Oct 6 2011

It’s like Amish magic!

Sometimes, the silliest things make me happy and proud of myself.

Far and away, my most important super-power is shopping. I don’t mean that I can spend money with the best of them. No, I mean that I can find the perfect gift for anyone, and I can find it at phenomenally low prices. I knit like a fiend, and I’m damn good at it. As well, I’m learning to spin, and I can get pretty damn good singles. I’m also learning how to cook, and I’m learning how to make foods work better for our diet.

Tonight, though, I made butter. Yes, much like the argument Muggles use when I tell them I’m knitting socks, I know, I can get butter at [insert grocery store here] for blah dollars and not have to worry about making it. So very missing the point, darling. I took a quart jar, poured in a pint of heavy cream, screwed the lid on, turned on Castle, and started shaking. By the end of it, I still had what looked like some sort of goo. So I started up Body of Proof. Fifteen minutes into it, I looked at my jar. There was starting to be clear spots in the glass. I watched it while I shook it. All of a sudden, *POOF*! SOLID STUFF AND BUTTERMILK! Holy SHIT, I made BUTTER! I was skeptical, but by the Blessed Saint Elsie (the cow from the Borden logo — whose husband, incidentally is Elmer the Bull, from the GLUE FACTORY! SICK MOFOS!), I HAVE MADE BUTTER! I feel all Tom Hanks in Cast Away.

Yes, I also know that people have been making their own dairy products for millenia. However, this is the first time that I did it. By myself. I feel like the Amish have been hiding their little folk magics away from us on purpose. Just mark this up as one more thing on my Skills List for the Zombie-Pocalypse.

Oct 4 2011

Cafe Writing: Seven Things

Bittersweet October. The mellow, messy, leaf-kicking, perfect pause between the opposing miseries of summer and winter.
~Carol Bishop Hipps

In improvisation, one of our exercises is a game called “Seven Things,” in which we go around in a circle giving each other the challenge, “Give me seven things that [whatever].” We are not going to go around in a circle here, but if you’re drawn to lists, this prompt is for you.

Give me seven of your favorite things about Autumn.

1. Flannel sheets: Oh my god, I love the day that we take off the cool cotton sheets and put on the fuzzy flannel sheets. Just the act of climbing into bed, into the natural warmth of them, makes me all cuddly-feeling.
2. Hot chocolate: I’m not a coffee person. It’s too bitter for me. I love the smell of it, but the taste is yucky for me. I do, however, love hot chocolate, so much that friends and family get me flavored syrups and odd hot chocolates when they see them.
3. Tea: I know that a lot of people drink tea year-round, but I’m not one of them. Tea, for me, is something for the colder times of the year, to help warm up, to help calm down, to help with the nesting and hibernation at those times of the year.
4. Soup: I love me some soups, and, much like tea, I don’t do a lot of soups in the warmer months. Something about a big bowl of homemade creamy cheesy potato soup with homemade bread means that it’s getting colder.
5. Changing of the leaves: I lived in California for seven years. The only times it looked like the hills and/or woods were on fire were when the hills and/or woods were actually on fire. In the midwest and the great plains, where I was born and raised, October looks like the world is on fire. There are as many shades of red and orange and yellow in a Wisconsin woods as there are shades of green in Ireland.
6. Samhain: Witch’s New Year. It’s a time for reflection, for honoring the ancestors, for amazing ritual, for sharing loss and stories with coven and circle and grove, and having friends and family to help with the pain of loss and helping you to move a little farther away from it.
7. Halloween!: Gayest. Holiday. Ever. And yes, I mean that strictly in the most positive sense of the word. I love the candy, the costumes, the awesomeness.

Take up the challenge at Cafe Writing.

Sep 21 2011

Return from Brigadoon

To be honest, I feel a little lost. It was an absolutely amazing week, and it just confirmed to me that I will never be the Workshift Coordinator ever again. Met some amazing new people (and one in particular — you know who you are). Had fantastic, transformative magic run over and through me for an entire week.

And now, that time is past again, and I have to dwell in the “Real World” (and, really, the only reason that it’s the “real world” is that there are more people living here than in our community). My re-entry started while I was still high on that energy from Between the Worlds and then quickly bottomed out as I found out that a job that I really wanted was given to another candidate. It was absolutely devastating for me. I tried so hard not to get my hopes up for it, but evidently, I didn’t try hard enough.

Part of what sucks about this is that, for the last 18 months, my entire identity has been about me being in school. Now I [get to/have to] re-invent myself in order to have an identity in the “real world” to which people can respond (i.e., “What do you do for a living?”). As if I’m living to work, not working to live. Whether or not I have a job, I have a career and it’s what I do.

So now begins the Job Hunt. It’s the most demoralizing, hateful thing in the history of ever. All most people do is bitch about having to go to work, how much their jobs suck, blah blah blah. Well, the alternative is to not have a job, and in this shitball of an economy, perhaps you should STFU about your “shitty” job or give it to someone who would appreciate having it.

I don’t want to go back to temping. I’m better than that. I want a real job with real benefits. Temping… sucks. I have never gotten paid what I’m worth at a temp job, and the agencies and clients treat you like you’re slave labor or some kind of leper. It’s shitty to get through a day with nobody talking to you, because they all know that in a week or two, you’ll be gone.

I hate the depressing whininess with which I’m dealing right now. I’ve fucking AWESOME at what I do, and I hate like crazy that employers are such shit right now simply because they can be. And I don’t know how to fix any of that.

Sep 7 2011

Shameless Self-Congratulations

So, I graduate on Friday. I’ve gotten all A’s in the last 18 months, with the exception of one B. I’m pretty proud of myself. I knew I was going to graduate with honors. I found out today that they’re rounding my 3.98 GPA up to let me graduate Summa Cum Laude. Yes, it’s just a community college, and yes, it’s just a technical degree, but it’s a ridiculously awesome achievement.

Go me.

Aug 30 2011

Twelve Days

My schedule for the next twelve days is… a little tight and frantic.

8/31 – 10am Interview (my second!) // Work until 3:45 // 4pm Internship final project
9/1 – 1pm Class (Last COMM200!) // Spanish presentation
9/2 – 10am-4pm Work (last day!) // Last Publisher lesson due

At some point over the long weekend, I’ll probably be getting together with a group of classmates from Spanish to study.

9/6 – 2pm Spanish final // Last Quickbooks lesson due
9/7 – Quickbooks and Publisher finals due
9/8 – 12pm Get my final project back and get my grade for COMM200
9/9 – 10am Graduation!
9/10 – Load the BTW truck
9/11 – Head to Wisteria // Set up BTW // Begin the drinking debauchery Bible Study Naked Gay Pagan Camp PANTASTIC PANGASM!

Jul 7 2011

OMFG2!

Tonight, I had a bit of a brainstorm. I would like to do a running series, probably weekly, on my blog to showcase the gardens of my friends and family. I’ve seen some of them, and you people are awesome. I have to live vicariously through you, and let me tell you why.

I live in an apartment complex. It’s a decent complex, as far as complexes go, but there’s no place to actually, y’know, garden. The front of our building is west-facing and gets all of the sunlight in the world. It’s a blazing wall of solar goodness on the front. However, there’s also nowhere to actually do any growing-type stuff. I wonder, though, thinking about it, if I could hand a Topsy Turvy on the front stoop from the overhang. Hm. I should ask our property manager about that. If I could put one of those up next year, I’ll have a crapload of tomatoes (and yes, I know, I don’t like tomatoes; I do, however, love pasta, and homemade pasta sauce takes a LOT of tomatoes).

Anyway, back from my little side trip. The back of my building is where the back patio area is, such as it is. My garden cart is back there, sitting, sad, lonely, unused for lo, these last few years. It’s a nice place to sit in the afternoon because it’s east-facing and therefore shaded in the afternoon. Seriously, the back of the house is 10-20 degrees cooler than the front of the house on any given afternoon. It gets shade and lots of it. Sadly, most garden plants aren’t happy in the shade.

Which brings me back to my original premise. I want to feature your backyard/side yard/window box gardens on Give Mama Some Sugar, probably one weekly. I will be sending out some emails in the next few days to solicit stories and photos from people I know, because one of the few Universal Constants is that gardeners looooooooooooooooooooove to talk about their gardens. Hell, more than parents love to talk about their children, gardeners have to talk up their green spaces.

Who’s up for it?

Oh, and the OMFG2? Acronym: Oh, My Friends Garden, Too! I’m so clever sometimes that it’s disgusting.

Jul 1 2011

Friday, Fridayfriday!

Suck it. I like the song. Well, if it’s remixed well, to within an inch of it’s goddamned life. Which, really, is a rant for another time.

I shoved my way through the rest of yesterday’s article. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. I think Dan Savage comes off a little judgey about it, but what works for him and his husband don’t work for me and mine, and it seems that that’s the entire point of the article. I just needed people to tell me that there were valid points and to slog through it.

Honestly, the part that turned me off the most and made me angriest was the last part of the first paragraph and the first part of the second:

She paused, scrunched up her mouth as if she had just bitten a particularly sour lemon and said: “An affair is at least a normal human thing. But tweeting a picture of your crotch is just weird.”

How do we account for that revulsion, which many shared with my wife, a revulsion that makes it hard to imagine a second act for Weiner, like Eliot Spitzer’s television career or pretty much every day in the life of Bill Clinton?

“Revulsion?” Really? That’s the word you chose? Like it’s nearly the most disgusting thing you could think of?

::cleansing inhale::
::cleansing exhale::

One of the odd things that happened during that was that I got asked for advice on a poly relationship. A guy in another city found my profile, and dropped a big long story on me. To sum it up, he’s friends with a couple in his town. He’s always been monogamous. They want to bring him into their relationship as a third. He wasn’t sure what to think about it, because of his ingrained monogamy and because he has jealousy issues. This is what I told him:

Wow. Hm. Well, you may want to sit down and talk to them. Make sure that their relationship is stable and healthy before you jump in. Do they communicate well (not just talking and listening, but communication; do they get each other all the time or know how to ask for clarification without getting agitated?)? How long have they been together? Are they wanting a true triad relationship, or are they looking for a third to be a fuck-buddy? Are you equally attracted to both of them?

One thing that you need to understand about jealousy is that it’s all you. Envy is a very different thing. Jealousy is a useless emotion that stems from an internal ownership feeling (meaning, you get jealous because OMG HE’S MINE!). Learn to control it.

You’ll know it’s right when you know it’s right. Keep in mind that a triad relationship is not one relationship of three people. It’s four relationships (A+B, B+C, C+A, A+B+C); it’s four times as much work to keep a triad relationship viable as it is to keep a two-person relationship viable.

It’s a *lot* of work, but it’s also *VERY* worth it.

I’ve had to time to calm down from the article. There were still things I didn’t agree with, and I do realize that I’m even further to the more liberal side of relationships than either the guy who wrote the article or Dan Savage. Relationships are valid. ALL relationships. Even dysfunctional relationships are valid. Just because we do work within one set of relationship parameters doesn’t mean that they’re not valid models.

Or am I just talking out my ass?

Jun 30 2011

Fidelity vs. Monogamy

From Merriam-Webster Online:

Definition of FIDELITY
1a : the quality or state of being faithful
b : accuracy in details : exactness
2 : the degree to which an electronic device (as a record player, radio, or television) accurately reproduces its effect (as sound or picture)

Definition of MONOGAMY
1 (archaic) : the practice of marrying only once during a lifetime
2 : the state or custom of being married to one person at a time
3 : the condition or practice of having a single mate during a period of time

They’re not the same thing. If they were the same thing, they’d be the same word with the same meaning. It’s all well and good if you’re for monogamy. Have at it. Be my guest. But when you start rolling your eyes at me or acting like you’re so very much more superior to me because you’re monotonous monogamous and I’m getting laid, I’m going to call you on your bullshit. My relationship is not affecting your relationship one teensy tiny little bit. If your “monogamous” partner is sleeping around and you blame everyone with an open relationship for that? Yeah, I’ma get all up in your shit. It is not my fault that he’s playing on the down-low. Maybe you should keep your man satisfied.

This is coming up because of this article, not because of anything that happened. I couldn’t even make it past the second page because the author was pissing me off so badly (if anyone else finishes it, please tell me if it’s satire, so I can try to force my way through it).

Every relationship is different. Every relationship also has rules. If the first rule of your relationship is “don’t sleep with anyone else” and that works for you, mazel tov. When I play, Leon knows about it. I also try (try; I don’t always succeed) to stay away from guys who are in “monogamous” relationships. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” doesn’t work for the military, and it sure as hell doesn’t work for (most) relationships. Do not presume to tell me how to handle my relationship.