I now own 1/6 of Wicked Grounds. That's pretty f'in cool. If you want to know what it is you can shove the name together and put a www in the front and a .com on the end and you will see the nebulous new website. 🙂
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Tag Archives: psa
Hiatus
I need to spend more time on real life. I’m doing too much escaping. To this end I’m going to lighten up my reading load on the internet. I don’t know if livejournal will hit my radar much. Not like people other than rbus are posting anyway. These days I come and read on Sunday nights just to keep up with him and otherwise I don’t check. I hope I don’t start forgetting. I really like my rbus hour every week. It’s the closest I have to keeping up with a tv show or a periodical story. 😀 I can’t wait to see the murder book when it is done. If it is for sale I am buying more than one copy.
I will probably still post because I think by expressing these things in writing. I love comments and that may be the easiest place to poke me for conversation if you aren’t keeping up with me in real life. I’m not great at responding to emails because they get buried in my inbox. Since I switched to gmail I can’t organize my inbox for shit. I really don’t like the feel. I kind of want outlook back. I lose messages and then I never respond and I feel like a total asshole. Then I build up all this anxiety around the person I forgot to respond to (I kind of remember in my head occasionally that “I should go do that”) and it gets harder and harder. Till I don’t want to. Till I don’t want to see them at all because I feel so stupid and guilty.
I need to get off the internet for a while. Reading it isn’t doing great things for me.
PSA: writing time
So I have this super hot girl in Duluth freakin Minnesota that I’m getting to know. It’s a very interesting experience for me. I may not be writing much on lj for a while because every spare minute I have for writing is going towards wooing her. Uhm, talk to y’all later.
Announcement and House projects
I have just decided that I am going to publicly announce that my Sarah (dangerpudding) is moving in with us towards the end of the summer. Right now August 1st is our target date. All co-housing situations have the potential for drama and stress. However we are going to choose to say, “We are ignoring the fact that often there is roommate drama! It’ll work out!” Basically I anticipate us getting some outside mediation at certain points to make sure my head is out of my ass. 🙂 There is so much potential for good here it isn’t funny. Sarah and I travel well together, spend excessive amounts of time together, and are both good at retreating to our rooms when we need a break. Cross your fingers for us and send us your blessings because this working out could be the solution to many of mine and Sarah’s problems. Good wishes are very very helpful.
That said! If Sarah is moving into my house there are many things that must be changed. Our house isn’t very big and we are currently using all of it. It’s going to mean a lot of adjusting our current house usage and getting rid of stuff. It also means that I have to get around to finishing the garage conversion. 🙂 Noah has the next four days off of work and I am going to take advantage of him being home to get through chores as fast as possible. Lots of painting. Lots of moving furniture. Other random sorting or minor chores that need to happen in the next few months.
As is my want, I periodically put on here that I would love house with house chores! Sometimes people show up and sometimes they don’t. Both are perfectly ok. But, if anyone out there has not much to do over the next four days this would be a better-than-average time to come over. Even if you don’t want to do house chores Shanna would love a play mate. 🙂 Or you could just chat with me. I’m open to many variations. 🙂
Elephant in the room
I’ve started and stopped this post at least 20 times. I smoke pot. There. I’ve said it. I have a medical prescription for anxiety and it really really helps. I can go from having super intense panic attacks so nasty I feel like I am dying to being calm and cheerful in a few minutes. I feel like this is the miracle I have been waiting for most of my life. I feel like I get a boost in seratonin. I really feel cheerful. I can be so very patient. On days when we just can’t find a calm/safe space for us to interact if I go into time out for 10 minutes we can go back to doing just fine.
But I feel guilty. I feel like this proves that I am a horrible mother. I don’t smoke all the time. I don’t smoke around my kids. But I feel guilty. This is a crutch. I have tried a lot of psych meds and had no luck. This is amazing. While I am high I feel comfortable in my skin which is pretty much anamolous in my world.
But I feel guilty because as my friend said “The people who used drugs when I was growing up were jerks” and I’m terrified of becoming them. People who use drugs are BAD. I don’t want to be BAD. But I keep on chores better when I am smoking regularly (no lie, it’s weird), I like my life more.
This is complicated. And it’s now part of me. I’m not sure if I am a permanent user or if I am just getting through this patch. We’ll see. This is the right choice for now. (Before anyone starts in on eating instead of smoking–I’m trying. It’s hard to find a consistent method that way.)
And it’s done.
After 9 days of contractions active labor began at ~6:30 this morning and our new daughter Callidora Lyra was born at 2:52. She was 8 lbs 12 oz, 21″ tall. She was born in the water in our home and she is completely amazing.Ad
Oh yeah
I got a new cell phone to replace my dying one and they couldn’t port my contacts. I am pretty unlikely to take the initiative to do it all by hand. If you have my phone number and you would like me to have yours this is a great time to send me a text message with your name. 🙂
ETA: I will not be responding to the text messages because we get a limited number. 🙂
Douchebaggery
So on occasion I have been known to behave in a less than saint-like fashion. One might go so far as to say that once in a great great great while I’m a complete and total bitch. Of course these events are few and far between. *cough* Ok, so at least they aren’t happening weekly. I would like to think that in the realm of crazy wives I’m not so bad but I am realistic enough to know that sometimes I kind of suck. Just like my wonderful, patient, fabulous husband is on occasion a poopyhead. It happens to the best of us.
You might be wondering what’s my point? Well, my point is that Noah feels like he can’t tell anyone about me being uhm less than polite. I think this is a fairly unhealthy situation for him to be in. I think that feeling like he has to stay isolated and put up with my sometimes unpleasant behavior smacks of abuse and that’s really not cool. So whereas I’m glad he doesn’t spend a lot of time bitching about me I think that some venting occasionally is healthy. I’ve told him this and he only sort of believes me. This weekend I even cornered him in front of a friend and said the same thing. Now I’m going even further and telling him in front of the whole wide internet that it’s ok to tell people that I am mean to him sometimes. It’s ok to say, “I’m not really sure what to do when she does ‘x'”.
Really. It’s ok.
One more time…
I feel like a broken record but such is life. Unless I specifically ask for advice I am not looking to receive any. I am not the sweetest person when people offer me advice. I recognize this and I’m ok with it. If you don’t like my response to you when you give me advice might I suggest that you stop giving me advice. My response is unlikely to change and you are going to spend a lot of time feeling frustrated with me because I am not polite. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Think about that. (Ok, I don’t know if that is actually the definition… but it’s a really awesome pithy saying.)
HPV vaccine follow up
I got this as an email forward. I don’t know much about it and I can’t vouch for the veracity, but it is worth reading if you did the HPV vaccine.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
There are thousands of young girls and women around the world who had the so-called ‘cervical cancer’ shots and got very sick. WE NEED TO HEAR THEIR STORIES. PLEASE HELP US BY SHARING THIS MESSAGE WITH YOUR NETWORKS INCLUDING (YOUNG) WOMEN AND GIRLS YOU KNOW.
FIRST: DID YOU HAVE A BAD REACTION after Gardasil or Cervarix injections (the so-called Cervical Cancer vaccines)?
* Did you get sick: seriously or just a bit; are you better now?
* Were you told about potential side effects?
* Do you now believe you won’t get cervical cancer?
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! CHECK THE BLOG
_http://womenhurtbymedicine.wordpress.com/
Check PAGES for background info and submission details and e-mail your story to _gertrudegreen@hotmail.com
_
SECOND: DO YOU KNOW OF ANY REPORTING OF BAD REACTIONS?
* If you are (or know) a journalist who has written critical stories about the vaccines, please send then to us for the background pages;
* If you are (or know) a health practitioner and have seen girls and women suffering adverse effects after Gardasil (or Cervarix) injections, please write to us.
* Concerned parents: if you daughter doesn’t want to write – you can.
YOUR STORY COULD HELP SAVE OTHERS:
* With 11 deaths already allegedly linked to Gardasil (9 in the US and 2 in Europe) and thousands of adverse health reports, we hope that girls and women speaking out about their own experiences will help us pressuring health authorities to review the current mass experimentation on (young) women.
* It will not be known for at least another 10 to 20 years whether the anti-HPV vaccines will indeed lower the incidence of cervical cancer or whether they were a gigantic waste of (public) money and an extraordinary money raiser for the pharmaceuticals involved (Merck, CSL, GlaxoSmithKline). Meanwhile lots of women will suffer. Send us their stories!
PLEASE POST AS WIDELY AND INTERNATIONALLY AS YOU CAN AND LINK YOUR WEBSITES TO OUR BLOG (and tell us about it).
Renate Klein and Bonnie Bickel
—
*Recently published: Marti Kheel, /Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist
Perspective/. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008*.
psa–the future
How do I say this. How do I believe this. But yet… Noah and I have decided to leave the bay area. We have been talking extensively for the past almost two years about how we would manage to afford the things we want while staying here and the options have never been pretty. Mostly what we figured out was all the ways we would have to compromise the things we want in order to afford the basics of life here. Of course it would be easy to stay here if I kept working, but that would be giving up on the most important things that we want for our children and that is to not put them in daycare and to allow them to homeschool. This is a difficult position to be in.
After a great deal of talking about our options we decided that having a certain standard of living is non-negotiable for us and the only way to have that is if we drastically cut some of our primary expenses. The only way we can make this happen is if we leave California. We have considered a wide variety of locations as possible destinations and have decided that Pittsburgh is the best option for us. Noah has friends there, job leads, and the cost of housing is simply unbeatable for places we would consider living.
We have been doing research on the area, but of course we realize that there is only so much we can do from our comfy California couch. If you have input on things we should know about different areas of town or specific helpful information about cross country moves (I have never done this sort of thing before) please feel free to tell us.
What I (and probably Noah too) don’t want to hear are complaints or criticisms about our choice, whining about how we can leave, dire predictions of failure, or other snotty opinion sharing of an unhelpful nature.
We don’t plan to leave until after the baby is born. Apparently home birth isn’t exactly legal (or illegal–it’s confusing) in Pennsylvania so it’s going to be a bit odd to deal with that once I’m already set on my option. I also have the convention in February to consider and I’m not going to flake on my obligations. (I swear Jon–I won’t abandon you too.) We will miss people, of course. But I believe that those who are our friends will handle the distance. Those who fade away probably would have anyway.
(Yes, I know this is public.)
Filter update and psa sorts of stuff.
It seems as though baby stuff is likely to obsess me for a while to come. In addition to all of my current filters: http://rightkindofme.livejournal.com/330553.html#cutid1 (comment if you change anything) it seems like a good idea to give people the chance to opt-in rather than telling them they have to opt out of hearing about baby-babble.
Oh, I’m pregnant. 🙂 According to how such things are measured I am about five weeks pregnant. My estimated due date is Friday, May 23, 2008.
I can’t keep a secret to save my life.
Worth saying.
I’ve said it before and I’l say it again. If you are my family you get to ask me to pick you over other people because that is what family means to me. I believe in taking sides. I believe that is what actually loving someone means.
And it is only for family that I will deal with feeling so frustrated and still actually talk to the person I am angry with. Just sayin. Chosen family means I choose you. No buts. No except for.
Ya’ll still piss me the fuck off sometimes.
Clarification of “not really available”
Quite a while back Noah and I discussed what sorts of things should change about our lives when it comes to having children. As it turns out, we both feel pretty strongly that it would not be a good idea to have outside “relationships” while breeding and raising young’uns. Yes, there is the issue of potential disease risk, but mostly there is the little matter of heavily nesting and wanting to direct that sort of energy towards our family and our future. We both have a tendency towards “Ooh! Shiny!” and that isn’t a good thing to be doing while we should be spending our energy on other things. At this point we are quite firmly into the, “Kid could happen at any point. No really. Any.Day.Now. Ovulate already you stupid ovary!!!!” Heh.
What this means for us is that we are not polyamorous. We are not pursuing outside relationships as they take away energy and time that we want to keep between us. This brings us to the fact that we live in a binary society–if we aren’t polyamorous, we’re monogamous–right? Well, mostly. There will be no baby making sex any year soon as that is something we think would be a very Bad Idea to do while trying to breed. Paternity issues and disease risk just aren’t things we feel are worth the neato-ness of outside sex. Being us, we still really really like the idea of flirting and *some* sexual contact with other people. I suppose this means that we aren’t 100% completely and totally monogamous as oral sex does count as sex. But we also feel like such potential foreys into playing with other people should be done together and very rare. In fact, it isn’t for certain that this will happen and it will be all talked about and stuff and evaluated on a case by case basis of “how much drama could this person potential add into our lives.”
So yeah. That’s what “not really available” means for us. At least until last kid is a year or more old. 🙂 Of course I still like talking about sex, pretty much constantly. Please please don’t take this as a sign of “I want to have sex with you.”
What is the use of “perfect” anyway?- and Anna whining
HEY! ANYONE DRIVING NEAR FREMONT!!! Apparently, the police are out in major force today. Don’t break any traffic laws even slightly.
Now on to the rest of my fussing..
We are about as ready as we are going to get and I’m pretty ok with that level of ready. Yay for ready.
My pissiness this morning centers around Anna. She’s here visiting for a while. I haven’t spent serious time with her in 3+ years. I’ve been uhm, busy.
Backstory: Anna had back surgery about 6 months ago and is in serioius pain a lot of the time. She can’t lift much and she often needs to go rest. I’m fine with this. However, I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. The only thing I have asked her to do was to iron the curtains. There were 6 panels. It took her about 9 hours over two days because she kept complaining about how much she hates to iron. Uhm, well, there isn’t much else you are capable of doing. And I have this awful Puritan work ethic that means I get bitchy about people sitting around doing nothing while I work. It really bugs me. However, I know she can’t do much so I don’t have that high of expectations. Even with really low expectations the fact that she was whining about doing the one small task I gave her really pissed me off.
Oh, and she has been fussing for two days that she had to go buy the Harry Potter book at 9am. Uhm, Anna–do you recognize that we are kind of busy? She gave me this long story basically repeating for me what I know about the fact that her life is really pathetic and she has nothing to look forward to except for this book. I have some sympathy for this, but I also have 100 people coming to my house today.
I didn’t kill her. She has her fucking book. She carried 10 bottles of wine and washed a few bowls. I think that is all I am going to get from her…
But we are done. This rocks. Now I can calm down! Now I get to breathe and chill out and stop stressing. I can do this.
Pressies
Alright. It’s done. I’ve freakin registered. We are registered at Target and at Crate and Barrel. Target has stuff that is more day-to-day useful and C&B has the perty stuff I would really like to have, but will probably never buy for myself because I am too practical.
I would like to say at this exact moment that I am not expecting anyone to buy us anything. I registered because people have been pressuring me to do so. I have a strong dislike of the societal rules that dictate that we should expect gifts just because we were foolish enough to get married. The entire gift giving culture is one I have a hard time with. I love to give presents; it makes me happy to see people enjoy the things I give them. However, when I give someone a present it is 99.99% of the time with no expectation of reciprication or of particular acknowledgment. (I expect Noah to give me Christmas present–but he and I are clear on that so I’m ok with that exception to the normal rule.) I believe that Thank You notes are neat things that are fun to give/get sometimes but should in no way be mandatory. I was not brought up in a family where such things were standard and I have been shocked as an adult by the number of people who have told me that I am rude for not sending them. ?! Wait–aren’t *you* the rude one for rebuking me for the behavior based on my culture?!
So I will say this: I made gift registries because I know that giving presents feels good. However, keep in mind that your culture around gift exchange and my culture around gift exchange may be very different. If it is important to you to get a thank you card, tell me and I will make an effort in that direction for you because I make efforts to accomodate/appreciate my friends as they most appreciate. DO NOT EXPECT ONE AS A MATTER OF COURSE. That custom is not part of my life. If you will feel like I am ungrateful/unappreciative if I do not respond in a certain way, just don’t give me a fucking present because I don’t need more guilt in my life.
(Oh: event date is July 21, 2007. If you don’t know the last name ask me.)
Geeking (a less than cheerful PSA)
I have been having an issue for a while now and I have been trying to deal with it in a way that is simply not working for me. I’m about to drastically change how I deal with it and it seems reasonable to let people know what I will be doing and why.
I love my friends–I really do. I don’t put up with people I don’t like/love very much. I have, however, gotten to the breaking point on geeking. I understand that my friends are all very fascinated by their technical gizmos and programming and whatever else stuff ya’ll are into. I do not share this fascination, not even slightly. In general I understand that my lack of technical interest is fairly uncommon in my group of friends so I just kind of tune out when the conversation gets very technical. Unfortunately it has gotten to the point where I have started timing the portion of geek talking to conversation I am able to participate in and many gatherings are 2/3 conversations I can’t be part of. Given how little time I actually spend with people this is pretty unacceptable to me.
The thing that is bothering me the most is when I manage to start having a non-geeky conversation with one person and someone else joins the conversation and within five minutes they have steered the conversation to where I am completely excluded. I am not saying anyone is awful and horrible for this, but I do think it is thoughtless, inconsiderate, and rude. It is rather difficult to get most of you into a non-geeky conversation at a group event and it is hard for me to keep putting energy into a losing battle of trying. I feel very demoralized and rejected at most group events and that is a big factor in why I have just not been going. I don’t think my friends realize how much you are rejecting my participation in a conversation when you spend hours talking about things I have absolutely no interest in or knowledge of. You might as well switch to German for all I understand.
And I’m done. I’m sick of feeling like that at group events. I’m not going to sit there and feel like shit anymore. I am going to start getting up and leaving. If I am going to be ignored and exluded from conversation I would rather do that in a different place so it doesn’t feel like such a slap in the face. I understand that no one is really consciously trying to hurt me–I do understand that. However knowing that people aren’t trying to hurt me doesn’t change the fact that it hurts me.
I am completely uninterested in being told that I should listen and try to learn from the situation and I would greatly appreciate it if no one gave me such advice. I will in fact be very angry if anyone tells me that I should get over my feelings and try to be more accepting. This is about setting boundaries and I have that right. Once upon a time I used to go to a munch and the boys liked to talk about guns, cars, and computers. Guns and cars are both more accessible topics for me as I have a fairly significant level of understanding of both, however I have no interest. The boys learned that they were free to talk about guns, cars, and computers but I would walk away from the conversation. I am not saying people shouldn’t talk about things I have no interest in, I am saying I am not going to sit and listen. It isn’t that I can’t understand it is that I don’t care to.
A truly sad night.
Kurt Vonnegut died tonight.
Bitches, boundaries, and dirty little secrets.
When I was a kid my mother was fond of telling me: “We keep our dirty laundry in the closet” meaning that we do not discuss the horrible things that happen behind closed doors. I internalized this message and didn’t tell anyone I was abused for years. When I was 15 and had a series of breakdowns I came to the conclusion that I could not live by her directive. Instead I decided that I would have no secrets. I would do absolutely nothing I was ashamed to talk about generally. And if I ever did find I had something I was ashamed of I would talk about it as publicly as possible because then there would be nothing that could be held over my head. I can never have someone emotionally blackmail me with something I have done. I have accepted a small change in this policy in the past couple of years as I have slightly gone into the closet for my job. This has been incredibly emotionally stressful for me and paved the road for me to start keeping other things private. I recently had to look at myself and my life and what I am doing and I realized that I have a dirty little secret. I have something I am deeply ashamed of and that I am hiding from people. When your behavior is at odds with how you claim your behavior is that means that either your opinion of yourself/your ethics is out of date or you need to change your behavior. Given that I am still proud of my basic code of ethics that means that I need to undertake the very difficult and painful task of living up to it.
So here I am. This is my confession. This journal entry is not really filtered for a variety of reasons. I need to say these things about myself in a basically public way because that is how I operate when it comes to things that are bad. I cannot hide them. I debated with Noah long and hard the merits of doing this in a public way and essentially this is something that I need for me. So a lot of people who read this journal are not really used to my harsh self-analyzing posts so this one may be really hard for you. I invite you to skip it if you feel that the messy inner workings of my mind are things that do not need to be part of your life. And given the nature of gossip, if anyone chooses to break the basic confidentiality implied by my journal please at least have the respect for me to tell me that you are sharing this entry with other people. I feel I deserve that.
Going dancing
I was asked to go to the Plough tonight so I’m going to do it. I’m looking forward to seeing people! 🙂