Oh nice, NOAA’s hazardous weather outlook for our area says that there is a chance of rapid snow melt and slow-moving thunderstorms producing heavy rain.
You know what that means? Potential localized flooding. In addition to a non-negligible threat of tornadoes tomorrow. I seriously hate my life.
I like the notion that you don’t have to love your body and have a good body image to be a worthwhile person. Of course, if someone has a positive body image (whatever their shape is) that’s great. But I’ve always had a negative body image, even as a kid and I don’t think it will ever change. It’s just something I’ve learned to live with. It should be enough that for the most part I don’t practice disordered eating anymore. Asking me to love the way my body looks is too much damn pressure.
I hear that. I’m twenty-six and am only just now starting to feel good about myself. It’s an unexpected bonus, but had I been unable to, I figure there are worse things.
I saw a Mr K clone once, way back in the 80s. Terrible embarassing, I couldn’t stop staring. Luckily his attention was all on his partner and their baby!
@Lea –
Elyse Anders at Skepchick had a great article about how itās OK not to love your body. Itās your body and you donāt have to feel a certain way about it. Sheās a cancer survivor who runs marathons. Sheās lost all kinds of weight and she doesnāt think her butt is fantastic. She isnāt ashamed of it either. I like her point of view. If beauty is important to someone, I think thatās fine. They should go for it and be as beautiful as they wanna be. I donāt think we all need to be or feel beautiful to matter.
I must read this. The whole “love your body” bit seems an exaggerated line to me – love in my mind is a strong emotion and implies more time spent thinking about something than I’d want to spend on my body. Being content with my body or just not thinking about aches and pains suits me fine. Love is for other persons, two-legged or four. Sir loves my body, that’s enough for me. I’ve only been pretty much content with it since we got together – seven years out of fifty. It’s a nice change.
@Ken L – oh good, another Springsteen fan! š
@LBT – I’m picturing you listening to a Springsteen album and thinking “The Boss reminds me of someone, who is it?” š
it just hit me like a ton of bricks your icon. it’s the Boss. I thought looking at your blog it might be either that or Mandy Patikin in Princess bride. also gotta say not a cat person but Fribby pic is very cute.
Unimaginative
10 years ago
Hi, everyone! Congrats, inurashii! I’m back from New Orleans, which is home to some very funky smells. I’m nowhere near caught up, and will probably be mostly lurking for the next couple of months while I re-re-design my life again. And still work my overloaded day job, so I can afford to re-re-design my life.
I’m actually not all the way home, but Edmonton is showing signs of green leaf, which is lovely. I expect Spring to unfurl in the next couple of weeks, and then I can soak in the balsam. Love Spring (sniff sniff inhale Ahhhh!).
At some point in the last year, I came across this tumblr by an autistic young man (or possibly a few of them, I’m not sure). http://theconcealedweapon.tumblr.com
In fact, I probably found it here. Anyway, I highly recommend it. My nephew has Aspergers, and this tumblr has corrected a LOT of my misconceptions. Also, they have no love for TERFS, MRAs, misogynists, or assholes in general.
News for me: I cannot eat fresh corn. Bad in that I love corn, but good in that now I KNOW what’s been causing my bathroom emergencies after eating outā¦ Friggin’ digestive system.
Ken – LOL the power! Yeah, my sister asked me a while back if I realised Mr K and the Boss look very much alike. I hadn’t (this was before I’d really looked at Bruce’s pics; I didn’t have any of his albums then) and when I did look – yup, she was right. It doesn’t take much photoshopping to make his features very much like Mr K’s, and I’ve got heaps of portraits done that way now. Given I can’t take snaps of Mr K, doing it this way was a real find.
This is a then-and-now; the painting is Louis XIII Crowned by Victory, by Philippe de Champaigne, from around 1635.
Eyeballing Mandy Patinkin is one of my chief joys in watching Princess Bride. Oh, and the duel where he and Westley are talking about real Renaissance sword-masters.
Thanks about Fribs! She did look very cute lying like that. I’m glad she didn’t do the wake-up-and-move thing kitties usually do when someone picks up a camera. š
[CN: severe weather, death of animals]
The weather forecast just seems to be getting worse. I really hope the update brings good news, but so far the weather outlook for our part of Colorado is really scary (capitalization is from the NWS website, not me):
NUMEROUS SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS WILL LIKELY DEVELOP ACROSS NORTHEAST
COLORADO THIS AFTERNOON AND CONTINUE INTO THE EVENING. LARGE AND
DESTRUCTIVE HAIL…TORNADOES…DAMAGING WINDS…AND LOCALLY HEAVY
RAINFALL ARE POSSIBLE.
SUFFICIENT INSTABILITY COMBINED WITH STRONG AND DEEP WIND SHEAR
IN THE ATMOSPHERE WILL SET THE STAGE FOR DEVELOPMENT OF SEVERE
WEATHER. THE STORMS ARE FIRST EXPECTED TO DEVELOP IN THE FOOTHILLS
AND PALMER DIVIDE BETWEEN NOON AND 2 PM…AND THE SPREAD NORTHEAST
INTO THE I-25 URBAN CORRIDOR BY EARLY TO MID AFTERNOON AND THEN
ONTO THE EASTERN PLAINS BY LATE AFTERNOON. BE READY TO TAKE QUICK
ACTION IF WARNINGS ARE ISSUED FOR YOUR LOCATION.
And I’m afraid they don’t seem far off. Outside the air has that super moist, fresh smell characteristic of atmospheric conditions perfect for severe weather. I’ve known this smell ever since I was a little kid. It is an instant trigger for me. It’s only 6:30 AM right now and I already feel like our lives are in danger. I can’t think straight, I completely lack any appetite, and I feel my stomach churning. All I want to do today is just sit in my bed and pretend I’m in a different world. This is a nightmare.
We can’t afford to have damaging weather hit our area even if we do survive (and we probably will survive). There is so much at stake: our cats, our dog, all of the 265 trees we just planted three weeks ago, the plants in the greenhouse, and so much more. Any substantial damage will be a disaster for us because we are already in a financially tight situation.
In addition, there’s a chance that, if a tornado or a large hailstorm hits us, we won’t have time to bring in the cats. The dog will come in immediately because she comes when she’s called, but not the cats. If the cats stay outside during such weather, they will most likely die unless they are lucky enough to find shelter on their own. Golf-ball-sized hail doesn’t typically injure adult human beings, but it will probably severely harm the pets if it hits them.
If there are any good/warm thoughts, prayers, etc. you can send our way, we would all really appreciate it.
@Ally, lots of good vibes and love to you! I hope you all (trees included) make it through ok.
As for me, my lawyer just called and confirmed my daughter’s father receive the court notification, so there’s reasonable hope of having an actual audience (and even more hopefully, an agreement) next week.
Marie
10 years ago
@Ally
Sending good thoughts your way. I hope you stay safe.
I’m sorry to hear you might get severe weather. If it makes you feel better, I do believe animals can sense impending dangerous weather. Darrow is normally one of those rare cats who is rarely afraid of anything. Last year, he was sitting in the window and suddenly bolted from it and headed to a location in the apt. that was not near a window. Five minutes later we suddenly got a very severe storm.
Content note: I’m going to describe the storm. Just a warning in case you want to skip the rest of this paragraph. The storm formed really suddenly. I had no idea it was coming. There wasn’t a lot of thunder. It was really strong wind and a lot of trees were knocked over and branches were breaking off and flying around. It was scary and obviously unsafe by the windows.
Somehow he knew it was coming. Dracarys too hid under the bed and she usually isn’t bothered by storms either. I do think cats are very good at knowing when they need shelter. Is it possible to keep them inside all day if it will set your mind at ease?
Thanks, everyone. I just got the cats in. I feel bad for putting them in the office, but at least they’ll be safe there. They also happen to be close to the tornado shelter area of our choice in the house, so if there’s a tornado we can easily grab them quickly.
girlscientist
10 years ago
@LBT: Sorry to hear about the lack of funds and your parents’ conspicuous spending. I sent you a few bucks – I’m not using them, and I hope they can make a difference for you.
I’m having a bad, unproductive day today. The weather is beautiful, yesterday I finished writing a poem for the first time since 1997, and I finished writing the responses to the reviewer comments for the paper of doom. But I’m stuck feeling miserable because of my estranged BFF, whose abusive S.O. forced her to more or less cut me off. From what little I know bout her life for the last two years, she’s done her best to get a stable job and to make friends outside of her GF’s sphere of influence, and she’s succeded, because she’s awesome like that. But while my BFF’s life was in turmoil, her GF decided to have child (and looking back to how my friend was doing at the time, I’m pretty sure my BFF didn’t *want* a child, at least at that time, and the whole pregnancy thing has definitely thrown a wrench in her wishes for her career). My BFF’s parents divorced when she was very little, and she’s always felt that her father had abandoned her. I think her GF more or less had the child in order to nail my friend in the relationship, and I’m afraid that she’s blackmailing my friend into feeling obligated to stay with her for the sake of the child.
I don’t have definitive proof that my friend is being abused. Only circumstancial evidence, like the fact that when I confronted her she got angry and told me to mind my own business (I figured it out *just* as her GF must have gotten pregnant, so my timing was probably not the best, not to mention that I was really clumsy about it).
I met her GF once, and she exhibited what I thought were a number of red flags: she made a few remarks that seemed like microagressions to me (she criticized my friend’s mother in front of my friend and me, she said that my friend’s taste in TV shows was “pathetic” and made a comment about my friend’s relationship to her father’s new family which seemed so hurtful it left me speechless… all that with a smile on her face). At one point in the conversation I made a self-deprecating joke and she mocked me (it was almost like she couldn’t help herself). She seemed incredibly self-satisfied for no discernable reason, and flat-out admitted that she was reading all the text messages I sent my friend. Later, after my friend had stopped responding to my texts, I found her GF’s old blog, on which she had flat out doxxed my friend.
And then there’s my friend’s behaviour, which was so weird: she never invited me to hang out and always had an excuse when I invited her, and yet at work she seemed to really enjoy every occasion to hang out with me. She had a weirdly low self-esteem for someone who claimed to be in a happy long-term relationship. Once, she injured her back, and she said she “must have fallen while roller-skating.” She was always very good about seeing a doctor whenever she didn’t feel well, but she had this lingering cough (which lasted *months*) which she refused to see a doctor for. And once, I put my hand on her shoulder, and she hissed, like I was burning her. And there was the whole friendship dynamic between her and me, which was just really bizarre.
I haven’t given up on my friend. We don’t communicate much these days, but I send her an e-mail about once a month with a funny link so that she knows there’s someone who loves her. I read all the books on domestic violence I can put my hands on in order to get a clearer picture of what’s going on with her. And I try to make myself as strong as possible to that, if she needs me, I can be there for her. But damn, there are days when it’s hard, and today is one of those days.
Sorry for the tl;dr, but I needed to get it out. Thanks, David, for putting these threads out. You’re the best!
Ally, glad you got the cats in. Thinking all kinds of positive/good thoughts in your general direction.
girlscientist, I think you are doing exactly what you need to do to be there for your friend. If/when she needs help, she will know you are there for her.
Marie
10 years ago
@girlscientist
Sending good thoughts for you and your friend. It sounds like you’re doing all you can.
girlscientist
10 years ago
@cloudiah, marie: Thanks! It’s just that some days I really miss her and that’s really difficult. I’ve gotten much better at trusting her, but some days I feel helpless and I lash out at her inside my head, which is unhelpful. Thank goodness the berating stays *inside* my head.
I sent you a few bucks ā Iām not using them, and I hope they can make a difference for you.
They have, thank you! Would you like to put it to a story? If you don’t have a preference, I’ll just push it to the Thing in the Drain, which is the current story in funding.
@Ally: My apologies for that specific use of language. I meant absolutely no offense to anyone. My pal refers to herself as a dyke, and wears the term with pride. I’m so used to it being a non-issue in my very queer circle of friends that I sometimes forget that words like “fag” and “dyke” can be hurtful, especially when it’s my BFF talking. I’ve heard her squeal “I am such a fucking dyke!” so often that the word often doesn’t register as anything but a synonym for lesbian.
I totally understand your sensitivity. From all I’ve witnessed and heard from various trans friends, it seems that transitioning is one of the most difficult things a person can do, and most of society will not support them. Our “Privilege Olympics” are only ever silly talks between close friends who all have a lot of respect for each other, in a safe space where we can let our tongues flap as stupidly as they want to. Which, in hindsight, might not make for the best material to post publicly. I was only thinking from the point of view of the participants, who usually end up almost wetting ourselves with laughter. We’ve all had the serious discussions about privilege, othering, and all the ways the world can shit on a person, and sometimes the need is felt to toss our good behaviour out the window and let off steam. Again, no offense was ever intended, and I’m sorry if my wording came off as too glib. Another issue might be that we live in one of the most queer-friendly cities in the world, and thus don’t experience as much abuse as we have, or would elsewhere, and so we forget ourselves. One more apology, okay? I feel like a real shit now, and I’m very sorry.
On a brighter note, I’m glad you got the cats in, and I hope the storm wasn’t too awful! Keeping the kitties safe and happy is always top priority. If anything ever happened to my little fuzzball I’d be crushed.
Aaaaannnnnd, a bit of personal griping to end this post. Allergy season is in full swing. I’m either swelling and leaking from every facial orifice, doped out of my tree on Benedryl, or hiding behind my air filter. Once again, I’m more or less stuck indoors until October. My immune system fucking hates me. I’d hate it back, but a faulty immune system is better than none. Maybe I should just wear a full-face particulate respirator all summer. It might be sweaty and uncomfortable, but what a fashion statement!
The entire Front Range is under a tornado watch until this evening – that includes us. Starting to feel dizzy. I can’t handle this. We have everything prepared in case of a tornado but I have an unshakable feeling of dread and powerlessness right now.
We Hunted The Mammoth
Oh nice, NOAA’s hazardous weather outlook for our area says that there is a chance of rapid snow melt and slow-moving thunderstorms producing heavy rain.
You know what that means? Potential localized flooding. In addition to a non-negligible threat of tornadoes tomorrow. I seriously hate my life.
I like the notion that you don’t have to love your body and have a good body image to be a worthwhile person. Of course, if someone has a positive body image (whatever their shape is) that’s great. But I’ve always had a negative body image, even as a kid and I don’t think it will ever change. It’s just something I’ve learned to live with. It should be enough that for the most part I don’t practice disordered eating anymore. Asking me to love the way my body looks is too much damn pressure.
Thanks LBT.
RE: WWTH
I hear that. I’m twenty-six and am only just now starting to feel good about myself. It’s an unexpected bonus, but had I been unable to, I figure there are worse things.
@Boogerghost – glad you had a good visit to Melbourne! Do you live in Oz?
Damn, I can relate about study. I never did come up with something I could do (not that we had the $$ to make it feasible anyway).
@Sam-I-Was – AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
I saw a Mr K clone once, way back in the 80s. Terrible embarassing, I couldn’t stop staring. Luckily his attention was all on his partner and their baby!
@Lea –
Elyse Anders at Skepchick had a great article about how itās OK not to love your body. Itās your body and you donāt have to feel a certain way about it. Sheās a cancer survivor who runs marathons. Sheās lost all kinds of weight and she doesnāt think her butt is fantastic. She isnāt ashamed of it either. I like her point of view. If beauty is important to someone, I think thatās fine. They should go for it and be as beautiful as they wanna be. I donāt think we all need to be or feel beautiful to matter.
I must read this. The whole “love your body” bit seems an exaggerated line to me – love in my mind is a strong emotion and implies more time spent thinking about something than I’d want to spend on my body. Being content with my body or just not thinking about aches and pains suits me fine. Love is for other persons, two-legged or four. Sir loves my body, that’s enough for me. I’ve only been pretty much content with it since we got together – seven years out of fifty. It’s a nice change.
@Ken L – oh good, another Springsteen fan! š
@LBT – I’m picturing you listening to a Springsteen album and thinking “The Boss reminds me of someone, who is it?” š
Now, brain bleach!
Fribby napping in her favourite spot.
Maddie “This bowl is so empty I can’t even bear to look at it!”
Drat. The paragraph about Elyse Sanders should have been blockquoted. Has the Blockquote Mammoth had its fill at last?
@kittehserf
it just hit me like a ton of bricks your icon. it’s the Boss. I thought looking at your blog it might be either that or Mandy Patikin in Princess bride. also gotta say not a cat person but Fribby pic is very cute.
Hi, everyone! Congrats, inurashii! I’m back from New Orleans, which is home to some very funky smells. I’m nowhere near caught up, and will probably be mostly lurking for the next couple of months while I re-re-design my life again. And still work my overloaded day job, so I can afford to re-re-design my life.
I’m actually not all the way home, but Edmonton is showing signs of green leaf, which is lovely. I expect Spring to unfurl in the next couple of weeks, and then I can soak in the balsam. Love Spring (sniff sniff inhale Ahhhh!).
At some point in the last year, I came across this tumblr by an autistic young man (or possibly a few of them, I’m not sure). http://theconcealedweapon.tumblr.com
In fact, I probably found it here. Anyway, I highly recommend it. My nephew has Aspergers, and this tumblr has corrected a LOT of my misconceptions. Also, they have no love for TERFS, MRAs, misogynists, or assholes in general.
News for me: I cannot eat fresh corn. Bad in that I love corn, but good in that now I KNOW what’s been causing my bathroom emergencies after eating outā¦ Friggin’ digestive system.
Ken – LOL the power! Yeah, my sister asked me a while back if I realised Mr K and the Boss look very much alike. I hadn’t (this was before I’d really looked at Bruce’s pics; I didn’t have any of his albums then) and when I did look – yup, she was right. It doesn’t take much photoshopping to make his features very much like Mr K’s, and I’ve got heaps of portraits done that way now. Given I can’t take snaps of Mr K, doing it this way was a real find.
This is a then-and-now; the painting is Louis XIII Crowned by Victory, by Philippe de Champaigne, from around 1635.
Eyeballing Mandy Patinkin is one of my chief joys in watching Princess Bride. Oh, and the duel where he and Westley are talking about real Renaissance sword-masters.
Thanks about Fribs! She did look very cute lying like that. I’m glad she didn’t do the wake-up-and-move thing kitties usually do when someone picks up a camera. š
[CN: severe weather, death of animals]
The weather forecast just seems to be getting worse. I really hope the update brings good news, but so far the weather outlook for our part of Colorado is really scary (capitalization is from the NWS website, not me):
And I’m afraid they don’t seem far off. Outside the air has that super moist, fresh smell characteristic of atmospheric conditions perfect for severe weather. I’ve known this smell ever since I was a little kid. It is an instant trigger for me. It’s only 6:30 AM right now and I already feel like our lives are in danger. I can’t think straight, I completely lack any appetite, and I feel my stomach churning. All I want to do today is just sit in my bed and pretend I’m in a different world. This is a nightmare.
We can’t afford to have damaging weather hit our area even if we do survive (and we probably will survive). There is so much at stake: our cats, our dog, all of the 265 trees we just planted three weeks ago, the plants in the greenhouse, and so much more. Any substantial damage will be a disaster for us because we are already in a financially tight situation.
In addition, there’s a chance that, if a tornado or a large hailstorm hits us, we won’t have time to bring in the cats. The dog will come in immediately because she comes when she’s called, but not the cats. If the cats stay outside during such weather, they will most likely die unless they are lucky enough to find shelter on their own. Golf-ball-sized hail doesn’t typically injure adult human beings, but it will probably severely harm the pets if it hits them.
If there are any good/warm thoughts, prayers, etc. you can send our way, we would all really appreciate it.
@Ally, lots of good vibes and love to you! I hope you all (trees included) make it through ok.
As for me, my lawyer just called and confirmed my daughter’s father receive the court notification, so there’s reasonable hope of having an actual audience (and even more hopefully, an agreement) next week.
@Ally
Sending good thoughts your way. I hope you stay safe.
Ally,
I’m sorry to hear you might get severe weather. If it makes you feel better, I do believe animals can sense impending dangerous weather. Darrow is normally one of those rare cats who is rarely afraid of anything. Last year, he was sitting in the window and suddenly bolted from it and headed to a location in the apt. that was not near a window. Five minutes later we suddenly got a very severe storm.
Content note: I’m going to describe the storm. Just a warning in case you want to skip the rest of this paragraph. The storm formed really suddenly. I had no idea it was coming. There wasn’t a lot of thunder. It was really strong wind and a lot of trees were knocked over and branches were breaking off and flying around. It was scary and obviously unsafe by the windows.
Somehow he knew it was coming. Dracarys too hid under the bed and she usually isn’t bothered by storms either. I do think cats are very good at knowing when they need shelter. Is it possible to keep them inside all day if it will set your mind at ease?
Thanks, everyone. I just got the cats in. I feel bad for putting them in the office, but at least they’ll be safe there. They also happen to be close to the tornado shelter area of our choice in the house, so if there’s a tornado we can easily grab them quickly.
@LBT: Sorry to hear about the lack of funds and your parents’ conspicuous spending. I sent you a few bucks – I’m not using them, and I hope they can make a difference for you.
I’m having a bad, unproductive day today. The weather is beautiful, yesterday I finished writing a poem for the first time since 1997, and I finished writing the responses to the reviewer comments for the paper of doom. But I’m stuck feeling miserable because of my estranged BFF, whose abusive S.O. forced her to more or less cut me off. From what little I know bout her life for the last two years, she’s done her best to get a stable job and to make friends outside of her GF’s sphere of influence, and she’s succeded, because she’s awesome like that. But while my BFF’s life was in turmoil, her GF decided to have child (and looking back to how my friend was doing at the time, I’m pretty sure my BFF didn’t *want* a child, at least at that time, and the whole pregnancy thing has definitely thrown a wrench in her wishes for her career). My BFF’s parents divorced when she was very little, and she’s always felt that her father had abandoned her. I think her GF more or less had the child in order to nail my friend in the relationship, and I’m afraid that she’s blackmailing my friend into feeling obligated to stay with her for the sake of the child.
I don’t have definitive proof that my friend is being abused. Only circumstancial evidence, like the fact that when I confronted her she got angry and told me to mind my own business (I figured it out *just* as her GF must have gotten pregnant, so my timing was probably not the best, not to mention that I was really clumsy about it).
I met her GF once, and she exhibited what I thought were a number of red flags: she made a few remarks that seemed like microagressions to me (she criticized my friend’s mother in front of my friend and me, she said that my friend’s taste in TV shows was “pathetic” and made a comment about my friend’s relationship to her father’s new family which seemed so hurtful it left me speechless… all that with a smile on her face). At one point in the conversation I made a self-deprecating joke and she mocked me (it was almost like she couldn’t help herself). She seemed incredibly self-satisfied for no discernable reason, and flat-out admitted that she was reading all the text messages I sent my friend. Later, after my friend had stopped responding to my texts, I found her GF’s old blog, on which she had flat out doxxed my friend.
And then there’s my friend’s behaviour, which was so weird: she never invited me to hang out and always had an excuse when I invited her, and yet at work she seemed to really enjoy every occasion to hang out with me. She had a weirdly low self-esteem for someone who claimed to be in a happy long-term relationship. Once, she injured her back, and she said she “must have fallen while roller-skating.” She was always very good about seeing a doctor whenever she didn’t feel well, but she had this lingering cough (which lasted *months*) which she refused to see a doctor for. And once, I put my hand on her shoulder, and she hissed, like I was burning her. And there was the whole friendship dynamic between her and me, which was just really bizarre.
I haven’t given up on my friend. We don’t communicate much these days, but I send her an e-mail about once a month with a funny link so that she knows there’s someone who loves her. I read all the books on domestic violence I can put my hands on in order to get a clearer picture of what’s going on with her. And I try to make myself as strong as possible to that, if she needs me, I can be there for her. But damn, there are days when it’s hard, and today is one of those days.
Sorry for the tl;dr, but I needed to get it out. Thanks, David, for putting these threads out. You’re the best!
Ally, glad you got the cats in. Thinking all kinds of positive/good thoughts in your general direction.
girlscientist, I think you are doing exactly what you need to do to be there for your friend. If/when she needs help, she will know you are there for her.
@girlscientist
Sending good thoughts for you and your friend. It sounds like you’re doing all you can.
@cloudiah, marie: Thanks! It’s just that some days I really miss her and that’s really difficult. I’ve gotten much better at trusting her, but some days I feel helpless and I lash out at her inside my head, which is unhelpful. Thank goodness the berating stays *inside* my head.
RE: girlscientist
I sent you a few bucks ā Iām not using them, and I hope they can make a difference for you.
They have, thank you! Would you like to put it to a story? If you don’t have a preference, I’ll just push it to the Thing in the Drain, which is the current story in funding.
Ally: Oh, wow, stay safe! I know tornadoes are your absolute least favorite thing.
@Ally: My apologies for that specific use of language. I meant absolutely no offense to anyone. My pal refers to herself as a dyke, and wears the term with pride. I’m so used to it being a non-issue in my very queer circle of friends that I sometimes forget that words like “fag” and “dyke” can be hurtful, especially when it’s my BFF talking. I’ve heard her squeal “I am such a fucking dyke!” so often that the word often doesn’t register as anything but a synonym for lesbian.
I totally understand your sensitivity. From all I’ve witnessed and heard from various trans friends, it seems that transitioning is one of the most difficult things a person can do, and most of society will not support them. Our “Privilege Olympics” are only ever silly talks between close friends who all have a lot of respect for each other, in a safe space where we can let our tongues flap as stupidly as they want to. Which, in hindsight, might not make for the best material to post publicly. I was only thinking from the point of view of the participants, who usually end up almost wetting ourselves with laughter. We’ve all had the serious discussions about privilege, othering, and all the ways the world can shit on a person, and sometimes the need is felt to toss our good behaviour out the window and let off steam. Again, no offense was ever intended, and I’m sorry if my wording came off as too glib. Another issue might be that we live in one of the most queer-friendly cities in the world, and thus don’t experience as much abuse as we have, or would elsewhere, and so we forget ourselves. One more apology, okay? I feel like a real shit now, and I’m very sorry.
On a brighter note, I’m glad you got the cats in, and I hope the storm wasn’t too awful! Keeping the kitties safe and happy is always top priority. If anything ever happened to my little fuzzball I’d be crushed.
Aaaaannnnnd, a bit of personal griping to end this post. Allergy season is in full swing. I’m either swelling and leaking from every facial orifice, doped out of my tree on Benedryl, or hiding behind my air filter. Once again, I’m more or less stuck indoors until October. My immune system fucking hates me. I’d hate it back, but a faulty immune system is better than none. Maybe I should just wear a full-face particulate respirator all summer. It might be sweaty and uncomfortable, but what a fashion statement!
@LBT: “The Thing in the Drain” is fine!
The entire Front Range is under a tornado watch until this evening – that includes us. Starting to feel dizzy. I can’t handle this. We have everything prepared in case of a tornado but I have an unshakable feeling of dread and powerlessness right now.
@Winter Walker
I get you. Thanks for understanding. š
Well, looks like my period of unemployment shall be ending soon; I got a job offer with very nice pay recently. So, things are looking up here. š
@breakfastman
Yay! š congrats.