sunday stealing

someday, this blog may evolve into a series of thoughtfully-considered, well-written posts on relevant and meaningful topics.  until then, i will meme when i feel like it.  questions from the sunday stealing blog.  the numbers are a continuation from the questions published on sunday stealing last week— i guess it's a multiple-part meme.

23. Are your days fast-paced?
as far as weekdays when i am at work, yes, my days are very fast-paced.  there are a million things to do and i never get all of them done.  i'm trying to prioritize better and work fewer hours, but even when i succeed at that, the pace will remain close to breakneck.  so, because of that, my weekend days are the opposite and i move like a slug when i'm not working.  (and by moving like a slug, i mean "slowly," not "leaving a trail of slime behind me.")

24. What did you do last night?
i went to the store with jon to get groceries, which was lots of fun, then made a platter of miniature cucumber sandwiches on cocktail bread for dinner, which we ate with chips & salsa and followed with dessert of raspberry lime pie.  while i was making the sandwiches, i made jon stay in the kitchen with me and load the dishwasher and wipe off the counters.  then we watched some tv and i fell asleep on the couch reading sometime after "saturday night live" was over.

25. Do you use sarcasm?
no.  i never use sarcasm.       (get it?)

26. How old will you be turning on your next birthday?
thirty-nine.  i hate questions with one-word answers, but this is a long meme, so i will forgive it.

27. Are you picky about spelling and grammar?
yes, very.

28. Do you get along better with the same sex or the opposite sex?
i used to say i got along better with men or even that i "just don't get along with women," but that was a bunch of shit predicated upon some pathological self-loathing and internalized sexism.  gender doesn't seem to be a huge factor in determining how well i get on with someone.

29. Do you watch the news?
only if jon is home.  so, i guess i don't.

30. How did you get one of your scars?
i have a scar from surgery on the back of my left thumb that was done to repair the tendon i damaged when i cut myself in the same place with a razor blade when i was using the razor blade to scrape a label off the bottom of a jar and it slipped— slipped straight down into my flesh.

31. Who was the last person to make you mad?
i'm sure it was jon, and i'm sure it was nothing, and i'm sure i can't remember it now.

32. What is the last big thing you purchased?
the precious II, my iPhone 4.

33. Who would you want to be tied to for 24 hours?
jon, duh.

34. What is a rumour someone has started about you?
one time in the first year or so that i was sober, so like 1999, i saw this guy i knew from the halfway house i'd gone to at a bar/restaurant on grand ave where i was eating with my boyfriend at the time, and the guy was having a drink.  i wouldn't have even noticed what he was drinking, but he was seated a table away and i overheard the server carding the woman he was with.  anyway, he apparently started telling people he'd seen me drinking at the wild onion, i guess as some sort of attempted damage control in case i told everyone he had been drinking.  i don't think i told anyone i'd seen him drinking— i mean, i didn't care that much because he was sort of an asshole.  i got completely freaked out that he was telling people that i was drinking for about five minutes, then i realized he was sort of an asshole and nobody really cared.

35.  What would you do if you were stuck in an elevator?
use the emergency button or phone in the elevator, sit down, post "is stuck in an elevator" as a status update on facebook, and play a game on the precious II while waiting for the elevator to be fixed.  i'd also text whoever needed to know if being stuck in an elevator was going to make me late for anything.

36. T or F:  All's fair in love and war? (sic)
i guess false, because fairness is fairness whether it's a card game or love or war.  but hardly anything is ever fair, and i don't care much about fairness.  i think this saying is supposed to mean that any strategy, no matter how underhanded or manipulative, is acceptable in matters of the heart or battles for resources, and is usually trotted out to liken romance to armed conflict.  it's not something i say, because i rarely think whether something is fair or not is relevant.  i am very concerned about matters of justice, particularly in matters of race, gender, sexual identity, and disability, but "fair" is sort of a small word for that.

37. Do you know how to use some words correctly, but not know the meaning?
no.  how would anyone know she or he was using a word correctly without knowing its meaning?  that's stupid.  i don't use words i can't define, and when i run across a word i don't know, i look it up.  one possible exception to this would be scrabble, where i play words i know are acceptable scrabble words without knowing their definitions, but i don't think of that as "using" a word.

38. Do you know which US states don't use daylight savings time?
nope.  i used to know one, indiana, because i'm from there, but they got on board a few years ago.  for some reason i think arizona might not, but maybe i just think that because they're assholes about martin luther king day.

39. Do you want a bright yellow '06 mustang?
no.  i don't want a bright yellow anything.  what the fuck kind of question is this?

40. What's something you've always wanted?
uh... world peace?  this question is too vague.  when i want something, i take the steps necessary to move toward getting it, or decide i don't want it that much after all.

41.  Would you rather swim in the ocean or a lake?
the ocean.  lakes have yucky weeds.

42. Do you wear a lot of black?
not really, i don't think.  certainly not compared to jon, who is so brutal and core he rarely wears anything not black.

43. Describe your hair:
long, brown, currently kinda greasy and pulled up with a clip on top of my head.

44. Where is/are your best friend(s)?
sitting next to me on the couch, reading my blog, checking to see if i posted this yet. what a babe.

i fucking hate the formatting on this thing

i can't figure out how to edit the html properly, and it's pissing me off.  someone post a link to a good, simple FAQ or tutorial page with just like a list of tags or something.  grrrrrrrrrr.

also, just so you know, i started that manic monday post on monday.  i just needed to go to sleep before i finished it, and have pretty much been working or sleeping since then.

manic monday #211

well, i haven't done a manic monday post in quite some time, and i'm apparently inspired by new blog to write a bit more, so here i go meme-ing away.  questions from the manic monday blog, which is my favorite of the meme blogs.


1.  If you could only see black and white except for one color, what color would you choose to see?
have i answered this before?  i feel like i have.  i know it is a question i've thought about, because i asked it of my clients a few months ago.  that was pretty funny, and was a great moment of just being human together, because i heard responses of pink and purple and talk of sunsets from these supposedly thug-like, tough felons.  i've never seen them as stereotypes, but i think a lot of people lacking direct experience would be surprised by the very normal concerns, fears, and vulnerabilities that "ex-cons" recovering from mental illnesses that are pretty similar to those of the general population.  
anyway, for me, i would pick blue.  i think i could handle just bright white for the sun, but a gray sky on a sunny, puffy-cloud-scattered day like today would be too much to bear.


2.  If you could have a room full of any one thing, what would it be?  
should i be really pragmatic and just say money, because then i could use that to fill other rooms with lots of different stuff that i like?  i feel like that would kind of be breaking the rules, like using a wish to wish for unlimited wishes.  so i will try to come up with an actual thing i'd want a whole room's worth of.

my first thought was books, and i kind of do have a room full of those, but i could always get more.  i used to buy tons of books regularly and devour them voraciously, but i'm sort of sorry to say that i haven't bought a book in quite some time.  last summer i got into the habit of playing games on my iPhone to fall asleep instead of reading, and i didn't read much at all until a few months ago.  now i read before falling asleep, but i read books on my iPad.  the last five or six books i've read have been using an e-reader app on the iPad.  i hate the idea that so many have suggested of the death of print media with the dawn of online media, but i'm doing nothing to support the sustenance of the printed word.  it's cheaper and more efficient to download books, and reduces the use of resources to produce and transport paper books.  so, let's see, a room full of something other than books....

the next thing that came to mind was food, but that's basically a kitchen.  i have one of those already and don't find it particularly exciting.  i'm not a cosmo girl type who would enjoy a room full of shoes and handbags.  I KNOW!  a room full of apple products.  ginormous iMacs, MacBooks, mac minis, all permutations of color, size, and style of iPods, several iPhones and iPads for my various mobile moods, hundreds of backup accessories like power cords, headphones, and adapters,  airports to expand my network infinitely if i so choose-- oh boy, oh boy, i'm getting so excited just thinking how awesome it would be.  and i would definitely find a use for multiple units of the item, so having a whole room full of them would be in no way redundant.

3.  Imagine you could go back to the age of five and relive the rest of your life, knowing everything that you know now. You will reexperience your entire adolescence with both the cognitive ability of an adult and the memories of everything you’ve learned form having lived your life previously.
Would you lose your virginity earlier or later than you did the first time around (and by how many years)?
oh, golly, this is a tough one.  i am sort of opposed to regrets of any sort as far as the poor choices i may have made throughout my life, because whatever i've done in the past has been part of the aggregate of experience that has led to me being who i am in the present, and i really like who i am here and now.  so regrets are sort of empty calories as far as emotional energy goes.    
i was very young when i lost my virginity, too young by my adult standards.  that being said, the experience was not at all bad.  apart from being too young to really understand the meaning of being sexual and adult intimacy, it was about as good as young teen's first time can be.  particularly compared to the lost virginity horror stories i've heard, which seem to be the rule rather than the exception.  my boyfriend was very respectful, put absolutely zero pressure on me, participated fully in decisions about contraception and their implementation. so i honestly don't think i'd change a thing.    
the thing that kind of fucked me up as regards sex and relationships happened a couple months after i lost my virginity, did not involve consent or even being fully conscious, and would have happened whether i'd lost my virginity prior to that occasion or not.  i can't even say with absolute certainty that i would change that experience either.  i mean, i think i would, but i really am so, so, SO incredibly happy with my life right now that i don't think i want to fuck with the space-time continuum at all.  what if i ended up something horrible, like a PC user with a droid?

wordless wednesday #22

being inappropriately glamourous at the coffee shop

jon is on vacation this week, which means i actually leave work after eight hours, and get to do fun stuff like sit on the patio at caribou coffee on grand avenue using FIVE separate apple devices between us.  we used our iPhones as our tile racks for the scrabble "board" on the iPad, and he has his iBook, and i have my MacBook.  i even brought my old 3G iPhone in case anyone happens by who would like to join us in scrabble.  or, rather, join me in a game, as jon is too disgusted by his devastating defeat at my hands with my Q, J, K, and Z to his As, Is, and Ns to be able to continue playing.

anyway, i sure am having a good time.  there are at least two pairs of women who are sponsor and sponsee meeting to share experience, and the pairs are within ten feet (easy earshot), and it is really rather bizarre.

sunday stealing

oh, yes, and now i shall meme.  questions from the sunday stealing blog.  i need to learn more html so i can format these better, but for now, this will do.

1. What curse word do you use the most?
probably "fuck," but only because it can be used in various forms as virtually every part of speech and has numerous senses of meaning.


2. Do you own an iPod?
yes, i have an iPod touch, but i rarely use it because i have an iPad and an iPhone that i use for portable audio.


3. What person do you talk to on the phone the most?
oh, probably my mom.  i don't talk on the phone much.  i'm a texter.


4. Do you still remember the first person you kissed?
yes.  mike carter in sixth grade.


5. Do you remember where you were on 11/9/01?
yes, vividly, as it was my thirtieth birthday. though i think this question was written with the european convention of day/month/year and refers to september 11th, 2001 rather than november 9th, 2001.


on november 9th, i was at a joint 30th (me) and 40th (my friend bruce) birthday party at my former friend julie's house here in lovely st. paul, minnesota.  my parents came to town and we had a cake with images of my and bruce's faces rendered in icing, and we both looked like we were black.  (we are both white.)  it was a really fun party.  i had (and still have) wonderful friends and they were all there.  some shitty friends were there, too, and i enjoyed chatting with them as well.


on september 11th, i was working at caribou coffee on grand avenue, and we were getting news reports filtered in from customers about what was happening at the world trade center.  we turned off the programmed muzak coffee house blend after the second tower was hit in favor of the news on mpr.  the thing i remember most about it was a conversation with a woman i secretly disliked strongly because she was cooler than me (according to my faulty self-perception at the time).  that and a customer who looked like kris kristofferson, and is actually played by kris kristofferson in my memory, coming in in the middle of the extra-hectic and confusing rush shouting something about the second tower going down.


6. What was the last movie you watched?
beetlejuice.  i watched it today on tv.


7. Has anyone ever called you lazy?
probably.  i have called myself lazy, but at those times, "depressed" or "unmotivated" would have been more accurate.


8. Do you ever take medication to help you fall asleep?
yes.  usually benadryl, sometimes ambien.  my sleep is sort of sensitive to stress, and i almost always have terrible insomnia thursday nights because i work too much.  ambien is good as far as a more serious drug than benadryl because its half-life is a few hours so i can take it even if i have to be awake for work in four hours.


9. Has anyone told you a secret this week?
ummm, well, my clients have shared things that are private and deeply personal with me, but i don't know if that counts as a secret.  i gossipped with my friend kate, and though those weren't specifically secrets, i certainly wouldn't want anyone else knowing how judgemental i can be when i let my hair down, as the saying goes.  so probably not in the classic sense of telling a secret.



10. What is the first thing you notice about the opposite sex?
it depends on the person.  when i was single i probably focused on signals of the person's availability/interest and his intelligence, but now i just notice what's the most noticeable thing, like eye contact, social skills, and ability to process ideas and respond quickly.



11. What are you looking forward to?
work tomorrow.  i love my job.



12. Do you own any band t-shirts?
yes.  some sicbay shirts are probably still hanging around, and i know i have an old pike sweatshirt.  i'm sure there are several others but i don't know which ones.


13. What will you be doing in one hour?
reading in bed or sleeping.


14. Is anyone in love with you?
yes.  jon is madly, deeply, head over heels crazy in love with me.  


15. Last time you cried?
i cried today when i was scrolling through some friends' pictures on facebook from this weekend's pride parade and festival.  i cried because i was so moved by the undaunted activism of my LGBT friends in the face of such ugly hatred and institutional homophobia.  the sheer joy and delight and celebration on the faces in those pictures is an amazing sight to behold considering that they are told daily, "you are bad and wrong, and you may not love who you love."


16. Are you on a desktop computer or a laptop?
laptop, baby.  macbook all the way.



17. Are you currently wanting any piercings or tattoos?
no new ones.  i still need to have my gigantic back piece finished.


18. Would you ever date anyone covered in tattoos?
no, because i would never date anyone other than jon, and he is not covered in tattoos.  but i have dated plenty of elaborately-illustrated people, so tattoos were never a deterrent.


19. What were you doing before this?
reading my friend heather's blog.


20. When is the last time you slept on the floor?
well, i slept on an airbed on the floor at my parents' house last christmas.  if that doesn't count, i have no idea.


21. How many hours of sleep do you need to function?
i can function for a day on four, but only for one day.  i manage on about six most of the week, and on weekends sleep about ten to twelve to make up for it.  ideally i would get eight or nine a night.


22. Do you eat breakfast daily?
no.  i don't eat breakfast ever.  unless diet coke and cigarettes count as breakfast, in which case, yes, daily.

what's wrong with this picture?

i think this is hilarious.  in this picture, you're like, why does that hand on jon's face look all fucked up and weird?

and then you see this picture, and you're like, oh, because it's a foot!

isn't jon cool for letting me ply his face with my weird monkey feet?

i'm kind of amazed

that i like alec baldwin better as a megalomaniacal old fatcat:






than i do alec baldwin as a recently-deceased ingenue:





i'm watching beetlejuice.  it's pretty good.  plus it gives me occasion to goad jon into telling me early nineties minneapolis winona-ryder-is-such-a-bitch stories.  i still like her.  we're the same age, and i had that same charming combination of self-centeredness, naïveté, grandiosity, low self-esteem, and fucking guitar players in the early nineties too.  i did stop the rich girl shoplifting thing way before she did, though.

oh, god, i can't do this

i'm going to be a terrible blogger.  i hate what i write.  what i've written so far is stupid and not "me" somehow.  why is this different from the very blog-like notes i write on facebook?  this seems so much more vulnerable.  on facebook, i "share," but on this blog it feels more like i've told everyone at the party to sit down and stop talking because i'm going to tell a story.

it's like writing it in a blog post carries some implicit claim that it is worth reading, and i should carefully craft each piece to make sure it is aesthetically valuable.  this is why i can't call myself a writer.  motherfuck.

you know what?  i'm going to push on.  this isn't the paris fucking review.  it is a blog, a web log.  and a log is just a record.  if someone comes and reads and thinks it sucks, he or she can just not read it again.  i want to use this thing for me.   it's partially about writing, and partially about establishing an online place to interact with others that isn't facebook.  i believe facebook has totally made my life richer and more thoughtful, and deepened and change many of my relationships in significant ways.  i do, however, have some serious concerns about facebook's data privacy practices and zuckerberg's cavalier attitude and machiavellian sensibility around users' information.  SO, i'd like to find some sort of social networking methadone as i consider cutting down, and i'm starting here.

here's my statement of intention:  it's just for whatever i want, it can be a series of responses to question memes, reposting of facebook notes, status-update-like posts of whatever ideas drift through the transom of my mind, too much information about my gastrointestinal or reproductive health, or pictures of my cats.  i will stay the course!

"pussies, and dicks, and people fuckin' and all..."

when i was in the fourth grade, i had a friend named mary nell.  she just tracked me down and friended me on facebook, and i am blown away in that way that we all are when small worlds' orbits intersect in that bizarre universe.  anyway, i have a funny story involving mary nell that i like to tell from time to time.

one weekend mary nell spent the night at my house, and we probably did usual kid stuff.  the next day, we hung out with my friend and neighbor, whitney, and one of things whitney and i liked to do was snoop through her older brother tim's room and check out his porno mags.  he would have been in seventh grade. whitney and tim and i talked about sex-related stuff in a kid way-- like jokes involving dicks and periods and pubic hair.  innocent and more interested in being gross than anything actually sexy.  but i guess i was fairly savvy about sex for a fourth grader-- i don't really know, and at the time i assumed my store of forbidden knowledge was similar to that of my peers.  and i think mary nell probably had been exposed to much less information about sex than we had at that point.

anyway, whitney and i showed tim's magazines (hustler, beaver, and oui, if memory serves) to mary nell, and sort of pointed out and explained the various parts and activities on display, to the point that we understood them.  she didn't seem surprised or confused or anything more than curious in the same way we were.  so then we finished that and did other kid stuff like playing in the creek behind our houses and riding bikes.

later in the afternoon, the three of us piled into the family van when it was time for my dad to take mary nell home.  as we were pulling out of the driveway, my dad asked us if we'd being having fun and what we'd done that day.  mary nell piped right up and said, "oh, we had lots of fun.  we went over to whitney's and looked at magazines and they had had pictures of pussies, and dicks, and people fuckin' and all."

whitney and i looked at each other, absolutely mortified.  we had assumed mary nell knew what we were doing was something that parents would not think was cool, and could lead to an earnest talking-to or punishment.  my dad responded just as though she'd told him about the crawdads we'd caught in the creek.  i don't think he even said a word-- just a look like, "oh, huh, interesting," and drove on.  and he never said a word about it later, either.

am i going to try blogging?

i guess i am. i'm just going to keep this blog instead of starting a new one because it's easier. but those first two posts, from 2005 and 2008, probably won't be consistent with any ongoing theme. actually, i doubt there will be any sort of unifying theme, so never mind.

but anyway, welcome to my new blog. i came here because i want to tell a story about my friend mary nell from fourth grade. which i will now write in another post.

well, that sucked

my soon-to-be ex-husband just came over to get some of his stuff.  our whole interaction today, largely via email, has completely mystified me.  he asks if can have some items, i say yes to some, no to some, he tells me to just keep everything because it's not worth fighting over.  i hadn't realized answering a question was fighting.  i guess it's not worth working on trying to communicate more clearly since we won't have to bother communicating at all pretty soon.  he'll be coming with a truck saturday for everything else.  i come away from every interaction with him wondering what just happened.  it's like i've missed the first half of the conversation or something.  my plan is just to be present, be clear, and tell the truth.

welcome to hell

my first post.
time to decide if i continue my "online writing" practice of not capitalizing anything. looks like so far i'm going to stick with my informality convention. when i write a story, maybe i will break down and use that shift key after all.
doesn't matter. i'm just posting this so i have something posted so i can fuck around with this blog. what else am i supposed to do at work? i've already put together my own care package of stolen rubber bands and magnets.

"quit crying, you're making my pussy wet!"