Open Thread for Personal Stuff: Very Belated May 2014 Edition

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.

Thanks LBT.

@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 it’s OK not to love your body. It’s your body and you don’t have to feel a certain way about it. She’s a cancer survivor who runs marathons. She’s lost all kinds of weight and she doesn’t think her butt is fantastic. She isn’t ashamed of it either. I like her point of view. If beauty is important to someone, I think that’s fine. They should go for it and be as beautiful as they wanna be. I don’t 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! 🙂

@LBT – I’m picturing you listening to a Springsteen album and thinking “The Boss reminds me of someone, who is it?” 😉

Now, brain bleach!

Fribby napping in her favourite spot.

Maddie “This bowl is so empty I can’t even bear to look at it!”

@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.

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. 😛

@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,

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?

@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!

@girlscientist

Sending good thoughts for you and your friend. It sounds like you’re doing all you can.

RE: girlscientist

I sent you a few bucks – I’m 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.

@Winter Walker

I get you. Thanks for understanding. 🙂

@breakfastman

Yay! 😀 congrats.