Tag Archives: questions

Officiating a wedding.

Hey folks! I have a whole set of questions for you!

I know that I know folks who have officiated weddings. What did this process entail for you?

Two of my former students are getting married. My girls will be the flower girls and I was asked to officiate the wedding. I feel quite flattered. <3 I had both of them together one year and the bride was my student aid the next year. She was one of the kids who helped paint my house. I feel quite close with her in particular.

So this is sweet and thrilling. But I'm all… Oh! That sounds like an adventure! With hoops to jump through! Oh gosh. What are those hoops again?

So I ask you, oh LJ because I know some of you have experience. 🙂

I was asked a question! I

"Triaging you mental health? That sounds really useful; I'd love to know more about this process if you're willing to share!"

tri·age

/trēˈäZH/
Noun
The action of sorting according to quality.
Verb
Assign degrees of urgency to (wounded or ill patients).

I are fucked up. If you want to know why, now there is a book!  I'm pretty excited about that. 🙂 The whole being able to post a link thing. Anyway.

Ok, not all of my fucked up is in the book. I have other stuff too. Lots of stuff. Sometimes I feel like I am drowning.

I'm not very good at talking to doctors. I have had a very high number of extremely negative experience with doctors. When you're starting off by being institutionalized and strapped to a table it's hard to not go downhill.  I went to a gynecologist once, asking her about extreme pain in my vagina and lack of libido. She told me to just think of something else because it didn't matter how it felt to me I was only doing it for the man anyway, right? I have had doctors refuse to treat my stomach until I get on psych medication. I have a lot of stories. I don't like doctors.

 Sometimes whether I like it or not I need help with my body. I try to get by without seeing doctors but there are things that I need them in order to accomplish. I want my arms to stop hurting. I understand that this is self-imposed damage; the problem is I really don't understand how to undo it or how to stop doing more. I require help. I need to sleep; without sleep my crazy is totally unmanageable. I've been having pain in my abdomen since Calli was born. the problem is that as more of a phantom pain. It will be hard to figure out what's going on there. It will take somebody trusting that I understand why this feels weird for my body; finding a doctor who will respect what I have to say about my body has been a pretty impossible task so far in life. I have been getting terrible headaches for a long while. I knew my vision had degraded. My eyes are working too hard. I have a lot of ambient stress in my life. I've had some really nasty bacterial infections that only got treatment because friends came to my house and dragged me to the ER. I don't seek medical care unless I feel like have no choice. Usually because I think there is a chance of something killing me or a bone is broken. 

When I decide to take the step of involving a doctor it's a big one. I need people to pressure me to go. I spend my life with the default expectation that I should be in pain. That is just life. I have been depressed for most of my life. It just makes everything hurt more. Keeping going when it hurts that bad feeds my masochism. Of course it is supposed to be this hard for me I'm a fucking loser.

Somehow I always keep walking. I get slower. I drop balls. I bring my focus of life in closer and exclude more and more people. But I always get up every day and am productive. 

So if I want to make a change in my body that is not about immediate death or injury or bleeding… it's kind of complicated The very action of scheduling an appointment and then knowing it is coming up aises my stress level throughout every level of my life. Everything is harder when I have the horrifying impending visit with yet another person who may dismiss me and refuse to help me because I am a fucking loser who doesn't deserve help. I dont really need more confirmation of how unworthy I am.

My abdominal pain is going to be hard to track down. It could be. I don't know. I thought about scripts of how to introduce the problem and I couldn't figure out how to word it for a stranger I don't trust. I can explain it to someone I trust. I can't say it to someone who is going to be nasty to me. I jus can't.

Walking in and saying, "I'm a writer. I hurt my arms." is one of those things wher they just believe you and then start treating you as a writer who is someone of status. quot;Oh what do you write? Do you write professionally?" 

A murky conversation revealed that getting paid for writing does make you a writer. I'm just starting in the transition after being a teacher and now I am a stay at home mom so things aren't instant. I told him I was just a blogger. He corrected me and said I published a book–which people bought thus I am a professional writer.

I like the doctor. 

When I say I need to triage I mean I need to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse scripts in my head for how I will present data to a doctor in order to get what I want. If I can't come up with a good script I just can't visit that issue on a given day. I just can't. I have to perfect the script or I can't talk about it. So I try on a whole bunch of different ways of presenting information.

This time I focused on what would bring me the most instant benefit and the easiest available scripts for building trust. My abdomen is hard for me to talk about. I'm very serious about wanting to not damage my arms. I will gosh darn be proactive about that. I have friends who are in really bad places. I'm scared. Obviously there is information I need to learn in order to not seriously hurt myself. Ok. I can take that seriously.

And I feel like I have taken too much over the counter sleep aid in my lifetime. I need to stop. So I rehearsed how I wanted this problem approached.

I am not a long term insomniac. Since having children I have become an early waker. I'm aware that is a common depression symptom. I deal with atypical depression. Medicating it in the standard ways do not work. I have PTSD. It causes a lot of problems for me but they tend to happen around anniversaries and milestones and holidays. In the scheme of my life they are kind of brief. 

My problem is when I get one night of sleep disruption it starts a cycle. If I let it go I can end up being seriously sleep deprived and it can go on and on for weeks. I've been using the over the counter stuff to stop it at about a week. I want to change my approach.

I asked for something that would be safe to take every three or so days if needed. In general I hope I won't be taking it that often. I will be taking it as soon as I get home from therapy on Tuesdays because that night of lost sleep is a particularly rough one. I slept about six hours last night with .5 mg of Lorazepam. Usually Tuesdays are nights when I get two or three hours of sleep. That's a big step in the right direction. I can't take the over the counter stuff in the same way because I am too groggy the day after. I get home too late at night and I would spend all of Wednesday a zombie; I have to take over the counter stuff by 8pm or it is just a bad plan. I don't get that with the Lorazepam. I have used it in the past for anxiety. I am far less groggy than with over the counter meds.

So the triage process was realizing that I really need to treat my stomach issues, but that will require trust. So I need to go build a relationship. Which means I need to be honest about some of my other sub optimal body issues and kind of pick from the list. My arms aren't something that I experience shame talking about. It's a common, straight forward issue. I knew I could start there and have that be probably taken well.

I was scared about sleep. I probably wouldn't have brought it up only I know I have to stop taking so many over the counter sleep aids. I'm going to die in a car accident driving the next day. Seriously. They just aren't great for my body.

I have to have sleep or I can't manage the stress of my life. Right now my life isn't very stressful. I have a pretty easy life all things considered. But I still can't function without sleep. Sometimes I can't get myself to sleep. I understand my cycles. I've been living in them a long time. I've done hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of reading about my set of issues. I understand how my atypical depression/anxiety/ptsd bounce around. I can describe the process. I can point at dates on the calendar when I will have bad spells. Inevitable as the sun rising.

Figuring out how to explain it was hard. I worked on that script really hard. I am so ridiculously grateful it went well. 

I expected him to send me home with 5-10 pills and instructions to email him and ask for a refill. Instead he gave me 30 pills with three refills. I feel kind of overwhelmed because he asked me point blank questions and I told him that I overdosed on sleeping pills as a teenager so pills are kind of weird for me. I can't swallow larger ones very well–I have a really overactive gag reflex. I don't take pain meds like ibuprofen because I can't deal with swallowing the pills. I barely manage sleeping pills. Those suckers are blessedly tiny. And half a Lorazepam I can't even feel. It's great. 

I will be able to make an appointment to talk about my abdomen. And I'll find other things. But I'm going to wait until after the glasses arrive because I want to see how much difference in general pain the headaches are. I feel like right now I don't have a concise and clear enough case. I will. I'm working on it. I will go to PT and talk about posture and all kinds of aches and pains and ask for advice. I'm going to bloody well take advantage of having this access. I'll be user. Then I will ask for help with my abdomen.

That is what I can handle dealing with right now. If I try to do this faster than I am ready for then I will experience a general uptick in anger and frustration and I will take it out on my kids. That's not acceptable. It is not acceptable to raise my stress level beyond what I can handle while being nice to my kids. That's the line. 

The triage process is slowly increasing how much I think about a given problem until I figure out how to solve it while carefully watching how I behave with the kids. If I start slipping I know I need to distract myself and stop trying to solve the problem for a while.

I need to settle in to this level of progress. Find out what it feels like. See what it does for me. Then think about more change.

Baby steps.

Question month

A friend humored me and asked me silly questions:
What is your name?
What is your quest?
What is the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

My name is Krissy. Not Kristy. Not Chrissy. Not Chryssi. Not Crissy. Not Krissie. Not Krissi. Man I’ve gotten some weird misspellings.

To find contentment with my life. It’s an awesome life. I just wish I directly enjoyed it more.

No clue. 🙂

If anyone else has any questions you can backtrack to that post. I mostly make the assumption that because I haven’t met many new people question month is kind of pointless at this point. I overshare beyond what people want to know anyway.

Thinking about schooling

I really like a lot of the theory behind unschooling (google it if you want to know what it is) but I’m pretty opposed to radical unschooling. I’ve been having interesting conversations with Noah about this topic and the gaps in education he worries about. I have different things I worry about. I’m not sure where things will shake out for us exactly, but I’m kind of randomly curious.

What things do y’all think are necessary for one to be an educated and/or well rounded person? What do you actually think it is necessary to learn?

Dear Lazyweb

So I’ve been limping along sans working laptop for a while and it displeases Shanna mightily because I go in the office and she can’t paw at me. ha!

The things I want from a laptop are pretty simple:
very light
able to be dropped, probably repeatedly
decent battery life

I web browse and chat (IM). I run itunes and occasionally watch movies but I really don’t need a big screen given that most of the time I watch the movie up in the corner while I continue to IM and web browse. 🙂 I don’t program or do anything else processor heavy. I’ve used a Mac for the past few years because I got used to the free one I got from work and just continued after that. I’m not part of any computer religious wars and don’t really give a shit about them. I just want hella sturdy and functional while being light. 🙂

Any tips?

Question month!

“Consider your five senses: hearing, sight, touch, taste, & smell.

which one would you surrender first? which one would be last?

and just a couple lines of why.”

Well, seeing as I have a disease that is known for causing deafness I’ve had a long time to come to grips with the idea that I will end up deaf. But if I had to choose which one I would give up it would be smell. I’m not particularly focused on olfactory stuff. I have a hard time breathing out of my nose so I think I miss many/most smells anyway.

Last would be sight for me. I would have a very hard time adjusting to the kind of limits blind people have. I know many who still have awesome lives, but they have no choice but to accept help that would be super hard for me.

Question month!

“What’s your taking on “poly” vs. “dating”, as discussed here: http://fd-midori.livejournal.com/377749.html ?”

– Your definition of each
– Compare & Contrast
– Pros & Cons of each
– Does it ever morph from one to another? Does it ever morph back?
– Are there perceived social status or greater cool-factor to be in one or the other?
– Peer pressure for one or the other?
– Role models for either?
– Source of information about how to have poly relationships or how to date
– Myth around poly, myth around dating

– In my very humble opinion dating is casually spending time together to see where things will go. Poly is about being open to multiple serious relationships. You can date while you are poly.
– Dating can be done by people who are monogamous or by people who are poly. Dating doesn’t have a requirement to be ‘exclusive’ though people can choose to use it that way. Dating essentially means you have no commitment to anything serious in the relationship. Poly in my opinion involves having some level of commitment with the folks you are dating. It doesn’t have to be super formal or defined in great detail, but there does have to be the assumption that you take one another pretty seriously and you aren’t going to disappear without notice.
– Pros of dating: no commitment, freedom to be ‘single’, no relationship boundaries on your behavior.
Cons of dating: you don’t necessarily have a good idea what the other person wants from the interactions, you may or may not be looking for the same kind of eventual result as the person you are seeing.
Pros of poly: more people who are committed to you means more support, possibly more sex, the ability to get needs met by disparate people, the freedom to explore many more aspects of yourself than is generally allowed in monogamy.
Cons of poly: you have to juggle the needs of multiple people, scheduling can be a serious bitch, you need to have an extremely high skill level at communication for it to work, you need to ensure you are only involved with people who are very emotionally mature or it descends into a drama clusterfuck.
– Sure it can move in either direction. Depends on the level of commitment involved in your interactions. That’s up to the individuals.
– There is absolutely a ‘coolness’ factor to poly these days. If you are casually dating multiple people with the understanding that once you figure out with whom you want to be in a Relationship and then the other dating situations end you are viewed as limited, narrow minded, unevolved, and sometimes even mean because you were ‘stringing those other people along’. I think that general society has an unfair expectation that people take any dating situation Seriously. I don’t think it’s good for people.
– I don’t think there is pressure to be poly in the general societal pool. 🙂 There is still a strong push in general society to take any/every dating relationship and require it to be a Relationship. People are not really encouraged to casually date if they are monogamous and that’s kind of sad. In the queer/bdsm circles I’ve traveled in there is enormous peer pressure to be poly. I think is mostly because the folks who choose to be active in the public scene are people who are hunting. People are privately kinky all over the place and don’t feel the need to be around ‘the scene’.
– For me personally or for people in general? For me personally I know a few individuals who are fuck-you good at poly. Daddy Joe comes to mind. His extended web seem to by and large have their shit together and I respect that a lot. For people in general I think the ones that are always trotted out are Janet and Dossie because they wrote the book. 🙂 I don’t think there are role models for dating. Maybe there should be.
– I know there are many books on poly but the only one I am personally familiar with is The Ethical Slut. The closest I can come to a book on casual dating is The Rules and it really makes me shudder. It does point out that people shouldn’t be exclusive until it is serious.
– I think there is a pervasive myth that if you are poly you will fuck anyone anytime and it’s not true for the majority of poly folk. There are also a lot of assumptions about how poly relationships work and it is nearly impossible to determine how people structure their relationships without asking. I think that one of the biggest myths about dating is that it has to be exclusive. It really doesn’t.

You can ask me a question here.

(part of the question redacted to preserve the anonymity of the asker)
“Speaking consensually of course, what sexual experience do you think of as the hottest you’ve had? And to be balanced, what sexual experience was the biggest let down/least hot?”

Hm. Hrm. Man this is where my shitty memory causes me problems. It’s a good thing my lovers don’t tend to have thin skins because they could get their feelings hurt by how badly I remember. This is something you aren’t supposed to admit in public but really it has to be sex on drugs. There have been a couple of uhm, altered, experiences that were so incredibly intense and overwhelming that straight sex has just never been able to compare to. I know it’s not pc and all… oh well. My memories of it have to keep me warm while my body is out of commission for such activities. 😀

Although if you want a (mostly) sober experience there was that time in Carmel with Noah. It was the first time we were dating [uhhh, before I dumped him and all] and he got me fairly drunk and introduced me to the wonderful world of anal sex. That was completely hot and wonderful and scary and overwhelming and fun.

If I reveal the biggest let down I’ll hurt someones feelings. So yeah. I’m skipping that one because despite popular opinion I do occasionally have tact. 😛

You can ask me a question here.

Question month!

“Does having a sick and therefore cranky toddler make you want to drop her on her head and at the same time feel guilty about it? ‘Cause that’s what I’ve been feeling all this past week with Miss Snuffly-Grumpygus here.”

Strangely enough, not really. 🙂 My mom was always really hostile when I was sick so it gives me a lot of extra patience. 🙂 And it helps that my stomach hurt yesterday so I’m thrilled to cuddle her on the couch all day. 🙂

questions

Ms. asked me questions. If you want questions say so in comments.

1) How would you say motherhood has changed the essential you, or has it?

Well… I’m not sure. There are big parts of me that motherhood has changed drastically. I’m no longer quite as out there sexually as I once was. I miss that. I’m not sure if it will really come back how it was. And that was the largest part of my identity once upon a time so this is pretty hard for me. Other than that I don’t feel like I’ve changed that much. I’m still bossy and aggressive and rather a control freak. 🙂

2) What does the Christmas season mean to you? What would you like for it to mean to Shanna? Are there traditions you would like to see her grow up with?

Oh man. This is interesting to me. I know what I would like the Christmas season to mean but I’m not sure if I’m there. I would like Christmas time to be when I slow down and look at how awesome my life is and how many wonderful people I have in my life. I like giving presents because I get to show people a very small portion of my affection for them that way. I’m totally a feeder. That’s a lot of why I love making cookies and giving them away. 🙂 I think that I would like Shanna to see Christmas as a time of joyous anticipation. Not just because she is getting presents, but because she will get to see people and do things that are special to this time of year. Next year she will be old enough to help with most of the things I would like us to have as traditions: making cookies, decorating, dancing to cheesy Christmas music, going to look at Christmas lights, cuddling up and reading books while looking at the Christmas tree.

3) Do you miss teaching in a classroom?

More than I’ve ever missed anyone or anything in my life. It’s a near constant ache. That is the thing I have done the best of anything I have ever done. That was me at my best. And it feels like it is gone.

I could probably figure this out

The rumor is that I’m a smart girl and all… but hey! Lazyweb! I’m sure there is some easy way for me to start following a bunch of blogs on blogspot but I have no idea what that way is. I get kind of annoyed with having to go to each separate url from my bookmarks–if that doesn’t reveal modern laziness I don’t know what does. So, does anyone have a super easy shortcut to tell me about?

Oh, and in other news: you all don’t post nearly enough. 😛

Food combinations

This week we are getting:
# Asparagus
# Green Garlic
# Chard
# Salad Mix
# Spinach
# Radishes
# Sugar Snap Peas
# Tokyo Turnips

We still have spinach, some salad mix, kale, and fennel in the fridge as well. I’m trying to figure out meal planning for the week.

We have (in the freezer) chicken, different kinds of sausage, and several cuts of beef.

We have cheese (cheddars mostly, but also some parmesan), eggs, pasta, and rice of several kinds.

Of course there are other things in the house but those are the biggies. Any suggestions?

Subjective opinions.

If I were paying someone to watch my kid while I worked they wouldn’t do any household chores, cook, or running errands. That work is valued by society as being good enough on its own–even if I am paying one person to watch my one child and it isn’t a group situation.

That said, how many hours a day do y’all think a stay at home parent should do housework/cleaning/cooking? As many hours as the work out of the home parent? More? Why?

# I’ve written before, in one of these memes I’m sure, about my first impression of you in Rob’s fiction class oh those several years ago. So I was wondering. Was it my writing or me that first made an impression on you, and how has that impression altered over the years?

Well, your writing marked you as “weird” and therefore more likely to be someone I could get along with, but it was more about you. You are a kind of smart I desperately admire and feel inferior to. You were very nice to me and most people in the MA program looked down their noses at me; I was very grateful. It hasn’t actually changed much. 🙂 You are still a kind of smart I desperately admire and feel inferior to. I deeply admire how focused you are on your writing and I feel like there is no way I could ever do it.

# Do you think you’ll ever go back to teaching, and if so, under what conditions?

This weighs heavily on my mind. I don’t know for sure. When my kids are old enough to basically take care of themselves during the day (maybe 10 or 12?) I would like to go back to working with at-risk kids on a part-time basis. At that point when Noah is working from home they can do independent work for the day. It’s in the back of my mind as something I would really like to pursue. I miss being able to convince kids with low self esteem that they have potential. It made me feel like I was actually doing something good for the planet.

# Same as question 5 above: Where do see Shanna in twenty years? What possible futures have you envisioned for her?

Honestly I have no idea. I’m semi-hopeful that she will be in college or about out of college but if she doesn’t want to pursue that it’ll be ok. I’m trying very very very hard not to push her in any direction. If she wants art or science or music or math or nature or whatever else I will do my best to facilitate her following her passion. I suppose that what I really envision is that she has found something that excites her and she is working towards that.

# You’ve always struck me as someone who gets along with a lot of people, very open about a lot of things, and yet you can be intensely private. What would you say were your criteria for real friends as opposed to people you just like talking to?

heh. This may offend people, but oh well. I’m not sure I understand what “real friends” are. The longer my life goes on the more convinced I am that no one is going to be there for me. Part of the reason I am so comfortable talking about my stuff in public ways is because I am not talking for anyone else’s benefit I am talking for my own benefit. Talking out loud helps me process. I am intensely private because every one I have ever “tried out” to see if they are trustworthy has let me down at a crucial point. Now I only share the things I don’t need any real support about. It plays into my fierce hatred of advice actually. Most of the people who give advice have no intention of being support if their advice goes terribly wrong. Granted, in most situations there isn’t a way for the advice to go terribly wrong, but my feelings stand. It’s similar to why it is so hard for me to do really heavy bdsm play anymore; I don’t trust anyone to help me on the road back to me.

So yeah. I think my criterion are maybe unrealistic and therefore I don’t really know what “real friends” are. I’ve been let down too often.

# How much of what I’ve asked here could be found with a little patience and a detailed search of your live journal?

Probably very little. Maybe the stuff about Shanna. I carefully consider what I reveal and I try not to hurt anyone’s feelings, including my own. I’m very scared and uncertain about teaching. I feel like there is a hole in my heart so I’m not talking about it much–revealing an actual vulnerability is dangerous. I don’t want people to start telling me I should put my kid in daycare and go back to teaching. And there are a few people who are going to feel bad when I say that everyone has let me down. It is going to cause them to feel defensive, maybe they will express it to me and maybe they won’t–but it will change the nature of our interactions.

Questions part 2

1. Teaching was such a part of your life, what, besides the Banana takes
its place?

At the moment, nothing. It’s very hard. I miss it. I feel like part of my identity was taken away and I don’t know what to do about it yet. When she gets older and needs less time with my boobs I plan to volunteer but it’s hard to go work with other children when my child demands so much attention.

2. What are your plans around the interaction of being freaky
and having children, focusing on how it impacts the children. (short
version)

It’s uhm, complicated. Well sorta. I don’t intend to involve her in any way so hopefully there will be no direct interaction. 😀 That said, I don’t plan to pretend I never have sex or that my sex is all missionary position. I know multiple people who have good luck with saying, “There is stuff in this cabinet you don’t want to see. I’m not saying that because I want to keep you out of it. I’m saying that because it will make you want to wash your brain out with acid because you don’t want to think of your parents that way. If you choose to snoop that’s your problem; don’t come whine to me.” Of course this is after many years of doing my best to keep her from finding things accidentally.

3. What would you change in your life that was going on five
years ago or so.

Hm. Five years ago. Five years ago I was just starting to practice poly and I was having a rather fun relationship with a neat guy. I was dancing like crazy. I was in really good physical shape. Five years ago was awesome. But six years ago sucked. What I would change about six years ago was feeling like my life was over because I had HPV.

4. Given the opportunity to study with any writer for a
summer, you pick the location, the time and the writer, who, when, where
and why? 🙂

Amusingly, I wouldn’t pick a writer who was all that interesting. I would probably go visit one of my trash novelist favorites like Jude Deveraux or Betrice Small or Diana Gabaldon or Jacqualine Carey and ask them for help with making my characters more approachable. Right now all of my writing is very personal and I’m not all that friendly of a person so my characters aren’t either.

5. If you had the ability to completely imprint an experience
of yours into the minds/hearts of people around you, what would it be?

I had a student, I’m going to call him Norbert because his real name is just about equally as horrid, and Norbert was a young black man. He was in a gang because everyone in his family was in a gang. He was treated like crap by pretty much everyone on campus because he was a “loser with no potential.” I adored Norbert. We dealt with one another extremely well. He was more willing to do more work work for me than I think he had ever done in his life. One day he came to class in a terrible mood, cussing, being casually violent, and just generally spoiling for a fight. After he tried to provoke a couple of fistfights in class I told him to get out and go sit on the bench outside of class. When I walked outside and sat down next to him I said, “What is going on? You are very angry about something and it has nothing to do with me or my class–so what is it?” He blustered for a bit before he started crying. My big, tough, adult-looking boy started crying. His cousin was shot that weekend. He was scared and grieving and he had no space for that in his life so he had to be mean.

I was never one to be particularly afraid of large black men because they’ve been pretty gentle with me all of my life, but after that experience it goes a bit farther. I wish that everyone around me could get past the “scary” feelings they have about black men and see that they might be terrified like anyone else.

Interviews

Rules:

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me” or something of an equally pithy nature.
2. I will respond by asking you 5 questions of a very personal nature. Be warned!
3. You will update your LJ with the answers to the questions, or there will be trouble.
4. You will include this and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them 5 questions.

I will promise questions to the first 5 people; after that, it will depend on my interest/energy/etc. I will also promise answers to the first five people who want to ask me questions.

1. How did you meet your charming husband?

At a party at his house. I came to the party as boy A’s date hoping to also flirt with boy B and ended up in the kitchen at one point pinned between boy B and the lovely host. Boy A was less than thrilled. Luckily he does still like me and is a good friend.

2. What minor superpower would you love to have?

Hey–I make milk, that is a superpower. 😉 I’m not sure if this counts as minor, but I would love to fly. I fly in my dreams nearly constantly.

3. What aspect of yourself do you feel others really misunderstand?

People think I am far more hostile than I intend to be. My tone of voice often really sucks and I have worked very hard on that. I find that people often tell me, “When I first met you I thought you were a total bitch, but then I got to know you and figured out that you are actually a really neat person.” That always makes me cringe because who likes being told that they make terrible first impressions all the time? How many people haven’t bothered to try and get to know me because of first impressions *sigh*

4. What one aspect of motherhood has most surprised you?

I may get a shoe thrown at me for this. I thought it would be harder. I expected to have post-partum depression and instead my mood has been better/more positive than ever in my life. I thought I would feel more resentment about her constant neediness but I’ve had probably an hour total of her life where I needed a break or else. I thought breastfeeding was going to be difficult and it was simple and painless. I thought I was going to be sleep deprived and cranky and I tend to sleep better than I did before having her. I feel like my mommying instincts have totally worked out for me and I’m grateful.

5. How did you get onto the Internet?

Ha! That would be the lovely Ms aargnzarf allowing me to use her AOL account when we were in high school. I discovered cyber sex in chat rooms and I was hooked. *grin*

Thinking about traditions

I have a mixed history with Christmas. Sometimes it has gone well (I had a couple of good ones thanks to Tom) and sometimes it has gone very poorly. Now that I’m the mommy I get to set a lot of the parameters around how Christmas goes so I’m thinking about that a lot. There are a few traditions my mother started which I want to continue:
-You get to open one present on Christmas Eve. It’s jammies. Ha!
-Your stocking is full of a mixture of very useful things and very silly things. Socks and underwear are pretty standard.
-Home made cinnamon rolls for breakfast. 🙂
-Your “Santa” present is unwrapped under the tree so that you can have something to play with before everyone else is ready to open presents.

What kinds of traditions did ya’ll grow up with? What traditions do you still keep?

Before anyone is snarky: yes, I recognize that many of my friends are Jewish. Tell me about your Winter Holiday of Choice traditions. 🙂

Curiosity

Is anyone going up to Manda and Tristan’s wedding this weekend? Uhm, obviously I mean is anyone from my friends list. I’m sure they have friends, I just don’t know how well we will overlap. I’m curious cause I’ve never been to Camp & Sons before and it would be awesome to have someone show me around without having to be you know, gregarious or outgoing or something ridiculous like that.

And they have outlets, right? I won’t have to try and blow up the air mattress with my lungs? 🙂