pronoia

Changing direction

As you've likely noticed, I've been ... stalled on this blog. It's devolved into a narrative of my life, and then I get caught up in feeling like I can't talk about the letter I wrote to David Foster Wallace's wife because I haven't yet followed up on lunch with my sister (moderately fine, my parents are still upsetting me, my sister is too prone to dismiss feelings and change the subject). And anyway, this is not supposed to be my diary in 7th grade: Had peanut butter and jelly for lunch again!

Because really? You don't care -- and you shouldn't. Hell, I don't care. But just like I do in my paper journal, I get caught up in "and then, and then, and then" because somehow it's less scary than the stuff I really want to talk about. Enough of that.

So, some changes around here.

I realized over the weekend that the stuff I want to talk about generally falls into three basic categories: spirituality and spiritual practice; adoption/kid related stuff; disability/oppression/identity/partnering someone with mental illness. These are the things I want to read about, and so these are the things I want to write about. I thought about creating separate blogs, but really, I can't keep up with one more blessed thing and anyway, that would just reinforce the sense of these things as separate, as not-life, instead of as aspects that feed each other and overlap and all together color my life and the lives of people I love.

And that's where this will be going. Sure, there will still be stories about my crazy animals or the silly fixes I sometimes get myself into, because those amuse me greatly. And if there's something else I haven't mentioned you want an update on, feel free to comment or email me and I'll likely post something about it. But I'm going to do my best to really dig into what's being important in my life lately, because what else is writing for?

Reason #1,326,428 Why Heather Corinna Rocks

Her explanation for how she does the sex ed she does. If you don't know Heather and her work, she's a sex educator, activist, artist, Buddhist, and all-around amazing person.

I clearly need to go read some Maria Montessori, not only for sex ed, but for rearing kids and educating adults and everyone in between, on any subject.

Oh, the Trials

I've felt crappy all day, and just now, when my decongestant and ibuprofen kicked in enough that actually figuring out where on the computer screen I should click didn't make me want to throw up, I decided to update my blogroll.

This is so much harder than it sounds. I subscribe to people through bloglines, so I haven't noticed how terribly out-of-date the actual blogroll is, but man, it's out of date. It's three obsessions ago out of date.

I set about fixing it, but the problem of categorization came up. I had, in the past, categorized to help shape the resulting list into something slightly more manageable than yarn after my cats have played with it. It still seems like a good idea, but what categories? All parenthood and parenthood-seeking blogs together? Infertility vs. queer parenting vs. post-infertility parenting vs. adoption-centered? Where do adoptees go? What about people I just find interesting even though they don't fit any particular category?

I still think categories are helpful, and they help shape the narrative of what I'm reading and thinking about, so I'm going to pick a set and go with them for now, but if you've got any good ideas, send them over, okay? A librarian I am not.

UPDATE: Okay, I've done my best to create some meaningful categories. We'll see how well they work. This isn't really my whole blogroll, of course--I decided to spare you the unending detail. These are instead my favorite blogs--the ones I read when I'm short on time and yet want some company. And since I also got bored with the look of the blog, I've jazzed it up as well. As much as one can without paying for customization, anyway. Let me know if it breaks your screen.

And Now a Note From Our Sponsors

Since this blog has been innundated with offers of free drugs lately, I had to turn on comment authentication. For those of you who hate the little letters, I'm so sorry. Once this dies down, I'll see if I can turn them back off.

Goodbye, Jessica

Jessica of Cancer, Baby died on Friday. She was thirty three, she wanted a baby more than anything, and she had ovarian cancer.

In the infertility blogosphere, she wasn't one of the big names or the most linked. She didn't post much by the end. She never got to be one of the against-all-odds success stories everyone hopes for, even when they themselves are staring down the barrel of another negative pee-stick. Despite all of this, she will be missed in the blogosphere, as I know she will be missed in her daily life.

Goodbye, Jessica. I hope you find that baby you were looking for.

40 Questions Meme

To lighten things up a bit. Besides, Dale asked. (sort of.)

Forty Questions

1) Who is the last person you high-fived? -- Ms. P, the other day in the car.

2) If you were drafted into a war, would you survive. -- Oh, I highly doubt it. My tendency to start hurting and stop moving would surely get me dead.

3) Do you sleep with the TV on? -- Never. It's in the living room, we don't get cable or broadcast, and I can't even stand it on for background noise.

4) Have you ever drunk milk straight out of the carton? -- Yes, but not for a long time. Stupid milk allergy.

5) Have you ever won a spelling bee -- I don't think so.

6) Have you ever been stung by a bee -- Once, when I was five. I stepped on it. I've also been stung by jellyfish and a Portugese manoray.

7) How fast can you type -- I haven't clocked it recently, but my college roommate's mother, executive secretary extraordinaire, was impressed.

8) Are you afraid of the dark? -- Never. But I am sometimes afraid of what's *in* the dark.

9) Eye color -- Green.

10) Have you ever made out at a drive-in? -- Unfortunately, I've only been to drive-ins with my parents. When I was too young to be making out with anyone at all.

11) When is the last time you chose a bath over a shower? -- Well, never, really. Showers are for getting clean. Baths are for hanging out with yourself, getting rid of knots, and watching candlelight on tile. Oh, and watching kitties try to understand stupid humans. So I never choose baths over showers; I just have one or the other based on what my goal is for that bathroom encounter.

12) Do you knock on wood? -- Absolutely--whatever wood or wood-like product is around.

13) Do you floss daily? -- I keep trying, and I make it for several days and then forget all about it for a week.

14) What happened to question #14?

15) Can you hula hoop? -- For a few minutes, yes.

16) Are you good at keeping secrets? -- Sometimes.

17) What do you want for Christmas? -- Progeny.

18) Do you know the Muffin Man? -- He lives down the lane, right?

19) Do you talk in your sleep? -- Frequently. Sometimes I even sleep-decorate, but only things I can reach from the bed.

20) Who wrote the book of love? -- Vikram Seth.

21) Have you ever flown a kite? -- Certainly. From the old Spanish fort on Puerto Rico, even.

22) Do you wish on your fallen lashes? -- Yes. And falling stars. And digital time that is either repeated (12:12) or in order (1:23). And candles. And whatever else I think of.

23) Do you consider yourself successful? -- Depends on when you ask me, I think.

24) How many people are on your contact list of your cell? -- 26. How many people do I call regularly? 3.

25) Have you ever asked for a pony? -- Nope.

26) Plans for tomorrow? -- Write a couple of reports, plan a meeting, and pay bills. It's rocking to be me.

27) Can you juggle? -- Not very well at all.

28) Missing someone now? -- Oh yes.

29) When was the last time you told someone I Love You? -- This morning.

30) And truly meant it? -- Truly, madly, deeply.

31) How often do you drink -- Almost never.

32) How are you feeling today? -- Ouchy.

33) What do you say too much? -- "It's not my favorite."

34) Have you ever been suspended or expelled from school? -- Nope. And I only ever got one detention, and it was for a very Unfair cause.

35) What are you looking forward to? -- Spring. Plants. A friend visiting. The Baby Plan unfolding.

36) Have you ever crawled through a window? -- Yes. But not for very interesting reasons. I'm better at climbing fences.

37) Have you ever eaten dog food? -- Ewwwwwww.

38) Can you handle the truth? -- Define "handle." As Dale said, better than lies, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

39) Do you like green eggs and ham? -- Depends why it's green.

40) Any cool scars? -- Not cool, but plenty of them.

Fun With Questions

Thank you to everyone who left me questions! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and connected. So, without further ado, answers.

Me3 asks: Why were you living in Hawaii?  Why did you leave Hawaii?  Do you ever return to Hawaii?

I lived in Hawaii for five years, 8th grade to graduation. We were there because, in 1986, my father was offered three options for our next posting: Pearl Harbor, Washington DC, and Rekjavik. My mother duly informed him there was only one acceptable option and off we flew to Hawaii.

Moving to Hawaii was an experience because, well, you can't just load your belongings in a truck and head out. We were moving from Virginia Beach, so our belongings were loaded on tanker trucks, taken through the Panama Canal, and eventually delivered to Hawaii. In fact, we spent the first five weeks of our time there living in a hotel in Waikiki because our base housing wasn't ready, and then, through a strange turn of events, I ended up having my tonsils taken out the very day we finally moved into our house with all of our belongings. Because the military pays to have all of your stuff boxed up, we were treated to unusual combinations of items once we opened boxes: my stuffed animals and the kitchen knives, for example.

I left in 1991 because I had graduated from high school. The University of Hawaii is fantastic for a certain subset of subjects: oceanography, marine biology, nursing, astronomy. For other things, well, let's just say that it wasn't up to par, especially by the standards of my very preppy high school. Hell, public state schools in general were to be sneered at unless they were UVa or the UC system, so only the students who were particularly undistinguished academically went to UH.

I've been back twice since then. The summer after my first year of college, I spent $800 to fly back and live with my best friend because I refused to spend three months in a state I'd never lived in. We got temp jobs and spent the summer going to the beach, hanging out, and chasing boys. Her parents were out of town most of the summer, and we got into far less trouble than we might have given the circumstances. I think the riskiest thing we did was eat raw cookie dough.

I went back a few years ago with my college best friend for a wedding; we devoted two days to my friend's nuptials and eight to driving around Oahu in a convertible, seeing people I hadn't seen in years, and going to the beach. We were able to stay with my HS best friend at her mom's house, so it was relatively cheap and absolutely fantastic.

I will go back again, and if I ever earn/win/inherit/find on the street the right kind of money, I'd like to move back there, get a house on the north shore, and write. It's beautiful and it's my emotional home.

Susan asks, what kinds of things do you sing under your breath (or more loudly, as the case may be)?

The problem is that I sing whatever's playing on my internal jukebox, which is random, hard to reprogram, and sometimes just plain fragmentary. If I've been listening to a particular album lately (like the Indigo Girls' All That We Let In or the soundtrack to the Buffy musical episode), it's often a cut off of there. Sometimes, however, it's a song I haven't heard in years (like this morning's "as long as old men sit and talk about the weather, as long as old women sit and talk about old men"--Randy Travis but I had to look it up). The worst was when I had the old Chevy commercial in my head for two straight days, but could only remember the line "like a rock." My internal jukebox is very repetitive.

The real problem used to come when I was either teaching or being a student. If my attention is occupied, I don't generally sing under my breath although the jukebox is still on if I listen right. If I'm not paying attention, though, because I'm bored or because my students were, say, taking a quiz, I could end up humming or singing without noticing it. Not the kind of thing they address in composition pedagogy!

Susan also asks, And I'm curious about your thoughts on naming (both reaching back to a grandmother's name and deciding with Ms. P to share a name).

Ms. P and I were pretty clear that we wanted to share a name. For us it's part of feeling like a family and part of making that family clear to people who might want to discount it. (And I won't discount the real advantage of pretending to be a blood relative in the event of sudden hospitalization, etc.)

We started off talking about hyphenating our original last names. The possibilities ended up being long, dirty, and Dutch. Not really our cup of tea. Then we tried making a new last name out of the parts of the ones we started with. Then we were food or porn stars. These attempts didn't last very long. It was clear we were going to have to start from scratch.

Well, we thought, if we're starting from scratch, let's do it right! We brainstormed all of the things that are important to us as a couple, figuring that if we included them in our name it would act as a kind of talismanic ritual, calling those things more fully into our lives. We combined them, combed baby name books, and translated them into other languages. (For a while, Ms. P was trying to convince me to take the name Schmetterling.) Nothing quite felt right.

At some point, I suggested my grandmother's maiden name. It's beautiful; it combines light and water and movement, all things on our list; and it had the added advantage of reassuring my troubled family. Ms. P was won over by writing it (she could never love a name that didn't write beautifully), and for a while we went around writing our names on everything until we felt like they were real.

We've reflected since then that both of us being women helped tremendously, because we had both already internalized the cultural code that women change their names. We both resisted it at different times, but we had considered it. I know several men who have changed their last names, but only one who actually took his wife's.

We take names very seriously. Taking a name together--not simply hers or mine, but a name together--was about calling into being our marriage.

Dale asks, For some reason -- I guess this is sort of in the random-list spirit -- I'm wondering whether you like your hands and feet, and what your favorite song was when you were fourteen.

Hands and feet. Hmm! I don't think about my hands and feet much. When I notice them, either I'm enjoying that I can do something or I'm irritated that my hands are too small to grip something properly (like pickle jars). In general, though, I do like my hands and my feet. If I were at home, I'd take a picture for you!

As for my favorite song when I was fourteen, well, first I have to diverge into my odd time-telling habits. There are people who can tell you were they were in 1983, just by knowing the year. Me, I have to figure out how old I would have been in 1983 (9 for almost all of it), then what grade I was in (4th then 5th). And then I know where I lived, and then I can remember all kinds of things. But years and ages? Complete mystery.

So, my favorite song when I was fourteen. I was fourteen in grades 9 and 10. Okay, Hawaii and high school. A few years later it would be "Somebody" by the Cure (but only the live version); at 14 it was probably something awful by Richard Marx. My best friend K and I would call each other when we got home from our after-school activities, turn on the same radio station, and lie there not talking much while we did our homework. This period generated my favorite lyrical mishearing. Instead of "how can we be lovers if we can't make amends," I heard "how can we be lovers if we can't make a mess" and went around singing my lyrics, loudly, for years. I still like mine better!

Excellent questions! Feel free to leave them whenever you're curious; I love knowing what people are curious about.

 

Because I Have Run Out of Brain Cells

100 Things About Me, Because of Course It Is About Me

1. I adore prime numbers. I prefer things to happen in prime numbers. When I read the news about the largest prime number so far, clocking in at 9.1 million digits (it's 2^30402457-1), I swooned.
2. I have very little ability to juggle large projects while waiting on someone else's decision. I can do small, discrete, data-oriented tasks, but I can't really write when I'm Waiting.
3. I like filling out forms. I find it soothing.
4. I like to put my Achilles tendon between the big toe and other toes of my other foot when I go to sleep.
5. Small children make me happy.
6. There are whole parts of my childhood I don't remember because I was so far inside my own head. I actually remember coming out of a daydreamy period and trying to figure out why I was on a bus and in those clothes and where the hell were we going?
7. I had opinions on the Reagan-Carter presidential race in elementary school, and I have opinions on politics now, but I'd prefer not to think about it too much.
8. My writing teachers in college asked me to please lighten up and write something happy.
9. I'm generally an optimist until I'm just not anymore.
10. I'm an Enneagram 9. Married to an Enneagram 4.
11. I'm proprietary about my pens.
12. Hell, I just love office supplies and I hoard them. It makes me feel safe.
13. I'm trying to learn beaded loomwork. It's harder than it looks.
14. I secretly want to be a singer when I grow up.
15. I'm 32.
16. I can generally recognize when a book or a movie or a band is Important and Great, but I usually don't like them very much.
17. I love movies disparaged as cheesy. Not because they're good, but because I find them pleasingly exactly what I expect.
18. My handwriting is near to illegible to anyone but me unless I write very slowly and deliberately, and even then it's a shot in the dark.
19. I don't like having evidence of my PhD around. I like that I did it, I just don't like it being a form of braggery.
20. I love the color green, followed closely by brown, orange, and purple. But really, in the end, I think color is A Good Thing.
21. I often want to like things more than I actually do like them.
22. I have a hard time thinking of myself as different from other people, inside.
23. I have a weakness for Coke.
24. I've cried over a fair number of relationships, but I've only really had my heart broken once. And it was the shortest and stupidest of them all, to boot.
25. I remember how I felt when Ms. P told me she was considering religious life.
26. I was raised Catholic, but it never took.
27. I'm currently researching and talking to Pele. We'll see if she'll talk to a haole.
28. I don't have much connection to physical location, having learned at an early age that I was only going to move anyway.
29. If I have a connection to any physical location, it's to Hawai'i.
30. I really miss the ocean.
31. I was once stung by a beached Portugese Man'o'war so badly--the tentacles wrapped up both legs--that I had to spend several days sitting in a baking soda bath in a tub in our carport while my mother read romance novels nearby.
32. I only played doctor with one person in my childhood, the divine Sara from across the street, and the only thing I can remember about her--other than her talent at tracing and coloring Garfield, of course--is that her Marine Corps father made stained-glass windows in his spare time.
33. In high school I spoke German fluently enough that by the end of a five-week visit I was unrecognizable as American.
34. I can't remember much of my vocabulary other than "schlagen," to hit, and "schlampen," to be a bitch. Oh, and "Gummi," both eraser and condom.
35. I once thought I was good at languages, but I'm only good at German.
36. When Ms. P and I married, we took my paternal grandmother's maiden name.
37. My paternal grandfather had a PhD in physics from the University of Heidelberg.
38. My maternal grandfather had an 8th-grade education and worked in the quarry.
39. My grandparents didn't know what to do with one another.
40. I often dislike the feel of my own clothing. I worry I have Sensory Integration Disorder or something like it.
41. I was a big geek in high school, even though my high school rewarded smarts.
42. I was terribly shy in high school.
43. I once played Tick-Tock-Crock in a high-school production of Peter Pan. The tech crew once accidentally landed a flying Peter Pan on my croc-foot.
44. I notice all kinds of things about people, but I have never figured out how people know about bands.
45. I often don't care to think about my general appearence, which is why I've had two great hair styles separated by lots of blah since my last haircut in July.
46. If I'm not careful, I'll forget to look in the mirror in the morning and will walk out of the house with something strange going on. This is much less worrisome with Ms. P.
47. I sometimes think her hair looks fine when she thinks it's a walking disaster.
48. She's much femmeier than I am.
49. But I'm not exactly butch, either.
50. I never "came out," so to speak, because it never seemed necessary. Except to my mother.
51. I like taking computers apart and putting them back together.
52. Past a certain mechanical point, however, I don't really understand how they work.
53. My lovely HP laptop drops the wireless connection in the house, and I don't know why.
54. I have lots of freckles.
55. I'm a shoo-in for skin cancer since I can't remember a summer in my childhood and young adulthood when I didn't get a sunburn of some kind.
56. I once got sunburned while walking for 20 minutes across campus in Illinois in short sleeves on the first balmy day in March.
57. I once sunburned my whole body--breasts, ass, feet, ears, etc.--by going skinny dipping in Hawai'i with my boyfriend at noon on the day I was flying away to college.
58. I sobbed from Hawai'i to Pennsylvania and scared many passengers.
59. I sometimes feed the dogs from forks because it amuses me.
60. I get very sad over individual animals killed on the road.
61. I have a song playing in my head every minute of the day. Sometimes they are very bad songs.
62. I love the poetry of Mary Oliver.
63. I want to be a poet when I grow up.
64. I want to be a novelist when I grow up, too, only I'm bad at writing fiction.
65. I like reading porn/erotica, but pictures don't often do it for me.
66. I like pretending I can paint.
67. I once had a pair of shoes I referred to as the butch-femme shoes. They were strappy heels, but with a nice solid heel and hiking-boot-esque soles.
68. I have never cheated on anyone.
69. I have, however, been the person someone cheated with.
70. My high-school best friend and I were each present when the other lost her virginity. In the case of mine, though, she didn't know it.
71. I'm not easily grossed out.
72. I can't handle watching--or even hearing--violence in TV and movies.
73. The first time I watched The X-Files, I couldn't look at the screen.
74. I once finished the NY Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle without cheating.
75. I still have a mad crush on Gillian Anderson, so long as she doesn't go off-script.
76. I believe in getting to my life's goals by doing the Next Right Thing.
77. Reading blogs can make my brain go off-line.
78. When we run out of dog food we feed them random things from the cupboard.
79. As of this moment, the library project is still at a stand-still. I am irritated.
80. I once frequented a Diaryland site called Dead Letter or Unletter or something like that. You could write letters to people you didn't want to read them. I wrote a few, and I read all the time.
81. I love eavesdropping on people.
82. I think people are fascinating. They're more fascinating at a distance.
83. I hate to pry, even when I'm completely curious.
84. Sometimes I still channel my inner 12-year-old and say The Stupidest Thing Ever.
85. My supervisor just left before me, which is unprecedented.
86. I like getting email and I'm not very good at responding to it.
87. I sing to myself under my breath.
88. When I'm not paying attention, I sometimes sing louder than I intend.
89. Sometimes I'm startled that people act as if they can see me.
90. I love wearing overalls and yoga pants and big mens shirts. Just not at the same time.
91. I hate traffic-directing people when the lights aren't out.
92. I wish I were sensible about money.
93. I like doing taxes.
94. My first boyfriend still isn't speaking to me because of something stupid and petty I did 13 years ago.
95. I'm still in touch with friends from high school who do speak to him.
96. I can say the name of the Hawai'ian state fish: humuhumunukunukuapua'a.
97. I wish I could find affordable adult ballet classes.
98. I like yoga because I don't think.
99. I like yoga because it isn't competitive.
100. Saying 100 things about myself is much harder than I thought it would be.

So, what is it that you've wanted to know about me that I didn't tell you here? (All, you know, two of you.) Leave questions in the comments and I'll answer.

I'm Sure I'm the Last

person on the planet to discover Bloglines. It's awfully handy, but it does obviate my habit of declarative clicking, hoping SOMEONE had updated and would relieve me of my workaday routine for a minute or two. Anything to help me stay focused.