Monthly Archives: February 2007

Being good enough

Some days I get it into my head that I am not good enough. When I do this I latch onto something as an example to prove that I am not good enough. This time it’s related to sex. I’ve taken way too much pride over the years in the fact that I am generally considered to be very good at sex. I have gone out and deliberately learned how to be better.

But I’m not the best at everything. And sometimes knowing that hurts. Sometimes knowing that means that I hate the people who are better. Especially when they are people I know, people I am jealous of anyway.

I know I need to grow up, but this one sucks.

And in the process of being stupid and immature I hurt Noah. I wish I could be all that he deserves.

Negative and positive teaching experience

One of my babies passed a note under the door to a neighboring class yesterday with the word, “faggot” on it while I was absent. The teacher was very upset and the grapevine let me know this morning.

When this period started I was not my usual cheerful, enthusiastic self (despite my journal’s appearance I am normally incredibly upbeat at work). Instead I had everyone sit down and I told them that I had heard about the note and I am very upset. I said I was about to tell them more about me than I think they usually need to know, but in this case it seems very relevant.

I told them that I have dated girls very seriously. I told them that I have been active in gay rights movements since my early teenage years. I told them that many, if not most, of my friends are gay. I told them that their inadvertant behavior can be very hurtful and mean. I told them that I spend a lot of time bragging about my wonderful kids and telling lots of people how proud I am of them, and I am really hurt that I can’t do that right now.

I told them that basic human respect is something that everyone deserves. That picking on someone for their sexual orientation is just as horrible as picking on someone for their race, or religion, or gender. It’s just wrong no matter how you slice it.

I told them that I know they are teenagers and therefor very self-centered and that it is ok to be self-centered most of the time–it’s the age they are and that’s fine. But they need to start thinking past themselves and recognizing the far reaching effects their actions have. It’s also ok to make mistakes sometimes and say something rude or hurtful on accident–everyone does. What makes them the good and wonderful people that I am so proud of is the ability to recognize when you mess up and apologize for it and try not to do it again.

I also told them that the class next door where the note was sent is a freshman class. My kids are juniors and they are very much examples of behavior for the younger kids. I explained that if my juniors show intolerance as being acceptable that the younger kids will be just a little bit further towards being uncaring of the people around them.

The boy who wrote the note is visibly upset and writing an apology letter. He will be reading the apology letter to the class next door at the end of the period. He almost cried when he told me he was sorry for letting me down. He’s really not a bad kid and I assured him that I won’t like him any less for this and I won’t be mean. But I do need him to show that he understands what the grown up thing to do is. And he’s doing it, with a little encouragement of course… but lots of teenagers refuse. And the letter he is writing is very thoughtful and considerate and sweet. I’m proud of him.

Not up for this

My fun day at home wasn’t so fun by the end. By early afternoon my head hurt, my neck hurt, and if I move around my stomach let me know that a run to the bathroom was imminent. And, whatever was in my system was letting me know that it wanted out of my system anyway with a lot of pain involved.

Well that rocked. Or something. I slept through most of the afternoon and still went to bed early. I woke up at 3 am and rolled over and noticed that my stomach still hurt enough that even minimal movement is agonizing. So I called in sick to work and Noah drove me down there to deliver lesson plans. Have I mentioned that I love my husband?

When I’m sick I am even more whiney and babyish than usual. So when I got an email from a girl I sorta know this morning asking for references for Tom I nearly cried. I told her that yes, he is very safe and will almost certainly never cross any boundary she has and let it go at that. I didn’t tell her that he is a great casual play partner and a difficult boyfriend. I didn’t tell her that she should stay emotionally uninvolved so that she can walk away when she stops being “new” because his interest will gradually fade anyway. *sigh*

And right now I am feeling the disadvantages of being poly/open/slutty. I’m tired of telling people I am not interested. I want a break from having to deal with being nice in letting people down gently. I always feel guilty and I want to not have that feeling for a while. I’m tired of having to give justification for why I don’t want to play/fuck/date/whatever. Once or twice I’ve said, “Right now I’m just so into my husband that I’m not interested in anyone else” and people follow that up with, “Well, when then?” Excuse me? You just put yourself on the “never” list.

I’ll quite bitching now. I hate being sick.

Timeline of insanity.

 

Three years ago today my favorite dance partner, terpsichoros took me to my first DHP. I went because I heard it was wild and exciting. There was also this other boy going and I wanted to flirt with him a lot. Tom and I had very tentatively opened our relationship in December though sex wasn’t permitted with anyone until January. I was on a mad hunt for new people because the near celibacy of the previous year and some were just too much for me. At this DHP I ended up sandwiched between the boy I was crushing on and the strange host of the party. I never did figure out what made him go for me so hard that night.

I went out on first dates with the host of that party and the boy I was crushing on within a week. 🙂 The other boy was an intermittent part of my life for about a year in a very casual way. But uhm… the host, that would be Noah, didn’t end up being casual. At that time he had a primary and I had a primary and I had a lot of rules governing how much contact I got to have without outside people and there were time restrictions on how quickly anything could happen. Which means that on my first date (2/26) with Noah I told him that there would be no sex. Given what a pushy tramp he is he still was very pushy and forward sexually and that pushiness very nearly made it so that he didn’t get a second date. But I spent time with him, often going to the gym with him, and talking over the next few weeks. About a month later we finally had sex and it was ok. 🙂

We got closer and more emotionally intimate. He became the first and only person to ever ask me, “What happened to you?” He is still the only person to ever care that way for me. He wants to see me. We dated until late November. During this period I was the one insisting that I was still just a secondary. He was very enamored of the idea of my being a co-primary with the other girl he was involved with. I had the sneaky suspicion this wasn’t actually ok with her at all and later it was discovered that I was basically right. I broke up with him because I would not be “co-primary” and I didn’t want to come second behind her. I wanted to be the Most Important Person to someone and as long as I was so obsessed with Noah and enraptured with him I couldn’t look for that. It never entered into my head to ask him to change the nature of his relationship with the other girl. That would not have been ok in my head.

So I dumped him, hard. It wasn’t pretty for either of us. It didn’t take long (maybe a month or so) and even though I was pretty certain that a Relationship wouldn’t work I just couldn’t stay out of his bed. Ok, maybe the sex was better than ok. 🙂 But I tried to keep distance there. Then I made a nine month mistake commonly referred to by short hand as “Puppy.” During that period I managed to stay out of Noah’s bed through sheer force of will and desperation to find something that might work somewhere else. Noah was still very much my best friend. His relationship with the other girl went away with much drama. He dated other people, some for short periods some for longer. He started dating a very nice, gentle girl while I was early on in my mistake. I thought he was happy. I was trying so hard to be happy.

Then, by a year after breaking up with him, I was single again and stopping to look at my life and what I wanted. I was still spending time with my wonderful best friend. I was still pretty completely obsessed with him. I dreamed about him. I thought about him all the time. I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to ruin his happy relationship with the new girl, I had broken up with him and I didn’t deserve him anymore. Though I did have active plans to ask him to knock me up when I was 26/27 because I couldn’t imagine a better co-parent.

But in March, two days before the second anniversary of the first time we had sex, he came over to have dinner and hang out. We did that often without it turning into anything other than friendship. This time he told me that he wanted me more than anything, that he wanted to marry me and spend forever with me, and even though he believed I would say no–he had to ask or he wouldn’t be able to forgive himself. I sat there in stunned shock for a couple minutes trying to find words. He believed this meant I was trying to figure out how to break it to him gently that I didn’t want him and started stammering out how he knows it won’t work and I don’t want him and… I told him to shut up and launched myself at him and told him yes. Yes, I would marry him. Yes, I want him. We did kiss, but very specifically on both our parts we kept all clothing on. He uhhh was still with the other girl. We talked about how much it was going to hurt her and I was very sad there was no way that I could see for all of us to be happy. I wasn’t going to give up on him again though, not for anything.

He broke up with her. It was uncomfortable and hard. I really have nothing negative to say about how she responded at all–there would have been no better way for her to be. Noah and I started trying to figure out how we fit together without any one else being between us. It was actually a slow warm up. Even though we were sort of technically engaged already we tried to not be instantly together all the time or enmeshed. We only saw one another a couple times a week for a few months. We didn’t advertise how seriously we were taking the relationship for a while. I told him that it was important to me that he not just be exchanging one full time girl for another full time girl. We had to be seperate for a while before we could be together. That sort of worked. The warm up was slow-ish (I’m honest) and good. We started making plans for the future.

One thing we talked about a lot was selling this house and renting for a while so that we could build up a more significant deposit on a better house. Eventually this plan was vetoed for a variety of reasons, but not before his then housemate moved out. It was June by then (whoo hoo, three whole months later) and I was experiencing plagues and pestilence in my apartment. (The flooding from the upstairs toilet and the bug infestations were just Not Funny.) Given that he needed to have some help with his mortgage it looked like he might have to get a new housemate. But… my apartment was sucking… So given that I would be moving in sometime in the near future anyway I just moved in then. Then I ran off to the east coast on vacation and started proceedings for the gorgeous ring that is mine.

We spent the summer trying to figure out how/if poly was going to work for us. Yeah, most of what we figured out is that poly is a fucking headache. We were also talking about the ominous cloud of wedding planning hanging over our heads. Then I got sick. And people were sweet and wonderful and tried to be helpful in convincing me that going to a doctor would be a good idea. In this process they told me that some of my symptoms could potentially indicate a very serious illness that could kill me. While in the midst of freaking out at the idea that I could die I looked over at Noah one night before going to bed and said, “If it turns out I am dying, can we go get married this weekend so that at least I get to be married to you before that happens?” He agreed. So I went to the doctor–uhm yeah… not dying. I’ll be fine. Well don’t I feel silly. So I came home all sheepish and told Noah that I wasn’t dying. He was happy about this. I sat there and fussed and dawdled as I worked my way up to saying, “So uhm, would you be interested in getting married this weekend anyway?”

This was on Thursday before Labor Day weekend. We found a lovely B&B up in Tahoe, booked a room for the weekend and drove up on Friday. We bought a pretty dress and lovely gold rings on the way (my “real” ring still hadn’t arrived). We had a lovely night enjoying our last night of sin before we became all legally sanctioned. The wedding was small (us and the minister) and quick. We said our own vows and I had moments of terror–oh god, what if I am FUCKING UP?!!!! But I stomped that voice out ruthlessly. We went back to the B&B and had a lovely dinner and enjoyed our wedding pint of Haggen Das vanilla ice cream–it’s all about priorities. 🙂 We drank port and enjoyed one another very much.

By late September neither of us were dating anyone else. The poly headache just kind of… was shelved. We fell more and more deeply into enjoying one another and figuring out the rocky bits of how to deal with one another (I may be harder than average to handle, but Noah has his moments too). Meeting his family over Thanksgiving was an experience I will never forget, or need to repeat.

We had a lovely fun Christmas season with some really hot people, but have been really cheerfully monogamous for the past couple months. Given that breeding is in the pretty near future it looks like monogamy will continue to be the mode for the forseeable future. Yeah, we are crazy enough to want to breed and to do it soon.

Do I know this relationship will work out? No. I’m really hoping. I believe that a lot of what makes relationships work is wanting to make them work and I think we both have a very high level of investment in making this work. I love him. I like him. I think this has at least as much potential as any other relationship and more than a good many. So I’m hoping.

Thank you terpsichoros. I owe you more than I can ever repay. You gave me dancing, which I love, and you introduced me to my future. Did you have any idea what you were doing? 🙂

Stuff that needs to get to people.

aberrantvirtue we have that wireless router you said you wanted, but we haven’t seen you. We also have an American Gift Giving Holiday present for you. I would like to get this stuff delivered very soonish. When?

cyclothemia we have weird stuff from Japan for you. When can this be exchanged? Maybe Thursday at PE?

labelleizzy we have a Christmas present for you. When can this be passed along?

rose42dance we have an American Gift Giving Holiday pressie for you. Must be exchanged. When?

mzmtnlion have two pressies. Must give. When?

teamnoir have pressie. Must give. When?

loren_q see above.

i_am_dsh see above.

flyinamazon see above. 🙂

blackrose900 have shirt that will likely fit you. Is Gorgeous. Will I ever see you again?

Alright! Let the pinging begin…

{dirty} Going out?

I have a wonderful friend here from Boston and he would like to go to the pervy venues. We are going to BaGG and we plan to hit PE and Edges. I would really like it if lots of people could come with us so I am soliciting the opinions of people as to which nights would be best for PE and Edges.

Come on! It would be fun!

Weekend good, computer bad.

I had a pretty fabulous weekend. Vegas rocked. I felt some constant frustration that I couldn’t stay up late, but that’s how my life goes. (I wake up at 5am most days and pass out by about 9. My internal clock does not appreciate attempts to fuck with the system.) We saw amazing shows and it is really interesting how Noah and I like different things in performances. He is really into the big technical spectacle and I want audience participation and silliness. S’all good. 🙂 For me, once they demonstrate that the stage can move around and do neat stuff I’m impressed for about 2 minutes, then I want to get back to them proving that the actors have talent and are nifty. Yeah I know, your stage moves–so what? But, he loves them moving the stage and blowing fire. I will continue to think Zumanity was the best anyhow. 😉

Holy shit crowded. It was apparently a bad weekend to be there. Though we got to stand very close to Dennis Rodman. I vaguely sort of recognized that he was some famous basketball player–I had to ask an employee of the casino who he was. 🙂

So much happened. I want to tell it all, but I have laundry to do and an evila to pick up from the airport.

My current bitch is that my god damn computer isn’t working. And my email can’t be reached at all. Good thing I have the work laptop as a back up. *sigh*

Good Grief

One of my students drew a picture of me as a super villian and showed other students. The overall reaction has been, “She looks like a dominatrix!” Oh my god.

This from the kid who wears a collar. And apparently she is making copies of the picture and passing it around.

Oh. My. God.

And here’s the link: http://img242.imageshack.us/img242/5313/gibbssupervillainsu9.png

Mmmm yay

Last night we had an amazingly tasty dinner at The Plumed Horse. It’s a fancy French restaurant in Saratoga. He had the venison, I had the Kobe beef. He talked me into trying foie gras (I think I spelled it right). I had a freakin tasty salad. He seemed to enjoy his chocolate fondant; I worshipped my Grand Marnier souffle. (Spel?) And I don’t know what kind of wine we had, but I enjoyed the hell out of most of the bottle on my own. *grin*

By the time we got home I was absolutely smashed, oh… there was also a very tasty glass of ice wine at the end.

I have decided that I need to stop drinking hard alcohol and become a wino. Hard alcohol makes my tummy hurt and wine doesn’t. 🙂 Yay for smashed and no hangover or tummy ache!

And the after party at our house… damn. *happy sigh* I loves my husband.

So today I am drowsy and very mellow and happy. It’ll be a good day.

Mmmm commercialization

In my career I see messloads of emphasis on V-Day. ASB makes messloads of money off of bringing around balloons, candy, cards, etc. One of the kids gave me a cute little card. It says, “Hope your day is a big hit!” with a picture of Scooby Doo. 🙂 He asked me to be his Valentine too. I found that quite adorable. I specifically did not give him a hug afterwards though cause if he does have a crush encouraging it would be bad.

We are going out to dinner and that will be fun. It’s kind of weird to look at expectations. I don’t really want much attention paid to it, but at the same time I feel weird knowing that not much attention is going to be paid to it. I feel like there is some deeper badness implied by mostly ignoring it. But I also know that if i had given one second of hint that I wanted Noah to pay attention to it he would have gone way overboard in standard Noah fashion.

He actually made dinner reservations without my knowledge or input. He did take initiative. Noah is sweet and wonderful. Ok, no stupid angsty shit over the fact that I’m not getting balloons. 🙂

And rbus: the history of Ted is simple. Tom gave me Ted for our first Valentine’s together. I teased him that he bought it at the grocery store on the way home because he realized, “Oh shit… I didn’t do anything for Valentine’s” and he said that wasn’t true. At this point I believe him. It’s all weird. Ted became my constant companion for sleeping basically immediately. I keep him with me for sleeping with such intensity that he has gone on almost every single trip I have been on since then. I had Edmund for a long time–he was another bear that Tom and I had together. Eventually Edmund went to live with a nice girl who really needed a bear to love. Edmund went on a few trips Ted didn’t for a variety of reasons. Edmund went to Ireland by himself because I left Ted on my boyfriend’s bed on my way to the airport. 🙁 That was sad.

But! It’s been a great few years!

A weekend

It is interesting to me to see who I want in my life and who I don’t. It is interesting to me to see what kinds of arguments I get in. I got into an argument about home schooling on Sunday. I have a serious issue with the people who believe that the only way to get proper socialization is to be forced to go to school. I happen to believe that school is a hostile environment and one I don’t think is beneficial to very many people. Ok, you disagree. Well… uhm, go you? Glad you fit in then.

I had an epiphany yesterday while reading the book Undefended Love my adopted mommy gave me. Maybe–just maybe I am not bad. It’s a very weird/disorienting/hard thought. But I’m going with it. It has been hard to stay present with it while going through some unpleasant interactions, but it’s going ok.

Hard therapy conversation. I told her stuff about my dad. I think I am going to journal it soon. It’s hard to be really honest and up front about some of it. I’m not sure if the stuff my dad did was worse or easier than the stuff strangers did.

I’m still not over him, and that is hard sometimes. I am trying to move past it, but it is not the easiest thing I have ever done. I grew up with him. He was my Daddy. (If you don’t know who I am talking about, don’t worry about it.)

I got bit by a spider. My arm hurts less than it did, but my forearm still hurts. I still have very little ability to grip with my hand. My stomach hurts, but my stomach almost always hurts so I’m not going to attribute it. I’m alternating being hot enough to sweat and feeling chilly. This seems bad. Apparently me being hurt is cause for some people to laugh. I will remember that.

Noah overwhelms me with how amazing he is sometimes. And sometimes I am reminded that he is a human boy and not totally perfect. That’s hard sometimes.

The kids are all kinds of fucking wacked.

Today is a wacky day. I don’t have “wacky” days very often. Kids are in massive trouble left and right way over my head. One of my girls has a warrant out for her arrest. 🙁 I’m sad that I sent her to the office right before the parole officer arrived to pick her up. I wish I had told her to run. People calling my class to interrupt and find out if I still have oranges. WTF PEOPLE!!! I’M BLOODY TEACHING!!! Then, when I come in from dealing with drama with a kid outside the class turns into, “Are you pregnant?” “No. I’m not pregnant, I’m fat. Get over it.” “Are you sure? You look pregnant.” !!! WTF!!! And I responded (very loudly) “I am NOT PREGNANT.” I said this loud enough that the teacher in the next room thought it would be funny to call and say, “My class would like to know if you are pregnant.” This is my buddy. I hung up the phone and yelled, “I hate you!” His room busted out laughing.

I think my phone rang a total of 6 times in one period. The kids never shut up. I finally made the biggest talker take a lap. They so got on my nerves. And settling down into 7th period has been a nightmare. I am so keyed up.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

And now Marcie thinks it’s funny to ask me if I am pregnant. NOT FUNNY.

re: Rose42dance

Pryankster list just received:

Good news! Just heard from Sara, and apparently the surgery went well. She’s out
of recovery and in a room, and when I spoke with her they were just bringing her
some juice. They want to keep her there until she’s eaten and passed a meal, so it
may be a day or two. She’s on pain medication from the surgery, and sleeping quite
a bit, so the hospital policy is to block incoming phone calls for 24 hours after
surgery. She’ll be able to take calls starting tomorrow morning.

Visitors are allowed, however, and visiting hours end at 9:00 tonight.

The hospital’s phone number is (510) 537-1234, and she’s in room 2404.

(If you don’t know who this is talking about, don’t worry about. Pryanksters–pass it on.)
Yay!

Therapy and boot camp and tooth pain, OH My!

Last night we had therapy. It is interesting to go with Noah. Cause that means all sorts of stuff is coming up which doesn’t usually. It’s scarier than usual. It’s also interesting becasue I know that a lot of my “turning inward” stuff never comes up in therapy but this therapist has already seen it more than once. It’s… disconcerting.

Boot camp is kicking my ass. I need to start taking the stomach medicine before I go because I’m in serious pain and I want to puke before it is over. 🙁 But I kept going through the whole thing even though I was doing it very slowly. My whole body hurts. I am so fried. And three more days this week… *sigh*

I get to run off for more dental appointment crap today. I’m not really looking forward to this. But… has to be done.

And tonight is a Pryankster pryactice in the south bay so I’m going to do my best to go. I’m wondering if I will be physically able to move, but I’ll try! I’m terribly GGG.

Now I will go back to watching Toy Story with the few remaining kids in my Comp and Lit class. (The sophmores are off taking the exit exam.)

Weekends are good.

I got to see several friends I haven’t seen in a while. That was nice. I also got to go rock climbing! It was totally fun even though I suck. 🙂 Would anyone be interested in going with me again? I promise that next time I will make sure I get a belay class so you aren’t stuck bouldering. 🙂

Much yummy snuggly time on Sunday. Mmmmm. I loves my husband. Along with a bit of “processing.” I’m tired of processing. *sigh* I need to work on being less crazy though, so I’ll keep it up.

This morning started at 5am. I rolled my ass out of bed and went to boot camp. I kept the very out of shape and heavy older woman company as we walked and occasionally sorta half-jogged around the track. I didn’t keep her company to be nice, I did it cause I am that freakin out of shape. heh But, I feel alright. My back is a bit wonky but that’s ok.

How does one be positive? I try so hard and yet… I don’t know. I can’t seem to manage it in an ongoing fashion.

And: I am often in the car between 3:30ish and 6-ish very bored. Who likes talking on the phone? I have this phobia of calling anyone because so many of my friends are passionately anti-phone but surely I am not the only one who likes talking to people on the phone…