Career Ponderings.

“It is only the great men who are truly obscene. If they had not dared to be obscene, they could never have dared to be great.” –Havelock Ellis

Havelock Ellis was a sexologist, a student of human sexuality, in the late 1800s and early 1900s.  He married Edith Lees, a lesbian supporter of women’s rights, wrote the first English-language medical textbook on homosexuality, and remained a virgin until well into his sixties.  For someone who was considered to be an expert on human sexuality and psychology, it seems a little unusual that he failed, until his sixties, to discovered that the cure to his own impotence came in the form of urolagnia, or sexual arousal in response to urine.  He particularly appreciated the sight of a female urinating.  He’s a seriously fascinating guy.

Kudos to you, you kinky, dirty sexagenarian.  Which refers to someone between the ages of 60 and 69, and not to something dirty.  And 69 is referring to an age, not a sexual position.  Just clarifying.

Also, for the record, I’m now seriously considering pursuing a career in either Marriage and Family Therapy…Relationship Therapy…or Sex Therapy, which is a more specialized branch of MFT.  Only time will tell.

Last week, I was looking into becoming an Animal Control Officer.  So, who the fuck knows?

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Thanksgiving at the Cabin.

Highlights and lowlights of Thanksgiving 2009.

Highlights: I positively adore taking the train cross-country.  I like to hoard two seats to myself, rest my backpack against the armrest and sprawl out sideways so I can stare out the window like it’s a television screen.  All those lives intersecting, flashing by.  I love the film strip imagery.  I spent some seriously good quality time with my father and my brother.  Speeding through the woods on the ATV was an excellent pick-me-up.  I finished reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote for the second time and started on The Time-Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, which I absolutely cannot put down.  It’s only been about 24 hours and I’m 350 pages in.  Reading is so much easier when you’re cozied up by a fireplace.  We deep fried our turkey and it turned out absolutely amazing.  I worked on some basic obedience with Bo and she did really well.  All she needs is some exercise and a little bit of practice and she’ll be a great dog.  I did a pretty damn good job of remaining cheery, calm, and peaceful for the first day or two. But I can only deal with so much.

Lowlights: It rained almost the whole time.  We watched home movies.  Rather, they watched, I ignored.  Everything but the turkey and the mashed potatoes came from a box or a can – sweet potato casserole, cornbread stuffing, turkey gravy, overcooked rock-hard rolls, and watery green bean casserole.  I told her to only add a half cup of milk, but she didn’t listen.  We have mice and I found a giant stockpile of sunflower seeds under my pillows when I went to go to sleep.  My mother’s drama and psychoses were a constant annoyance and an extremely thorough buzz-kill.  She kept crying and picking fights over nothing.  Brian and his fucking moronic friends carved their names into the railing on the Tower and it is now padlocked as our neighbor, George, would prefer not to have his property damaged any further.  Once again, Brian ruins everything and gets away with it, sans consequences, and without so much as an apology or an inkling of remorse.  What a surprise.

This trip made me realize a full and complete hatred for home videos.  They make me angry and sad.  Partially because they dredge up my barely suppressed inferiority complex in regards to my brother. Partially because they are so bitterly sweet and blissfully ignorant and pathetically hopeful.  Little did we all know how things would be now.

Overall…My goal of being nice and staying calm was a major fail after day two, but it was definitely an improvement.  I was proud or myself.  And it was a pretty typical weekend for my family.  Stressful, tense, irritating, and depressing, with some good bits scattered about.  Thankfully, as my high school English teacher, Mrs. Gudeman, once taught us…the bad bits fade into the background and it’s usually the good bits that you remember most.

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In Memory of Jewel Sabados.

Annie’s grandmother, my adoptive grandma, Jewel Sabados, passed away yesterday evening, after fighting through an arterial aneurysm and the subsequent stoke.

This woman was the definition of gumption, I swear.  She was a tough ol’ bird.  This was a woman that beat cancer.  Ukrainian, like me.  Weathered and dark-skinned, with thin salt-and-pepper waves, a dramatic nose, a thin-lipped, gap-toothed smile, and a delightfully tumbly, raspy voice.  It took a while for your ears to wrap around it and hold onto it, the way she spoke.  In the time that I knew her, she needed a breathing machine and regular dialysis.  Rode around the county fair on a motorized wheelchair, modified with a big basket on the back to carry her stuff.  If you weren’t careful, she’d spin that thing around and whack you in the shins with it.  For Christmas last year she gave me a fleece blanket with snowmen on it and a pink blouse that I’ll never wear.  But it doesn’t matter.  She was always incredibly happy to see me when I came to visit and always gave me good, tight, back-slapping hugs.  Last time I saw her, she showed me pictures that they salvaged from the fire that claimed her house a few months ago.  Her as a young girl with her whole family, her and her brother driving a cart with two enormous draft horses hitched to it.  Black and whites, crumpled, singed.  When I left, she said “Don’t stay away so long next time!”  And that’s how I want to remember her.  Laughing and sharing her couch-bed with me, making sure Zorro wasn’t attacking my yarn and watching me knit, playing “Clue” with Annie, Zoe and I, eating a slice of my quiche, telling us the same stories over and over again.  I wish I could remember them better now.

I miss you a ton, Grandma.  Thank you so, so much for being a part of my extended family and for always helping to welcome me into my home-away-from-home.  You’re irreplaceable and you’ve got a very special place in my heart, along with the entire Lord family.  I love you all sooo very much.

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Still.

Earlier today, I had to make a trip to the Village to do my laundry ’cause our washing machine here broke.  And I ran into Meaghan H on the second floor.  Went into her room and talked and hung out.  I made her miss Dr. Phil.  I poured my guts out and I didn’t even mean to.  Told her about all the housemate issues and how bored I am with my life right now and about my mom cheating on my dad and how I feel about my friend dying.

I miss Danielle.  Now I understand why people go to psychics to try to get in touch with the dead.  I’d give anything to be able to contact her.  I took for granted the fact that we would have all the time in the world.  That we’d grow old and laugh at these memories, rather than die young and cry over them.

My heart is just positively aching.  I wonder when this is supposed to get easier.

 

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Housing for Next Year!

So, Skylar, Chuck, Nisha, and I have decided we’re gonna try to live in one of the university-owned rentals. It’s going to be $800 a month for a four person house.  So, $200 a piece for a 12-month rental.  $2400 total.  It’s still less than the $2561 that we pay for living in the townhouse, each semester!  Utilities have been estimated at about $30-50 for gas, water, and electric each.  Let’s say bills are a total of $150 a month, divided between four people.  Still only about $240 a month total, for rent and utilities.  I need to check and make sure that the loans will cover it.  If so, it’s definitely gonna happen.  I just need to make sure and see how that’s going to work.

We just got back from touring 201 Howard…Oh my god.  It was hilarious.  The house is HUGE.  And full of random shit.  There are inlaid bookshelves in the front room, random custom-built cubbies all over the walls, a giant, trashy looking kitchen with really, really old appliances, a bathroom with a pink claw-footed tub, and a really random room that’s mostly counters and a big ol’ farm sink.  We were joking that the guy was a murderer who butchered his victims in there, LOL.  There were supposedly four bedrooms, but one of the upstairs “rooms” was really just a large, open hallway between the stairs and the upstairs bedroom, lol.  Across from the upstairs bedrooms was a big, creepy crawlspace/attic.  We’d have more storage space than we’d know what to do with.  I really want to live there.  Just because it’d be an interesting story to tell later.  I think Sky was freaked out, though.  Oh well…It’ll probably be rented out by the time we’re looking seriously anyway.  The search continues!

Here’s the kicker…There’s a lone toilet in the basement.  Up on a pedestal and concealed behind Western saloon-style doors…LOL!  Chuck goes…”That’s gonna be our throw-up toilet!”  I love that kid.

I wanna go back and just take pictures…It totally had the feel of one of my abandoned houses that I explore.  Just imagine the things that went on there.  Like murder in the butcher room…;)

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Junior Year Classes.

Okay, so I don’t think I’ve bitched about this yet.  I’m in Digital Photo right now.  It’s literally the worst class I’ve ever taken.  He never teaches us anything.  On more than one occasion, we’ve just sat here in class while he looks through his own photographs on the big screen and sorts out which to keep.  Do that on your own time, you fuckhead…Ugh.  He just rambles on about nothing.  Bluegrass music.  It’s like he starts a sentence and doesn’t know where he’s going with it when he opens his mouth.  By the time he finally gets to the point (if it even was the original point), I have stopped listening.  I have learned absolutely nothing from this class.  Example: Right now we’re watching Youtube videos about phony prank photobooths.  This is HARDLY relevant and I’m paying HOW much money to be in this class, doing something I could be doing for free in my dorm room?

Me:  Thank god I have to leave early to go get my allergy shots.
Sam:  lol.  The fact that you will take needles over this class is a huge statement.

I rest my case.

I finally got my shit figured out.  I think I’m going to be able to add a Sociology major, with no problems.  Still have to talk with the adviser in that  department, Dr. McCandless.  I got registered with McCarthy, but we might edit it up and see what else I can fit…Here’s my second semester schedule.

MWF: Intro to Sociology 9-9:50, English 10-10:50, Cultural Anthro 11-11:50
T/TH: Principles of Mgmt 9:30-10:45, Barn 1-3, Business Comm 6:30-9:15 (Only Tuesdays)

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Funeral and Wake.

Well, my mother once again wins Worst Parent Ever Award with flying colors.  She tried to get me up to go to Danielle’s funeral today and I refused.  She then proceeded to launch into a rant about how that would make her look and what she was supposed to tell Danielle’s mom about where I was.  Are you fucking kidding me?  And then she made some kind of comment about being an adult and doing the right thing.  Yes.  Make me feel even more shitty than I already do.  Thank you.  That’s so fucking helpful.  Don’t mind the fact that your kid is sincerely fucked up over her friend dying…Just worry about what people will think of you.

Why should I go?  I went to the wake, I hugged her mom, her cousin, our friends.  I cried the whole time.  It was awful.  I was so much less prepared for that than I thought I was.  I showed my support.  Enough of this supporting her family bullshit…What about me? Why should I go to this thing that’s going to tear me apart even worse?

The wake was so horrible.  Videos and pictures of her everywhere…Her scrapbook project that we had to make in middle school for Mrs. Kukla’s class.  Her handwriting.  Her artwork.  And her.  I never saw this girl once without a smile on her face, laughing and talking and bubbly.  It was the worst feeling yet to see her laid out, beautiful blue eyes closed forever, no smile on her face.

I’m crying again just thinking about it.  I’m so sick of crying.

I’ll go to her grave someday…But not right now.  I can’t do it right now.  I can’t watch them put her in the ground.  I just can’t.

 

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My Goals.

“This is one dream I mean to cling to.”
–Vianne Rocher, Chocolat

Things that are struck through are completed. Things in italics are works in progress.  Things in bold are ongoing – things I want to continue to do throughout my life.

-Understand football.
-Try absinthe.
-Write something in wet cement.
-Have a kitchen garden and houseplants.
-Get a fireproof box for my important documents.
-Do something dirty in an elevator.
-Learn to belly dance.
-Write by snail mail.
-Re-learn embroidery.
-Complete a 365 photo project.
-Learn how to drive a stick shift.
-Get a tattoo.
-Go on a cruise.
-Send a message in a bottle.
-Take a long roadtrip with my camera.
-Whiten my teeth.
-Ride in a taxi.
-Cut my own hair.
-Have a bonfire on the beach.
-Sleep under the stars.
-Take a photography class.
-Play board games.
-Speak Spanish fluently.
-Speak French fluently.
-Roast marshmallows in the backyard.
-Learn to play the harmonica or the cello.
-Rediscover my violin.
-Try surfing.
-Hear someone’s life story.
-Buy my dream camera.
-Go camping with my children.
-Learn how to hot-wire a car.
-Compile recipes from all my greatest friends and family.
-Give blood.
-Sew a quilt.
-Knit a blanket.
-Coach a youth softball team.
-Adopt pets from a rescue or shelter.
-Bake Christmas cookies.
-Become CPR/first aid certified.
-Vote.
-Learn the tarot cards.
-Try out a hypnotism CD.
-Learn to whistle with my fingers.
-Dye my hair a crazy color.
-Build something out of wood.
-Take a martial arts class.
-Break a bone.
-Recognize at least ten constellations.
-Own an economical car – hybrid, fuel cell, or ethanol.
-Learn how to read palms.
-Stretch every morning.
-Open a checking account.
-Volunteer with Habitat for Humanity.
-Take a ballroom dance class.
-Bake home-made bread every weeken.
-Keep up with politics, foreign affairs, and other current events.
-Learn to knit.
-Bartend.
-Get back into cross-country skiing in the winter.
-Have a wrap-around porch and a porch swing or a rocking chair.
-Go to a strip club.
-Study abroad.
-Try new recipes.
-See the aurora borealis.
-See the Cirque Du Soleil.
-Be a tourist in my own town.
-Have garage sales.
-Go skinny dipping.
-Get business cards.
-Get my allergies tested.
-Go on a whale-watching boat.
-Barrel race.
-Do cartwheels.
-Re-learn how to shoot a rifle.
-Play pool and darts well.
-Learn how to rig a fishing pole.
-Make an ofrenda for Day of the Dead.
-Go clubbing.
-Go paintballing.
-Build a treehouse.
-Go to a concert.
-Light a candle for someone.
-Get a massage.
-Write a letter to the editor.
-Start a horse from scratch.
-Press flowers.
-Get a pedicure.
-Plant a tree.
-Fly a kite.
-Roast marshmallows in the back yard.
-Go apple-picking.
-Go to the drive-in.
-Ride a bicycle built for two.
-Catch fireflies.
-Build a snowman.
-Go sailing.
-Have a bird-feeder.
-Listen to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream”.
-See a bullfight.
-Roll my own sushi.
-Listen to classical music.
-Ride a mechanical bull.
-Get into UrbEx.
-Own my own horse.
-Wear earrings.
-Lose my virginity.
-Learn how to jump start a car.
-Establish a good credit rating.
-Be a regular somewhere.

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Danielle.

I got a phone call today during my art class from Kelly B.  I knew it was something bad, right away.  Her calling me.  Last time, it was Max commited suicide.  The time before that it was Hannah P calling about Chelsey’s parents. This time…Danielle.  Danielle, my best friend through some of the roughest parts of my life.  She died in a car accident.  It happened Monday morning…she swerved to miss something in the road.  They’re not sure what.  The car rolled…Massive head injuries, coma, brain death.  Her body lives on with the aid of life support while they sort out what fortunate souls are going to receive her healthy organs.

I’m still in shock.

My last conversation with her involved me telling her that I’d found her on Twitter, but that she hadn’t posted anything since March.  Her response was…”I know!  I signed up but couldn’t find anyone I knew, so I never used it!  Now I will update constantly just to keep you informed of everything you don’t wanna know!  Danielle is pop-locking…is pooping…is having sex…is chewing steak, got her period, hasn’t showered in a week, blowing her nose…can’t stop itching…”

I miss her so much already.

I decided to write her a long letter and then burn it.  I know she’d appreciate the gesture, understand it. I wish I believed in heaven or spirits.  I wish I believed that she really could read it when I sent it up in smoke.  Maybe I’ll just cling to a secret hope that she got it, somehow.

I had to buy a lighter.  I went behind this building where they have lines of blank tombstones smooshed together, waiting to be engraved with birth, death, and identity, plopped on fresh grave plots.  My own private funeral.  I burned the letter and listened to Tom Petty’s “It’ll All Work Out”, which is what just happened to come up on my mp3 player when I stopped the car.  I saved a scrap of the envelope that didn’t burn up.  Part of her name, in cursive.

I love you, honey.  I’m so sorry you’re gone…

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Polyamory.

What is polyamory?  Loving many…Loving freely.  It sounds like a great thing…But is it possible to love too much?  Too easily?

Polyamorists throw love around, bend it to their own definition.  But does it devalue love to use it with such ease? Does love become diluted?  Spread thin?

How meaningful is it to be loved by one who loves many?  How special can it possibly be when you’re second, third, fourth on the list.  Doesn’t it make you less special?  Less attractive?  Or are you still essentially just as special and valuable and attractive, no matter how many people are seen the same way?

I just want one.  I want to be number one.  I want to be someone’s favorite.

P.S. I don’t mean this to be offensive to any polyamorists…It’s just me trying to figure out how I feel about it.

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