indeed the entire competing discipline she discusses--behavioral ecology--have not been featured on Good Morning America or on the front page of Time the way evo psych has. It seems to me to be good news that men are not dangerous rapists holding back their genetic predispositions by sheer will and doomed to live a life of constant vigilance and restraint. Doesn't it?

Well, you sure couldn't prove that by the comment thread over there. Rape apologia abounds.

Examples:

--Posted By: DRAGONROOK @ 06/23/2009 9:45:58 AM You know, I agree that men should be able to use intelect[sic] to overcome our natural urges, and anger. However, the vast majority of men on this planet are no where near that evolved. I am continualy[sic] hearing about American women who have gone to Afghanistan and Iraq and have been subsequently raped. The Israeli's[sic] stopped using women in combat units because they discovered that many were being raped by their own troops. So the next time you hear a woman, or more likely a girl who thinks she's a woman, say " I can wear whatever I want, and no guy can put his hands on me." , please remind her that even in the animal kingdom, females show their plumage to indicate a desire to mate, and nature doesn't care about the laws, or ideals, of man.

[Ed.-Females show their plumage? I think someone is a bit confused here. As well as the fact that when the female peahen walks away uninterested, you don't see the peacock jump on her, hold her down, peck the shit out of her and rape her then pass her along to all other peacocks, yes? You don't see the peacock pouring GHB into her morning corn and waiting for her to pass out, do you? Right.]

--Posted By: Ian Blokesworth @ 06/25/2009 8:54:59 PM "Posted By: DRAGONROOK @ 06/23/2009 9:45:58 AM You know, I agree that men should be able to use intelect to overcome our natural urges, and anger. " So should women. As a whole, men are doing a fantastic job of repressing their natural urges. Let's see the ladies repress some of their natural urges and worry a little less about rape. With cheap, easy abortion, rape it not as costly to a woman as it used to be.

[Ed.- ...! ]

--Posted By: KESthlm @ 06/26/2009 9:37:42 AM
The rape example seems a bit primitive. The selection process for a certain trait does not necessarily have anything to do with the expression of the trait itself, since the same genes may dictate behaviour in many different situations. The genes behind the "rape" characteristic are probably advantageous in a different setting - such as when the rapist fights other men. Rape may just be a disadvantageous side effect.

[Ed.-"just" a disadvantageous side effect. Nice.]

--Posted By: ChristinaM33 @ 07/01/2009 10:07:41 AM
It truly scares me, how attached to the idea of men being unable to stop themselves from raping some of these folks in this comment thread seem to be. I really wish I knew who, exactly, they are to be sure I'm not ever in an elevator alone with these guys and that my daughter never dates one of them and not a single one of these people should ever serve on a jury for a rape trial.

[Ed.- Okay, that last one was me. I confess.]

It's My Blogoversary!

2009-06-30T08:07:00.004-05:00

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

And thank you, Teena, for saying something or I'd have completely forgotten, the blog would have gotten angry with me--rightly feeling unappreciated and neglected--and I'd've had to spend a ton of time making it up to the blog with lots and lots of attention. We all know for a blog that means lots and lots of posts, some of which are bound to be inane and none of us want that. So, Teena, you really helped me and everyone else dodge a bullet there.

So, it's three years now. Can't believe it's been that long. Elayne and Gine are the ones who first encouraged me to write a blog. Blame them. However, having a blog led me to look at other blogs too, and I found a community of friends out there with whom I fill a role. See, they had no Total Bitch(tm) in their group and they desperately needed one. And so I found my niche. Thanks, y'all*.

*Y'all= Jen, Bob, Steve, Carol, Burning Prairie, Konagod, Lisa and all the rest on my Blogroll of Awesomeness. God's honest truth, I consider each one of you a friend.

I Got Nothin'

2009-06-21T22:13:00.003-05:00

Really, I have nothing. No pithy remarks, no political rants.

*Made it through another family event with most of my dignity intact, no arguments per se and only needed three beers to make it.

*Bright spot: Keith rode me over and back on the motorcycle. It is way more fun to drive the bike than it is to ride on the back but it did leave my hands free. Either you trust the rider to be able to manage the bike despite distractions OR...it's a really boring experience after being the rider yourself.

*Anyway, we're working on it (for those reading along with Special Information). Short story: if everyone on the planet had heard the entire story, I do believe that the dumbest person on the planet would look at Keith and say, "Wow. What the hell were you thinking, dude?" to which he would answer, "I wasn't, really." Nothing physical as far as I know, before anyone jumps to that conclusion--just phenomenally dumb, in my opinion. There's been an outbreak of stupid in my house and both he and I caught a raging case of it.

*Was I really as black and white no shades of gray, dualistic, and cocksure of my own judgment on All Things at 18 as The Girl is? Why, yes. Yes I was. I still can be on occasion but I do at least attempt to rein it in. Some. Shut up.

*I get to have a second grader for the second year in a row! Yay! No, not so much but you know, maybe it's for the best. I dunno. We'll see. His biggest problem is that he won't do his work. He just sits there. Perhaps another go 'round will help him mature some but further, it is an exercise in natural consequences--don't do your work, you do the grade again. Also, he's lost his summer. He'll be going to summer school for another week and after that, there are all kinds of courses for kids at the local college. Sucks to be him. (Can you feel my sympathy for the child just oozing from this paragraph? Yeah, he can't feel it either.)

So, that's me.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, especially to my dad, my kids' dad and my granddad.

Really? No, REALLY?

2009-06-17T16:14:00.003-05:00

Advice from my English professor:

, while reading the responses I was a bit dismayed by the responses that stated, “I don’t really have one” or “I have too many to choose one.” A friend of mine, who also teaches, says that such answers are either a sign of limited evaluation skills or a indicator of disinterest, and neither trait should be displayed by college students. As a bit of advice that will definitely benefit you in the future, whenever you are asked to answer any type of question, try your best to give the type of answer that the person is seeking.

Uh-huh. False dilemma logical fallacy followed swiftly and surely by advice to lie, fabricate something or otherwise prevaricate to meet someone else's expectations.

You know, I am doing my very best to like this professor. It's a challenge for me as she is stretching my feminism to the breaking point with comments like, "My current goal is to become a vice president of instruction, but if I could have any job in the world, I think I’d do it all over again and be a stay-at-home mother" and "I am much more proud of successfully retaining my Mrs. degree over the years than I am of obtaining any other degree or position I've obtained."

The fuck?!? I know. I KNOW. Choosing to be a stay-at-home mother and being proud of a successful marriage are just as legitimate as being proud of a successful career and degrees obtained. Because that's how feminism works.

But...REALLY? C'mon. /sigh/

Dreams of Escape

2009-06-17T09:14:00.003-05:00

Okay, 'escape' may be too strong a word in this instance but truthfully, I would like to take a trip, be a vagabond, get on my bike and go on The Blogger Tour. Just throw a few clothes in the saddlebags and head on out.*

I think first I'd head to Austin and see if Kona and txrad will get drunk with me.

Then, off to Brave Sir Robin's place on the Texas coast for a more genteel sort of bender. (Not that Kona and txrad aren't genteel. Shit, they're high society compared to my redneck self.)

Then, I'd head out to Atlanta and see if Mathman and Lisa can tie up the Spawn, throw 'em in a closet for awhile and get drunk with me.

Gotta stop in Florida and have Ranuel show me all the gators, watch some anime and get her drunk if she'll let me.

After that, head up the east coast to Baltimore and see Steve. He'll get drunk with me. And beat me at trivia and Wii bowling and laugh at my attempts to play golf.

On my way north, I'll stop in at Gine's church and listen to her sing, if they'll let me in the door.

After all this drunkenness, I'd then head up to Massachusetts to see if Cunning Runt is actually taking all those photos or if he's taking them from some stock photo joint and de-tox.

Perhaps then I'll swing down around the Indiana area and bug Liss and Iain to come have lunch and a few cocktails.

I'm sure then, I'd end up taking a drunken swerve toward Oklahoma and find myself in Burning Prairie's neck of the woods. Not that there are any actual woods in Burning Prairie's neck of the woods but...you know.

After a lovely time playing with her kids and perhaps babysitting so she and her husband can get out of the house (I won't drink a drop, BP, I swear nor will I give them any), I'd head on up to Oregon, I think. I just gotta see Portly's town. Besides, I can get in touch with my spirit, no doubt pickled by this time and see some of these festivals and town gatherings she talks about.

Then I could swing up and see Linda and buy some jewelry. I'll need some to complete what should be a truly vagabond and hippie appearance by this point and Linda does custom pieces. Linda, what would a vagabond/hippie earring and necklace set run me?

After that, I think I'll go right down the west coast, into Mexico, visit the potters in Chihuahua and get some pots, head down through tequila country and right on down to Costa Rica to hang with Bobanjen. I should ingratiate myself to our future Costa Rican overlords anyway. I'll probably stay there. Ocean and mountains, Atlantic or Pacific within a few hours drive, cheap prices...yeah, can't beat it.

Forget this marriage shit, working every damn day God sends, busting my ass going to school, raising kids, cleaning a house that isn't mine and giving all my money to this company or that company. Fuckitall.

Now, if I can just save a couple thousand dollars...

*With a couple thousand or so dollars for things like hotels. When I say 'vagabond', I'm talking Vagabond With Style. Roughing it is staying at the HoJo's. Just saying.

A Bad Dr. Seuss Book: Socks with Crocs

2009-06-15T08:17:00.003-05:00

Socks with crocs.

Crocs in a box.

Crocs in socks with glocks in a box.

Why are crocs in a box with glocks in socks?

I do not know but I think it's bollocks.

I believe...

2009-06-12T11:54:00.003-05:00

I firmly believe that wide-spread ferret ownership will lead to the destruction of the English language and influence children to wear socks with sandals.

That is not ferret bigotry at all! I'm only thinking of YOU, ferret owners, (and the children, of course).

Apparently, logic and sense have taken a(nother) day off.

In Which I Write Letters with Portly

2009-05-31T01:42:00.002-05:00

I'm jumping on the Portly Dyke bandwagon and also writing letters to my Congresscritters. This is mine, since I, a registered Democrat, live in the Land of Republicans. So, this letter is more appropriate for anyone who did not vote for those currently in office. Feel free to c&p whatever you wish for your letter, if you like.

***************************************
[sent to Sen. Cornyn, Sen. Hutchinson and Rep. Kenny Marchant]

Dear [Congresscritter]:

I am writing to ask for your support and leadership in requesting investigations into the enhanced interrogation techniques (torture) used during and authorized by the White House and various departments within our executive branch during the Bush/Cheney Administration. If asking is not enough, I will beg.

I listen to the news reports and watch as our former Vice-President attempts to justify these actions as if there is any possible justification for what has been done in my name and yours.I cannot seem to wrap my mind around the fact that there is even a debate about whether or not torture is justified in any circumstances.What matter is the ‘effectiveness’ if we must part with our souls? What ‘value’ is any information gathered when the act of gathering it is treasonous to all of our national ideals? What lives are saved at the cost of broken spirits, of course those who were tortured who are and should be the focus of our concern but also those who, under orders, committed the torture and now must live with what they have done?

Once, as a nation we believed that and so we signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and created our own national laws against this behavior. Yet, in a moment of national horror, our leadership began a program that will haunt us as a nation for much, much longer and will cost many more lives than the tragedy of September 11, 2001 ever would have.

My children are learning about American history while this is debate raging and I am perplexed at how to explain to them that our country was founded on liberty and justice for all and yet when the test came to see if we really meant those ideals, we threw them all away because ‘liberty and justice for all’ didn’t really mean “all” when it really mattered.

This is not a Republican/Democratic issue. This is an American issue and a human issue. It transcends political party and is the one defining moment of our generation. Just as World War II defined our grandparents and their leadership, just as the Vietnam War defined our parent’s generation and their leadership, so too will this be that for which we as a generation and you and your colleagues as leadership will be defined in the history books. Please, do the right thing, the American thing, and the human thing and fully investigate and prosecute all of those responsible for this blight on our national soul. I will continue to write each week until it is so. My conscience and my patriotism demand no less.

Sincerely,

[Me]
**********************************
I've signed on to Portly's letter to President Obama and I'll be c&p'ing her letter to the U.N. I would ask you all to do likewise, if you will. Thank you.

Memorial Day: Grandpa's Story

2009-05-25T19:24:00.006-05:00

inspired by elle

It has taken me 38 years to gather the little bit I do know about what Grandpa did during WWII and after. There's more to this story. I just don't know what it is.

When he was 16, he ran away from home in Spring Valley, NY and--being too young to join the regular military--he joined the Merchant Marines. His first assignment was a run from Alaska to Russia over the Arctic Ocean. He spoke of the ice that would accumulate on the deck and the railings, inches think and dangerous as hell. He told me that if someone fell in, there were seconds until death. The ship didn't even slow down to get the body. I never asked how he knew that information. I did not want to know, I guess.

His next assignment was in the Pacific. I learned that when he was complaining about how stupid the Government was. He said, "This stupid oil embargo. Incompetence, that's what it is. It like when they sent me from the Arctic to the South Pacific...and it took them 6 months to get me a summer uniform." I know he had two different ships torpedoed out from under him, one of them caused him to be in Hawaii with a broken leg. I know that because of Sailor Jerry and Lulu*. Not many of those WWII era originals left, sad to say. He said they charged him $40 for the crutches he got--and it was a rental. So he used the hell out of them, wore them out and got his $40 worth by God, mostly by walking down to Chinatown to get the tatoo. He got another one but it was so fresh when the ship was blown out from under him, it became a blob of green ink. Salt water and fresh tatooes don't mix. He mentioned sharks, once--then, never, ever again. He made it to navigator, rank of sergeant, before his tour was up.

When he got done with the Merchant Marines, he found out that his service would not count and he'd be drafted. So he signed up for the Army. He's had enough of water, he said. He was supposed to go in with the first group to go to Korea. That would have been his assignment, that is. (First group into Korea was 1950.) Instead, having scored high on an IQ test, he was sent to work in occupied Japan. This was 1945, or early 1946. He was the only non-com assigned to a CID unit in country. They were not, however, charged with investigating crimes of the Army. His duty was to go building to building in Hiroshima and the surrounding area, clearing out those Japanese soldiers either too crazy or too sick with radiation poisoning to realize that the war was over. "Clearing out"...nasty euphemism there. He has pictures of himself in front of that building, and pictures of Japanese civilians with whom he became friendly while there. He still wonders what became of them. He recalls his motorcycle that he used to get around because at first, a car couldn't get through--there were too many bodies.

That part, he did not tell me and never, ever would. There is one person to whom he is just now beginning to speak of his time in Japan and on those ships--a Vietnam vet named Walt. Walt has been a friend of the family for years and years--my whole life, really. He's a good man, but not without damage. He and Grandpa will talk of it and it seems to almost be in code. One will say something seemingly cryptic to those of us who have not seen what they have seen, the other will nod. No more need be said between them.

To give this a happy ending, Grandpa met Grandma while he was in the Merchant Marines. He said he went to a Halloween Party when they docked in New Jersey and saw the most beautiful girl with the most fantastic auburn hair and fell in love at first sight. He tried to give her a ride home on his motorcycle but she was having none of that. She made him go back to base, get his car, and come back. And so he did.

They were married for 56 years.

*We, my father and siblings, have decided to make Lulu a family thing. As a tribute to Grandpa, we are all getting Lulu tattoos. Dad, my brother and my sister-the-roller-derby-queen have one. My-sister-the-PhD-student and I are the only two left. The instant I have the money, I'll be going under the needle.

Update: No, I Haven't Run Away and Joined A Convent Edition

2009-05-24T12:50:00.002-05:00

I did, however, drop my Maymester English course because the woman was smokin' crack or something. So, that frees me up for a minute--I signed up for a Summer 1 English course instead, with a teacher who, according to Pick-a-Prof, gives out A's like a Mardi Gras float rider gives out beads. (Since it's an internet class, I probably will attend topless more than once.)

I completely identify with Lisa in this post and with this commentor. Do folks not realize that when they tell you not to complain about being treated like shit they leave you with exactly two options--to leave or continue being treated like shit? Ahhh, family life...I cannot for the life of me understand why more and more women are chosing to remain unmarried and childless. Whatever could they be thinking? I mean, whatever will they do with all those masochistic tendencies all women get when we're given the uterus and boobage and what will they do with all that disposable income? And the sheer free time on their hands? Now, see, that's just decadent. You know what they say about idle hands and the Devil. I know what I'd do with those idle hands and it has something to do with getting that web address from Lisa.

As for the outside world, Dick Cheney...blah blah...prick...Obama...blah...Gitmo...spineless...DADT, too. You don't need my commentary. Everyone in the world has spoken of it. So, there ya go.

RaceFail 09 in solidarity with FOC_U

2009-05-18T10:37:00.003-05:00

Along with the post below, I repost the story of Mona. Not sci-fi, but it makes a point:

Supererogatory Choices
Mona arrives at the crossroads with her perfectly prepared chicken, spiced rum and Cuban cigars at 11:50 pm and sits to wait for her destiny to make a showing.At midnight, he is there. She is both surprised and unsurprised at the mundane appearance of her visitor.

“You must choose,” he says.

“I do not understand. What am I to choose? I have chosen already to give you my soul. What other choice is there to make?” Mona stands, spine straight, shoulders back. Marie Antoinette never looked so regal, waiting for her destiny.

“You must choose which of your people will receive their freedom, of course.”

“Which of my people? I have only one people.”

“No. You have many people, just as you have many faces you present to the world.”Suddenly, she understands what he means. Her shoulders slump, as if a sudden heavy weight has been placed on her.“And what of those people I do not favor with my choice? Are they forever to remain in their current state?”

“Not necessarily, but their job will be that much harder. You know how rare it is when one group gets what they’ve always wanted to remember those left behind. I count on this, actually. Someone must fill the spaces at the bottom.”The beautiful, blue-eyed man picks up a cigar and lifts it to his nose. “Fine offering. I thank you.” He lights the cigar. The red tip looks like a judgmental eye to Mona.

“Describe to me what you will do. Then, perhaps, I can make my choice.”

The man flicks some non-existent lint from the lapel of his Armani suit and checks the shine on his Italian loafers. As he holds out his hand to see if his manicure has been ruined, his eyes flash at the impertinence of this woman, but he begins to speak.“If you choose your Thursday dinner party group, then all ways in which adults choose to love each other will be valued equally. A family with two moms or two dads will be just as valuable to children who need families as homes with opposite sexed parents. In-vitro fertilization clinics will be just as kind and supportive of a lesbian couple that wishes to have a child of their own bodies as any other couple. Crime committed on your people because of who they happen to love will be non-existent. Value and safety will not be predicated on how well you adhere to your assigned gender.”

Mona is no fool. “But, if I choose this group, then all of the other people will remain as they are. Or, you might be lying.”The gentlemen shrugs. He has a 9am meeting with the CEO of a petroleum company and wishes for this to be done. A soul like Mona’s, though, will be a prize in his favor. So much richer than that of a person already compromised. He can already taste the sweetness of her being.“Oh, I have lied already, but not about our deal or the payoff. I get some of my best souls this way, and I would lose those opportunities should I be found swindling."

He looks at her from toes to eyes, slowly, with a predatory gleam and a lick of his lips. Mona rolls her eyes. Lust is something she's seen more times than she can count since childhood. It doesn't even give her creeps anymore. It's amazing what a person can become accustomed to. It annoys him that she is not more rattled. "If you choose your Wednesday poetry group, then women will be the sole masters of their own bodies. Sex will be a celebration of humanity between equal partners. A woman's worth will not be judged by what is between her legs and how 'pure' it is but by the contents of her mind and heart. Beauty in a woman will be valued exactly as much as beauty in man and no more. Commercials endlessly telling women they stink and offering cleaning products for a self-cleaning organ will disappear. Women's organs will be their own, always, no matter what state those organs happen to be in at any given moment. No woman will be forced to allow those organs to be used by another. By the same token, those women who chose to use their organs with the purpose of bringing forth another life will be free to do so, whether they are poor, or without insurance or already have children. Women will not be property. They will be 100% fully human."

“But still, not all women will be considered equal to all others. Some will still carry a taint. Am I right?”

“Then, choose your Saturday night crowd." Exasperation tinges his voice. " The effects of institutionalized racism will disappear. Poverty will no longer be the destiny of such a large proportion of them. Their children will receive the same education, the same opportunities, the same benefit of the doubt as white children receive regularly. Black women will not be looked upon as people who perpetuate a disease whenever they have children. And their children will be equally valued with children from other races. People of color applying for jobs will be starting from the same point as all others, not having to overcome preconceptions before they even walk in the door. Cultural roots will be valued and it will not be required to set them aside in order to assimilate--as if those who do are ever allowed to assimilate without also being pale. These things will disappear as if they never were."

“Or maybe you should choose your Monday night support group. All people will be judged by what they can do and what they do contribute, not by what they cannot or are missing when compared to the 'normal' people."He paused for a moment to allow the visions to sink in fully.“Now choose.”

“But, I cannot choose one over the other! I love them all. Each of them is a part of my soul.”

“Then don’t use love to decide. Use pity. Whom do you pity the most, Mona? Which group do you think needs this sacrifice from you the most?”

As dawn rose over the dusty, country road, Mona swatted at the dirt on the seat of her jeans and walked home.

Stench Clouds

2009-05-16T10:59:00.003-05:00

In a small town, in a large state, in the middle of the middle of nowhere, there was a paper mill. The residents of this company town lived around the gates of the paper mill. The mill provided all the jobs for all the people in the town, either through direct employment or businesses that depended upon the employment of others at the mill. There was a direct correlation between how close one lived to the mill and how much one benefitted from the mill.The CEO actually lived on the property of the paper mill in a large mansion.

Those who lived on the leavings of the mill lived on the outskirts of town. The closer people lived to the mill, the more disdain they felt for those who lived farther out than they.The children learned to see others around them in the way their parents did—envy for those closer to the mill and disdain for those further away. Yet, those further away could smell the stench of the mill. On an almost daily basis the wind would blow the noxious fumes toward the residents of the outskirts. Once in awhile, one of the closer residents would go to the outskirts of the town. Some wouldn’t bother to notice the horrible odor that exuded from their very skin, instead saying that the residents were making stuff up. Others would notice and attempt to scrub the reek but after a lifetime swimming in the toxic soup, they could never be 100% successful.The residents of the farther neighborhoods would try to tell these folks that they still smelled really bad.Some would take the advice and some would be offended. After all, they were scrubbing the stench off for the benefit of their new friends, right?

And yet all the while, the mill still provided all the jobs, all the money. It was hard to give up the status and the wealth and the benefits. Even those who did notice had to go home eventually, had to go work. Even though they knew that the mill was poisoning the air, lessening the life expectancy of everyone, decreased the quality of life of everyone. They had to make a living. The further residents and those nearer residents who wanted to change things asked the mill to clean the chemicals out of the air. But those responsible for changing things were also those who most benefitted from the status quo and the rest of the close-in residents didn’t want to see that the costs of remaining the same were so much greater than the costs of changing.

And so, things remained the same.

The End

Good News on the Home Front

2009-05-13T09:56:00.002-05:00

First, The Boy was struggling throughout 2nd grade. His reading, writing and math skills were well below his classmates' and there was a very real danger he wouldn't make it to 3rd grade. When we were told this about 9 weeks ago by his teacher, we discussed some possible remedies for the situation to help with his concentration and motivation for doing school work. The end of the school year was not the time to really implement this stuff, though, with the planning meetings for the next year, the testing and so on, so there was quite a delay.

Instead, we implemented some draconian measures of our own at home. No more playing outside with his friends Monday through Thursday. Instead, he had to stay in, read, practice his math facts (what we used to call addition/subtraction/multiplication tables), write stuff out. If he wanted to ask a question, he had to write it down. He's gotten very good at writing, "Mom, can I" in the last several weeks.

Well, good news! He's improved 4 reading levels in the 6 weeks we've been doing this. This doesn't mean he makes 3rd grade, though. It means he's qualified for summer school and he'll have to improve another 8 levels to make 3rd grade.

I'm not even contemplating what that's going to be like right now. I'm just so excited that he's improved so much and I think it's time for a celebration of his achievement. I wonder if he prefers whiskey or bourbon? I've never asked him...

Second, after my huge-mega, foaming-at-the-mouth, tear-filled tirade on Mother's Day, things have improved with regard to the housework and respect issues. (And that's all that will be said about that.) When I ask for something to be done, it gets done. When someone notices something that needs to be done, they do it--even without asking! Now, granted, we're barely speaking to each other, but then...when one really thinks about it...if you flip it a certain way...that's also good news. No, I don't really mean that. Except, I totally do. Well, not really. Sometimes. Maybe. No. No, not at all. Not even a little bit.

Third, I've enrolled for courses for summer and I've got my syllabus and assignments. It's a 3 week English II course up first (Maymester, they call it) and if I become a recluse from May 18th through June 1st, that is why. I shared the assignment list with Steve and he said, (and I quote, hence the little quote marks), "Holy shit that's a lot crammed into 13 days." I'm back in school and I'm excited about it. I've missed it this semester since I had to take off. After this English course, it's an Algebra course for Summer I, and two courses for Summer II, Government and History.

That's an awful lot of good news for me. I think I need to go have a lay-down.

Wow.

2009-05-08T14:52:00.002-05:00

Here ya go, ladies!

It's a Mother's Day wish for you.

Har, har, har! Get it? No? Allow me to Translate from Dude to Lady Brain:

Happy Mother's Day, you irrational harpy who sets me up with questions I must either lie to or be abused for telling you what a fat cow you are!

I Make a Prediction

2009-05-06T12:35:00.003-05:00

I'm going to go out on a limb here and without consulting my crystal ball or my Tarot cards and say that this story will change dramatically as it develops:

College Student Shoots, Kills Home Invader
Posted: 4:53 pm EDT May 4, 2009Updated: 6:41 pm EDT May 4, 2009
COLLEGE PARK, Ga. -- A group of college students said they are lucky to be alive and they’re thanking the quick-thinking of one of their own. Police said a fellow student shot and killed one of two masked me who burst into an apartment.Channel 2 Action News reporter Tom Jones met with one of the students to talk about the incident.“Apparently, his intent was to rape and murder us all,” said student Charles Bailey.

My prediction:

A group of college students having a party attempted to purchase some drugs when the deal went sour. One of the students pulled a gun, a firefight ensued in which a woman party-goer was shot in the crossfire and the deceased, Mr. Calvin Lamont, was an innocent bystander. Whether Mr. Lamont was also a party-goer or simply some poor schlub walking down the sidewalk is unknown at this time.

Now, let's see if time will prove me correct or if these kids really did live out some Law & Order script.

Why I Love NCIS

2009-05-02T08:46:00.002-05:00

Twisty wrote that she hated NCIS:

“NCIS” is one of the most asinine TV detective shows ever made, which is undoubtedly why it’s in its 7th season and there exists an entire cable channel devoted to rerunning it practically nonstop. It’s corny and sexist (even for TV) and all-honky-all-the-time and one suspects its audience is primarily the teen NASCAR demographic. The incessant background music track is so loud in the mix it doesn’t quite drown out all the dialogue, which is too bad, because the writing on this show makes “The A Team” look like Othello.

I’ll spare you further details, but in one episode, one of the studly young honky detectives gets his beloved Corvette stolen. His character is a stereotypical TV ladies’ man, and stereotypical TV ladies’ men are always comically devoted to their sports cars, so he is comically devastated by this terrible loss. After the commercial break (wherein KIA tries to sell me a cheap car with zero percent financing and a ten year warranty) he discusses the tragedy with his hot honky female partner.

“You know, I don’t think I want her back,” he says. By “her” he means the stolen Corvette.

“Why not?” asks the hot honky female partner, shocked.

“Because she’s been violated, ha ha!”

Rape jokes! Yeah, baby! When you want teenage boys rolling in the aisles, don’t mess around! Bring on the A material!

I beg to disagree with the Spinster Aunt. First, I love the soundtrack. Second, the characterizations are, I think, more nuanced than that.

Leroy Jethro Gibbs: the leader of the team. He is emotionally constipated and authoritarian and the "hero" of the piece. Yet, his emotional reticence has cost him all human interaction. He's been married three times. All he has is his job and the respect and devotion of his team--but no life. He spends his free time building boats by hand in his basement. He's a tragic hero.

Toni DiNozzo: This is the studly young honky detective mentioned above. He's a comic figure. His sexism and uber-masculinity are the basis for the comedy. DiNozzo is a clown and a fool specifically because of his adherence to the patriarchal narratives of how "sexy" guys are supposed to act. In the scene above, as soon as says what he did, everyone groans, rolls their eyes and leaves him alone. All sympathy for him at the loss of his car is gone--because he decided to be a prick. He's written as a guy for whom there might be hope someday but not today.

Tim McGee: The computer nerd. The writers have been intelligent enough to show the computer nerd as having a whole life--he's also a writer of (really bad) mystery stories and actually understands women better than DiNozzo--because he sees them as people. Strange in a TV show, I know. He is the foil for DiNozzo and while on occasion he is the butt of the joke, it usually for a human foible--not due to clueless masculinity gone amok.

Jenny Shepherd: Director of NCIS and Gibbs' former partner in the spy game. Yes, a female director of a national military police force. It's done without ignoring her difficulties being a woman in such a position--particularly from Gibbs' who has a hard time with a former lover now being his boss. She, however, has no such difficulties.

Mike Franks: He is Gibbs' former boss who has retired. While this character says he retired just in time to not have a woman for a boss, he's characterized as a relic of days gone by. Useful but "old-fashioned" and not canonized for being of the old breed.

The main female characters are the real reason for my love of this show, though.

Abby: Goth forensic tech. She is smart, quirky, and has a real daddy complex on Gibbs. She bowls with nuns on Thursdays, sleeps in a coffin, talks about her tattoos but is never made to be a tough. She's sexy while smart--and different. She's 6' tall, wears platforms and dates a Little Person. She's the definition of fierce.

Kate: She is the "hot honky" female partner. She also came to NCIS from the Secret Service where she was on Presidential detail. She never let's Toni get away with this macho crap and often is the vehicle by which Toni is made to look like a buffoon.

And my favorite, Ziva David: She comes in as a replacement for Kate when Kate is killed by a sniper. She's Mossad and a living weapon. She also makes Toni look a fool but not quite in the same way. Kate argued with him like a sister. Ziva teases him. Her first scene:

(A girl dressed in fatigues with a visitors badge is standing nearby, having obviously just walked in. Tony doesn’t notice her. She looks at where he’s staring, then back at him. He finally notices, but is caught unawares.)

Dinozzo: I’ll call you back. (hits the receiver of his phone twice and turns his attention to the new girl) Hi. I was just… (shrugs a little)

Ziva David: Having phone sex?

She cuts him no slack whatsoever. She's tough as hell and makes no apologies for it. She's more competent than any of the others and Gibbs utilizes her talents. She's not used as a damsel in distress (which unfortunately, Kate was) but usually is the one riding to the rescue.

Truth is, as the series progresses, the female characters become stronger and the writers seem to really get in the groove of having women who are full characters and male characters who don't have to wear a white hat all the time--and when they do, the hat is rather dingy and tattered. You know, like real people but...yes, impossibly beautiful, impossibly white real people.

It is TV, after all.

Rage

2009-05-01T15:46:00.003-05:00

I'm feeling the one-word titles today.

Anyway, the following passes as science at The Girl's school.

(click on the picture to go to the video)

Some, just some mind you, highlights of this 30 minute video include:

*"Men desire to have the supermodel on their arms and women desire to be that supermodel."

* The reason six month old infants look at "beautiful" faces 3 seconds longer is because we're hard wired by nature to seek beauty and NOT because the conventionally beautiful face looks more like Mom, or Dad, or Aunt Linda.

* Mothers interact with pretty babies more than ugly babies. Not that mothers neglect their ugly children. No, no. We didn't mean that!

*Camille Paglia tells us that women are doomed, DOOMED I say!, to hate each other (especially us old dried-up prunes hating on the young, nubile things) and that is the "cruelest lesson women must learn".

*Although we as a culture are more tolerant of multicultural beauty, blonde and blue-eyed is still the prefered look and this is just genetic and inherent in the human male.

Enjoy!

Questions

2009-05-01T15:21:00.003-05:00

What about Carrie Prejean's absolutely incoherent "opinion" about opposite sex marriage has anything to do with her boobs?

How is "how dare you speak your opinion what with those fake boobs of yours" any different than "how dare you speak your opinion with those boobs of yours"?

Are we really surprised that Carrie Prejean, a person who has spent her entire life to this point adhering as closely as humanly possible to the narrative set down by the patriarchy for women both in looks and behavior also spouts out the patriarchal meme on marriage and who it is for?

I understand the impulse to slam the woman for such an execrable opinion on this subject. Really, I do.

Principle above personality, people. Principle above personality.

I see a trip to Canada in my future

2009-04-30T16:44:00.002-05:00

Stupid American healthcare system!

My PCP wants me to have an IV antibiotic because she thinks I have a blood infection.

I can't do this without going to the ER, waiting eleventy million years and paying 80 gazillion dollars more than the simple procedure would otherwise cost.

Guess what?

I'm not going to be doing it.

If I die, or when I end up so sick I'm in the ER for something super-duper serious, well...that's America for ya.

Best Country in the World*

*Any characterization of the United States provided by this blogger is not intended to constitute a description of said states for all consumers. Some services may not be available in all jurisdictions or to all interested parties. Anyone not white, rich, male, Christian or otherwise "gifted" at birth should request a copy of the applicable policy or prospectus for a complete description of the services available to your sort of people.

Are You Kidding Me?!

2009-04-28T15:23:00.002-05:00

As you know, I attend a local community college. When I logged onto the system to see if my summer funding had come through, there was a notice that asked me to send them a copy of my 2008 tax returns and a verification form. This was on Sunday.

So, on Monday, I did what they had asked me to do and faxed them a copy of the verification form and my 2008 tax return. Since Keith was "self-employed" for part of the year, our tax return was lengthy and the fax machine kept pulling through more than one page at a time.

When I received an e-mail today asking me for the same information, I called the financial aid office and asked if they had received the information I sent yesterday.

"Oh, yes ma'am. We've sent it back to you."

"I'm sorry. You've what?"

"Yes, ma'am. We've sent it back to you. We are unable to process the information for the 2009-2010 school year until May 11th. So we mailed it back to you."

"Where on the web notice or the e-mail y'all sent me is May 11th mentioned?", I asked while placing two of my fingers on my forehead and rubbing the spot between my eyes that had begun, quite suddenly, to throb.

"Oh, it isn't on there ma'am."

"Okay...there's a logical disconnect in there somewhere. Do you see it?" (I was channeling Gine at that moment)

"Yes, ma'am, I sure do."

"Well, I hope you can get that fixed because you've wasted my time faxing that to you too soon and your money mailing that thing back to me."

Which, why did they mail back a fax? I still have the original. It doesn't go into the machine and magically disappear only to come out on their end. I work in a university advising office and STILL this is clearly the single most stupid thing I've heard all week.

How Did We Survive 8 Years?

2009-04-28T12:07:00.002-05:00

Because even when the man did the right thing (and there's no doubt about the fact that in this case, he did), he did it for a STUPID reason:

“We’re seeing a payoff of the original investment made in pandemic preparedness by the Bush administration,” said Jeffrey W. Levi, executive director of Trust for America’s Health. The term pandemic refers to a widespread outbreak of an infectious disease.

Frances Fragos Townsend, who was assistant to President Bush for homeland security and counterterrorism, noted that the Department of Health and Human Services had devised a detailed plan for responding to the threat of pandemic flu in 2005 and 2006.

On his summer vacation in 2005, Mr. Bush read “The Great Influenza,” a history of the 1918 pandemic by John M. Barry.

So, basically, had he read Pippa Funnell's book, Magic Spirit, would we all have gotten a pony?