Friday List: A Loose List of Thoughts on British Royals

So today was the wedding of Prince William and Princess Kate.  I did not watch any of it or look at any of it any more than I had to. I looked at her dress because I do have an interest in these things and found hers to be quite lovely and tasteful. Diana's dress was very dated to me, too 80s.  I think Kate's dress will still look stylish in years to come. So good for whomever made that decision.

Good luck to them. I don't really believe in marriage, but I guess in the case of royals, it is unavoidable. I hope their marriage is less troubling than that of his parents.

I always felt sorry for Diana.  She was so young when they married.  Charles was old and ugly.  Sure, he was a prince, but old and ugly and he seemed very boring.  Mind you, these were my impressions as a young girl when I was really shallow about things like "old and ugly."  It seemed like from the moment she was chosen as his bride, she was already on some downward spiral to her death.

One of the things that squicked me out about the Diana situation was how they made such a public thing about her being a virgin. Given the level of invasion the press always had with her, I'm honestly surprised there weren't pictures of her virgin twat in the tabloids. Everyone always felt so entitled when it came to Diana, like every aspect of her life was their business. I bet there were people out there who felt cheated because they didn't get a piece of her placenta after she gave birth.

I'm happy things have changed enough to where the status of Kate Middleton's virginity was never discussed, because it is no one's damned business. I really hope the royals have learned from the last round of marriages and whatnot how to keep the press at arm's length so that people can have some level of private life.

Because really, William and Harry are far more gracious than they should be. The press chased their mother down and basically caused her wreck.  She died trying to get away from nosy reporters.  William and Harry are nice to the press, even though these people, in their selfishness and insanity, caused their mother's death. I know people will say that being a royal is a job, but dammit, people should get some time off from their jobs.....and even if it is a job, no one's life should be under constant public scrutiny. It's just damned wrong.

As I said, I wish Will and Kate well. I hope their marriage is happy and as normal as it possibly can be.

I also hope that she never has a lot of kids. The last thing we need is a reality show called Will and Kate Plus  8.

Seeking the Oasis: Amanda Palmer's Comment on Living in Rape Culture

When Amanda Palmer put out her song and video "Oasis," she received a lot of criticism for it.  People thought she was making light of rape, of abortion, and religion. She noted on her own blog, in frustration, that perhaps if she had cried a little and did the song in minor key, slowed it down, and made the whole thing so sad, people would be fine with it, or at least less upset. She's probably right.

I think they were missing the point though. Okay, actually, clearly they were missing the point.

First of all, every song about rape and the consequences that follow will always be tackled in a different way for the very reason that every rape survivor processes what happened to them in a different way.  Because of this, how we express this in art will come in an infinite variety of ways. Even though everyone who has ever heard "Me and a Gun" by Tori Amos understands to the core of their being what this rape was like, not every song about rape will be "Me and a Gun."

As dark and horrible as "Me and a Gun" is, "Oasis" is far more devastating.  Palmer tells the story in such a way that we can clearly infer many things about her protagonist. The girl is still in school, so somewhere between sixth grade and college, though she feels more on the younger side of that.  The girl isn't sophisticated. Her language is simple, as is her sentence structure and phrasing. In the video, Palmer's dress and body language is also indicative of someone rather young.

It's not the youth of the protagonist that is most haunting so much as how she processes the events in her life.  Where many critics believed Palmer to be "making light" of rape and abortion, I believe she does no such thing. Instead, she shows a girl who is surviving being a part of rape culture by finding more reality in music and loving bands than she does in what is happening to her.

The girl divorces herself from what takes place in her body. During the part of the video where the rape is shown, instead of being horrified, the girl looks both bored and disgusted by the man.  She acknowledges that she knows this isn't her fault.  She knows he is in the wrong. In fact, while it is never pointed out, the rapist is almost always present in the rest of the video.  The impact of his actions on her life never leave her, even as she chooses to focus on other things.

What Palmer seems to be saying is that rape culture is such the norm now that people are evolving to survive  it by abstracting the violent acts from how they define themselves.  "Yes, I was raped. Yes, I got pregnant from the rape and had an abortion. Yes, everyone found out about it and talked about me. Yes, I was shamed. But none of this is important. I have better things going on in my life."

Is Palmer saying this switch in priorities is the best response? Not at all.  However, I think she is showing that it is a response that probably millions of people have to sexual assault. They don't get angry. They don't get upset. They don't even really let it accept them emotionally, any more than it has to.  There is an element of shallowness to this, but of course, to many, shallowness is a very keen coping device for living without going insane.

By the end of the song, despite all the horrible moments the girl has gone through, she is joyous, because what was most important to her, getting something from the band she loves and making her best friend jealous about that, has happened. Everything else was just crap she went through in the mean time.

And while I disagree with why people get upset over this video, I do understand it. In fact, I think there is a primal part inside of us that is horrified by the message of this video.  Because even though society gets annoyed with rape victims and wishes most of us would just shut the hell up, society also gets very, very frightened when people don't play their parts. Rape victims are supposed to be devastated.  Of course they are. One of the primary functions of rape is terrorizing people into staying in "their place."

So when we see someone who has been assaulted roll her eyes and just move on with her life, it is unsettling.  It means this method of keeping people oppressed may stop working. Whatever will the rapist do then?

Bitchery and Snark..........Then Gratitude!

It's been a frustrating week.  There has been rain and more rain.  Loss of internet connection that felt like it lasted a million years (but actually only last 24 hours) was accompanied by the perpetual and predictable computer failings at startup. There is a need for house repairs (due to rain) and the rush to get said items for house repairs, only to find more items were needed, more money spent, and then the putting off of house repairs as it is too wet to complete them.

Panicking hurry-up-and-wait is my least favorite dance. Which is quite ironic, because it is a dance I find myself doing all too often.

I didn't go to therapy because things were too slick and nasty and wet and bridges were out and storms were still happening.  I spent the day cold and aching because I'm apparently becoming one of those old people who gets to relive all injuries whenever the weather is bad. I will now give out the world's most sarcastic yay.........yay.

On the other hand, I'm working on the goals I've set.....I'm doing reasonably well.  My paperwork has all gone as it should. The storms seem to be slowing down.  People love me and were concerned for my safety.  My house was not blown away by storms.....nor did any other houses mistake me for wickedness and drop onto me. Most importantly, I didn't have to go in the cellar.

Compared to most people, my last several days have been easy. My house isn't underwater or smashed by trees.  My pets are all safe and nothing has been destroyed by hail.  My sense of humor is even still functioning.

And yes, I know this post is random and complain-y, but when you're stressed out and tired, it's difficult to be clever and creative.  You know, assuming I am that normally.  It's still a post though, and every day I post is another bit of my thoughts out there for the masses.

All four of you. Hi!

The Tiny Room of Doom!

When my grandparents moved into this house back during the 1980s, they chose it for many reasons.  It had a large front porch, a work shop, large yard, and two garden spaces.  One of the things they liked most about the property was the fact that it had a cellar.

Now, for those of you who do not live in tornado country, when I say "cellar," I don't mean the underground story of your house or a place where roots are kept. I mean place located underground where you go when the tornadoes show up. Most cellars are well insulated, waterproof, and evoke feelings of safety.

The one located on this property, however, is none of these things.  It leaks, it is scary, and I don't think anyone has ever gone in there and felt good about it. Well, maybe one person, but I'll get to that later.

The cellar sits across the driveway from the house, which means any time you need to go into it, you will certainly get pelted by whatever is falling from the sky. Rain, hail, sleet, flying debris from wind, yup! You'll get hit.  As I've mentioned before, the driveway floods, so along with things hitting you from the sky, you also run the risk of slipping in the puddles or at being carried off by the current. Okay, that last part has never happened but eventually, I'm sure it will.

The stairway down into the cellar is insanely steep. And, okay, let's look at the logic of this.  Whenever you go into this place, it is A. Wet and B. Dark.....I think steep stairs are the last thing you need.  Though, it is not the last thing you will GET in the cellar because not only is it dark, nasty, and steep, but once into it, you have about a 70% chance that it will be flooded.  Because, yes, whatever drunk or insane idiot put this thing in, had no clue as to how to divert water from seeping into it.

Even when the thing wasn't flooded, it was difficult.  The floor is the world's oldest and nastiest concrete. The walls are uninspiring and sad rocks that seem to only be interesting due to their water damage patterns. My grandparents' idea of "cellar decor' consisted of two candles, a small shelf, one folding chair, and various milk crates to be turned over for seating.  If you've never been wet and sitting on a milk crate, let me tell you, it's not comfortable.

No one hated the cellar as much as my mother. One time when my mother, brother, and I were living with my grandparents, the tornado sirens sounded. We all put on jackets and hurried down the cellar. Once inside, we all scrambled for seating.  My grandfather had a flashlight in one hand and set it down on the floor to light one of the candles.  The light reflected on the wall just enough to show the rows and rows of slugs crawling on it.  My mother proceeded to scream, jump on her milk crate, and continue to scream as she did a little dance of disgust.  I don't think she ever went into the cellar again.

The only person who ever seemed to like the cellar was a crazy woman who moved in there.  Some years after my grandfather died, the abandoned rest home a few streets down reopened as a home for the mentally insane.  The people who ran it were awful and eventually, the place was shut down.  In the time before this happened, however, the neighborhood got interesting.

One of the women from the place wandered into the cellar and convinced herself that it was her home.  When my grandmother tried to get her out, she screamed at her and threatened her with a stick.  Gran called the police, who led the woman and her "bathroom bucket" out of the cellar. The whole time, the woman still insisted she'd lived there for years. I've often wondered what happened to her.

When my roommate and I moved in, I told him that under absolutely no circumstances would I be going into that cellar.  I didn't care if a tornado was knocking on the front door.

It would be impractical for us, actually. There is no way we could make it across the floodgate of the driveway and down those horrible stairs with four cats.  One or all of us would end up seriously wounded, and most likely, the "one" would be me.

No, instead, we will move into the hallway, which is the center of the house. There are no windows or other sharp things to hurt us and it's probably the most stable part of the house.

As for the cellar, my brother and his family go down there during storms. As I've written before, I'm good with that. I don't even mind if that lady wants to move back in, as long as I don't have to go down there for any reason whatsoever.  Ever.

Hail Hath No Fury Like a Little Cat Scared

The storms continued today, causing much depression in those who would seek hidden eggs and those who would picnic. My roommate and I had plans to do neither, deciding instead to just feast on cheapish Easter candy and enjoy the day.  We knew the enjoyment would be short-lived though. Even early in the morning, it was already very dark outside. Around seven, it went from darkish to pitch black.  That odd sort of foreboding one feels before a storm set in and we knew it was going to be an eventful evening.

Tonight though, we knew this for another reason as well. Alice, our little outside-cat-turned-part-time-inside-cat, walked into the living room and let out the loudest and saddest meow I've ever heard.  It was full of fear and panic.  As soon as she could be, she was up in my roommate's arms.

Alice, being a cat raised in the outside, is usually a brave little thing. Actually, she can be a bit scary.  She's quite good at killing things.  One time she left the head and guts of a rabbit on the porch.  We've seen her take on possums, dogs, and cats twice her size.  She isn't afraid of us at all.  She's always very vocal about what she wants and when she's displeased.

Storms though . . . storms are big.  Storms are lack of light and lack of warmth and full of stinging rain and dangerous chunks of painful hail. Storms can flood and freeze and summon winds that can spin into tornadoes.

Alice knows all this and has suffered through it. We don't know how old she is, but we know that before we adopted her, all of her life had been spent outside.  Sure, there are enough abandoned houses around us for her to have found some shelter, but that doesn't take away the fact that storms are scary.

My roommate held her and spoke soothingly to her.  When he had to get up for something, he transfered her to me.  I cuddled the little ball of shivering cat against me and let her bury her face against my arm.  She doesn't really like me as much as she likes him and tends to get away as soon as possible. During the storm though, she made no attempt to move.

As I held her, I thought about all the work my roommate has put into this cat.  How he coaxed her into letting him pet her, how he would talk to her and sit on the porch and let her get used to him. I thought about the night he finally brought her in, our little Christmas gift.  Of all the changes he's made in Alice's life, I think the biggest and most important is that she now knows she has People.  Not just a place to go and eat or a place to hang out when it's cold, but People who will listen to her. People who love her and will hold her when she's scared during the big bad storm.

Friday List (albeit, a day late): Easter Trappings

A lot of people are going to say a lot of things about the religious whatnots of this holiday.  The pagan rites, the Christian traditions, and all the things in the middle of a spiritual nature will probably be written about on blog after blog.  So I think I'm going to talk about the trappings of Easter, kind of a general overview of my memories and impressions of the holiday.

EASTER LIST ONE: THREE MEMORIES

Somewhere in my closet is a box that holds the two or three remaining pictures of me as a young child wearing Easter dresses.  Mind you, this was the 70s, so one dress is pink-ish coral and the other dress is pink-ish carnation.  My hair was far redder back then, so the whole thing looks rather horrible. There might be a picture where the dress is powder blue, but let's face it; no one looked good in that.

Easter was never a big holiday for me as a kid. I know I went to some egg hunts, but they must have been traumatic because I've blocked them out.  The only distinct memory I have of any of them is a plastic molded green basket and some sad Easter egg someone had stepped on. You know how that looks, just that kind of half-flattened shatter of colored shell that is still attached, but white can be seen underneath. Ohh . . . and some mud, because we all know that egg hunts happen on days when it is raining or it just rained.

Back when I was teaching college, I would sometimes go to the parking lot behind the local library.  I tended to enjoy grading papers while sitting in my car surrounded by nature.  This usually involved me going to the park by the school, but sometimes it would be really busy (or the geese would be more psycho than usual) and the library would end up being my destination.  There was no lake, but there were nice shade trees and most often, it was empty.

One day, I was out there grading papers when a group of people came out onto the grassy field in front of me. It was a group of children and their parents, probably teachers.  The children all stood at one end of the field and their parents stood in front of them.  As the children moved forward, slowly, their parents took pictures of them.  I realized they all had Easter baskets and this was some small egg hunt.  I also realized that more than likely, the parents taking pictures were stepping on eggs.

EASTER LIST TWO: THREE HATREDS

There are things I absolutely hate about Easter and most of them have to do with fake outs.  I hate the plastic Easter grass, which is basically the STD of the holiday.  Easter grass, beyond the general business of supporting eggs, is evil.  It gets everwhere. On your clothes, in your carpet, in the mouths of dogs, cats, and children, in your shoes, all over your car.  Even months later, you will find it lurking around.

I also hate the fake little plastic eggs.  You know, the ones that open up so you can put candy or money or drugs in them.  Half the time, they never close.  The other half of the time, they close at first, but open up during transport, spilling your candy or money or drugs into the evil fake plastic grass.  The only thing I like about them is the sound the make when they open. That sort of "shoooopk" sound. Love that. But not enough to make them worth it.

Third of all, and this is the most emotionally wrecking of all the things I hate about Easter, I hate chocolate bunnies that fake you out.  You see a beautiful choco bunny and then you take a bite in PSYCH! Empty! Or worse, PSYCH! Filled with bad marshmellow.  It's not that I dislike marshmellow as a rule, but when you're not expecting it and it's poor quality, the whole experience is troubling.

EASTER LIST THREE: THREE LOVES

Having bitched about all the fakery, I have to talk about things I do love about the holiday.  The first is the baskets. Oh yes, I know baskets can be cheaply made, pourly constructed, and sometimes just plain WTF, but quite often, it's easy to find beautiful Easter baskets that have a lot of character and beauty to them.  A few years back, my roommate bought me the most beautiful Easter basket.  I kept it in my closet for a while, but then felt it was too lovely to leave in the shadows.  Once I brought it out, it became a cat bed. I was fine with that though because the cat looked beautiful in the basket.

I love how the holiday is a marriage of Christ rising from the dead and the festival of Eostre, which is all about fertility rites. We eat symbols of life and fertility and have rabbits all over the place.  Somehow we combine this with chocolate and make the whole blood and death/spring time sex thing be innocent and full of Peeps.

Finally, and most of all, really, I love dying eggs.  Even as a kid, this was my favorite part.  I always wanted to get a kit as soon as they appeared in the stores and start the dying as soon as we got home. I always loved to set the eggs in the dye as long as possible to get really deep colors.  I would pull them out and marvel at the emeralds and deep reds.  Then, just for fun, I would leave some in just for a brief time and get pastels. I also love it when part of the color gets messed up and you get a darker portion. Ohh, how I love that!

So yes, a whole mess of Easter impressions . . . a day late, but I was raging about things yesterday.  But today I'm all snickery nostalgia and Peeps.  Happy Easter.

That Ugly Fat Bitch

Hello there. I'm that ugly fat bitch.

You know the one.

The one who is so huge you don't understand how it is that she still walks . . . not that she walks well.
The one who dresses in unflattering clothes . . . not that she could find clothes to flatter her.
The one who is in no way desirable. In fact, she makes you revolted by the look of her.

Yes, that is me.

And you know what?

This is the fun thing about it all. This is the part you will find crazy and possibly not even comprehend. This is the part that will go contrary to all the stereotypes, goes contrary to all the lonely fat girls standing at the edges of dances weeping big sad, salty tears because no one will ever love them.

The truth is, I'm happy you think I'm the ugly fat bitch.  I am not only happy, I'm weirdly overjoyed by it. It's like there is some kind of chemical that releases a spite-drug inside my system whenever men look at me with disgust.  It makes me happy that you don't want me, would ever want me, don't even connect me with your pleasure centers.

Why is this?

Well, I'm sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that I was raped as a child.

That's only part of it though.  The biggest part has to do with the fact that people act like they can own the  beauty of others. People act like they are owed beauty, owed their very own beautiful woman to love and show off to everyone else.  People act like it is a woman's duty to be beautiful, her one and most important sole purpose in this world to be an object of desire and inspiration.

And . . . I'm not doing that. I'm walking around as a big fat disgusting ugly bitch. Well, okay, waddling around. But you get the idea.

This doesn't mean I'm changing my mind about losing weight. I still plan on doing so, but keep in mind, I'm doing it to not be in pain.  Anything else is beside the point.

A Day of the Drearies.

In the area where I live, this time of year tends to stay dark, dreary, rainy, and somewhat scary. You know, tornadoes and that kind of thing. There were no tornado sirens today, but my roommate and I did drive home in the midst of tons of rain and streaks of white and purple lightening.

This wouldn't have been so bad, but we always take the old highway, which is in a state of perpetual disrepair, full of potholes and curves and narrowness.  Oh, and low water bridges.  Honestly, who came up with the idea of low water bridges? They are the stupidest thing ever.  I can't tell you the number of times I've been in a situation where whatever automobile I was in had to be turned around because the bridge was flooded.

Anyway, the road we were on was the one we fishtailed on back during the snow.  I wasn't quite making the Noise of Fear that only dogs are capable of hearing, but I was coming close to it.  Fortunately, my roommate always handles said situations quite well.

It's cold again, which makes me somewhat happy I've not put my blankets in storage yet.  I'm going to curl up in them and sleep, listening to the sounds of the rain as it falls on the house.

This is somewhat of a luxury for us because we used to live in a trailer that leaked. Okay, leaked BADLY is really a better description. Any time it rained, we had to put pans in the hallway to catch all the water.  It was a fairly wide area and you more or less had to make a very large step over them to get down the hall.  So yes, here, I was, a fat woman trying to navigate my way around six pans of water, wet carpet, and a narrow hallway.  It really wasn't fun. Might have been kind of fun to watch though.

The drearies could last until June.  It's not ideal, but it's not 100+ degrees outside either. I'll take the drearies over that any day.

Commitments

This has been an interesting week.  I've been doing a lot of research and a lot of thinking about things. I have some answers, some more discussion, and some decisions. More importantly, I have some commitments.

I think to a lot of people, these first commitments would seem very small, possibly too small to even matter.  However, to me, to someone who most usually doesn't commit to anything, they are very big and very important.

First of all, I am committing to at least 20 minutes of physical activity a day.  Twenty is the start and the minimum.  This will be added to as I can handle.

Second, I am committing to going back on vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is amazing at decreasing my appetite, cleaning my skin, and keeping my blood pressure good.

Third, I am committing to staying hydrated.  The last thing I need is dehydration because that always sucks.

Forth, I am committing to taking my meds.  I'm pretty good about this already, but I want it written down as a commitment anyway.

Fifth, I'm committing to meditation.  I'm not good at this.  But one of the things I'm written about before was how I don't have a real connection with my physical body.  I know that it is very needful for me to make this connection and spending time each day concentrating on it will help so much.

Sixth, I am committing to logging all of this on a daily basis.  Even if I fail at part of it, even if nothing happens....I want a log of what I did, so I know where I stand.

To me the most important, and hardest one to maintain, is the log. It's easy to blow off something you've said you'll do every day.  It's easy to just for get about it, think you'll remember at the end of the week, and then just not do it at all.

I need to do it though.  I need to keep track of what I'm doing.  I think one of the reasons I keep getting off focus of my goals is because I let my mind slip away from them.  By logging my progress or lack there of, I can see what's really going on, where I'm really faltering. I can assess why things didn't go as plan and formulate ways to make them happen.

Failure in weight loss, after all, isn't a forever thing.  That's the beauty of it. You can fail day after day after day and then still be able to change things once you understand why you failed.

I will fail again. On some days. I will fail with certain commitments.  However,  this time, instead of just blowing that off and eventually assuming I just can't do this, I plan to keep evaluating my situation. I plan to keep altering and changing things until I can make this happen for me.

I will make this happen.

Calm before the Storms

As April has decided to be its usual cruel self, we are expecting more storms for the rest of the week.  Color me not thrilled about this.  Weather always plays nasty tricks on my roommate and me.  One of the later ones has involved my foot hurting where I broke it back when I was 17. Yes, I've become THAT old person.

In the meantime, the humidity is hellish and sticky. The cats are all looking at us like we betrayed them. I've got fans on me and short sleeves.  All the while, the wind is building to some nastiness outside.  Storms. Blah. Do not want.

I received some good news, something I've been waiting a long time for.  Now it's so, so close and while I'm really happy and relieved, I also have a lot to think about, because this step means I can and should move forward with a bunch of other things. I've known this the whole time, but I tried not to think about it too much, because I was afraid it would jinx the first part. Yes, I know. So, so rational of me.

My life is a certain way right now. I'm very, very grateful for this, but at the same time, I don't want it to be this way forever. I want more. More health, more enjoyment, more security.  I have plans to achieve those things, but I have to make sure I do them in the right way, with much planning and wisdom.  I can't half-ass any of this or I'll just end up losing everything.

To that end, I've started some Google docs to organize my plans and my questions.  As I find out information, I'll post answers and links to where I got the info. As I get more answers,  I'll be able to set up a timeline that works for me and everyone involved.

Am I scared? Yes.  But honestly, not as scared as I would have been ten years ago or even five years ago.  I think, if anything, my 30s have brought me much humility and wisdom.  Maybe not about a lot of things, but in ways that are really working for me.

For instance, I understand the value of the small victory.  Last year, even though we'd been in our current location for about ten months, my roommate and I had a room that was floor to ceiling with boxes.  We had piles of disorganization here in almost every room.  There were still places where it was difficult to find anything.

We started changing this one box at a time.  That was our goal. One box. If we moved more or unpacked more? Awesome. But as long as we did that one box, we were happy.

Since then, we have reclaimed the back bedroom, put books not only on bookshelves but organized them as well.  We have reclaimed our space, tossed out things we didn't need, and organized the kitchen.....err, as much as our kitchen can be organized.

We did this by planning, small goals, and constant discussion during the process.  Sometimes we had to change things or alter plans. Sometimes it got frustrating. Quite often, we were really tired.  In the end though, our house is far more organized than it was last year.

So for the next month or so, I will be planning, researching, asking questions, discussing, evaluating, re-evaluating, talking, and keeping a visual record of what I find.

Past that.....we'll see. I plan for great things.

Pulling Your Chain: Your Opinion and How it Ruins Communication

My aunt has Lyme disease. Chronic Lyme is very debilitating and often misdiagnosed.  It took my aunt over 20 years to find out this was the cause of her pain.  She spent years going to different doctors, spending tons of dollars, and almost dying in the process.  Now that she knows what is wrong with her, whenever she hears of someone with similar issues, she tells them about Lyme.  My cousins and I do the same thing.

A few days ago, her Facebook status was about one of my cousins helping a friend find out about having Lyme. My aunt stated that "God spoke through her."  My aunt was happy that her struggles weren't in vein. People would benefit from her painfully-gained knowledge.  My cousins were helping with this.

Someone on my aunt's friend's list starts blasting her about "being used by a god."  My aunt responded back with an explanation of what she was talking about and he continued to persist in his opinions about religion.  Finally, my youngest cousin told him his opinions were out of place in the discussion.  In a private message, she asked us if she had been too harsh.

No, she hadn't been.  The status update was not an invitation to religious debate.  It was a celebration of the fact that some good was coming from my aunt's struggles. a vindication.

Today, a photographer I know posted pictures from her latest sessions. They were of a girl in a bikini by the water.  The pictures were in no way lewd or unseemly, she was just in a bikini. Yet, some woman had to start in on how "disappointed" she was because this photographer, who usually does pictures of families or weddings, had stooped to do something so "unclassy and suggestive."

When someone pointed out to this woman that the poses were not sexual, she went to a tirade about how it's sad that as a society we don't see such things as sexual anymore. Then she went on to babble about how perverts will see the pictures and harm women and children because of them.  She did this for several posts.

As Americans, we really really like our freedom of speech.  We harp on it and spout out how our opinions are something we always have the right to express. And yes, for the most part, this is quite true.

Ahhh, but just because you can do something, doesn't mean you always should.

If we are seeking to truly communicate with others, we need to always consider if the timing of expressing "our opinion." Why is this important?  Because quite often, people have emotional, intellectual, or cognitive investment already in play whenever we decide to open our mouths. Sometimes, depending on the level of this investment, our opinions may blossom into a positive communication. However, quite often what we say, when our attempt at communication is timed wrong, will not be what we truly communicate.

Some basic examples.

Person A: My son just died in the war.
What Person B says in response: War is stupid and we had no business being there.
What Person B communicates: I'm an insensitive asshole.

When someone has lost a loved one, the last thing they need to hear in those days following is how you feel about the situation surrounding the death of their loved one.  Even if they feel the exact same way you do, their period of mourning is not the time to talk about political or social bullshit.

Person A: I'm overjoyed I'm a grandparent now! My son and his husband just adopted a baby.
What Person B says in response: Your gay son and his gay lover have no business with kids and will go to Hell.
What Person B communicates: Even if you're happy about this, I don't care because I value things over your happiness.

As bad as it is to thrust your agenda into someone else's grief, it's just as bad to do it when someone else is celebrating.  This is especially true in cases where there has been a struggle to reach this point of celebration and victory.

Person A: Hey, I know you love music.  My favorite singer is Justin Bieber.
What Person B Says in Response: Yeah, well, Justabeaver is hardly an example of music.
What Person B Communicates: Even if you did just try to reach out to me, I'm still going to be a snob about this topic I clearly know more about than you.

One of the basic things people try to do when talking to each other is to establish a baseline of common interests. If you constantly reject people's attempts by insulting their interests, you will fail in communicating in a positive manner with them.

I'm sure a lot of you are now thinking I'm advocating some sort of system of lying.  You will have none of that! You like to keep it real! You're not going to pretend to like things! You won't support wars or gay people or Justin Bieber lovers or anything else that doesn't ring true to you!  Or, you do, do the opposite of all of these if that's how you feel.

I'm not saying you have to.  What I am saying is that if your relationship with the person you're trying to communicate with is important, you just need to take an extra two seconds or so to try harder.  Instead of just instantly spouting off your opinions about things, emote to the other person.

Recognize What Person A is Needing.

Take my first example from above.  In that case, Person A is reeling from the loss of a child. As someone who truly wishes to communicate with this person, you should consider what they most need in the moment and respond accordingly.

"I'm so sorry you lost your son. I know you love him."  "He will be very missed." "Do you need anything?"  All of these statements keep you communicating in a positive way with this person. Yes, you may burning on the inside because you hate the war, but it keeps the focus on you helping this person you see as valuable to you.

Recognize What the Person is Truly Saying.

In my second example, Person A isn't even directly talking about her gay son.  Person A is talking about how joyful it is that there is now a grandchild.  As someone who wishes to communicate with them, pursue topics that stay on topic of this excitement.

"You are going to be the best grandparent ever." "What is the child's name?" "Have you got to spend a lot of time with him/her?" While you may just hate and loathe the parent part of the equation, what your friend talked to you about was the new relationship in their life.  Focus on that.

Find Common Ground

As stated before, when someone broaches a topic they know you like, they are usually trying to establish common ground with you.  If their next statement isn't something to your liking, revert to the first statement and build off of that.

"Wow, you sound really into this.  What kind of mp3 player do you have?" "I hear he played at Blank Concert Hall. What did you think of that place?"  By taking the topic back to the generalization of "music," you find you have far more topics to delve into than just where you find differences.

Yes, we all have opinions. And yes, many of us are very proud of those opinions. Often we go so far as to see them as fact.  Opinions, however, can often lead to us establishing patterns of broken and/or miscommunication with others.  If we take the time to listen to what other people are saying and assess how we can frame our responses, we will be able to establish lines of communication with more and more people.  And yes, eventually, they may even ask for our cherished opinions.....which is usually what we wanted in the first place.

Friday List: The Pathways in my Mind

Almost everyone I know or come in contact with is living in a state of perpetual emotional need.  It's like we're walking around starving for . . .  something . . . and not sure how to sate whatever that is.

If you're religious, the statement I made above will make you think, perhaps even a little smugly, that what this  desire is for is God. You would tell me, if you were here, that all of these needs for . . . something . . . can be fulfilled in surrendering to whatever religion you happen to be following.

I would almost believe you . . . except, everyone I know who is religious is still struggling with this same emotional hunger.  None of them seem any more sated than anyone else.  In fact, I would venture to say many of them are even less happy.  I don't mean that in a smug way. It's sad, really.

My roommate and I were watching Hoarders tonight, in a state of both awe and horror. I've noticed a lot of people have the same reaction to the show. The first one is "How do these people get this way? It's terrible." The second reaction is "They are insane and need to get help." The third reaction is "Oh holy hell, what if I'm a hoarder and I just don't realize it?"

Most of us are hoarders.  Maybe not in the sense that we have to create paths to walk through our houses, but in an emotional or mental sense, yeah....we are.

I thought about this concept quite a lot the last few hours and decided that for my Friday List, I would talk about things I let collect in my brain when I should just let them go.

1. Past Insults.  There is an old saying, and I've probably used it on the blog before: Tell a girl she's pretty and she'll believe you for a minute. Tell her she's ugly and she believes it for the rest of her life.  You know, despite the failing condition of my memory, I still very clearly remember all the horrible things people have said to me over the years.  I really don't need those thoughts collecting dust in my brain, so I'm going to make an effort to cast them out.
   
2. Past Injustice.  I think everyone has had moments when they were treated unjustly, or believe they were treated unjustly.  It stung at the time, but unless there is something you can actively do about it now, why keep it around to dwell on it?
   
3. Patterns of sabotage. In the next year, I'm going to be making a lot of changes in my life.  Many of them are going to be scary and involve risk-taking I have never done or at least haven't done in a long time.  Already my mind is trying to sabotage all of this, using statements it's digging up from memories of crap my family has said to me over the years.  There is absolutely no need to keep this around.
   
4. Paranoia. The reason the Paranoid Parrot meme works so well is because people honestly do have these reactions.  "Slight cough, must be lung cancer." "Noise outside, must be angry mob."  Look, we have fear responses to help us stay alive, but quite often, many people, myself included, can let this fear cripple us into nonreaction. I don't need that in my life anymore.
   
5. Feelings of unworthiness. I wasn't a planned child. In fact, I was a baby who derailed the plans of others. I spent most of my young life feeling like I was a burden and it was best I ask for as little as possible.  Even though I have tried to fight this pattern, I often still feel unworthy.  There are moments when I truly think I just won't ever be allowed to be happy or have a stable house or have a stable income or a good job or a productive life or health. It's just not for me.  But that, again, is ridiculous.  I am just as worthy as anyone else of having a happy and successful life. It's just a matter of me working toward it.

Okay, that isn't by any means all of the things I can let go of, but it's a good start.  I'm going to try and actively start altering my mindset to where these elements don't even come into play. I know it will take a long time, but that's fine. It really is.

As we were watching the show, my roommate and I talked about how it was easy for the hoarders to get overwhelmed.  There was so much stuff, sometimes piled all the way to the ceiling. One man had a basement so full of stuff, he had to turn sideways to even walk through the narrow paths he had for himself. To consider how to get rid of and organize all of that was daunting.

Then we talked about how the best thing to do was to not look at the big picture. Look at one small bit of space at a time. Clean it. Organize it.  Once you're finished with that, just move to the next small space.  Eventually, once you've done enough small spaces, the larger space isn't so bad.

Yes, this means it may take you the rest of your life to fix whatever it is, but at least you're moving forward instead of backward. It will be difficult, there will even be setbacks.  But that's okay. Just learn from them and move on.

Wow, I'm certainly Miss Positive Barbie tonight.  Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Collision

I'm never the most graceful of people.  Actually, I'm probably the least graceful of people.  Today I lost my balance and fell into the door in the bathroom. I bruised my hand and jarred myself.  Worse, the door was open and on the other side of it is the water heater.

We've watched it all day, wondering if any damage was done.  Earlier my roommate came in and said he saw water on top of it.  A few minutes ago, he came in and told me it was certainly going to have to be looked at. He wasn't happy and I don't blame him.

There are levels of bad here.  One of these levels is the uncertainty of knowing how much this will cost.  What all will have to be changed or altered about the situation. What level of damage was done.  So many factors we can't be sure of yet.

The worst part though is knowing it is happening because of me.  As my roommate was telling me all of this, I was trying to listen to him but all the while my stomach was becoming white hot with panic and heat.  Things are fucking up and it's my fault. Not something I intended to happen, but my fault nevertheless.

And I want to take it back. I want to relive that moment and fall the other way. Or not fall at all. Or anything other than reaching into this level of panic.  Why did I have to lose my balance? Why did it have to be in that direction?  And to think, up til this moment, I was having a fairly good week.

Gimme Shelter

Tonight there were some very serious storms in my area.  This is tornado season and all the local channels where on high alert about all the impending bad weather.

My roommate and I grew up around tornadoes, so we're both rather indifferent to them. The idea of going into the cellar seems like more work than staying in the house and if we die in the storm, so be it.

But my brother has two small children, so he, said children, his wife, and one of their friends came over and stayed in our cellar.  When the storm let up, they came into the house to use the bathroom and check on the status of the weather.  Eventually, they went home.

It's interesting in that while I had no need to go find shelter myself, I rather love the idea of providing it for others. I like the fact that they come here and find safe harbor. I like the idea of being thought of as someone who can provide that.

The funny thing is, this never occurred to me until tonight.  I find the idea quite intriguing and plan to think about it and explore it some more in the coming months.

Young Blackhaired Barbie's Wild Ride . . .And the Crazy that Resulted

There is this small lake community near the area where I was born.   It's the local place where everyone spends their summers, basking in water of questionable cleanness, braving past rushes where you're fairly sure snakes live. As a small child, I lived for days at the lake.  I loved everything about it from that first contrasting step into the water where your upper body is hot from the sun but your feet are in very cold mud to the feeling of being in clothes that are drying from the windows being down as you drive home.

The roads around the lake had two very uncomfortable aspects, vicious curves and some precariously high areas. During the first years of my life, I spent lots of time as a passenger over these roads and thought little to nothing about them.  This all changed when I was four.

I don't know if my mother was drunk (it's always a possibility), but from what I remember, we were going to visit someone and she was mad.  She was driving a red Falcon, I don't know the year.....it seems that she lost control of the car, just....completely lost control of it. No brakes, no ability to really steer. We weaved dangerously over those curved roads that circled the lake before finally ending up in someone's yard and crashing into a tree.

Even though I was really young and lack a lot of detail, I very clearly remember the feeling of being completely out of control.  I knew I had no ability to alter anything that was happening.  I was in a car, moving at speeds that seemed both extremely fast and horrifying slow. I remember my mother's panicked, screaming as she tried to do something about this. I remembered wondering if I was going to die.

Most of all, I remember the moment we hit the tree. The loud POP as metal met wood.  I remember being tossed from my seat painfully into the dashboard and the feeling of all my breath leaving me.  I remember the violent suddenness of all of it and hating that so much.  Hating that reality reaches the only conclusion it could and there was nothing, nothing at all, I could have done to change it.

It gets kind of fuzzy past that. I know we ended up in the hospital and neither of us were dead.  I know everyone kept trying to calm me down. I know I acted like everything was fine as quickly as I knew that was what was expected of me.

I was worlds away from fine though. From that day on, I developed a sicking horror of sharply curving roads.  Any time my parents would drive over them, I would bury my face against the seat and keep my eyes closed. I would stay this way until I felt the curves were over.  I started counting during this, memorizing the number of seconds it took to get past the curves.  And all the while I had my eyes shut and my face buried, I would wonder if it was the best way to go, given that I could die at any second.

I would beg and plead with my parents not to take the routes that brought us to the curves. I would suggest alternatives, trying to sound casual about it (I wonder now how freaked out and paranoid I sounded) or even act uninterested in whatever they wanted to do that required driving over the curves.

The worst part came when I started school.  My two hour bus ride, bad enough for a child prone to car sickness, became a dread fest because the bus WENT OVER THE SAME ROADS WE WRECKED ON.  We drove past the scarred up tree five days a week.

Again, I knew I had no choice in the matter. I would sink down in my seat and hide my eyes as we took that cumbersome, big-ass bus over the narrow, dangerous, horrific curves.  Every day, I was fairly sure we were going to die.

Then again, my kindergarten teacher was such a miserable and evil person, there were days when death seemed like the better option.

It's funny because I can remember that fear and the total phobia of going over the curves. I can remember all the murky thoughts about what could happen to me and the panic attacks I would sometimes have just thinking about trips I knew I couldn't get out of, but I don't remember when it stopped.  Because it did stop.  I can go over those roads all day long now and not bat an eye.  Beyond that, the commute from my hometown to where I went to college is far more curvy and dangerous . . . but I'm so calm about that trip I could do it in my sleep (and possibly have).

I still dream about that wreck sometimes.  I find myself back in those awful moments where there was no control in the car whatsoever and all I kept thinking was how there was nothing I could do, nothing I could do.  Sometimes I wake up just before we hit the tree. Sometimes, I wake up just right after it.

To this day, I'm honestly not sure which one is worse.

In Which I Discuss my Murders

The pest control people came today and murdered the flea population in the yard.  My cats have been unhappy acting ever since.  They always hate it when new people are around. The pest control costs money we'd rather not spend, but it was very needed.  In the area I live, fleas can get out of hand. They did last year.

My grandmother's back yard was a jungle of neglected bushes and vines and trees.  The yard is a double lot with cats, opossums, mice, rabbits, and skunks wandering through it.  The house is very old and has lost of holes. And carpet.  All of this makes for great flea breeding.

Fleas get out of hand very quickly. Like, one day, everything is fine. The next day, you notice things jumping on you when you walk across the room. The cats get agitated and start pulling out clumps of fur . . . never an attractive look on a feline. My roommate and I were getting overwhelmed. With some research and planning though, we got the flea problem handled.

If you're ever in this situation, here are some basic steps.

CALL IN THE PEOPLE

Pest Control costs money, but they do a great job and can handle issues with the yard that most people just can't.  We never use them for the house, though I've read that works as well.

THE FINE TOOTH COMB

If your animals have fleas, you need to buy a flea comb.  Making sure you have enough light, you run this through the animal's fur in one stroke, then remove the comb and kill any fleas you see on it.  Nasty work, but very direct in ending the problem.

My roommate's extensive practice with this has led him to some conclusions.  One, fleas tend to like certain spots on certain animals and will always be found in said spot in abundance.  Always make sure you go over this spot several times when flea-combing your pet.

THE DAILY SUCK

If you have fleas, there really is no way of avoiding vacuuming the floor on a daily basis. Oh wait, not just the floor. You have to vacuum any surface where flea eggs can nest.  Couches, chairs, curtains, pillows, and anything else with material or carpet on it needs to be vacuumed.  And be thorough about it.  Move furniture around, get under beds.

Once you're finished, dump the contents from your vacuum.  Put them in a bag, cut off the air from it, and put it in a trash can. Or burn it. Do NOT just dump it into the yard.  That just puts the fleas in the yard.  Because, just in case you didn't know, fleas CAN survive the vacuum. When you pull out the canister, you'll see them crawling around. It is SO nasty.

My roommate was the main vacuumer last year and I know he was exhausted.  He's like my hero though because this is one of the main things that got rid of the fleas.

It also helps if your vacuum is bagless because that way you know you can completely dump everything out of it.

THE SCENT OF BLISS

Lavender is a natural bug repellent. It gets rid of fleas and just about any other nasty that you don't want in  the house.  We replaced our detergents with lavender scented ones, as well as all soaps, cleaners, and air fresheners.  We also bought dried lavender bundles, incense, and oils.

Besides making bugs unhappy, lavender also has a calming effect, which is helpful during stressful summer months.

THE PLATE OF DEATH

Probably the most direct, crude, and rather disturbing way to handle fleas is the Dawn method. You squirt a bit of Dawn dishwashing liquid onto a plate and then fill the plate with water.  You can then either shine a light into the plate, or just leave it alone.  You still get results.

The fleas will be attracted to the water, but once they're in it, the dishwashing liquid kills them.  Do this before you go to bed at night and in the morning, you'll wake up to a disgusting plate filled with dead bugs. Just what anyone would want to see in the morning.

Of course, there are other things you can do directly to your animal. Bathing them, for instance.  If you do this to an animal often, like a dog, it probably won't be any worse than it ever is bathing your dog.  With cats though . . . well, for instance, last year one of the cats scratched my throat when we were bathing her.  I would honestly rather do any other method of flea control before tackling THAT again.

The Road Frequently Traveled

Today was a mixture of good and bad.  The roommate and I went to look for possible replacements to my computer should it fail completely.  We still haven't been able to determine what's wrong with the damned thing.  It's frustrating and rather scary, given our limited funds.

So the bad part was the knowledge that we're about to possibly incur a big expense, one that may or may not work any better than the jacked up mess of a computer I have right now.  My comp is only about 15 months old and the fact that its screwing up doesn't bode well for the idea of any new comp in the future.

The good part was that my roommate and I had a wonderful time.  We sang, we laughed, we accused each other of outrageous things.  We ate mall Chinese food, chopsticking off of each other's plates for variety. We people watched. We remarked on changes we saw. We bitched about stupid drivers.  We snarked at the state of ugly in some of the small towns between ours and the city.

We've been friends for a long time now. During those years, we've made that trip many, many times.  Sometimes it was fun. You know, that is a lot of what travel together is when you're new in your friendship.  You go to see movies, to eat, to celebrate birthdays or graduations or holidays.  Often my roommate and I would go eat Christmas day dinner at Denny's, just for the perversity of it.

Over time, the trips can become more serious.  You take each other to doctor's appointments.  You travel to visit each other for hospital stays. You find out things you knew to be true, but needed medical confirmation and drive home making plans, both sighing in relief because something can be done.  Sometimes, you get devastating news and you drive home in silence, wondering how you'll deal with the fact that the world just shifted.

But in all of those trips, even the stressful ones, even the scary ones, and yes, even the horrible ones, I've been very blessed to have someone who will make me laugh and sing with me.  Someone who can help me take the edge off the bad stuff. I know that I've been this for him as well, and that makes me happy.

As a general rule, humans tend to look towards some possible future and ignore the here and now.  A lot of us, when we're traveling the road most frequently traveled, pay little attention to it, our minds off dreaming of destinations unknown.  The thing is, the future is uncertain . . . and could quite possibly suck as much as whatever is making you unhappy in the moment. All things considered, we do ourselves the greatest service in paying attention to what is really happening on our current trip, and being grateful to the people taking it with us.

Happy Caffeinated Musings . . . Plus Blessing!

I ventured out of the house today. Met up with a knitting friend and we drank coffee, knitted, and discussed the world.  A band was playing while we were at said coffee place and they were really good. I feel good after my last post.  Very purged from a lot of negative hell that's been building inside me.  In fact, while this has been an emotional day for a number of reasons, it's also been a good day.

I had a lot of deep and important conversations with people today. Even though a couple of these discussions were brief, I still think they imparted a lot.  Oh, and I was positive and encouraging.  I can do that sometimes.

Lately, a lot of people around me seem to be frightened. If you've been reading the blog, you know I get that. Fear can be useful at times, but more often than not,  it's paralyzing.  It stops us.  The shitty thing is, the world offers up so many chances to be frightened on so many different levels.  I would love to say these fears are baseless and could never happen. Sadly, that's not true.  Quite often, what we fear, we fear with good reason.

But . . . the reason, while there, is often not good enough.  Yes, we may lose if we live boldly. Yes, it may cost us a lot.  Jobs. Friends. Reputation. Family. We may be viewed as the freak or the crazy bitch or the outcast or the undesirable.  We may be the one who they're stoning as we walk through the streets.

You know, one of the nice things about being fat is that I get to live with my freakness on my sleeve. My socially undesirable differentness is out there for everyone to see and judge.  This can be scary and hurtful . . . though more often, it's just predictable and annoying.  But it's the slap right when I walk in the room.  I don't have to wait nervously as the crowd gathers, fearing they'll realize my big bad thing and then slap me.  No, being fat is one of those things you can't hide.

For everyone else, their secrets, while easier to cover up, are also more confining.  If you can hide it, you become someone who constantly has to hide it.  You become a slave to your attempts to fit in with everyone else.  You become in danger of losing who you really are.

If you're someone out there who is afraid of people realizing who you really are.....remember two things.  One, and yes, I know I've talked about this before, you are under NO obligation to be honest with anyone but yourself.  Two, the people who really love you, the people who actually matter, will still love you regardless.  And the people who walk away? They never really loved you anyway. Just some fiction of you. You're better off without them.

So it's just a little past one in the morning.  I'm still hyped up on caffeine and the energy of live music.  This is my hope for everyone.:

May we shine.  May we glitter in all that we are.  May we revel in the beauty and the ugly that is us.  May we live brazenly.

Friday List: My Body is a Cage

So as you know, I've been doing a work book in therapy that is supposed to help me start dealing with the abuse that happened to me as a kid. I go through various levels of resistance to this. I somewhat believe the book, somewhat resent it, and somewhat just want to quit.  I won't though.

One thing I do believe was the part about how disassociated I am with my body.  I live in my head. I live WELL in my head.  But my body? It's just the thing that allows me to express, gives me access to data, and causes me pain.  This isn't really a good thing, of course.  By basically ignoring my body for all these years, I've had even more reason to be nonchalant about what is happening to it.

So I've started these mental challenges to pay more attention to my body.  To really think about it in ways beyond just it hurting or being hot or too cold or whatever. Honestly, I think the more awareness and connection I have to my physical being, the more able I will be to get healthy again.  Look, I'm not thinking miracles here. I'm not gonna Charlie Sheen Tigerblood cure myself with my mind or anything.  Still, I think a better mind/body sync will help.

So my Friday list tonight will be about things I like about my body.  And I mean body and not face. Faces are easy to like. Well, most of them, anyway.  No, this is just body. So....here goes.

1. I like my tattoo.  I have a tattoo of a lily on my left hand. I had it done when I was in my early twenties and wanted something permanent in my life. It was done illegally, as tattooing was against the law in my home state back then, but the artist who did it was licensed in another state.  He was visiting his parents at the time and while over at a friend's house, I started talking to him and the tattoo idea came along.  The tatt was done in his mom's trailer, which I love because it adds such a nice white trashy flavor to it.  For about a year after having it done, whenever I would get bored in class, I would gaze at it lovingly.

Okay, so.....I sat here for about an hour past that first entry, typing things and erasing them.  Then typing other things.  I would look over my form and struggle for something.....come up with some passable but still lame idea....type it....then erase.

The truth is, I don't like anything about my body.  I don't know it. I ignore it. And when I have to deal with it, I hate it. I hate all of it.  I hate that it makes me a spectacle. I hate that it's weak. I hate that it causes me so much vulnerability. I hate that it requires me to have gender, which sorts me into a group before I even open my mouth to speak. I hate that it requires me to have a gender, that assigns social expectations and biases before I even get to decide things for myself.

I hate that it always hurts. I hate that its the first thing someone sees. I hate that it has needs and wants and requirements. I hate the damage done to it. I hate that people touched the body, beat it, spit on it, violated it, abused it, and yet while that healed, my mind still carries scars and memories.

And I don't just hate it, I'm angry at my body.  I'm angry at it for being so weak. I'm angry at the idea of anyone looking at me or coming near me. I'm angry at the fact that the body can be so easily harmed, so easily destroyed, so easily addicted.

I love my mind, but quite frankly, I wish my body didn't exist. I wish I could just be a floating thought process able to communicate somehow with others. Or maybe one of those floating heads on Futurama.

Because really, that is how I feel most of the time. I'm just a floating mind stuck in a body that causes lots of issues.  My mind is full of stories and thoughts and dreams and other worlds and songs and jokes and plans. My body is the limitation to all of this.  In the end, my body and its failure will be what puts an end to the person I am right now.

So.............wow.  This didn't go as I expected, but it went where it needed to go.  The cool thing about recovering from something is that no matter where your starting point is, there is always potential for vast improvement.  And I'm way down there at rock bottom with this project.

It's okay though. I have a baseline. I know where I'm starting from now.  Instead of ignoring my body, I'm actually, well, okay, raging at it, but at least that's not ignoring. I guess we'll see where this project goes.

Is This what Yoda Meant by Midi-chrolians?

Oh look! I'm in a good mood!  The flying pigs must be dropping shit on the ice skaters in Hell.

No, really, I am in a good mood and I hope I remember to go back to this post again and again.

A letter to the sad people:

Hi there.


I know you feel really lost. I know you feel useless and all alone.  I know you feel like no one gets you, like nothing you do matters.


This isn't the case.  You are very important. You are useful and you are doing something with your life, right now, in the very moment you are reading this.


You see, there are somewhere between 500 and a 1000 species living inside your gut.  There are probably that many living on your skin.  You have organism in your saliva, in your eyes.  Bacteria, fungi, and archaea survive and thrive because of you.


Your provide life and comfort for millions of bits of life. You are their landscape, their shelter, their food source.  You are an ecosystem, the one central factor in the brief lives of so many.


This is a beautiful thing.


So on those days when you feel down. and wonder if you've ever mattered at all, remember you do. You matter so much to so many life forms.  You are important.  You are a provider of life. You walk through this world providing a place for so many.  They owe their existence to you.

Love and kisses,

BHB*

I hope that makes you feel better. It made me feel better.  Until tomorrow, enjoy your time with your microflora.

*Blackhaired Barbie, of course.

This Many Posts In and I Still have Stuff to Say

I suck at consistency. I mean, I really, really, really suck at it.  My life is paved with good intentions of changing this or doing that or improving something or starting/finishing a project. Most of the time, it never happens.  And I'm not just talking about crap no one wants to do like exercise, I mean even fun stuff like video games and books.  Wow? Fun? I'm such a geek.

Okay, there are some things I finished.  I have a Masters Degree. I wrote a book during NANOWRIMO a few years back.  I complete knitting projects provided they're not too hard and don't take too long.  Oh wow, that really isn't much, is it? Damn.

There are a lot of reasons I stop. I get bored. I'm self-defeating. I get sick. I get discouraged. I go crazier for a while. I think all of it is symptomatic of people with my background.  I'm also sure most people chalk it up to pure laziness.  Sometimes, I think they're right. Everything I'm learning about my depression tells me it has a lot to do with it as well.

Therefore, I am quite pleased and not just a little surprised to find myself still blogging after three months.  Okay, I realize three months doesn't sound like a long time, but for me, it sure as hell is. And not just blogging once in a while, blogging almost every night. Half the time, the posts are even fun. That is an accomplishment.

You know, one of the things I've learned in the process of getting my life together is that you have to think in small steps.  Don't think about ALL the weight you have to lose, think about the next pound. Don't think about ALL the money you don't have, think about saving just a small bit at a time.  In this case, I'm not thinking about "will I be blogging in two years?" because my mind just automatically goes to me looking at this blog and it not having been touched for months.

No, I'm just going to think about this one post at a time.  One bit of my life, one essay of thought, one rambling documentation of my pain and confusion (or snark) at a time.

For right now though, for this moment, I'm going to be damned proud of myself.  Three months of blogging. Yippie!

Let Me Into your Painful Adolescence

[Spoilers] I think from the moment I first saw the look of Eli from Let the Right One In, I was obsessed with the movie. I saw it as soon as I could, decided it was the best understated vampire movie I had ever seen, and started missionizing to make others watch it.

The movie takes place in Sweden and the setting is almost monochromatic with white snow against dark grayish buildings.  The snow looks soft and still flaky. Even when it's not falling, you have the impression of it falling, which adds a dreamlike quality to the film.

The main human character Oskar has this very blonde dutch boy hair cut and an almost bubbling happiness about him, despite his ill treatment. Eli the looks-12-but-200 year old vampire is ethereal, almost godlike in beauty, and impossible to not watch. All of this, combined with scenes of almost comical villagers, the sweetness of first love, and moments of rather graphic violence, lull you into a sense of understanding what the horror is about, only to be slapped in the face by it in the end.

So it was with some, okay, with vast, apprehension that I received the news that there would be an American version of the film, Let Me In. Aghh! I even hated the name change.  This was a minor detail, admittedly, but enough to begin what I knew would be a long list of things that altered the movie into something that was nothing like the dream scape of the original.

This didn't stop me from watching it though.  I am many things, cinema slut among them.  Despite my lack of attention span, I watched Let Me In over the last two nights and at the end of it, felt I could only express how I felt about it by writing this.

There were certain things they Americanized. Oskar became Owen.  Eli became Abby. The setting changed from Sweden to a wintery New Mexico. The year, which seemed, at least to me, to have little bearing on the original was very much 1983.  Oddly, where it doesn't seem to matter in LTROI, it matters in the remake.  It actually accentuates the remake, giving a nice layer to it.  LMI feels very 1983 and if you were alive and aware in 1983, you are drawn back there, into that time and how you felt. If you were anywhere near Owen's age, you find yourself understanding him completely.

With the exception of some altered or deleted scenes, Americanizing of setting and names, and the absence of Eli/Abby's questionable gender, the movie is basically the same.  However, on very fundamental levels, it is completely different.  The Voice and Point of View from LMI is altered and the themes explored and expressed have changed. Let the Right One In is a movie about a boy who falls in love with a dream girl who is really a monster, but he accepts this. Let Me In is about the painful depths of awkwardness.

The center of the awkwardness is Owen. Kodi Smith-McPhee does a cringingly perfect job as the young social outcast.  Smith-McPhee is actually a beautiful child and manages to make his features work completely against him as Owen. His phrasing, which comes off as stilted and mouth-breathing, and shy looks, slightly off-timed interactions, and, ohhh the worst, his attempts to look cool, add up to That Kid we all remember from school. The one who was alone except when he was being picked on. The one who was so awkward even the other social-outcasts couldn't relate to him.  The kid who you wish would at some point say the right thing, but never could. Yeah, that kid. Owen is him.

Owen can't relate to Drunk Religious Mama, who is mostly concerned with drinking, praying, and getting her  divorce from Owen's father. The father, who we never actually see, just hear on a phone conversation, is less concerned for Owen than he is with his constant battle with the soon-to-be ex. Owen is the target of the bullies at school and pretty much ignored by everyone else.  He has a weird haircut, a billowy silver coat, won't get in the swimming pool, and fairly girlish features. All of these things add up to him spending most of his time alone, eating Now & Laters (and singing the theme song, which, again, cringe), watching for boobies in his telescope, or pretending to exact revenge on his enemies by stabbing knives into things.

And while much of this is uncomfortable to creepy, Owen has a level of realism to him that draws you into the story.  I hate movies where kids come off as more sophisticated than they should (unless there is a good reason for it) or ones who are fake-awkward but you know they'll end up winning in the end.  With Owen, you honestly don't think the kid has a chance.

As much as I loved the dreamlike quality of the original movie, this agonizing shove into reality with the remake is great.  The introduction scene (which sets up the horror element and I honestly think could have been cut from the movie) is nothing compared to our first minutes with Owen.  This is when the remake finds its own voice  . . . and that voice is not pretty.

The awkwardness of reality dictates this movie. It is the center of everything.  Even Abby, the beautiful and graceful vampire child, can't escape it.  Where most vampire movies, even the ones where the vampires are seen as the bad guys, tend to give the vampires charm and grace, in this movie, those matter very little. Every aspect of Abby's vampire nature serves only to set her apart, to make her the same level of social outcast as Owen. There is never a moment of "Wow, you're a vampire and that's so cool." It is always "Wow, you're a vampire and that sucks because vampires are monsters."

Being a monster isn't a moral judgement either. Almost everyone in this movie, to a greater or lesser extent, is a "monster" in their own right. Abby's, however, forces her to make others into victims. The Now & Later jingle of "eat some now, save some for later" becomes darkly true with her.  Kill the human for blood right now or keep them around and watch them destroy themselves because of you.

Abby tells Owen that they can't be friends. He thinks it's because she, like almost everyone else, hates him for whatever injustice in the universe has made him unlikable. She knows it's because she is a monster, and humans, no matter how hard she tries, will never truly be friends. Never again.  She doesn't seem to feel guilt over the people she kills outright. For the one she keeps with her, who is forced to live their life as her mortal companion, it isn't clear if she feels remorse or just fear at the idea of them leaving her.  Probably both.

In her companion, who Owen at first believes to be her father, we see the the dark realism of the movie truly become horrific. All too often in our depictions of killers and people who are violent, the scenes of violence are without flaw.  They are planned out with perfect calculation and go off without a hitch.  The "father" seems to live under Murphy's Law.  Every attempt to obtain blood for Abby goes wrong. The last attempt, due to the randomness of the universe, goes so badly wrong that he has to die.

Well, let me rephrase that. He didn't have to die.  He chooses to die, first by pouring acid on his face and then by jumping to his death, so that Abby can be protected.  He knows his life is awful. He has a idea that he is soon to be replaced, but he is still so loyal to her, so captivated by her, that he would choose to die for her.  In the end, being near the monster takes him down as well.

The most horrifying part about the Father character is that by the end of the movie, we know that in watching  the last days of his life, we are more than likely seeing Owen's future.  Owen, who never had much of a life to begin with, will now trade away all of his possibilities so that Abby can be taken care of and protected.  He is now hers.

We know he loves her. We know she saved his life, and, actually, gave his life meaning.   However, because we just watched the fate of her last care-taker, we know what will follow for Owen.  Fifty, maybe sixty years of poverty and constant travel.  No real home, no real career, only the fear for Abby's safety and the need to fulfill the constant demands of her hunger. When he has outlived his usefulness, she will seek a new companion and he will die for her.

The vampire, as a cultural metaphor, can mean a lot of things. Sometimes the vampire is return to the wild and chaotic needs of our base nature.  Bram Stoker's Dracula is far more Dionysus than anything else.  Sometimes the vampire is a metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases or for some political party or why people shouldn't be taxed so much.

In the case of Let Me In, the vampire is analogous to all the destructive relationships we get into as youth as a way to try and escape the bad home life we have.  We find someone who we think needs us, who we think will protect us, and most of all, who will help us remove ourselves from the life we have.  Unfortunately, what we tend to forget is that these people who need us will always need more and more.....and eventually, we just won't have anything left to give.

Little Miss Darkness Writes a Blog Post

I picked up the refill on my anti-depressants today and popped one even before I got home.  It's not so much that it could actually make a difference as much as it was just the symbolism of it all. I needed to find The Happy and it was alluding me.

I hate it when I swing back down into depression.  It's not so much that things are really worse, it's just that they seem that way. Things probably don't break or fall any more than they normally do, but my mind takes note of each thing that falls, of each thing that breaks.

The biggest problem with depression, or at least the way I get depressed, is that when I'm in this state of mind, I like the ability to think through how to fix the broken things. Or I'm too drained to fix them. Or I'm to tired from lack of sleeping because I'm depressed to fix them. Or all of the above.

When I'm not depressed, I make plans. I try to find solutions. I try to find ways to repair. And even though this all required more energy than just sitting here and being depressed, when I'm in a better mental state, it doesn't feel like it's more energy.  But when I'm on the downside of things, even the simplest tasks feel daunting, often impossible.

When my mind is functioning, I can, after maybe a little bit of panic, handle whatever comes along.  It's easy. I know I can do it. I know I can find ways through or around whatever the problem is.

However, when all that positive is gone, I'm left just hoping nothing happens.....that no flat tires come along....that no other types of car trouble happen.....that the plumbing works.....that my computer works....that everything works....that no one is in a bad mood....that no thing goes wrong.....that the plots on the tv shows aren't too stressful.....that no one is fighting.....that any billion other things don't happen......

Because when I'm depressed, I feel like I can't solve any of it......and when I'm really depressed, I start questioning why I even keep slogging along in a world that is causing me so much stress.

Ohhhh and that is when things get really bad.....when the ennui sets in.....when I begin to coldly and rationally wonder if continuing in this constant conflict is even worth my effort.  I try to talk to myself about my goals and hopes for the future.....and the ennui sighs and points out how all of these goals, assuming they are even remotely attainable, will probably be empty and as devoid of meaning as everything else has been.

But.....does life even have to have meaning? Can't it just be about experiences.....even if those experiences are bad or mundane?  Shouldn't even the mundane, routine, and even the sucky bits be just as valid to the totality of life as the good bits?

Or does that even matter? Does my enjoyment of my life (or lack there of) have any more context than the fact that I am host to bacteria and other organisms who live and thrive and then die with me as their home?  Should my supposed sentience have any more meaning than the presumed sentience I would give to the house I live in?

I just popped my second anti-depressant into my mouth in hopes the depression will subside sooner rather than later.  I miss the Pollyanna I know I can be.  And I know she misses me, the perky little sunshine twat.

Losing my Edge

I spent part of the night watching the last LCD Soundsystem concert from Madison Square Garden.  I would have watched more, but it's like over three hours long and I just didn't have it in me. Hah! Yes, I'm losing my edge and getting old because I can't freaking stay up late enough to watch the show. Figures.

"Losing my Edge" is my favorite song by them. The song is just seeped in sarcasm but still somehow also comes off as very, very true. "I'm losing my edge...... to better looking people......with better ideas and more talent......who are actually, really really nice." I think at some point, we all feel this way and somewhat seethe about the fact.  Though, only to a certain extent because there is something to be said for being alive in the time of what you see as your music and your experiences. Gen X people still act and think a certain way and we probably always will.  I'm happy about that.

I'm rambling but it's late.  I should be in bed but it's humid and I'm a little uncomfortable.  Every day is edging us closer and closer to summer and summer is always really damned hellish on me.  I hate it with a blind passion and really wonder why I choose to be a fat woman living in a hot and humid state.  That's really not bright at all.

My attention span has been worse than usual too.  It's all I can to concentrate on anything for more than five minutes. I watched a two hour movie and I think it too me like five hours because I kept pausing it to do something else.  My mind just couldn't focus.  I hate days like this. Focusing becomes almost painful and it's all I can do to keep from lashing out at everything that's trying to get my attention.  The world is wanting me to pay attention and all my brain is allowing is just random blips from here and there.

It's not that I don't want to focus. I just really can't. My therapist has suggested meditation as a way to help this (as well as relieving stress). I'm thinking she may be right.

Anyway, I think I'll try and sleep now.  Maybe the wind will die down and the humidity will go the hell away.  I have a busy week and I don't want any more complications than needed. Lack of sleep always leads to complications.

The Night of Future Dread . . . Now with Flashbacks!

We're still a month off from Mother's Day and I'm not looking forward to it.  It's kind of ironic, because even back when I had mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers, I STILL didn't look forward to it.

That was for different reasons though. Back when everyone was still alive, Mother's Day was difficult because I had to deal with, well, all my mother-y people. Gramma would always go to church so she could get her flower and be able to come home and talk about how "nice" it was because other people had family at church with them and how "nice" it was how some other woman would get an extra flower for being the one there with the most family members.

It was truly this large serving of passive-aggressive that was Gramma's major gift for the day.  She'd buzz off how we're all heathens for weeks past Mother's Day.  It was better than any box of candy I could have gotten her.  Besides, I could never stand church on Mother's Day. It would always be a sermon about how mothers should act and how being a mother was like the best thing a woman could do.  My teeth would always be on edge.

While Gran was at church, my mom would come over to Gran's house and start cooking.  I would hang out with her, talk with her about things, watch the house whenever the prospect of seeing Gran run her nerves into such overdrive that she would need to leave so she could go smoke. As I've mentioned before, my mother and her mother never got along very well.  The games they would play were old and written with rules no one really understood. Not even them.

At some point my brother would join us. He would be happy to see Mom and about like her when it came to seeing Gran.  By the time my brother was there, Gran would be home soon.  I would prepare myself for the coming hours. I would promise myself I'd not say things to be hurtful . . . or just weird. I would not take things so seriously or be offended at every and any thing directed towards me. I would not choose my battles, because this was not a war.  I would not fight. I would not be negative.

I'm in kind of my Glass Half Full mindset, so I'm going to think that all four of us were telling ourselves this same thing.  No fights. No hurtful discussions. No weirdness. No negative.  Just the nice conversation over an observance of Mother's Day.

Instead . . . .

Gran would come in with her Dish of Passive-Aggressive about church.  Mom would follow this with criticism about the people at the church or just religion in general. The awkward silence. Then either I or my brother would say something funny.  Then the other sibling would pick up on that and we'd try to redirect the discussion.  This would work for a few back and forths as Gran and Mom stared at each other.  But once we lost our pacing, Gran would go right back to the first topic and begin, in an offended and only slightly polite tone, to defend against all the statements Mom made.

Along with being able to grow absolutely any plant imaginable, my grandmother's other true talent was being able to never be distracted from a change in topic of conversation. She could always, ALWAYS go right back to whatever you were trying to get away from.   Thankfully, lunch would be ready and we'd sit down to eat.  Mom's meal would be great, as always, but somehow Gran would offer her some backhanded compliment that always felt insulting. And Mom would take it as an insult.

Things were in a downward spiral after that.  Any chance they got, they would dig their knives in deeper.  If Gran said something that was remotely wrong in any factual way, Mom would correct her. Gran would go on the defensive.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  Mother's Day was stressful.  And now . . . everyone is gone. So, while it's not stressful, it's sad.

And I wonder how long it will be like this?  How many years from now on will I just feel all orphaned and shitty on Mother's Day?  Maybe this is why women have kids, so they don't have to feel all lost after the mamas pass away.

Not that it makes me want to have kids. The last thing I need is to be 78 and feeling all orphaned while some ungrateful brat child of mine hands me a card they didn't sign and then tries to correct me on all the crazy stuff I say.

Friday Night List: A Week of the Better

As you all know, last week was hell on wheels for me.   My Friday list consisted of things that actually were positive about the Vicious Week of Sucking in hopes for a more positive week to follow.  I got that.  In fact, a lot of really cool things happened this week.

1. My Sister-in-Law brought me pie.  It's not so much that I got to eat pie, which was very nice, but the fact that she included me.  My SIL always includes me when she does stuff.  She always makes me feel welcome and like I'm important. I know a lot of people get crazy/horrible in-laws, but somehow despite all my other family craziness, I was blessed with a very sweet SIL!
   
2. I got to see a friend I've not seen in a while.  She just lives across town, but we tend to not really have a lot of time to spend with each other. It was very good to see her and hear how her family was doing.  Oh, and also:
   
3. The reason she came over was because she was doing spring cleaning and decided she had too much cookware and that the lucky recipient of said too much cookware would be me.  This was such a lovely and unexpected surprise. It was so nice of her to, like my SIL, think of me.  It meant a lot.
   
4. Someone I am close to is realizing the value and importance of his writing.  His blog is a documentation of a condition in a specific type of location.  I think for anyone out there who is suffering from this condition, finding his blog will be both education and comforting.  I think he's seeing this now and realizing how important it is that he is reaching out in this way.
   
5. I found this.

This video has blown me away. I love it so much. It's inspiring and beautiful, haunting and truly one of the most perfect videos I've ever seen.  I saw it like late night before last and I've watched it a million times since. Love it.

Yes, it was a good week.  Here's hoping next week is even better for all of us.