A Treasure Found at Home

there’s a meme going around that’s 10 things about myself that you might not know. i did the six things back in december, but now it’s up to ten and has gotten a bit more personal. i thought for a long time about what to post, but figured i’m not getting it done that way so instead i’ll just jump right in.

1. some days i think i must be neuro-diverse, a little Different: somewhere on the autism scale. but i don’t match all the major symptoms so i don’t know…

2. because of this, i think maybe i’ll never manage to find a life partner or a long term romantic relationship that works for me…

3. and so i’m nervous that i will never have children…

4. and i’m nervous that if i do get pregnant my children will be clearly autistic.

5. i’m to scared to skydive and i regret not doing it when i had the balls. (but i still want to dive with sharks! big sharks! in that cage! with the chum!)

6. lately when i look in the mirror, i look bigger and puffier… but my clothes fit exactly the same way so i know i’m not actually getting fat.

7. i really really really really hate… HATE to be lied to.

8. i don’t do my hair or wear makeup in part because i think it makes me more approachable by the sort of person i would want to end up with.

9. when i was little “nun working with orphan” was higher on my list of desired careers than “corporate grunt”.

10.  sometimes i wonder if i’d be more successful if i were not as smart.
10a. and then i wonder if i’d be more successful if i were much smarter.

last night i had the strangest dream i ever dreamed before. mmm mmm la la la.

ok, last night i did NOT dream everyone put an end to war, though that sure would be nice.  instead i dreamed that i finally met leelo, and that we understood each other in a way that a lot of others didn’t. i dreamed he let me hug him right when we met. i think this dream is much more about how i feel trying to interact with my women’s circle than any hope that i have some special magic autism-connecting power. i can’t comprehend the disconnects i see and it really makes me feel i’m not neurotypical.

anyhow, later in the dream i had my hair all done up and got too close to a candle. i burned it all off in big chunks. *sigh*

well, at least the dst ending this weekend will keep me up at odd hours over the weekend so i won’t have a chance to dream such things. must test the servers at 11 (don’t ask me why they’d break in reaction to something that was about to happen, but whatever) and three, which will be one minute after 1:59am sunday.

the other day at brunch we were talking about the possibility of having my head shaved (or, really, of doing it myself). i thought it might look nice but be really cold, horrible to grow out, and certainly not help with trying to be a softer more feminine sparkle.

and now i have another reason to keep my long locks.

britney doesn’t carry it as well as natalie did, somehow. maybe it’s the public head shaving.

i’ve never been an ‘angry’ feminist. i don’t think accusing everyone who happens to be walking past of disagreeing with you is really the way to change minds. i know, that’s hyperbole. but i do think that *looking* for anti-feminist behaviour is the fastest way to find it in places it doesn’t really exist.

however, i have always felt free to tell people they were being silly when they said i couldn’t (A)sort books, B)play trombone, C)walk to the cafe alone, D)all of the above) because i was a girl.
(answer: D)

for the most part i thought my peers were fairly well in line with what i believe about women being people first and female as an aside. over the past year or so i’ve started to look at that assumption more closely. i was floored when a friend of mine told me he didn’t think twice about my sexual preferences, he was sure i was only into women. obviously so because i didn’t giggle or flirt with all the men in the room; i didn’t dress sexy. apparently it just never crossed his mind that i didn’t do that because i didn’t want to sleep with any of *those* men for a variety of reasons beyond their sex (for example, he is married), or that i didn’t want to be seen as a sex object. that i asked him about his work and had what i considered a pretty decent conversation about science i thought would signal that i was intelligent, not gay.

i’ve also noticed a number of women in my community doing things i interpret as objectifying themselves. for months i’ve been wondering if i’m the only one who sees this. am i crazy? am i oversensitive?

maybe, but i’m not alone.

today i should be getting a copy of a book recently published in paperback. (man, i love amazon.) i heard this woman speaking on npr the other day and i wanted to crawl into the radio and curl up by her feet to listen to her talk. and then treat her to a nice dinner as a thank you for saying the things she’s saying out loud.

the book is called female chauvinist pigs: women and the rise of raunch culture. you can find a concise summary of the subject matter here on wikipedia.

a number of questions about women and how we’re viewed and our place in society are coming up for me.

i was recently discussing with someone why i want certain sorts of women in my life and other sorts not so much. what is it, really, that irks me about women (and men) who do nothing but complain? i think they key is that i don’t want to be that sort of woman; i don’t want to focus so much on why my body is not right and why xyz is not right and why those things will keep me from ever finding a partner. i don’t want i set idea of what a woman is and should be and i don’t want a huge focus on how i’m falling short of the mark.

i really feel that the more i surround myself with women who see gender roles that way, the more i’m inclined to do it myself, and the more i do it and my friends do it, the more my future children will be inclined to grow up doubtful of their own selves.

this morning in squid’s blog i found she was having some similar doubts about her daughter’s friends.

then i read whinger’s blog and her entry on date rape. i think i need to take a walk around the building a few times.

all of this crap about women should be small waisted, small hipped, demure, fluffy haired, quiet, bright eyed, subserviant  angels in the house… it just leads to unhappy women and unhappy men.

so, my question to you… all of you… is who do you aspire to? who do you see as a role model? who would you love to have as a confidant and dinner companion at least once a week?

tomorrow is the 3 month mark with sp guy. i called him this morning from work to see if we could do lunch together (and i could get a sweater for the fridge i’m now working in). he said he had some stuff to do and hemed and hawed, eventually deciding it would be good for me to come along because it was my gift he was picking up (!) and he thought it would be good if i would pick out just exactly what i wanted.

so it was off to the day spa for lunch! he suggested the whole day package and i took him up on the offer after reading a menu of their treatments — which he’d already doctored with the aid of a sharpie to be sure i didn’t know the prices. while he purchased the gift certificate, i had a brief tour of the facilities. the place is very nice, to be sure, and they have all sorts of little ammenities which make things seem uber indulgent. (forgot your hair ties? they have some.)

we celebrated today ’cause tomorrow i’m haging out with the women of 00 in a furious attempt to get us all complementary bridesmaid dresses in one day.

the coordination of five women’s taste in dresses and six women’s taste in movies (for the slumber party before and after), plus schedules… all i can say is, ‘brick fight!‘ we all have strong ideas about what we like and what works for us. some of us are more direct than others in expressing our preferences and some of us are more absolute than others in what we want. some of us have no clue what we want and still won’t really know after trying on several things. we have a list of possible movies about 20 deep at this point. i think at least two of us are bringing a selection. good thing i packed my knitting!

oh, yeah, i’m actually knitting again! rock on with my bad needles. socks and arm warmers are the order of the day. it’s funny to me how i can be knitting something i like for me and still people will come up to me and start telling me how to change it into something different. they’re great ideas for the next bit of stash, but this ufo is going to stay on target.

a couple weeks back in therapy i ranted on about how much it really sucks ass sometimes to be a female! especially when i get surprised looks by coworkers when i throw around words like ‘unix’ and ‘emacs’, get emails all the time (in my tech work) addressed to eri - C instead of eri - N, — or how i’m not allowed to be a pall bearer without a fight.
argh. articles like this one, which i originally thought just to email to hamster_grrl, really get my ire up. brests and a lower center of gravity might mean we do things like basketball and archery differently, but they sure don’t get in the way of doing them *well* and the sure as sugar don’t get in the way of our friggin *neurons*!

grumble, grumble, i haven’t had lunch yet so i’m a little pissy, and too tired to make coherent arguments.

read for yourself how second class we still are in academia/schools. my favourite at first glance is the f-to-m who remarks, “I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.”

i don’t have any photos because 1)my camera batteries were dying 2)we were still in our undies in the shots i took and 3)i lost my camera.

j-up got to spend the day on a scavenger hunt around sf seeing sites the locals never go see, like the top of coit tower. she said she fell in love with the city again and kept saying to herself, ‘we live here!’ i know that feeling.

the last clue led her to the hotel room where i and a bunch of her other chick friends were hanging out having a poloriod lingere photo shoot! so. much. fun. and really … empowering? is that the right word? we all felt really great about ourselves by the end of it, even though we (each of us individually) felt really nervous about the whole thing before hand. ‘am i cute enough?’, ‘are my hips bigger?’, ‘do i even know how to look sexy next to a bunch of dancers?’ ok, probably the six dancers didn’t have that last worry, but i did and i’d bet the one other non dancer did, too.

(i’m a little d dancer and they’re big d dancers. i mean, j-up teaches even.)

anyhow, frolic frolic, then it was off to dinner and out for a private lap dance for the bride to be. i wore a much more risque top than i’m usually comfortable in, but kept being reassured by the other women with me. the most common excuse was, ‘it’s pride!’… except we were downtown. oh, well, it was fun to be out and sexy like that.

then around the corner for more of the kind of dancing i’m used to. we all hobbled out to the cabs in our super cute shoes which now were killing our feet, back to the hotel for a quick change to more comfy shoes and outfits, and down the street to a bar where almost no one was dancing (except us once we got there). i got hit on by a guy who left me alone once he told me he was 26 and found out i am 32. well, he’ll be 26 tomorrow. i wished him a happy early birthday and went back to my dancing.

after dancing we went to an all night greasy spoon which was way too expensive, but we were way to tired to go anywhere else and figured we’d all feel completely like crap if we didn’t eat before going to sleep.

i took a cab home and was in bed just after 3 am. it was a fantastic night!!

if i’d had a full length mirror i might have noticed before i left the house. as it is i’ll just have to tell myself that somehow it happened during dinner.

but when i got in the cab to go to our super secret location for goddess worship last night… i realized my pvc pants were torn.

this will be heartbreaking news to many who saw me at tribal connections at the uu church last december. sorry, creampuff’s man. all i can promise is that i’ll be looking for replacements.

luckily, for last night anyhow, housemate and i had dinner just around the corner from home so it was a quick walk back up the hill to change and just long enough to plan in my head what else to wear.

i kept the sparkly shoes, but changed everything else.

then it was off to super secret location, which turned out to be a swanky dance club complete with velvet ropes and a vip room! we ate chocolate while wating for all the other couples (sets? pairs? ‘couples’ seems to imply a romance) to arrive, toasted mighty berb’s new niece (born just that morning), thanked the men several times, toasted conexus (to which the money for this auction item went), we danced, chatted, and gazed *deeply* into each other’s eyes… during which exercise i laughed and laughed and laughed. whatever, i was being genuine. we each got a long stemed red rose.
as we were organizing to leave berb asked where i live. then she said, ‘that’s very close to housemate.’

‘yes,’ i said, ‘very close. he lives in my extra room.’

she had no idea.

tarzan drove berb, housemate and i home. 3am with only a little nap on the train… i was beat.

i got a pedicure last week. i love it. i like to have my nails done, it makes me feel that much more put together.

but, i have this deep seated idea that having my nails done is wasteful. my nails suck. they’re short and bendy and break and i still bite them sometimes no matter how much i think i don’t really want to. and, polish on those sorts of nails doesn’t last long.

so it would seem getting fake nails would solve all those problems, and it would. but then i’d have fake nails. which are fake. and take a lot of upkeep. and i can’t even begin to imagine working on the playa with fake nails. but… my nails would look all nice and put together. but, er, uh… damn. i’m undecided.

so i was pondering this all as i went down to get my chai. considering the question of manicures and doing things *just for me* even if they’re silly and take up time. isn’t that the point? shouldn’t i do stuff just for me? aren’t i worth it?

and then i started thinking about all the other things i Want In Life and how some of that i can just do for myself now (like the nails) and some i can’t and as the doors opened to the first floor a very pregnant tiny woman stepped onto the elevator, holding her tummy with one hand looking ever so slightly uncomfortable.

and for some reason this felt really significant to me and i sort of jerked out of my daydream of well manicured hands and sunny days.

random things to be grateful for 

• dogs
• sunshine
• cheese
• orange
• an orange
• flowers
• cameras of the digital sort
• email filters
• chai
• yummy eggs
• good hugs
• friendly co-workers
• not too bad sunburn
• vpn
• im
• email

i’m again on one of those ‘be more girly’ kicks. wearing some makeup and, since it’s warm, wearing strappy high heeled sandles.

i figured i’d start doing my makup on the train so it doesn’t add any time to my morning routine. today i remembered to bring the make up with me, but did not bring a mirror so i can actually apply the makeup.

i’m not used to wearing those shoes, either. today i wore the pair of black strappies i thought i’d worn to the b&w ball last summer and danced in for hours… except, they’re not.

i realized when i started getting strap blisters pretty early on in the day that the ones i’d worn were the other pair. oops. guess i need to toughen up my toes and that bit where your heel turns into your ankle.

looks like i have some adjustments to make if i’m going to make this girly thing happen, eh?