Category Archives: Uncategorized

More cheerful

Today I am feeling happy because I have made a bunch of progress out in the shed. I am getting rid of the debris left from when the housemate before the last housemate was here. (I’m not complaining! Thank you for the roses!) This means I am able to organize the stuff I want to put in there. This kind of anal retentive organizing makes me swooningly happy. 😀

And I am going to squash my “I can do it myself!!!” attitude and gratefully accept help from the wondrous Taylor in finishing the garage. This way it will actually get done instead of me just bitching at Noah that I want it to get done. 🙂 Then I get to move on to feeling angsty about my lack of artistic ability. 🙂 That part will be easier to get done I suspect. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to do the playroom yet but I feel a tantalizing array of options. 😀

Bits and pieces to get them out of my head

Looks like trying to have more of a relationship with my family was a bad idea. 🙁 It’s time to withdraw from that again. Noah gave me some really good advice on how to do it without exploding a drama bomb.

I got into a really bad place for a while there where I was doing the martyr thing full time. That doesn’t help anyone least of all me. I need to knock that crap off. Noah can take care of his own happiness.

Shanna now, quite delightfully, says “owwwww sigh”. For those of you without children this means outside. It’s awesome. She loves her swing so much. I’m thrilled that I got the idea from and and I bought one. 🙂

I’m shifting things around in the house a lot more trying to figure out what arrangements will make me happiest long term because the long term is how long we are here. I really really want to make a cool playroom for the kidlet so I’m looking into that. I have a bunch of cool links that I might post later.

I’m feeling frustrated by the fact that people very very rarely initiate social interaction with me. Why is it that I have to do all of it?

My last tattoo appointment is on August 3rd. We’ll be stopping birth control after that. That means I’m taking advantage of the ability to drink. 🙂

Noah and I had a wonderful date on Monday where we had breathtakingly good food. Being married to a foodie is the best thing ever.

I’m not being good about exercise just lately. This is another thing I need to work on.

Urf and arf. Time to start walking towards the bus stop. I bet Shanna is going to love the trip on BART again. 🙂

What do you want?

I was asked elsenet what I want right now that I won’t be getting anytime soon.

Clothes from this chick on Etsy.
I want to finish the front and back yards.
I would like to remodel our kitchen.
I would really really like another bathroom. (This is probably one of the least likely things.)
To hire someone to trim the tree in the front yard.
I want to finish the garage and turn it into a play room so that I can start sending Shanna out there to play. 🙂
I want to be able to travel more. I think it might be Scotland next.

I think that’s the money-necessary stuff I want at this point. What do you want?

Hey smart people

I’m being asked a question I’m not sure how to answer. This website: http://www.thelocal.se/20336/20090629/ says that they are finding that DNA changes as a result of C-sections. My understanding would be that it would be as the result of trauma. The moms on a mailing list I’m on don’t understand how DNA can change. My understanding is that DNA can be damaged and damage is change. Am I wrong? I have found a variety of other articles documenting DNA change after trauma but I guess I’m just not explaining it well?

She’s a kid

Not a baby anymore. She can now follow directions, sometimes with more than one step. Granted she doesn’t always want to but I think that is the battle of a lifetime. If she bangs on the door to go play out back I tell her, “You have to get dressed and put shoes on first” and she runs back to the bedroom and starts pulling out drawers or she hands me her shoes. When she is tired at night I tell her that we need to brush our teeth before we can go to bed and she heads straight to the bathroom. Oh, and she loves brushing her teeth. I think that is a little weird.

She’s dancing. It is the cutest thing ever. She likes dancing best when she can hold on to something like the table because otherwise she rocks her hips so hard she falls down. She likes to spin in circles.

She is starting to have dislikes about food. When she heartily rejected the eggplant I couldn’t blame her because I wanted to do it as well. 🙂 She is super into fruit. We are now having to deliberately limit sugar because she gets really hyper. I don’t do that with sugar so it’s kind of weird for me. We are now giving her meat occasionally because it was becoming too much of a pain in the ass to keep her vegetarian. Here come the smelly poops! It’s ok we’ve got a good system for dirty diapers.

She went through a potty pause and I haven’t gotten back on the wagon with EC yet. I’m starting today. She knows what her potty is for. She knows how to ask for pottying. It’s time to focus on that again. We are going through way too many diapers. I’m tired of the laundry.

She can sign: more, food, water (used for drink as well), milk, potty, all gone (she isn’t good with this one), and she’s trying hard for dessert. She can say: up, something that sounds a really lot like out (like outside), dow (down), and she mimics sounds a lot.

I’m having trouble with Picasa. I’ll try to upload pictures later.

Real life is really annoying.

I fixed my Quicken problem today. I did it all by myself. Go me! This resulted in me being able to load the last couple of months into Quicken. I almost wish I hadn’t.

The sad truth is that we need to not buy Christmas presents, not go on any more trips, and seriously cut back on what we are spending on food. That spiffy new roof has more lasting effects than my comfort. Money kind of sucks. But if we are really really good then we might be able to go on a trip next year. *cross fingers*

(Icon just because I’m posting naked. :P)

A resolution.

We just got back the appraisal as we are working on a home refinance. Well. We aren’t underwater but the house is less than Noah paid originally. This means that regardless of other preferences we are staying in Fremont basically permanently because we would have to make money on this sale for a move to make sense. So I need to work on my attitude about living here. My resolution is to stop being negative about where we live.

Things I like about Fremont:
-I have a great food system worked out. I have a milk co-op just a couple blocks away (I sometimes walk with the order if it isn’t too huge).
-I really love our weekly walks to the farmers market/store. It makes me feel more like I am living in a community.
-I like that I am getting to know my neighbors and that there are a lot of kids in my neighborhood.
-I appreciate the good Thai/Chinese/Mexican/Lebanese/pizza all within walking distance that are local independent places.
-Even though Fremont is far from many of my friends, I’m still in the bay with all the benefits that entails.
-I’m close to BART.
-Even though I am not yet a good gardener and my yards still have a ton of work left before they are awesome–I can do that work at my own pace and I have a decent amount of room in which to work.
-This house is a really good size for us at this point. I appreciate how much time it takes to keep the house (not much). I like that we have way way more storage space than we need.
-I have awesome solar panels on the roof and with the recent reroofing our house is cool and comfortable even on very hot days.
-It’s not going to be hard to finish the garage to create a playspace when my kids are a bit bigger.
-Our mortgage is fairly low and about to get lower. This allows me to stay home without any financial pressure while still doing awesome travel.

One of these days I’ll have to figure out a name for the house that I like. 🙂

More crap from mom

My mom is in town. The 4th was ok. She had a whole big box full of stuff for Shanna. Some of it I appreciate: the hand-me-down hand knitted/crochet dresses that have been through multiple generations of our family are wonderful. Outside of that… not so much. I can see that we are once again going to have the trampy clothes war. She used to try and put me in awful clothes that I wouldn’t wear. She likes daisy dukes and super short skirts on young girls. She thinks they are cute. I think they are grossly inappropriate. I kind of want to make nasty comments about how she also thought it was fine to send her daughters off with a child molester but that might be pushing the point a bit hard. So yeah. I’m getting rid of the slutty clothes with the tags still on them. I’m not thrilled about the nauseatingly pink clothes either. Pink isn’t evil, I like pink. There is a difference between pink and frilly pepto bismol ickiness. I also don’t think Shanna needs to have jeans that are lace trimmed and covered in little pink hearts. Oh, and she doesn’t need cheap scratchy pepto bismol pink towels either. And she doesn’t need plastic attempts at soft covered books. And the ugly little plastic figurines? Not necessary either.

I’ve told my mother repeatedly that I don’t want her buying a bunch of crap but she won’t listen. She says, “Well it was cheap.” Yeah. It looks like it. Thanks. Save your money. In fact, save the money and pay me back the money you borrowed.

Social issues

So there is a weird situation in my life. There is this guy I’ve known since high school. Many of the people I am still friends with from high school hang out with him quite a bit. They really wish I would “get over” my issues with him and come hang out with the group because it would be fun. They think I should give him another chance.

But you see, the problem is that he tried to rape me. He was physically pulled off my kicking and protesting body by another friend. I’m really not interested in finding out if he is an awesome guy these days because I will never ever trust him.

So it’s all awkward and shit. I get the impression that folks think that since I wasn’t actually raped it’s no big deal. But it is.

That’s what grief is

Yesterday I had my second session with this new therapist. We spent an hour going over my history so that she would have at least some idea of who I am before we got into the fresh stuff.

It was amazing. I’m sad when talking about the old stuff because it is all sad stuff. But when we started talking about Francesca, when we talked about my child, I sobbed. That’s the difference. That’s what I’m struggling with. That’s grief.

Well how about that.

This has never been my hobby horse to ride, nevertheless I find it very interesting that Tripedia has updated their product insert for their DTaP vaccine. From page 11:

Adverse events reported during post-approval use of Tripedia vaccine include idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, SIDS, anaphylactic reaction, cellulitis, autism, convulsion/grand mal convulsion, encephalopathy, hypotonia, neuropathy, somnolence and apnea. Events were included in this list because of the seriousness or frequency of reporting. Because these events are reported voluntarily from a population of uncertain size, it is not always possible to reliably estimate their frequencies or to establish a causal relationship to components ofTripedia vaccine.

I state, once again, that autism has never been one of my concerns when it comes to vaccinations–I mean, look at the rest of the stuff on that list. But I find it interesting that a company is now putting autism in their product insert warning.

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.

I got more words

This has been sitting here for days. I don’t think I did a great job of finishing it, but it’s better than just never finishing.

curls: My hair turned curly in puberty. Before that it was stick straight. I don’t think I have ever recovered from the trauma. On one hand my hair can be very pretty and that is nice. On the other hand it’s a lot more work to make it look nice than I am generally willing to put in. I am really really really not willing to put in the work to make it straight–God that’s annoying. I like that my hair is coarse enough to tie it in a knot and leave it there with nothing to hold it.

Fisher: R.J. Fisher Middle School, I presume. Other than graduate school Fisher was the only school I ever went to for two full consecutive years. I loved Fisher. I was happier during middle school than pretty much any other point in my childhood, which is odd I understand. I had friends for the first time. I had teachers who were both intelligent and willing to work with me. The guidance counselor and vice principle both got to know me (I was a big one for acting out, but I had good reasons) and they both worked very hard at giving me a place to feel safe and secure. I think one of the best things they ever did for me was put me in the Conflict Managers program. I was made to feel intelligent, trustworthy, and competent. I met Grant there. He was my best friend. Amusingly in retrospect, he was my first D/s relationship–I was on top. 🙂 We used to go to the movie theater and I would ask him to buy me Red Vines and I would beat the crap out of him through the whole movie. He always bought them. 🙂 I discovered Anne Rice and then goth culture at Fisher. I had sex for the first time while going there and I didn’t have sex again the rest of the time I was there because I realized it was too early. That was the worst sex ever. I had a history teacher there, Mr. Potter, who single-handedly gave me confidence in myself in the classroom. We got into an argument about whether or not Bloody Mary was also Queen of Scotland. I told him that there were two Marys–Mary Tudor and Mary Stewart. I don’t know how he screwed this up but he couldn’t remember that fact. I brought in an Encyclopedia during lunch and proved him wrong. He congratulated me and told me that if I always stuck to my guns when I knew I was right I would go far in life. I really loved him.

boundaries: I’m not really as good at them as I advertise but I try. I feel intense pressure to be better at boundaries. Ugh. I seem to have different boundaries than just about any one else and I’m not entirely sure how that happened.

family: I have some weird feelings about family. On one hand I desperately want to have family, chosen or biological–either will do. In practice I find that even chosen family is pretty inconsistent and not really dependable. I guess it’s a good thing that Noah is overall reliable because most of the time he’s what I’ve got. I’m hoping that I prove to be better family than that to Shanna.

munches: I used to go a lot. I haven’t gone consistently in five years at this point. They are dandy for talking with the same people you see all the time anyway. They are a shitty place for meeting new people or for doing good reconnecting with people you haven’t seen in a long time. I think that they are rather designed to be something to fill in the gap during the week for people who are out every weekend with the same people. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s just not where I am anymore.

More words

Arbus gave me words. Be afraid.

freedom: Freedom used to be a much bigger motivator for me than it is these days. I used to spend a lot of time worrying about not being tied down. Now I’m kind of fussy cause I am almost never tied down and it makes me sad. Ha. I appreciate being an American. I think that I’m pretty lucky to live in a country that grants me the amount of freedom I have. Yeah, that’s all I’ve got for this one.

femdom: I hate this phrase. I think we should replace it with DomLady and DomFella if we are going to be indicating gender at all. But why do you need to indicated gender at all? What the freakmonkeys is wrong with just calling someone a Dom? It’s lame enough. Why make it lamer? Oy. That said, females who happen to be dominant are pretty hot.

dealing: Drugs? Cards? I am not a complete hypocrite so I will say that I have occasionally thought positive things about drug dealers in my life even though overall I think it’s not a great career choice. I think my sister should stop dealing though because she is stupid and keeps getting caught. Dumbass. I’m a really good card dealer I think.

whirling: When I was a little girl I would try on all of my new clothes (dresses–I didn’t wear pants at all) and give them a whirl because if they didn’t go out far enough I wouldn’t wear them. I still wish that I picked my clothes this way. I love whirling around. I love whirling Shanna around. I have learned that if I concentrate really hard I can make myself orgasm on the spinny rides. How’s that for TMI?

space: God I need a lot of it. I have trouble with people near me physically sometimes and I even have trouble with people in my house. This is MY SPACE damnit! But if you meant that big black thing above us I’m pretty neutral. I’m glad I don’t have to try to breathe there.