Tag Archives: questions

“Are you sure you want to ask me that?”

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I’ve had this agreement with most friends and family members in my life. When they ask me a question I give them a second chance to see if they mean it. I will answer. I will answer in so much detail that you may regret your life choices.

I like that Gentleman is around while I’m doing chores more now. We talk while I’m doing stuff. It feels a lot more like an integrated relationship. It’s like how I get to be around while he practices sometimes. I like these overlapping points in the timetable. It feels like life sharing. We are testing the waters during this courting period. We are on no particular escalator with specific end goals.

I’m amused that going back and forth between his place and mine is resulting in me keeping my space more tidy than usual. He is a tidy individual. He takes care of his things and he cleans up after messes really quickly. Sometimes I feel intimidated because I’m going to struggle to match that in this house. I could in my house in California that was 1/3 the size of this house. I am often worried I got myself in over my head. With Noah I was alright. Now the house is a lot to manage alone. Gentleman offers help and I demur each time. Ask again next year. After he has waited through the mandatory window. A long time ago my children asked that there be a year period between when I start dating someone and when that person meets the kids. They asked for that when I was still married. It’s very important to me that I earn their trust in an ongoing way so I take this request very seriously.

I have a love/hate relationship with watching time pass. I hate thinking about the fact that tomorrow Noah has been gone for eight months. I hate thinking about how long it has been since I saw my mother. I love thinking about how much time I have spent doing different things. Like, the number of hours I’ve spent with Gentleman. That’s a fun thing to muse about. We are clocking the hours needed to form attachment. We are talking about things that are hard and scary instead of ignoring them and hoping for the best. We are both earning trust. I think courting is important at the start of a relationship. I bring up as many hard things as I can. I don’t believe in a honeymoon of “hoping for the best”. I am a difficult person to mesh with. Doing so takes time and doesn’t always work.

I often wonder how often Gentleman regrets his choices when he says he truly wants an answer to a question. My answers are so weird.

Yesterday it was interesting talking about the different attitudes among California naturists. He was horrified that my children have spent time in mixed gender naked environments. I’m less worried about the naturists than I would be a member of the clergy. The naturists know they are skating on thin ice on the edge of society. They have reputations to uphold if they want to be permitted in the community. He is adamant that no right thinking person in the UK could possibly agree with my stance. It is wrong, in his view, to allow children to be around naked adults.

I contrast that with my lived experience of my children skating past body dysmorphia because they are comfortable with the full actual range of human presentation and they know that their meat sack is not what defines their importance. My kids arrived at mainstream school contemptuous of the idea they should go on a diet. How stupid. If you cut calories as a growing person you can’t build the healthy muscles and bones and brain you need. Fuck that shit. I attribute a lot of their casual approach to existing to the fact that they have seen people live thousands of ways and it is all part of the range of normal for them.

Yes, I am intrinsically unbothered by the idea that at some point my children might see you nude. As long as you don’t make it weird I don’t care that much. It’s the making it weird part that is the bad thing.

My kids negotiate boundaries better than 90% of adults. Yes, I think they know how to advocate for themselves in most different environments. We practiced. They aren’t thrown by things that bother most people. They also have meltdowns from not being able to handle things that are considered a mandatory and unavoidable part of life for other people. We avoid them. Life is ever more complex than one can nail down. There are no universal rules, none.

One of the books I just finished, The Social Distance Between Us: How Remote Politics Wrecked Britain, had some interesting bits. The author, Darren McGarvey, talked about interviewing an incredibly successful philanthropist and he noted that he struggled to be as pushy/forward as he intended to be. He was more deferential and gentle than he had intended to be. He noted his own inhibition when it comes to pushing someone of a “higher class”.

There are times when I feel this but mostly I have learned to push through it. Silicon Valley was a trip. I don’t know how I would manage someone in a UK setting where class is less about success in your career and more about who you were born. I’m going to continue to ride the wave of ignoring social hierarchy that I’ve been on most of my life. I was born to be used and abused until I die. Everything else I do is gravy. When you are born as trash you have a choice. You can comply and conform, which most humans are wired to do as instinctively as they breathe. Or you can decide that the hierarchy doesn’t apply to you and you will simply exist entirely outside of it.

I have gone with option B in this life. Noah loved that about me. I don’t conform neatly into any community or set of expectations. He also hated that about me because I couldn’t cut myself down to only what he wanted me to be. He hated that I didn’t think of myself as being better than other people. I can’t do that. Doing that is agreeing to the hierarchy and I can’t do that. I’m not better than anyone. The primary thing I do really well is not die when maybe I should.

Yeah, I’m diversely educated and I know how to do a lot of shit. Everyone else knows stuff I don’t. How can it be compared? I have no idea. I don’t really bother trying.

I play with class expectations, though. I dress up or down to fit in better. I bought a suit to wear in court and ended up not needing it. I am glad I didn’t buy an expensive one. I bought a capsule of rich bitch clothing for world travel. I hold on to the beloved, full of holes old stuff that reminds me where I come from. I make sure my big house is company ready most of the time. I want people to just drop in, and more people are doing so. I know how to do barely-there rich girl makeup and that’s it. I never mastered the art of makeup past that. I’m too lazy. Also I’m not that keen on looking in mirrors.

Which isn’t to say I ever fit in well no matter which direction I move on the slider. I don’t really fit anywhere. That’s ok. I don’t fit in well but I do know how to make a place for myself in most settings. Sort of? I’m not feeling confident lately. I’m isolated and lonely. I need to get over myself. I need to get out more. It’s hard because I’m going to run into more people who react with the same level of vehemence about my opinions being wrong as I got yesterday. He let it go and didn’t continue to press about how he now kinda considers me a low key pedo.

That is a hard thing to carry. I know in my bones what it means to grow up with a pedophile. It was my life. My children have been bubble wrapped to a shocking degree. I have literally witnessed almost their entire lives. Sometimes there were naked people around because we were in a public bathing type environment. I am fine with dying on the hill that public bathing is not inherently a sexual activity and it is not pedophilia for people to inhabit the same physical environment while nude.

But I don’t particularly want to. I understand that this is not the norm where I am right now. I don’t drive and there isn’t an appropriate place nearby. I’m not going to upend my life to seek out these opportunities going forward. Being prudish about nudity is not a morally superior attitude. That said, my house is a clothes on environment at this point. The casual attitude that Noah and many of our friends had of preferring to be naked has not crossed the pond. Here my house is a fucking fish bowl. I face a walking trail and people look in all day. If I want light from the windows I have to be fully visible to everyone who passes. We wear clothes.

I definitely feel like I have let a lot of standards slip over the past while. I notice all the places where things are needing fixed/replaced/cleaned up. In the long run my garden will be build up in height and I will have more visual privacy but it is going to take a few years. I need to learn how to do a lot of this myself because I don’t want to pay for anything I don’t have to. If I can do it then I should. I don’t have Noah breathing down my neck judging how I spend my time. Anything I could farm out so that I paid more attention to him was his preference. I have built a life here where I do so much less than I did in California. I feel like it is showing. I have fallen behind in a lot of maintenance tasks. I’m going to stay behind for at least the next ten months. I have to be realistic about the limits of my body given the shape of my life.

Until the next summer solstice. I have that long to be a mess. I don’t think I will ever have an easy time believing in the hope of the winter solstice again. I lost Noah three days later. Am I going to start losing the ability to sleep between the 21st and 25th of December because I am waiting to see who will die? That’ll suck. I hope not.

Shortie is making it very clear that one year of not celebrating is all she can handle. After that, we go back to celebrating on holidays because she needs them. I agreed that I will. She still needs to have the rest of her happy childhood after the year of sad. I don’t get to stop giving my kids a happy childhood. I still have to do that.

It’s going to be a lot harder now but we will be ok.

Yesterday was pretty great. We spent about four hours in the garden and then the kitchen. The stone fruit trees should have been pruned a month ago to prevent damage in winter storms, but it is what it is. We got it done. We also harvested 8kg of plums along with 700g of blackberries. Then we cleaned it and processed it. Blackberries became cobbler. The plums are in the fridge waiting to become jam. We will be making little gift bags of stuff we made from our harvest for holiday presents this year. That’s about as far as we are going to get with any celebration this time. Fuck. I can’t handle thinking about winter holidays.

I am overwhelmed thinking about more immediate things. I should get more organised. Maybe I’ll get work done today. Maybe.

Goodness, monsters, and shame

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I know that other people view monsters in a solely negative light but I’ve never been good at doing that. Monsters are always creatures with a different point of view. A friend pointed out that perhaps “alien” might be an easier word to use, but I feel like alien and monster are interchangeable. A monster is a creature who is different from you who seems scary. Many monsters don’t hurt anyone at all… but they are scary anyway.

I can’t begin to count how many people have told me that I am scary.

I am amused to read that it is a common thing for autistic people to feel like they “come from a different planet” which fits more in with the word alien than the word monster. (I mention this because I have been diagnosed as autistic not because I am trying to talk about “those people”. I’m reflecting on the similar language used by folks who have the same diagnosis as me.) Only I’ve seen every Aliens movie and I can tell you with authority that those things are monsters.

Are they evil? I don’t think so. They are creatures who are trying to survive and we look like food. That’s not more evil than the bacon I had in my soup tonight.

Before you tell me I should be vegan let me tell you that many health professionals have told me that I absolutely need meat for optimal health given my constellations of issues. Veganism may work great for lots of folks… but not everyone.

Anyway.

So I’ve reached a point in the evolution of my brain where I just can’t see monsters as inherently evil. I see them as creatures with too much strength and too much ability to hurt other creatures without necessarily intending to.

Intent doesn’t matter.

I wrote yesterday that I haven’t done a major boundary violation in many years. By that I mean that I haven’t had someone say “Don’t do x to me” and then I do it. I have broken rules. I have broken agreements about what I might go do with other people. I have hurt people by accidentally doing something that would have been a boundary if we had negotiated. (I’m a clumsy bastard and I absolutely do things unintentionally sometimes.)

If intent doesn’t matter, how do I justify calling some things mistakes and other things violations?

We are all hypocritical bastards.

What I mean is that when I was young I had a few times when someone told me “Don’t do x” and I went and did x as fast as possible. I stopped doing that. It helps me sleep better at night.

But I struggle with whether I ever have the right to decide that my “softer” fuck ups are mistakes instead of monstrous violations that are evidence that I should be shunned from society for the good of people.

I look around the bdsm community and I see a lot of people who have been perceived as dangerous/bad/evil/worthy of shunning. Many of these people are monsters.

Are they worse than me? Are they better than me? What metrics are being used to judge? Why are we being judged–what’s the end goal?

The only part that matters to me in the long run is whether I find a self that is worthy to be a model for my children.

I really don’t give a shit if you like or approve of me. And yet you are my community and I love and value you so much. Many of you have contributed words of wisdom to my inside voice that I replay on a regular basis. So many of you have taught me that just because I’m a monster that doesn’t mean I have to damage people on accident. I can learn to have my damage be inflicted rarely and only with great purpose.

This community is a lot of where I learned to value the darkest and hardest parts of myself. It’s ok that I want to cut people open and lick their blood. There are folks who think that is hotter than the sun. It’s ok that I want to hit people and make them cry. There are folks who have something deep inside them made whole by such a process.

It’s not wrong to be a monster.

But can a monster be good? Do I have to be good to teach my children to do good? Do I want to teach them that they must be good?

Oh bdsm community. Do we want our teachers to be a certain level of good? What is that level? What level of goodness is demanded/expected/required of “community leaders” or educators or presenters?

We talk a lot about consent here. But how much information must be given in advance to qualify as informed consent and how much responsibility do we all bear for our fuck ups?

It’s kind of funny that in the long run of my life, the bdsm fuck ups where someone blatantly hurt me or violated my consent are not the things that weigh me down. (I say this from the hubris of having my biggest injury as a bottom be a broken bone. Broken bones heal.) I worry more about when I damaged someone else. Being a victim is not as big of a driving force to change my behavior as knowing that I have used my strength to do someone else damage.

How do we learn to be powerful and strong and monstrous and good enough?

I know I shouldn’t let the word good be taken away by assholes who want to define it as passive… but this shit is complicated.

Would it really be so bad to be a monster if one can do it without shame and without hurting people extra? Hurting people sometimes is life. But maybe just hold back on the extra?

How much hurting people is tolerable? How much is abuse?

I don’t think you have the answers either. I’m thinking that I’m still at the stage where asking the question is all I can do. The answers will come long after I need them. Like all the most important parts of life.

Officiating a wedding.

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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

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"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

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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

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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

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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!

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“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!

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“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.

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(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!

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“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

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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

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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

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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.

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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?

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# 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

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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

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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*