A Treasure Found at Home

sat was the woman’s circle retreat. we all had a great time, and all our individual hesitancies about the day proved to be unfounded. the day was beautiful and i got a sunburn from spending some time outside bonding with c.

as three of us headed out to find a corner store with candy we passed a very cute boy of probably 20-something. we turned to look at him and he turned to look at us. blue mouthed to him that he was so cute while pointing right at him. somehow the whole exchange didn’t slow any of us down in the least.

but blue was on a roll noticing the pretty all around. she caught site of this pollinating pine tree on our way back to creampuff’s.

there are a few more shots from my camera if you click on the pollen.

we picked up invites for our next hippie party last night.

so. funny.

the funniest invites i’ve ever read. for our essential communications they wrote a dialogue between guestarchus and sponsoracrates instead of just listing them out. there’s a text adventure game (> dance sponsor / you are not able to do that yet / > hug sponsor / you hug. it feels good.)

there’s even an excerpt from the alters in amber trillogy to explain about our many alters.

oh my goodness. i laughed and laughed and had to read the thing out loud to buttons, who was sitting right next to me trying to get an unrelated story out of the woman who was distributing the invites.

i went to a party last night and met judith-who-lost-her-camera. you may know her from this hoo ha on boingboing.

as i left, another woman recognized me from our morning commute.

this place really is a small town.

i’m off to replace the battery in the car i’m borrowing and hope there’s not a further electrical problem, though signs point to that possibility.

i’ll have to grab something to eat on the way out since i burned the food i tried to make at home while i was trying to promptly answer everyone’s emails. all i’ve managed is one bowl of dry cereal.
then i meet my realtor to go see properties.

it’s still weird.

your fortune: you are pregnant. even if you are male.

my whole life centers around emergencies these days. what i think is near critical, someone else doesn’t feel compelled to act on with as much urgency.

and at 7 am when i checked my email as part of my waking up routine, i found someone else was having an ‘emergency’ that i don’t feel as urgent about. but, since he’s feeling that way and it’s my job to help, i’ve been on email and im since then trying to sort things out.

and then more stuff has come up. so…

no food.

no caffeine (i’m out of milky things to put in it, but i’m just about make tea without anyway).

thank goodness for my retreat scheduled for this saturday! it can’t come fast enough.

today in therapy we did an interesting little exercise. she sat across from me, leaned toward me, and repeatedly said, ‘yes.’

yes. yes. yes. [sparkle], yes.

and all i had to do was say, ‘no,’ each time she said, ‘yes.’

doesn’t sound all that hard, does it? especially when you know you aren’t actually saying no to anything in particular.

but, i cried. not what i would have expected. i would have expected yelling if anything. but, no.

huh.

who’d a thunk it?

power trip

the next three weeks are going to be really crazy. when i joined my group, we had four people. one of them left the company, so we’ve been doing the work of four with three since new year’s and it’s been hectic.

yesterday was bh’s last day for three weeks. he’s going back to india to get married. it’s great for him, but it means that manager and i have to do the work of four people all on our own. it’s crazy.

i got put on pager. that means i’m now the 24/7 escallation person for the next three weeks. on top of doing my normal job and as much of someone else’s job as i can manage.

oh, and i have to look for a house, too.

excuse me if you don’t see me irl until st. patrick’s day. send email. i’ll miss you all.

crazy busy day. running out to catch the shuttle. but wanted to post a couple little memes. pay special attention to what it says about me and the music. no time to explain; these have been waiting in notepad for more detail all day and they’re getting NONE, none, i tell you. none.

go here for sweet sweet sweetness, oh apple of my eye.

i dreamed last night of dancing in the forest in cathedrals made of tall tall trees.

seth won the gold!

woo hoo

wow

GOLD!

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “Mirrors should think longer before they reflect,” said French filmmaker Jean Cocteau. That’s especially true for you this week, Libra. You shouldn’t automatically believe every bit of feedback about yourself that comes your way, either from mirrors or any other source. Be skeptical of every image that people have of you, and don’t sit there passively while they barrage you with their expectations. In order to further upgrade your integrity (a project I hope you’re in the midst of), you may have to make yourself immune, at least temporarily, to what everyone thinks of you.

i find this horoscope really funny in light of the johari window (below) i set up. of course you’ll feel great if you create one of these, hardly any of the adjectives are unflattering. they have a nohari window, too, with all negative adjectives. i declined to participate in that part because i realized my own inability to pick five or six of those strongly negative adjectives for others. it seems like a more neutral johari window is really what’s in order.

but, back to not buying into every bit of feedback which is tossed my way.

saturday night i was at a dance party at a friend’s house. i’m pretty much tired all the time these days, so i ended up curling up on a loveseat and dozing off. ‘b’ woke me not long after i’d dozed off telling me he was ready to leave whenever i was (and to needle me just a little for falling asleep next to the dance floor — how is that even possible). apparently this was just the opening needed to invite some others to come over and comment on my sleeping. wombat’s comment was sweet and quick–nice. but then this tall shirtless man came over, we’ll call him marfan.

marfan asked me to dance, and i declined on the grounds that i had just woken up. apparently he heard this as an invitation to sit down. he started talking about the fruit on my outfit. we managed to identify all the pictures but one. at that point he started not just touching my clothes, but rubbing my arms and legs. he made some comment about how that was the way i should always be woken up. i agreed it could be nice and thought to myself how ‘b’ had in fact just woken me by rubbing my arm in our fast-becoming-typical wake-each-other-at-parties way we have.

still groggy, i let marfan start doing some sort of chair based contact improv with my arm. you’d think it would be a signal that i wasn’t that into him when i didn’t unfold all the rest of me, but he seemed not to notice or care. instead he took my other arm and unfolded it and tried to stretch my legs out. then the started rubbing his face on my arm!

do you notice something? notice the huge lack of conversation? why isn’t she telling us what he said, you’re thinking. well, because after the brief ‘what is this fruit?’ and ‘it would be nice to be woken up like this all the time’ he didn’t say anything. nothing. no. thing. especially not, ‘i’m marfan, do you mind if i rub you?’

it was at the face rubbing point that i started shifting around and unfolding. he clearly saw this as a good sign and made some space for me to unfold. as i stood, he settled further back into the sofa/bigchair/loveseat thing and patted the space beside him for me to cuddle up in.

i said no.

i did my best to ignore him the rest of the night and although he tried to engage with me again before i left, still never even bothered to tell me his name.

later i was telling my housemate about the experience. i told him that throughout the whole thing i was reticent to really strongly push marfan away and tell him to lay off and stop bothering me. i felt like not returning his petting and by leaving the chair and turning my back on him on more than one occasion and cuddling up with someone else all should have been signals that i wasn’t interested.

the thing that was holding me back was the desire not to be seen as a bitch. in fact, the night before someone had asked to kiss me and i’d simply said no with no hard feelings on either side. clearly it can be done nicely, but it’s easier when the other person is communicative.

sure, i have my sensitivities, but if you actually talk to me before you put your hands all over me i might actually LIKE it when we get to that point. so, the thing i need to remember in the future is this: why do i care if someone who has no respect for my boundaries thinks i’m a bitch for telling him about where they are and that he may not cross them?

all this to say i’m working on that integrity and working on shoring myself up to not let it slide based on what other people want from my and what they think when i don’t act in accordance. not just in situations like i described above, that was just the most recent, but in all aspects of my life. it’s just easier and more fulfilling to live and act in integrity.

i know you can all hear me yelling, ‘i love you!’ down the phone at my half deaf grandparents, but by golly it’s valentine’s day and rosie wanted to talk to me.

everyone’s happy today. grandma is doing a little better, though the conversation was pretty short.

rosie: ‘hi [sparkle], how are you?’

me: ‘fine grandma, how are you?’

r: ‘good. well, thanks for calling.’

me: ‘happy valentine’s day.’

r: ‘oh, you, too. bye.’

me: ‘bye.’

of course, she’s exahusted. she handed the phone off to grandpa who talked a little longer. he’s so loud i’m sure the whole office could hear him singing his little song of the unflattering nickname he has for me.

*blush*

happy valentines day from the stinkeroo.

follow this link. pick six adjectives that you think describe me. see a chart (!) that tells anyone who reads it what i think of myself, what others think of me, and where those ideas overlap.

it’s really cool. using initials cause of course ’sparkle’ is already taken.
then, if you want, you can get your own. of course, you risk a whole bunch of words you don’t want to see showing up in the top right corner. it’s a learning experience.
dude. memes.

http://kevan.org/johari?name=hjem

zero.

it’s what i now owe to my credit card companies!

zero zero zero zero zero!

sqeeee!

um… so my dad’s coming into town ‘in a few weeks’. while he’s visiting for the weekend he’s going to maybe help me buy a house.

i don’t know if it can happen that fast. i don’t know if there’s anything in our price range that’s livable.

but i might be a homeowner within a month.

*gulp*

rosie

she’s home from the hospital, but she’s not eating well and mom says it’s hard to get her out of bed. they decided to forgo the care facility after she ended up back in the hospital because they weren’t caring properly for her. (she got a blood clot from being left in one position in bed too long.)

luckily, two of her four children are nurses. my aunt took last week full time. mom’s ther this week full time, and hopefully by the end of the week she won’t need as much professional care and my other aunt and uncle can each take a turn.

i’m on backup, and might yet end up in ohio to spend a week with chief and rosie.

but, mom says they’ve all talked and made the decision that grandma is not going back to the hospital. if she doesn’t make it she gets to die at home, which is what she wants.

the whole situation is groundless. there’s no way to get my footing. lets just say it’s very good for my practice.

the olympics start today.

i’m more excited than i have ever been because my freind’s brother is competing!

keep your eyes open for seth wescott! he’s in the snowboarding cross competition.

she says:

He enteres the games as the 2005 World Champion Boardercross rider.  That means he is not only going to the Olympics, but he stands a very good chance of medaling in THE OLYMPICS.

this is exciting!!

i have a nice blob of green on the front of my pants where my burrito leaked guacamole on me.

by popular demand, a photo from my camera phone.

i really still don’t have a charger. all the party shots were taken with disposable film cameras! however, the charger should be here any day now… i’m so excited.

i had dinner with mr. bee last night. he says it’s been six months since we’ve seen each other. sounds about right, but i might have guessed longer. i think the last time i saw him was for my goodbye from the bank lunch.
we talked about all sorts of things (crazy work stories), but eventually came around to who we’d been dating and how successfully we’d been managing it. turns out he had some online exchange a few months back with tarzan’s ex of all people! i couldn’t help but laugh at how small a town the bay area really is.

then he asked me what i really wanted in a relationship. he wanted to know what love was. how do you know? what does it look like? is x, y, and z love, and what sort of love makes for a lasting relationship? is it the same sort of love that makes you giddy?

heavy questions. i didn’t have lots of answers. good thing we had some chocolate brownie ben and jerry’s to help us with our confusion.

he didn’t want to drive me home (parking sucks in his neighborhood), so he called a cab for me. he’d fully intended to pay for it, but left his wallet upstairs when he walked me out of the building and to the cab. no biggie. it was clear he’d meant to and the offer really felt as good as if he’d done it.