Man, my head might be trying to kill me, but it sure has been a fun couple of weeks with Julie. y'know, when she's not high on slurpees. wait. that's real fun too. it just involves more helping her ride her bike until she gets real cranky then taking her for naps. She's the head of activities and crafts with our ragtag team of anarcho scouts. Twist tie sculptures, wildflower seed bombings, lots of drawing and painting and art placement on the walls of the apartment that i'm not so sure i'm going to get the full damage deposit back from anymore... dominoes skyscrapers (and she even sat still long enough to play almost a full game of dominoes with my bro the other night!) cape-making and walks and building nests to be birds in on the sides of every street in our neighborhood, and bike riding (i'm sure glad i found her helmet, she's a terror on the pedal-less bike we got from a pal, although she refuses to go near it unless i'm holding it, which feels even more dangerous to me sometimes as she tends to have better balance than me.) it's been fun. and i've even gotten some CLEANING ALL THE THINGS done while she takes her two-hour long splashy-bath every two days or so.
Did i mention that ALL of these activities involves a magic wand? Did I mention that EVERYTHING she does involves a magic wand? I suppose sometimes she uses it for sword fighting, but it's still called a magic wand.
Anyway, I'm really stoked for her to be three. Kids are real interesting and real funny. And all the good people are stoked on hanging out avec toddler. And i REALLY like that she can tell me what she wants for her birthday now and i don't have to guess and make her things that i think are sweet but she's seriously non-plussed by. I'm a bit horrified of the amount of pink and purple i'm being swallowed by, between the neon pink and blue/purple striped legwarmers i'm knitting and the quilt i'm patching onto ("I want a PURPLE blanket with Princesses and Mermaids on it!") I figured i'd so with a stencil of Princess Peach that i made a mermaid tail for the bottom of, make a bunch of purple patches of it, then sew 'em all onto a purple and pink reversible quilt, as my skills are defintely not anywhere near any sort of ability to make a quilt myself.) toss in some headbands and hairclips and a slingshot and I hope that the baby daddy doesn't groan TOO much when she opens them. If he doesn't groan a little over the manic craft explosion we'll probably all be a bit confused though.
Things are good, as usual, with the baby daddy/Co-parent. we don't agree on much (don't really feel the need to though, which makes things simple for everyone) and have forgotten a lot of the small things about each other that drove us nuts, which is really nice. We don't understand each other at all, but I think we've really managed to figure out how to let all the things that don't matter wash out of view and just focus on loving Julie ALL THE TIME and letting that stand as enough for each other to respect the decisions that we make in our time with her. I'm down.
Friday, April 22, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Phew, so I suppose this blog has become exactly what i was trying to avoid when i took it down last time, that is, it's become a pool of confusion and self-loathing. and y'know, george-hating. these things happen sometimes. And then they stop for a while, and i really like it when they stop for a while. my brain and heart can take breaks from the crazy, and I like them a lot when they come. I'm back on vacation from my brain trying to hurt itself. it's nice here.
Things are going well, and simply. Pretty focused on Julie's birthday coming up. She doesn't quite understand ages or birthdays or anything (although she knows what presents are, and that gramma's coming to visit, and that bowling is a rad time and all of these things are happening soon and therefore is STOKED.) I asked her what she wanted for the b-day and think i'm going to be able to make ALL THE THINGS that she wanted, i just hope they turn out to be as rad as they are in my head. there is WAY too much sewing involved for my skill set. which in no way includes sewing. sigh.
Spring is here, which means that it only snows for a few days at a time, and sometimes most of it even melts before snowfall and i'm glad for this, because we're getting way more precipitation than we do most years, which, although i won't have much of a garden going this year, that everyone else in this place will have a good run this season, and hopefully there will be chickweed everywhere soon. it's creeping out of the ice blocks in the backyard already and i've been munching on it when i'm on my way to work, but i'd like to get my harvest on and make some things. I definitely overdid the tincture making last season, and still have a shoebox full of 'em... and most of them are ones that i don't use much. I'm still not sure why i went with burdock leaf tincture, i guess just because there was so much lying around when i made the root tincture. this year i think i'll just fry up and eat the leaves. I might try to make up a salve with some chickweed and plantain and burdock leaves for burncare, but i've had really bad luck making salves so we'll just have to see how that goes. the stuff grows everywhere so i'm sure i could just pick some leaves fresh for burns, and hope that i don't mishandle the oven in the winter. (ha!)
Been anarchy-scouts-ing it up all over the place lately. the feral pal is good for having projects together. The homebrew experiments are going well and there seems to be no lack of fruit to make wine with floating around. We have discovered that we need to make a new batch of beer every 2 weeks to keep up with our consumption and distribution, and are contemplating doing a batch every week for a bit so that the distribution can rise. we just need to get a bunch more carboys and we're off. Also stoked on spring because that means that we can get most of the things we need to make the beer from alleyways and abandoned lots in the neighborhood. there are hops growing everywhere and i've still got a 5 gallon pail of barley that fnb didn't want kicking around. well, it's only about half full now, but i'm not cooking any more for food until we get more confident in our skillz and start roasting the barley ourselves to make wort. cause that'll be super fun.
came across the term salvagepunk today, something that maybe rises from the ashes of steampunk/dieselpunk's newfound commerciality. Not that i expect it to have any different a fate, but i know there's no way i'm going to be selling the shit i make out of the shit i find, so now i guess i'm a cool kid AND can rock the anti-capitalism. until they find me and take both of those away at once when the ashes of salvagepunk blow into something ...marketable.
Things are going well, and simply. Pretty focused on Julie's birthday coming up. She doesn't quite understand ages or birthdays or anything (although she knows what presents are, and that gramma's coming to visit, and that bowling is a rad time and all of these things are happening soon and therefore is STOKED.) I asked her what she wanted for the b-day and think i'm going to be able to make ALL THE THINGS that she wanted, i just hope they turn out to be as rad as they are in my head. there is WAY too much sewing involved for my skill set. which in no way includes sewing. sigh.
Spring is here, which means that it only snows for a few days at a time, and sometimes most of it even melts before snowfall and i'm glad for this, because we're getting way more precipitation than we do most years, which, although i won't have much of a garden going this year, that everyone else in this place will have a good run this season, and hopefully there will be chickweed everywhere soon. it's creeping out of the ice blocks in the backyard already and i've been munching on it when i'm on my way to work, but i'd like to get my harvest on and make some things. I definitely overdid the tincture making last season, and still have a shoebox full of 'em... and most of them are ones that i don't use much. I'm still not sure why i went with burdock leaf tincture, i guess just because there was so much lying around when i made the root tincture. this year i think i'll just fry up and eat the leaves. I might try to make up a salve with some chickweed and plantain and burdock leaves for burncare, but i've had really bad luck making salves so we'll just have to see how that goes. the stuff grows everywhere so i'm sure i could just pick some leaves fresh for burns, and hope that i don't mishandle the oven in the winter. (ha!)
Been anarchy-scouts-ing it up all over the place lately. the feral pal is good for having projects together. The homebrew experiments are going well and there seems to be no lack of fruit to make wine with floating around. We have discovered that we need to make a new batch of beer every 2 weeks to keep up with our consumption and distribution, and are contemplating doing a batch every week for a bit so that the distribution can rise. we just need to get a bunch more carboys and we're off. Also stoked on spring because that means that we can get most of the things we need to make the beer from alleyways and abandoned lots in the neighborhood. there are hops growing everywhere and i've still got a 5 gallon pail of barley that fnb didn't want kicking around. well, it's only about half full now, but i'm not cooking any more for food until we get more confident in our skillz and start roasting the barley ourselves to make wort. cause that'll be super fun.
came across the term salvagepunk today, something that maybe rises from the ashes of steampunk/dieselpunk's newfound commerciality. Not that i expect it to have any different a fate, but i know there's no way i'm going to be selling the shit i make out of the shit i find, so now i guess i'm a cool kid AND can rock the anti-capitalism. until they find me and take both of those away at once when the ashes of salvagepunk blow into something ...marketable.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Egos should be illegal and mine just doesn't know how to act.
For one: the word Cunt is officially out of my vocabulary as of today.
For two: i like DOING STUFF and MAKING THINGS. and sometimes even going to bed when I'm already half asleep after yet another weekend of anarchy scouts (complete with bottle drive. ha!) and chatting with feral pals about how neither one of us know anything about adoption and feel real weird about it, but know that it doesn't pertain to us so maybe we just have to leave judgement outta that even though it makes us twitch (no, not thinking of adopting, it's just a theme that has come up a lot lately for whatever reason things come up.) The theme of gender and sexual orientation has come up a lot with us too. I can speak for myself and say this: I have a lot of goddamn privilege here, and i hide behind it.
I've been told by my family all of my life that i'm a lesbian, not in a way that they had any reason to assume my sexuality, but in the way that one might use the term as a slur because i didn't fit the gender norm, and i didn't care about a lot of things that they felt i was supposed to care about, and that i hated the fact that every time i started being friends with a dude he'd just wanna date me and i'd never really get to the "hey! we're pals and hang out and do shit and it's all good" parts. I always assumed that i could go through life and be treated "as a male" because that's how i approached situations. clearly i was wrong, and still am. Subcultural markers have helped with that, completely absconding with "sexualizing" my body in any way by conforming to the whole "if you don't dress sexy people won't treat you as a sex object" shit. (which, for the record, i fight myself on daily. i know it's bullshit. I've lived it's bullshit, but still somewhere in my heart i still hate the fact that i have a body that people will sexualize and i internalize that instead of confronting it.) So i've been wading through a lot of this and wonder if my identifying as genderqueer is all wrapped up in that. Like if i'm some sort of hurtful poser because women in my mind are sexualized and men aren't and that's why i'm uncomfortable being seen as female? real confused. I know that i've known i wasn't a boy or a girl since i've had the developmental ability to remember thoughts and feelings but i can't help but pick myself apart a bit on that.
Another piece, is the whole LIKING ALL THE BODIES piece. I mean, the bits a person has don't start the context for being attracted to them. Which isn't confusing at all for me. I really love the people that i love, and some of them i love in the way that sometimes we cuddle, and others sometimes we kiss, and others sometimes we do ALL THE THINGS. and others we've never touched at all. So i hid behind the official-relationships with male bodies, and secret crushes and flirtations with female bodies. These days everything is pretty much out there as much as anything else. I'm still confused all the time and wonder a lot about how fuckt my head is that although i can't have intercourse with a male body right now it's easier to admit to myself and others to being attracted to them than being upfront about being really attracted to/having relationships of whatever stripe with friends with female bodies and being comfortable and feeling safe having sex-by-anyone's-standards with them. Then again, that's likely mostly to do with the workmate-love more than the fact that she's a she. Now i'm just picking myself apart i think.
Maybe it's been too long since i had someone tell me every little thing that was wrong with me and now i'm doing it to myself because i don't know how to handle just being gentle with my Self. who knows. I think it's time to make some burdock tea and saw some boards into dominoes and finally clean that damn silk screen emulsion off and clean up the house before Julie comes back tomorrow so the kidlet can mess it up good and proper on her own terms while pirate-queen-ing around the place.
For two: i like DOING STUFF and MAKING THINGS. and sometimes even going to bed when I'm already half asleep after yet another weekend of anarchy scouts (complete with bottle drive. ha!) and chatting with feral pals about how neither one of us know anything about adoption and feel real weird about it, but know that it doesn't pertain to us so maybe we just have to leave judgement outta that even though it makes us twitch (no, not thinking of adopting, it's just a theme that has come up a lot lately for whatever reason things come up.) The theme of gender and sexual orientation has come up a lot with us too. I can speak for myself and say this: I have a lot of goddamn privilege here, and i hide behind it.
I've been told by my family all of my life that i'm a lesbian, not in a way that they had any reason to assume my sexuality, but in the way that one might use the term as a slur because i didn't fit the gender norm, and i didn't care about a lot of things that they felt i was supposed to care about, and that i hated the fact that every time i started being friends with a dude he'd just wanna date me and i'd never really get to the "hey! we're pals and hang out and do shit and it's all good" parts. I always assumed that i could go through life and be treated "as a male" because that's how i approached situations. clearly i was wrong, and still am. Subcultural markers have helped with that, completely absconding with "sexualizing" my body in any way by conforming to the whole "if you don't dress sexy people won't treat you as a sex object" shit. (which, for the record, i fight myself on daily. i know it's bullshit. I've lived it's bullshit, but still somewhere in my heart i still hate the fact that i have a body that people will sexualize and i internalize that instead of confronting it.) So i've been wading through a lot of this and wonder if my identifying as genderqueer is all wrapped up in that. Like if i'm some sort of hurtful poser because women in my mind are sexualized and men aren't and that's why i'm uncomfortable being seen as female? real confused. I know that i've known i wasn't a boy or a girl since i've had the developmental ability to remember thoughts and feelings but i can't help but pick myself apart a bit on that.
Another piece, is the whole LIKING ALL THE BODIES piece. I mean, the bits a person has don't start the context for being attracted to them. Which isn't confusing at all for me. I really love the people that i love, and some of them i love in the way that sometimes we cuddle, and others sometimes we kiss, and others sometimes we do ALL THE THINGS. and others we've never touched at all. So i hid behind the official-relationships with male bodies, and secret crushes and flirtations with female bodies. These days everything is pretty much out there as much as anything else. I'm still confused all the time and wonder a lot about how fuckt my head is that although i can't have intercourse with a male body right now it's easier to admit to myself and others to being attracted to them than being upfront about being really attracted to/having relationships of whatever stripe with friends with female bodies and being comfortable and feeling safe having sex-by-anyone's-standards with them. Then again, that's likely mostly to do with the workmate-love more than the fact that she's a she. Now i'm just picking myself apart i think.
Maybe it's been too long since i had someone tell me every little thing that was wrong with me and now i'm doing it to myself because i don't know how to handle just being gentle with my Self. who knows. I think it's time to make some burdock tea and saw some boards into dominoes and finally clean that damn silk screen emulsion off and clean up the house before Julie comes back tomorrow so the kidlet can mess it up good and proper on her own terms while pirate-queen-ing around the place.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)