Routine Disruption

Once upon a time, I was very very involved in a television show. You remember this, right?

Somewhere during the fourth season, which ended in May, I stopped watching. Not for lack of interest; for lack of sleep and time, I simply set the DVR and recorded the episodes. Then I was getting ready to go to Sweden, then I went to Sweden, then I came home, and OMG, we're at the middle of July and I have 9 episodes of Supernatural to catch up on.

That is, I need to park my butt in front of the television for 9 hours. Nuh-uh, ain't happenin. Not while the sun is shining, the days are long, and the garden needs tending.

While I still love the show, and still like Jensen Ackles a whole lot, I've managed to stay away from most of fandom for more than a year. It is a little like high school; I've kept in touch with the fandom friends, but I don't feel the need to visit the boards and spend time obsessing over it all.

This is a good thing.

Stealing Borrowing Posting Ideas

Mrs. G on Derfwad Manor posts a recipe from a guest blogger on Thursdays.  She asks a few questions of the guest blogger, one of which always is, "Who is your secret boyfriend?"  The answers are always entertaining.  Y'all know about secret boyfriends, yes?  Also known as TV boyfriends.  So I suppose that if I'm going to be more honest, this is actually just an excuse to write about fandom, Supernatural, and Jensen Ackles.  Again.  You have been warned, and you may stop reading now if you had enough of this from me last year.

Once upon a time.......

On a struggling TV network mostly dedicated to teen soap operas, there is a little television show called Supernatural.  The network, as Rodney Dangerfield used to say, "don't give no respect" to the show, sticking it in a terrible time slot, on Thursdays at 9 PM, where it is up against Grey's Anatomy (bleh) and the original CSI (I'll give that one a meh).  The cast and crew do far more to support the show than the network does; I see commercials for the appalling One Tree Hill, Gossip Girl, and the new 90210 at the rate of about 4 to one with Supernatural commercials.  Don't get me started on CEO Dawn Ostroff.  Creator Eric Kripke at the two leads, Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, along with writers, producers, and directors, attend fan conventions at what must be an exhausting rate, pushing the show every chance they get.

So for four seasons, the show has chugged along, pulling an average of 4 million viewers each week.  The writer's strike last year nearly killed the show.  Four million, in TV numbers, in case you're unaware of these things as I was in the days before SN, is paltry at best, and cancellation-worthy at worst.  The fan base, those 4 million (mostly women) people, have a fandom all unto themselves that encompasses a stunning array of in-jokes, turns of phrase, fiction, forum boards, and even art.  It is easy, perhaps frighteningly so, to lose yourself in that world, where a network of fans feel just as strongly as you do about the show, the characters, the mytharc.  Easy to become connected to a world-wide group, exchange IMs with fans around the globe, sometimes to the exclusion of reality.

I spent a lot of time in fandom when I was unemployed last year.  I miss it, often, now that I'm too busy to be as involved as I was.  I made some wonderful connections, new friends from all over the place, cool and interesting people that I would have never met were it not for a television show.  That fact still boggles my mind.  Without a TV show ffs, re-read that sentence.  Especially since as a kid, I wasn't really allowed to watch TV, I could have never imagined that I'd be this into a television show.  TV was for the hoi-polloi.  TV was for people who couldn't read.  TV was dumb.

Mostly, I still think that.  Whenever I go to work somewhere new, I have to explain to people, yet again, that I don't watch TV, no, I didn't see Greys or Scrubs last night, don't care what's happening on any given sitcom.  Those canned laugh tracks, ugh, how can anyone watch that?  It really annoys me.

Escapism, still, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, that's the appeal in the end.  When I became a big fan of the show, my life wasn't so fantastic.  I could pretend that wasn't happening while playing in fandom.  Now that things are better, I feel less of a need to escape, but wish I had the time to.

Oh, yes, I did say that this was an excuse to talk about Jensen, didn't I?  Instead, I'll just post a pic, and you can make that determination for yourself.

Ah yes.  So very, very pretty.  But aside from that, his work is amazing.  His portrayal of the badly damaged Dean is something I think needs to be seen to be appreciated.  Thursdays, 9PM, on (I cringe to admit I watch this channel) The CW.

Learning to BE rather than DO

I took a new (well, new to ME, anyway) yoga class this morning, Core Yoga. It was completely awesome, I enjoyed it a lot. Almost as soon as I left the gym, however, I got a stabbing pain in my left deltoid muscle. For a while it hurt to breathe, but it seems to be easing off. Hopefully is just something I slept wrong on and not a serious injury.

At the end of most Yoga classes that I take, the instructors do something called Savasana, a little meditation. In English, Savasana is Corpse Pose. You're supposed to relax completely. Sometimes the instructors do a guided meditation for this part of the class, sometimes not, you're just supposed to concentrate on your breathing.

Today the instructor gave us our direction while we were still in the final pose of the sequence, which happened to be boat pose. "Imagine something, something relaxing," she trilled. (She was pretty sing-song-y throughout the whole class, it entertained me a lot.) "A child's smile, or a butterfly, floating along, just that and nothing else. Then, when I tell you to, clear your mind and think of nothing, nothing at all."

Living in the moment is very, very difficult for me. When I'm trying to sleep (and this is the biggest reason that I take a sleeping pill) my mind is busy making lists of things that need done tomorrow, or the next day, or just in general. Trying to meditate is a bit like trying to pick one instrument's sound out of a vast symphony for me. So I tried to focus on the memory of a butterfly that I followed around Lily Dale for about a half hour on my last day there, trying (unsuccessfully) to get a picture of the darn thing with its wings wide open. It was a delightful few minutes, I almost felt the wonder of being a child again, chasing after it.

I'm laying on the floor in the exercise studio of my gym, trying to remember the wind off of the lake, the butterfly bobbing along with the breeze, the flowers it landed on, and into my mind pops Jensen. So I pushed him out (blasphemy, no?) and went back to the butterfly. Then my closet with its heaping piles of stuff on the floor that I'm supposed to get into reasonable shape while I'm off pops up. Pushed that out as well. Then the laundry that isn't done, Jensen, the floors that aren't scrubbed, Jensen, the car that needs washed, Dean, the dishwasher that needs unloaded, Jensen, the weeds that need pulled, Dean, the flowers that I haven't planted, Jensen, a conversation I had with a fangirl friend about Jensen, (are we seeing a pattern here at all? No? Must be just me, then.) the mess that needs cleaned up in my bathroom, Dean, the bed that isn't made, GAH!!! Butterfly, dammit, butterfly!!!

Each time I managed to bring myself back to the meditation, only to have it disrupted with something non-related. So much disruption that I never heard her tell us to clear our minds, the next thing I knew she was having us sit up into Lotus position, exchanged "Namastes" with each student, and the class was over. It occurred to me after I left that perhaps next time I ought to choose something else to concentrate on, that whole butterfly thing wasn't really working out for me.

Being in the NOW, right this moment, has always been very tough for me. I'm always thinking ahead to what's next. But as I walked to my car, I realized that this time I've had away from work is making it easier for me to just BE, that I've got a sense of almost serenity that I've never had before. Is it the medication? Probably. Maybe. I don't know.

I finished reading "Is It Me Or Is It My Meds" and I hadn't really thought a lot about it until I cracked that book, and read about others who think the meds make them less creative people. The meds are stifling my creativity. I think. I'm having trouble writing the book. Blog posts, these rambling bits of what runs around in my head are no problem, but the book, that's a problem. Knitting, too, I'm not very interested in doing.

I feel so much better, mentally lots more stable, and I don't ever want to go back to where I was in February/March of this year. But at what price? Taking away my ability to write may just not be worth it. The last time I felt able (and excited) about writing was after that mediation class I took at Lily Dale. Perhaps I need to incorporate that into my daily routine to get "it," whatever "it" is, back.

The only reason I'm not giving up on the writing completely and saying "forget it. move on. find something else." is because I love my little story and having had at least one other person read it, I know it is worth it, there's something there, that could just turn out to be the most amazing thing I do in my life. And if Rowling could write the first Harry Potter book whilst she was unemployed AND a single mom, well, damn. I can manage it too.

California Daze

All right, so when I stopped yesterday, it was two in the morning on Saturday, May 12. Let's pick up there, shall we?

I managed to get back to sleep at some point, and when I woke again, it was about 30 minutes before the breakfast bell was due to ring. I don't think I mentioned yesterday that all meals are communal (just like the bathrooms!) and that's actually fun. There is a staff kitchen, where they can cook for themselves, but with no power, there's no point. Let the kitchen crew cook for you!

I slipped out of the cabin, not wishing to wake mum or babysis. She and I had planned an early morning hike into the hills, but that wasn't going to happen with so little time before breakfast, so instead I walked down to the dock that reaches out into the ocean, bobbing along on the tide. I noticed that the sky was overcast, just like it is so often at home. I had expected abundant sunshine and warmth, coming to California. It was cool. I say yet again, sunny California, MY ASS.

I stood at the end of the dock and went through the yoga poses in Sun Salutation, trying to loosen my stiff neck and back, breathing in time with the waves. When the breakfast bell rang, I went in the direction of the mess hall, searching for the rest of my family. Even with no electricity, the kitchen staff managed to do an amazing job, so many props to them for what they do every day. A typical breakfast at camp is as follows.

scrambled eggs
hash browns
french toast
strawberries
bananas
pineapple
mango
kiwi
melon
vanilla yogurt
corn flakes
cheerios
granola
soy milk
whole milk
skim milk
cottage cheese
apple juice
orange juice
bagels
croissants
sweetbread, like a cinnamon-raisin bread
hot water for tea
coffee

Is that enough? Herregud! So much food, and mostly healthy stuff too. I took lots of fruit, a little bit of the eggs, half a bagel. Unreal, the way they feed just the staff.


After breakfast, we changed into clothes that we wouldn't mind getting wet, because we were going out in the ocean kayaks. (You know how badly I want to put that Dean line in about "She's 23, she kayaks, and they're real," don't you? LOL. At least I entertain myself.) The kayaks are red, molded plastic, with compartments at the front and back for gear, should you, you know, want to paddle one of these things to some remote campsite. I'll pass, but, the idea is there. They say "classic scupper" on the sides, I've no clue what that is supposed to mean. Babysis gives me a few quick minutes of instruction, I've never been in one of these before, and we carry three of the kayaks to the ocean's edge.

I managed to get out in the boat without tipping over in the surf, and I'm pretty darn proud of myself for that. I've got on my camelback, and I'm having a tough time adjusting the backrest on the seat so that the camelback isn't interfering with my comfortable seat. Manuvering the kayak is both easier and harder than I thought it would be. My upper body strength is fine, and I'm not having any trouble rowing, but I must paddle harder on one side than I do on the other, because it seems to pull constantly to the left.

There is so much to see. The water is so clear, and we approach the kelp beds, looking for all manner of wildlife. The kelp is like an underwater forest, with leaves swaying in the current instead of in the breeze. And the kelp grows up to the surface at an angle, to better capture the sun's rays. I have a ton of questions about each part of the plants, and babysis is able to answer them all, in far more scientific detail than I needed. I spend too much time looking over the edge of the boat and not enough looking where the hell I'm going. I managed to not run into any of the rocks along the edges, but that ends up being sheer luck rather than by design.

Some of the kelp comes all the way to the surface of the water, and then grows along the surface on a sort of horizontal plane. When it glides under the kayak, it makes a hissing, scraping noise, a "shhhhh" sound, although you do try to not steer directly over it so as not to damage it.

The ocean meets the land in a series of cliffs, rocky shoals and straight drop-offs. The rocks are red, brown, dusty looking. There are beaches, in certain coves, but mostly the waves crash against jagged edges. We spend nearly three hours in the kayaks, covering probably four miles of ocean. By the time we head back, I am sore, but not where I expected to be. I expected aching arms, but instead it is my hip flexors that are screaming for relief.

We put the gear all away, rinsing the life jackets with a wetsuit conditioner to prevent the salt from damaging them, and we lie in the sun until lunch time, trying to warm back up. Yes, there's that famed California sunshine, but it still isn't warm. After lunch, we sat in the sun for a while longer, contemplating our next move. The ocean is cold, COLD, about 60 F, and we're trying to decide if we're macho enough to go snorkeling. We decide that we can't pass up the chance, it is after all some of the best diving grounds in the world. So we gear up. I've gone diving before, and snorkeling too, a time or two. But this icy cold water requires far more gear than I am used to, boots, pants, jacket, hood, all made of black neoprene. It takes a HUGE effort to get all that stuff on. When I was taking my dive classes, we always just geared up in the water. It is far easier to put on a wetsuit when you are wet than it is when you and the wetsuit are both dry, however, when the water is as cold as it is, it isn't a good idea to hop on in and take your gear with you.

By the time we've got all that crap on, we're almost relieved to get into the cold water, because you're so overheated. First, though, there's a long walk across hot sands, and the requisite safety instructions. I already know just how cold it is from kayaking, but with all this gear on, at first I don't even feel the temperature of the water, all I feel is pressure, the water pressing on me. And then all of a sudden, it rolls up from my ankles to my chest as if I'd been lowered into the water all at once instead of wading in that far.

My sister encourages us to get all the way wet, that it is easier if done all at once, and she demonstrates with a dolphin dive. When I put MY face into the water, it is so cold that it takes my breath away, and I gasp, sputter, and end up taking in nearly a lungful of seawater. As a young child, I was terrified of the water. I've worked very hard to overcome that fear, but every now and then it sneaks up and catches me off guard. When I swallowed that water from the snorkel, I tried to stand up to regain my breath. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that I was already out way, way, WAAAYYY over my head, and I panicked for a moment. Alright, several. Then I remembered that neoprene is really buoyant, and I stuck my arms out to gain some stability and was able to remove the snorkel and clear the water out of it. I imagine it looked pretty hilarious from a distance, but no one harassed me about it, so maybe no one saw.

I don't have my open water dive certification, despite having taken the classes for it twice. (That's a long story.) I got to go diving in Hawai'i, and vastly prefer SCUBA to snorkel, because there's actually AIR in that regulator. I'm just not good with a snorkel, no matter what I do it gets swamped with rouge waves or I do something dumb and then, hello, I'm sucking down water again.

But one thing I like about both is the peacefulness, all you can really hear is the sound of your own breathing and whatever noises the water transmits, pops, cracks, sometimes the sound of a propeller. My old diving instructor had this thing on his air tank, a tank banger, that he would use to get everyone's attention, and it irritated me because he was disturbing my lovely solitude.

With the snorkeling, mostly you stay on the surface of the water, although you can dive down and take a closer look at something if you are any good at holding your breath. I am not. So for that reason and because the water was so fucking cold, I stayed at the surface, mostly allowing myself to drift with the current, watching the fish, the kelp.

Each branch of the kelp sways with the waves, and as I watched, I thought about the motion of the sea and then the motion of the earth around the sun, and I felt at peace with myself and the world, for a few minutes. I was imagining a gentle mother earth goddess, rocking the seas gently, watching over all her world. My breath was in time with the waves, and all was right in the world. Until another wave swamped my snorkel and I got another unexpected taste of seawater.

Eventually, I got cold enough that I was shaking. I found my mum and sister not far away, and mum took one look at me and ordered me back to the beach. Yep, 32 years old and still listening to my mother. Before I got out, my sister dove down and brought up a sea cucumber, which is an animal, not a plant. Babysis spends a lot of time teaching at camp, and she's really good at it. I tend to think of her as permanently 17, but the fact is that she's 23 and passionate about what she does for a living. She teaches classes about the marine life, about the recycling that the camp does, the environment, and she is very knowledgeable about all of it.

The lesson on sea cucumbers complete, I swam for shore, climbing out of the water about half an hour before my mother and sister. I discovered when taking all the gear off, that I'd gotten so cold because the hood I was wearing had come un-tucked from the jacket, allowing icy cold seawater to pour down the collar of the jacket. Oops. We cleaned all of our gear, and laid on the camp's dive deck, in full sun, trying to warm up. Sunny California? Ahh, you know the rest.

We played a game of Apples to Apples after dinner until it became too dark to see the cards, which was endless fun. Babysis bought the game as a birthday present to herself, and I need to get it for myself. Hilarious, especially if you're a geek into English vocabulary.

At some point during the day on Saturday, the camp got a generator to power their refrigerators and freezers, and the noise it makes can be heard all over camp. They decided to run it during the day, and turn it off at night, around 7pm. When we noticed that it had been shut off, we all heaved a sigh of relief.

While the generator is off, the camp is surrounded by only the sound of the ocean and the wind. No electronic hum of computers, refrigerators, buzzing security lights. Most people turned off their cel phones because there was no way to recharge them if the batteries died. The peace is pervasive, satisfying some part of my soul that I didn't know was missing out on that form of solitude.

I got up in the middle of the night (yes, again) because even so far away from all my troubles, I didn't sleep well. I went outside, and even though it was freezing cold, I stopped for a moment to just drink in the stillness. I took several deep breaths, listening to the ocean and my heartbeat, allowing the quiet to surround me, trying to fix that moment of utter peace in my memory. I had to push jealous thoughts of "this is her life ALL THE TIME!" out of my head. I am unbearably jealous of the life she's leading out there, even while I know I could never do it myself. The sun! Seen more than once a month like it is in Oh-hi-ia. The ocean, steps from her front door! The incredible food!

In the morning, my sister and I took a hike, just the two of us, to a place called Inspiration Point. Prickly Pear cactus are everywhere, and some are even blooming, a yellow flower that looks vaguely like a rose. What? You think I know a goddam thing about botany? Um, no.

We talk, the conversation of siblings that don't see each other often enough and barely understand the life choices the other has made, let alone understand one another. I wonder when this chasm opened between us, and wonder, desperately, how to fix it. I try, in the brief few minutes that we have alone together to explain my unhappiness, and my dissatisfaction with my job, and how much I miss both sisters on opposite coasts, with me seemingly stuck in Ohio. She tells me that there are times when she hangs up the phone with any of us, the 'rents or our other city gal sister, and cries because she misses us so much. And damn, now I've made myself cry again.

I don't know which is worse about the depression, not being able to take much joy in anything at all, or the random bursting into tears over relative trivialities. I feel like I can't express much emotion at all, as if I'm encased in a fog that separates me from the rest of the world. Laughter, happiness, elation, all seem so distant, while pain and and a weight, a heaviness, in my every step are my constant companions. I know it will fade. I know it will get better. Patience has never been my strong suit, though, and I want it better N-O-W!!

Anyway. It was very early in the morning, and we watched the sun come up through a cloudy sky. She brought her cell phone up there, and when we turned it on, amazingly, she had a signal. And about 6 messages from concerned friends and family members. So we made a few phone calls, to our other sister, to our dad, to my husband, reassuring them all that we were still alive and that no, the fire wasn't on this side of the island.

The only thing was that there was no power all weekend, and I know I said before that it was a minor problem. The thing is, that here, it is a minor problem. I don't miss my pager--for DAMN sure-- which was left behind because as soon as you cross a state line you're out of range. My phone isn't missed either, as soon as I figured out that I've got no signal in camp, I turned it off and put it in my suitcase. I did "look" for it a time or two, as it is almost always clipped to my right hip, and I often reach down and pat that spot to make sure it is still there, but after the second time I did that, I stopped.

The internet is a distant memory, neither fond nor painful, just not much considered. I know that Asylum has been going on over the weekend, and I'm really, really curious about the girls from the board who might have gotten to meet each other and what they did and saw, but it will all be waiting for me when I get back to Ohio and I'm quite content to wait.

Much later in the day that day, when I was talking to middlesis in New York again, she laughingly reminds me that I've only been away from the computer for a little more than 72 hours and that I ought not be so proud of myself over not missing it so much for such a short period of time. Um. Yeah. Thursday 04.30 until Sunday at about 21.00 (9PM) when I was talking to her....true, not so long after all. *Shrug* It is proof to me that I could stay away if I wanted to, or rather if the situation of no power forced me to. Hee. As I told both sisters, there just isn't that much else to do at home, and they know it. In New York City, plenty else to occupy your time and attention. Santa Catalina Island, an ocean, every single toy you could ever want, sun! Ohio? Well, hardly the garden spot of the world, are we? My father often teases the sister in NYC by saying (very crudely, I might add) that if someone wanted to give the planet an enema, New York City would be the place to start. I'd start with the cities in Ohio, but hey, that's just me.

It ended up being about 4 days by the time I got back to a 'puter, we took the red eye home from LAX on Sunday night, and sleep was the highest priority when we got back. Leaving either sister when I visit them is so hard. I won't force you to read all about our leave-taking, but not really because I care about putting y'all on an emotional roller coaster, rather because I'm not sure I care to re-live it by writing it out. Again. Once in my notes was enough.

My mother said to me, as the boat pulled away from Two Harbors, "She's happy here, Lucy. You have to keep that in mind. It makes it easier for me." Well, it doesn't make it any damn easier for me. I'm really glad that she's doing so well there, and it is fantastic to see her thriving, happy, productive, but I'd really like it a lot better if it were about 3000 miles closer and I could see her more than roughly three times a year. There's no way to put a positive spin on that, it just sucks.

This post got far longer than I planned, but that's all right. I just have one more thing to share. As the boat made the crossing from the island back to the mainland, I was talking to a young couple who had been at camp visiting one of my sister's co-workers, and they told me that they've been going to the channel islands for vacations for years. They said that every time they make the crossing from the mainland to one of the islands, they see dolphins. Sure enough, just after they finished telling me this, we saw a very large dolphin pod, perhaps 2000 dolphins all told, and they were leaping out of the water and frolicking in the wake of the ferry. We watched them for most of the remainder of the boat ride, their antics endlessly funny. That did my heart a world of good, easing some of the hurt at leaving my sister behind.

Music On My Mind

I've written before that Supernatural brought me back to the classic rock genre. And I'm grateful to the show for that, because I'd forgotten how much I love classic rock. Not all classic rock, but Zepplin, the Doors, Def Leppard, and Rush were soundtracks of my life in my late teens, and more recent rock acts that I'd forgotten about have been featured on the show, Screaming Trees, Queensryche, Alice in Chains. I've got my whole Supernatural playlist listed in the sidebar right now under my listmaking mania header, if you're interested in the types of things that I'm talking about.

I like all music, though, there isn't much that I won't listen to, including alt-country, (Wilco, Rascal Flatts, Ryan Adams) hip-hop, (Kelis, Mary J, Beastie Boys, Public Enemy) soul, (Amy Winehouse and Joss Stone) and R&B (Alica Keys & Alyiah), classical, even opera. (Madame Butterfly is a personal favorite.) If you took possesion of my iPod and scrolled through the artist list, you'd find such diverse things as Jason Mraz and Natasha Beddingfield, along with Bat for Lashes, Gorillaz, Jimmy Buffet alongside Tommy Lee. Setting the iPod to random shuffle is always entertaining and an adventure, because often something will pop up that I've completely forgotten is there.

I spent several hours last weekend cruising around iTunes, finding all kinds of things. Listening to 30 second blurbs of all manner of music, hopping from one list of all of an artist's songs to another. Is there anything that isn't on iTunes? I think not. I also spent some time trying to clean out the things on the iPod that I haven't listened to since uploading my music collection in January, because my iPod is a Nano and it holds about a thousand songs and I need to have stuff on there that I actually listen to, rather than stuff that clutters it up.

Music is something so visceral, so primal, so vital, even spiritual, sacred. You need only sit in on a drum circle and feel the stirrings in your soul of ancient memory to know this is true. Surprisingly, Celtic music fosters that same feeling in me, of coming 'home', of hearing something that maybe I don't remember personally, but my soul seems to. Cutting yourself off from music is about as easy as cutting off an appendage. There's rhythm in everything, from the mundanity of a changing traffic light to the clacking of the keyboard when you type. There's harmony in everything, from the wind in the trees to the patterns of overheard conversations.

I go nowhere without my iPod. It is on in the car when NPR news isn't on. It is on in my office when I don't have visitors. (Which means it is on most of the time.) It is on when I'm on the computer at home in the evenings. I have the headphones on in the grocery store, while I'm cleaning my house, and of course at the gym. All of which is either a statement about how we interact less and less with society in general (encapsulated in my own little world syndrome) or about how we expect to be entertained all the time, I'm not sure which.

That's not to say that I won't take it off to talk to someone, because I will. Most of the music I listen to makes me happy, and I really enjoy the fact that I am able to carry it around with me, accessible to me at all times. When I am able to sing along with the music, that makes me happy too. I get so much positivity from my music.

But there are songs that make me sad too, that evoke particular memories and can bring tears. It seems so strange to me that music connects so much to our emotional cores, evoking both joy and pain. For a long time after moving home from Europe, stupidly and strangely enough, Don Henley's "Boys of Summer" really bothered me, reminding me of a group of guy friends that I was afraid I'd never see again. My fears were fairly well founded, I have not seen any of them since 1992. But I hate to admit to having such taste in music!! Another one that can also make me cry is extraordinarily cringe-worthy, Jimmy Buffet's "Someday I Will" which is about hopes and dreams. Every single time I've heard that song done live (and we go see Buffet EVERY SINGLE SUMMER, y'all, DH is a big Parrothead) I've been standing in the crowd sobbing, because I find it that moving.

Van Halen's "Right Now" was released when I was living in Europe, I remember the video on MTV Europe, and you will remember it too when I remind you that it was one of the first videos that had text on the screen that you needed to read. I found that really moving too, both then and now.

Punk music makes me want to jump around and scream a lot. Techno still makes me want to dance, even though I can recognize how horrible it is now. RiotGrrl stuff makes me want to spring into action to make my voice heard. Opera makes me wish I'd kept studying voice. Chick singers like Tori, Sarah, Sheryl, make me want to sing at the top of my lungs. Classic rock makes me want to watch Sam and Dean. Especially the shirtless Dean we saw in What Is and What Should Never Be last week. Hee. Couldn't resist squeezing them in there, you know I had to fit that in if I was going to mention SN, right?

I know I haven't written anything at all about the therapy sessions which I mentioned in a Tuesday post a few weeks ago, but that is because my first appointment with the head-shrinker is tomorrow. Today I feel more upbeat, but I don't know if that's because I think we're making progress at my giant suck of a job, if the meds are kicking in and making me feel better, if the weather's better or if I'm just finally really feeling better. I'm not going to have much time to write about the session because I am leaving on Thursday to go visit babysis in Cal-if-or-ny-i-a. YAY, sibling goodness.

(And yes, we're flying though LAX, and yes, I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for a highly unlikely Jensen sighting. Just thought I'd mention that.)

I will probably be mostly offline while in California, because babysis really does live on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific ocean, and they have a very slow satellite-relayed to dial-up connection to the interweb. Plus, I can go scuba diving, sailing, ocean kayaking, hiking and snorkeling there, so I'm guessing that I won't have much time to be checking in. I'll update when I can. I still want to write a post about the French elections, but until I can, check out Petite's eloquent post on the matter.

Listening to: Random iTunes mix

Where have all the cowboys gone?

I saw Linkin Park's new video on MTV whilst on the treadmill this morning. I frequently watch MTV or VH1 with no sound, and so my impressions of the videos tend to differ from what they end up being like with sound. The song is "What I've Done," and the vid (on the link) shows environmental disasters of epic proportions. Towards the end, there are some shots of Mother Theresa, JFK, and Ghandi, and watching that, I was struck that I don't know who the environmental leaders of the day are. Or the voices of my generation. Who are our heroes?

Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth was a wake-up call to many, but I'm sorry, Mr. Gore, I just don't see you as a great leader of our day. It goes almost without saying that I hardly see W as a leader either. If we're going to stay in the political arena, I'll mention the fact that I worked for the Kerry campaign in 2004 because I saw him as the much lesser of two evils, not because I greatly admired him. I haven't yet made up my mind who to vote for in the Democratic primary, nearly a year from now, but that certainly isn't for lack of exposure to the candidates. They're EVERYWHERE.

I greatly admired Madeline Allbright, as Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, but she's not in the public eye right now. Kim Gandy, current head of NOW is someone I admire. I think she's very courageous, but she isn't going to stand for election any time soon.

Maybe it is because I'm so terribly depressed, in fact, it is highly likely that it is exactly because I'm depressed, that I can't see a leader, man or woman, who is going to help America clean up its environmental mess, its economic mess, or who speaks for my generation. Sports stars, musicians, and actors get far more attention than say, Greenpeace or Amnesty International, or the World Wildlife Fund, for that matter. I can hardly claim to be exempt from or immune to that celebrity hype, being as addicted as I am to The Superficial and Go Fug Yourself, not to mention my teeny, tiny, itsy-bitsy, little, insignificant crush on Jensen Ackles.

And now I've made myself laugh, so that's at least a more positive outlook for the day.

But, really. Seriously, dude. Who are the young leaders? Who do you admire?

Perhaps baking as a form of therapy.

I was channel surfing yesterday and caught a few minutes of "Semi-Homemade with Sandra Lee" on Food TV. I wasn't fully focused on the telly, having the laptop in my lap and reading fan's accounts of Jensen's new movie Ten Inch Hero from the Newport Beach Film Festival. Lucky, lucky, lucky fangirls who attended the screening!!!! Part of the cast, including Jensen, was there. So since I was more engrossed in reading about how one fan got to take his picture and hear his voice in person, ('scuse me while I swoon!) I missed exactly how Sandra Lee made the cookies that I thought looked good.

I don't like most of what she does, because I vastly prefer to make my own stuff instead of doctoring box mixes or using some of the other shortcuts that she uses. Yes, she makes homemade cooking more accessible to folks who think the kitchen is a scary place, but for the rest of us who really enjoy the process, the chemistry, the end result, her recipes are usually a "pass". Besides, pre-packaged mixes are always full of the worst things for you, bleached flour, white sugar, tons of salt, high fructose corn syrup, even tBHQ. If you are trying to avoid those things, as I am, you've got to read the label on positively EVERYTHING you pick up in the grocery store, because you never know what you're going to get in that box of Hamburger Helper, or sugar cookie mix.

I've been so weighted down by the depression which I've been trying to work my way through that I haven't made anything from scratch, or created a new recipe, or even fussed much in the kitchen over about the last two months. Y'know things are not good when the food writer isn't working in the kitchen, doesn't want to eat, and can't focus enough to make dinner, right? Something about these macadamia nut cookies made me want to get in there and bake something, though, so today I went rooting through the cupboards and discovered that yes, I did have an unopened container of macadamia nuts. I'll take the spark of inspiration wherever it comes from, I'm not picky.

I next went to my cookbook shelf, which takes up an entire section of my library's built-in bookcases. I was looking for a sugar cookie recipe that didn't require rolling out on the countertop (more mess than I could currently handle having to clean) or chilling in the refrigerator (I want COOKIES and I want them NOW).

Much like collecting shoes is an issue for me, collecting cookbooks is a habit that I can't break. I will actually sit down and READ a cookbook, just like I'll read a novel, learning new techniques or getting an idea for a concoction of my own. I own somewhere around 70 cookbooks, at last count. Go ahead, point at me and say, "Lucy, you're a complete geek." Yes, I know that and am OK with it. I have, at a minimum guess, about 10 cookbooks that are strictly cookies, and several of the old standby all-purpose cookbooks, like the red and white checked gingham covered Better Homes and Gardens, the Joy of Cooking. I couldn't find a recipe that I wanted to use, and even leafing through the huge three-ring binder full of things I've clipped out of magazines, printed from the web and photocopied out of library cookbooks didn't bring any inspiration. Dejected, I put the books all back on the shelf and went to lie down for a bit.

Christ, how ridiculous is it that something like that will put me into a tailspin? The anti-depressant seems to be helping a bit, but not enough, yet, to bring me out of that horrible funk. In my defense, I did only sleep about 3 hours last night, from around 3 am until about 6:30, so perhaps a short nap was just what I needed.

After napping for about a half hour, I thought about the bag of chocolate chips that I'd seen while hunting for macadamia nuts, and I decided that instead of a kind of sugar cookie with macadamia nuts in them, I'd make macadamia nut chocolate chip cookies. There are any number of good chocolate chip cookie recipes out there; I'm fond of the original Tollhouse recipe, with a few small modifications such as using all brown sugar instead of white, and the addition of a little bit of milk, but in about the last two years whenever I've made chocolate chip cookies, I've used Alton Brown's recipe for "The Chewy" which seem to stay soft after baking. I don't like rock-hard chocolate chip cookies. It is very much a personal preference.

A quick second of OT gushing...I heart Alton Brown's show Good Eats. Love how he explains the chemistry of cooking and baking, love his insistence that the only tool in your kitchen that only does one thing should be a fire extinguisher, love how he shows unique ways to accomplish complicated kitchen tasks with things that you already own.

When I'd finished mixing the dough, I looked at the lump of it sitting in the bowl, and was overwhelmed at the idea of scooping out four dozen cookies. (I make them much smaller than Alton recommends.) Just more than I could handle, I guess. So instead I put the whole thing into a round 9-inch cake pan and baked it for 30 minutes, and now cooling on the countertop is what looks like a cookie pizza.

I certainly don't NEED these cookies in the house. One of the problems that I have with food is that I can't eat just one cookie, I want a dozen. I don't want just the recommended serving size of potato chips, I want the whole bag of them. So I don't normally have things like that in my house to avoid temptation. I know this and can plan for it so it doesn't become a problem. When I am testing recipes, or working on a foodie article, I will give whatever it is away after reserving a small portion for myself.

This cookie pizza is cute, though, and I won't cut into it until DH gets home so that he can see what it looks like. And then it will go with me to work tomorrow, so my staff can eat it instead of me. They love it when I'm testing recipes.

Progress, however, in that I was able to get the house cleaned up today, I made something in the kitchen, did some laundry and I'm on the computer looking for story ideas for posts next week. The sun's out, birds are singing, distantly I hear lawnmowers chugging along as people cut the grass for the first time. My house smells like cookies and clean laundry, good, homey things that are sure-fire spirit lifters.


If only baking wonderful things was the answer. Wouldn't it be nice?

Really Weird Dreams

Sleeping is such a problem. I want to lie in bed and do nothing, but I'd also love to get more than a few hours sleep, and it just isn't happening.

Last night I climbed into bed around 12:30, after watching Supernatural (twice). I spent from 10 pm until just after midnight talking online to other SN fanatics. Yes, a new episode of Supernatural aired last night, and yes, it was wonderful. I'm resisting the urge to write a complete rehash of the whole episode. I do have this one thing to share...Jensen's character had several lines that made me laugh out loud, but the best one has to be when he's being interrogated and someone asks him "You think you're REAL cute, don't ya?" and he responds with a mile-wide grin, "I think I'm adorable!" Yes, yes, you are. And that sound you heard? Was about 30,000 fangirls screaming their agreement.

Moving on. I'm going to talk about sleep today. Really.

I am still taking Ambien, and it gets me to fall asleep very quickly, but it seems to level out at about 4 hours of sleep, because without fail, unless I climb into bed after 1 am, I wake between 4:17 and 4:38 every day. I get up at 5, and waking thirty minutes or so before when I am going to really get up irritates me. I'm not sure why, other than perhaps I feel that I'm being robbed of a precious few minutes of sleep.

Sometimes I am able to fall back asleep for those precious few minutes. Sometimes not. I have vivid dreams in that short space of time when I do manage to fall back asleep. I am able to "lucid dream," something I've been able to do almost as far back as I can remember. Sometimes I'm even able to control the dreams. Not all the time.

This most recent one that bothered me was one that I wasn't in control, nor was I lucid. It involved a dinner at a restaurant, with a table for about 12. I can tell you what the table looked like, the chairs, the decor of the restaurant, even what the dishes and glasses looked like. Very, very crisp, vivid detail. I can't tell you who all was around that table for twelve, but one person was one of my ex's, and another was a parent of an old friend, a third was a high school classmate that I haven't spoken to in a while. The parent was asking how on earth I could be friends with the ex when I'm married to someone else. I tried in vain to explain it, finally coming up with the lame non-explanation "Because we're friends." (real life answer isn't all that much more clear: he's a good guy, and we're both grownups enough to be able to be nice to one another. We share a political viewpoint, I like his wife, and we're not interested in ever getting back together...this is a friendship, not an opportunity, fer gawd's sake.)

My classmate and I left the restaurant, shaking our heads over the inability of some people to recognize that men and women can actually BE FRIENDS, walking down a set of concrete steps, and we ran right in to another ex-boyfriend of mine. In the waking world, I haven't seen this particular guy for a very long time, and in the dream, he of course looked exactly the same as he did when I was 15/16. I'm not sure I'd be able to pick him out of a crowd today, like many of my schoolmates, he remains forever 17 in my memory.

He persuaded me to come back into the restaurant with him, after spending several minutes kissing me in the parking lot. Um? WTF? Hadn't I just finished explaining in the dream a few minutes ago that I was married to someone else? And in real life, I am very happily married to someone else. Dreams like this bother me so much. Not only did I go back into the restaurant with this ex, holding his hand, but also introducing him around the table as "my ex-boyfriend Joe" and then kissing him again in full sight of everyone, who gave me jaws-on-the-floor-shocked glares. I woke up a minute or so later, gasping for breath, convinced I'd done something wrong. I was very disoriented to discover myself in my own bed, DH asleep beside me, instead of where I'd expected to be, standing in a restaurant surrounded by accusing glares and angry words.

Sometimes dreams mean something. Sometimes they're just dreams. I attach no particular significance to this dream, it isn't allegorical or a statement about my life, but man, it made me squirm. I don't have dreams quite like this when I'm not taking the Ambien. Never as vivid with the detail, and hardly ever traumatic. The level of weirdness knows no bounds.

Random News Notes

Two completely disjointed things that I want to talk about, and this will be a comparatively short, for me anyway, post.

First is this news about Senate majority leader Harry Reid, who said yesterday that The Most Meaningless War Ever (tm) has been lost. The White House shot back that they thought his comments were 'disturbing'. I'm chuckling because I agree with the White House, but not in the way they mean. I find Senator Reid's remarks very disturbing because HE'S RIGHT! Did we tell President Idiot over and over and over that an escalation of troops wouldn't work? We did. Did he listen? He did not. Is it a catastrophe? Yep. Are we surprised? Nope.

Next, I was up much, much too late last night talking online about the new episode of Supernatural that aired yesterday FINALLY, after a month-long hiatus. After the episode aired and I did my traditional re-watch of the tape of it (since I miss bits of dialog, being deaf) I had on Headline News as background noise.

I glanced up from the laptop, where I was busily typing away to a cadre of other hard-core nuts, oh, I mean fangirls, to find a clip of Neil Patrick Harris on the Ellen Show at one point. He came out. First, Neil, GOOD FOR YOU, I love that the culture here in the States is becoming more and more accepting of homosexuality and that you feel comfortable enough to take that step. Next, duh, 'cause I knew that.

But the bubble-head on Headline News just had to make some dumb ass remark about "Wow, and he plays such a ladies' man on How I Met Your Mother." IT IS CALLED ACTING HONEY, EVER HEARD OF IT? You're an entertainment reporter. Yeesh. NPH is one of the good ones. I don't watch his current show, but he's been in a bunch of things that I liked, and he's good at what he does. Is it so unfathomable that a gay man could play a ladies' man? Herregud!

Speaking of TV watching, I would like to squee endlessly about last night's SN episode, but since I am a complete freak about this show, there are a few details that bugged me. (I lied, there are three things to talk about today.) For the other fangirls who check my website, because the rest of you? Are going to be real lost in about ten seconds and for most of the rest of the post....

I get really annoyed when they stray from the mytharc for a whole episode. Less than one sentence's mention of Heart, nothing at all about the YED...and a few other things about the episode that bothered me. It would take Sam 6 HOURS of watching dailies to figure out that the Latinating was for real? Have we forgotten that he was up for a full ride law school scholarship at Stanford? Law school, Latin...and the fact that BDW tutored them in this stuff from the time Sam was 6 months old on. Anyway. My point is: Continuity of the storyline!!!! Argh! Sam is supposed to be super-smart. And psychic.

Dean and the food, again. Haven't we beat that horse to a bloody, gruesome death yet? Not that I ever get tired of looking at Jensen's lips, but enough with the food already.

Metallicar was missing from this episode, and I felt its absence keenly. A late-model, bright yellow Mustang convertible did not make up for the lack of Metallicar, although it did help a little.

A thing or two that really made me laugh...Jared's non-verbals at the mention of Gilmore Girls, OMG that was funny. His facial expressions when he figures out just what Dean's been up to with Tara/Wendy, priceless. Priceless, I tell you. Dean, getting the girl, love that. Never enough of that in any of the episodes. Dean, getting dressed as he comes out of the trailer at the end of the episode and his hair's a big mess. (Resisting the urge to suggest that there should be a lot fewer layers of clothing...resisting...) I like that Dean wasn't all angst-y and tortured in this episode. I suppose I want it both ways, mytharc, which equals angst, and Dean-the-pickup-artist. That's a pretty tall order, but I expect fantastic things from the show. And when it works? It really works. The fact that they "salted & burned" in this episode, yay!!! There hasn't been near enough of that or shooting things in the face with rock salt this season. That rocked. Oh, and Dean's a total fanboy when it comes to horror movies, that, THAT is fantastically funny. The in-jokes about acting, the film and television industry were cute, too. I caught a whole bunch of them, but I'm sure I didn't see them all, having not ever really worked in TV. The ones I did pick up on were howlers. Which is why I can't wait until TWoP posts the recap, I'm sure that they'll catch a bunch more of them. TWoP's recapper for SN is hysterical.


All right, all right, enough already. Two paragraphs about politics/news, more or less, and too much ranting about my hopeless addiction. Must. Stop. Now. I'm not crazy. Really. I am a serious political blogger. I AM!!!


(Lucy, dear, if you have to tell the good people that...well, it is a little like declaring, "I'm a classy broad!" or asking how much something costs...if you have to ask, you can't afford it. If you have to TELL them that you're a serious politico....) ~.~

Just can't resist.

News news news news that I can't resist sticking my nose into.

Let's start with Don Imus. I don't like him, never have. When MSNBC started simulcasting him years ago, I remember stumbling across him there at some point and I couldn't reconcile the voice with the picture of the man. That was almost enough to turn it off right there, but then I listened for a few minutes and he was talking sports and THEN I was done. I'm not a big sports fan.

This isn't a first for him, by a long shot. The guy isn't a shock jock like Howard Stern or anything, but he's said more offensive things than just this. Let us not forget, either, that it is hardly the most offensive thing said on the airwaves.

That said, I think the casual observer could remark that it might be a freedom of speech issue, but it isn't. In the early days of this country's history, the Supreme Court made a clear distinction between freedom of speech and slander. This is a case of hate speech.

NPR had a story a few days ago where the reporter talked about Imus's listeners as being white, well educated, and upper class. Well educated? Really? Guess I just don't have enough education, then, because I can't listen to him for more than a minute.


The mess with Anna Nicole, I can't really even comment too much about that. 'Sordid' might be the best word to describe the whole thing. Just because I'm not going to ruminate about it for long does not mean I haven't been watching with interest. Poor Anna. And her poor daughter.

Next I heard more disturbing stuff on NPR about the escalation of violence in Baghdad. When, oh, when, can we be done with The Most Meaningless War Ever (TM)? Interesting, and sad, too, that the news is all Larry what's-his-name, Don Imus, and not much else. I had to go hunting for news on Iraq.

Two more things before I get on with the rest of my day.

I haven't done the fangirl thing for about a week, so I need to get that out of my system. I got some new Jensen Ackles pictures, isn't this cute? What about this one? Oh, one more. They aren't new pictures, just new for me.

Finally, Thesister is coming to Oh-hia-ia from NYC for a visit, she will be here tomorrow! Can't wait! Picture me bouncing around like a hyperactive kid, because I'm so excited to see her. I may be off-line while she's here.

Back.... (In Black) to politics and my OCD

In no particular order, let's get to the political things I wanted to talk about yesterday and then on to the Tuesday Brain Dump.

First, the British sailors in Iran. Is anyone else reminded of the neighborhood bully taking all his toys and going home in this case? No, that's just me? OK. But really, I think the Iranians are being a weee little bitty bit ridiculous over this whole thing. Ask the Brits to apologize for 'invading their territorial waters' or whatever, but do we need to make this an international crisis? I don't think so. Let those kids go home already.

Next, David Hicks. This is the Australian citizen who has been held at Guantanamo Bay by US forces since 2002 and was christened the "Australian Taliban" by the media. I don't really want to rant today about the completely illegal detention center in Cuba, nor the totally unconstitutional tribunals they're holding there, or about the people that they're holding. Those are all things for another day, when I can annoy my family by talking about how "W" is the devil incarnate. No, I'm lying there. I do want to rant about how the military is holding people who probably have very little connection to Osama, or to the Taliban, or to terrorism at all. It is my personal opinion, perhaps naively so, that most of the people being held at Gitmo were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I'm going to avoid going on and on about it today.

I think that the plea deal that was brokered for David Hicks is bunk. He's got a gag order from talking to the media (and I for one would like very much to hear what he's got to say) and he had to sign something that says that he was never mistreated while in US custody, which I'm sure is not just bunk, but bullshit. Complete bullshit, as he's stated previously that he felt his life was being threatened if he didn't agree to whatever his captors wanted.

What else was on my mind yesterday? Oh, yes, Nancy Pelosi traveling and W's threats to veto anything that comes across his desk that is a 'no' vote for the war. Let's wait on both of those issues for another day and get on with my usual Tuesday stuff, shall we?

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or OCD, is a disorder that has a myriad of definitions. Used to be when I thought of someone with OCD, I thought of Jack Nicholson's Melvin Udall in "As Good As It Gets", where his character washes his hands over and over, and carries his own silverware around. But then, someone close to me was diagnosed with the disorder, and the things that are the symptoms for this person are radically different. He gets upset when things are changed...which means that if you re-arrange your living room furniture, it bothers him. Changing the way a particular dish is made, or where each person sits at the dinner table also bothers him. There are other manifestations, such as obsessive organization of DVDs, music, spices...

I've never formally been diagnosed with OCD, but I've got my own share of symptoms. Like what?

Alphabetizing my CDs and DVDs is one. I really alphabetize things that don't need it, all sorts of things. An embarrassing amount of things. Spices in the spice rack, shoes...books.

Listening to a song over and over and over is another. I'll get 'into' a particular song, and need, NEED I tell you, to hear it. And listen to it until everyone around me is sick unto death of it.

The television show and the cute actor I'm into is a third. (Regular readers are groaning and covering their eyes, so I'll stop now. Or right after this. Hee.)

Counting things is a fourth. I count stairs, I count cars, I count keystrokes on the computer, I count strides on the treadmill.

Finally, I'm a list-maker. I make lists for EVERYTHING. What to pack when I go out of town. Grocery lists. List of things to do at work, with priorities attached to each one. Lists of words that I like. Lists of Bands I like. Lists, lists, lists, lists. Once upon a time, an NPR program was doing this fun little thing where people would send in alternative definitions for words, and they were all hilarious, but the only one I remember is "listless-verb. To be without a list. Lost." That makes me laugh every time I think about it. List-less. Without a list. Oh, the horror! I need my lists!

I'm adding a list in the sidebar today, giving in to my obsessive list-making, and allowing an outlet for it. I'm going to list the songs in my iPod's Top 25 Most Played, but I'll update it and change it as I see fit, making other lists to share as the whim strikes me.

There is treatment for OCD, but mostly I'm not interested in it. I tend to view these manifestations of mine as personality quirks, rather than hardcore insanity. And while one or two of these things may slip over the line from time to time, mostly, they're harmless. At least, I keep telling myself that.

Random stupid thoughts with large amounts of bitching and gnashing of teeth

Things to bitch about
Have I mentioned that the CW television network is killing me by having another Supernatural hiatus until April 19th? Really, CW, you're killing me. The withdrawal may, indeed, be the death of me.

I feel fat.

My job sucks.

I miss my sisters.

I'm out of inspiration and things to post about, too lazy today to even check the news wires for ideas.

When did MTV stop playing MUSIC VIDEOS and instead start playing only really lame reality shows?

Things that are making me laugh

The entire Television Without Pity website. Reviews of TV shows that I don't even watch (and the one that I do) make me laugh out loud when remembered at inappropriate moments. And not that I need another forum to be addicted to, but the forum on that site rocks too.

The tulips I planted last fall are sprouting. I have not the slightest green thumb, killing any plant under my care quickly and easily. But bulbs? Bulbs are the easiest thing going. Put them in the ground, and if the goddam deer don't eat the bulbs, in the spring you have pretty, pretty flowers.

A commercial for a vibrating razor. WTF, dude? Why would you want your razor to be a vibrator or your vibrator to be a razor? I'm confused.

Not having had a religious experience, ever.

I think long and hard about these Tuesday Brain Dump posts, often writing them several days in advance of when they're posted, going back and revising, re-thinking, OK, really, obsessing over it. And I was initially going to write about obsession today, (not specifically my Jensen Ackles - Dean Winchester obsession) obsessions in general, with music, with an idea, with a movie that I'll watch over and over, a particular issue, you get the idea. The genesis of that comes from my sister giving me a stern talking-to whilst I was in New York about being insanely hooked on a fictional character. I needed that talk! And I think it was helpful. But then our conversation meandered from my insanity into religion, and that's a much better topic, having the potential for far more controversy.

Thesister identifies herself as an atheist. I identify as an agnostic. Not to split hairs, but there is a difference. Atheists do not believe in any god, any higher power, any spiritual being. At least, that's how thesister defines it. Agnostics, under my own personal definition, would like to believe that there IS some higher power. Cause it would be nice, wouldn't it? I see miracles in small things, a perfect blossom, a sunrise, a tree covered in snow after a heavy snowfall, and I'd like to believe that there's some higher power, some grand design, some thing beyond my ken that is a Creator. I'd like to believe. But I lost what little faith I had when my cousin died in 2005.

Before we get to that, let's talk about the way I was raised, and how that has an impact on who I am and what I believe today. The 'rents raised both sisters and I Catholic. I had no idea how controversial that was with my mother's family until very recently, when Mum informed me that my maternal grandparents had not come to my baptism. What?!? Why not?!? How on earth could you not come to a baby's baptism as a protest? Turns out that my maternal grandparents (who are both gone now, or believe me, I'd have a conversation with them about this, because I'd like to understand) were plenty pissed that mum decided to baptize me Catholic. When mum and I talked about this, I was stunned, because I remember them coming to both thesister and babysis's baptisms. "Guess they got over it by then," Mum told me. Huh.

We went to church sporadically while I was growing up, but I went to CCD every Wednesday (while school was in session) from first grade all the way through eighth grade. CCD stands for Confraternity of Catholic Doctrine, and was a roughly hour-long weekly religion class for Catholic kids who weren't (heaven forbid) going to Catholic school. Thank whatever powers that be that the 'rents DIDN'T send us to Catholic school...CCD was bad enough. I was taught in CCD classes that Catholicism is the only true Christian faith. (Really. No, really. I promise.) CCD was taught by lay people, not the nuns, and each one of my CCD teachers had their own 'issues'. I'm not sure what the screening process the Church went through to find these people, but whatever it was, it wasn't enough. Cause some of them, as I recall, were downright nuts.

It was their difficult job, in one hour a week, to prepare all the good little boys and girls to participate in each of the seven holy sacraments that make up part of the Catholic faith that needed to be accomplished by all 'good' Catholics. In no real order, the Sacraments are Baptism, First Communion, Confession, Confirmation, Marriage, Holy Orders, and Last Rites. Baptism is usually done when someone is an infant, so that wasn't part of CCD. First Communion takes place around the second grade, so that is the first thing they force you to study and understand. Confession and Confirmation vary from Church to Church, but at my hometown parish, Confession was 4th grade and Confirmation was your junior year of high school. Holy Orders are only if you plan to become a priest or a nun, and I think Marriage and Last Rites are pretty self explanatory.

I drank the kool-aide, believing everything that they taught us, and was a good little Catholic girl until about high school. At that time, I joined a Christian youth group and stopped participating in any Catholic anything. The youth group was a non-denominational born-again, very conservative, brainwashing society. And I drank the kool-aide there too. I began listening to Christian Rock, jettisoning anything in my music collection (only for a brief while) that glorified sex and drinking. To this day, I have no idea why my parents allowed me to do this, join this youth group that wasn't Catholic, because I didn't join any church to substitute for the Catholic church. I did spend time only with other youth group members and spouted off biblical quotes to anyone who would listen. And I spent a lot of time reading the bible, going to Christian rock concerts, hanging with other members of the group. Maybe they had no idea how deep I was into the group, or thought it was better than me hanging with the local stoners, I don't know.

At any rate, after two years of this youth group, I left the US, my school, and my brainwashed society behind and went to Sweden to be an exchange student for a year. The only book in English I took with me? The NIV Bible. Once separated from the youth group, however, I began to question the ideals instilled in me by the group, and by the Church. My host family is also Catholic, but were sporadic churchgoers like my own family back home, and I found plenty of other things to take up my time in Sweden.

My Swedish friends viewed my religion as something kind of odd, a curiosity much like being double-jointed. I spent so much time in the first few months in Sweden trying to learn the language, and my religious fervor slipped away bit by bit until it was gone. And when I realized it was gone, not only did I not miss it, but I felt as if a burden had been lifted from my shoulders. When I thought about faith and religion through the rest of that year, which wasn't often, I began to form my own set of beliefs about what was right and what was wrong, my own code to live by.

In college, I took some Women's Studies classes, and began to understand that the Church was man's creation, and that while not perhaps evil, churches weren't perfect. And that maybe, just maybe, the men who were in charge didn't have the best interests of women at heart.

Time passes, as it always does, and when DH asked me to marry him, I decided that I wanted the whole princess wedding, big church, big dress, big party. For better or worse, Catholicism was still my faith, and as silly as this sounds, I've always felt that other Christian weddings aren't long enough. Because the Catholics? Can't do anything in less than an hour. So I got married in the Catholic church in a ceremony that was both beautiful and long, lasting an hour and 20 minutes. Years of indoctrination by the Church meant that I had no problem reciting all the prayers and responses in the appropriate places.

I still believed in God, although by then, I was having more and more problems believing everything that the Church taught, as the clergy sex scandals were beginning to come to light by that time. And I've NEVER gone along with the Church's stance on women since I was old enough to understand it. We can be nuns? But not preach? No birth control, of any kind? We have no say in how the Church is governed, run, operated? Are you fucking kidding me?

As the clergy sex scandals unfolded, I lost all respect that I'd ever had for the Catholic church, and began to think that maybe all organized religions were as fucked up as Catholicism is. Investigations into several other Christian faiths made me decide that organized religion was bunk, and I wanted nothing to do with it.

And then J died. Several of my high school classmates had passed away before my cousin did, so this wasn't my first experience with the death of a young person, but it was the first experience that I'd had that made me question absolutely everything I believed in.

If there is a higher power, what purpose did it serve for J to be taken from her kids? From the rest of her family, aunts, uncles, cousins, the rest of her community, neighbors, students, co-workers? A benevolent and omniscient being couldn't possibly think that it would be a good thing for her daughters to grow up without their mother. Can you imagine the pain that those children will feel every day for the rest of their lives? Unless you've lost a parent at a very young age, I don't think that you can. And J's husband, his pain in losing not just his partner, but also the mother of his children. A higher power wants us to feel this pain? I reject that.

As I've read more and more feminist philosophy, I now think that all organized religions are a way for the menfolk to control the women, to control what we think, what we do, who and how we are. My personal code, established first when I was 17, still serves me much better than any set of tenets laid down for me by the male Judea-Christian god.

As any code, law, or set of rules goes, it undergoes revisions from time to time. But it starts here: YOU ain't the boss of ME, baby!

On Rude Behavior

I was on the treadmill at the gym, trying hard to keep distracted, when I came across an article in Details magazine about being a gentleman. Now, most of the 'Lad Mag' genre is icky, and articles about how to jazz up your pickup game don't do much for me, but this one got me to thinking about rude behavior that I encounter on a daily basis, and some that I participate in, embarrassingly enough.

The article in question can be found here, but be warned the site froze my laptop for no apparent reason.

The author talks about the lost art of being a gentleman, about knowing how to order a bottle of wine, how to turn off your cel phone, keep your pants on, and tellingly, "let the ladies go first". I'm all for most of that behavior...as the author rightly points out, dudeus americanus is an idiot who needs to clean up his act.

As I read this, the woman on the treadmill next to me got a telephone call. Her screechy conversation was about her daughter's troubles with attendance at school and how she was apparently in danger of being booted off of danceline as a result. It was annoying.

Normally, I am at the gym every morning when the doors open at 05.30. Yes, 5:30 AM. Until very recently, I thought the gym was pretty busy at that hour. This week, with the return to my sleeping pill prescription, I've had a more difficult time getting out of bed, and so have been dragging myself to the gym after work. I hate missing that early morning workout, because the gym is not only NOT crowded at all at that hour, contrary to my impression, but the people there at 05.30 are much more civilized.

Earlier this week, the man on the treadmill next to me was sweating so profusely that I was getting rained on. I can't even tell you how grossed out I was by that. I couldn't move to another treadmill because there wasn't one to spare. There were people waiting, like swarming sharks, for a treadmill to open up, so I stayed with Mr. Raindrop.

Another day, and this is petty and really obnoxious of me, the guy next to me kept coughing, and it irritated me so much that I kept turning up my iPod to block it out. And then I got a phone call of my own.

About 99.99% of the time, I don't even have the phone with me at the gym, nor do I take my work-mandated pager into the gym. If they can't be without me for an hour a day, well, the whole world is then totally fucked and I can't do anything to fix it. So the pager, phone, PDA and other gadgetry are usually in the car, or at home while I'm running. But I had called a friend on the way to the gym and requested a call back as soon as she got the message, so I took the phone into the gym.

I don't know if I've blogged before about my hearing loss, so bear with me while I explain that I am very hard of hearing, having destroyed it in my teens by clubbing, concert-going, and listening to my Walkman much too loudly back in the days before iPods. I have about a 40% hearing loss in my left ear, and about a 15% in my right ear. If you're not facing me, I can't hear you. If you whisper, I can't hear you unless you're whispering directly into my right ear. Yeah, I know how smart this makes me when I continue to listen to the iPod and turn it up too. Anyway, I told you all that so that you understand why the ring tone on my mobile phone is set to the "deafening" setting. 'Cause I can't hear it otherwise.

Back to the gym, where I'm running along on the treadmill, and the annoying older fella next to me is hacking, hacking, hacking and I'm turning the iPod up, and up, and up to tune him out. So loudly that I don't hear my phone ring, rather I see it vibrating and the lights flashing. I answer it, and have about a 20 minute loud conversation with my friend about cute gay boys that she's met, the actor that I think is cute, the fan forums, the hot guy who walked into the gym in front of me, my hormone levels, her lover, so, in short, sex.

When I hung up the phone, I resumed running (I had slowed to a brisk walk to be able to talk) turned the iPod back up, and stopped myself from belting out the chorus to Saliva's "Click...Click...BOOM". I try really hard to not sing out loud when I have the iPod on, but is is tough. (Great song to run to, BTW.)

It was a day or so later that I read the Details article, and the screechy woman next to me regaled her friend with her screechy opinion about her daughter's spot on danceline. Again, I was turning the iPod up, but I couldn't block her out entirely, she was too loud. I was starting to get seriously pissed off when I realized that Mr. Cough next to me earlier in the week probably hadn't appreciated Lucy's Frank Talk About Sex and Homosexuality any more than I was appreciating her diatribe. Oops.

As I continued to read the advice of Details to twentysomething guys on how to behave themselves and have some class, I was suddenly reminded of my mother's English friend, B. B was someone my mum ran around with about 20 years ago, and the first time I met her, at about 11, I was transfixed by her accent, the first one I'd ever heard in real life. B was (and probably still is) one very classy dame. I watched her every move, trying to figure out just what, exactly, made her so graceful and refined. She was never standoffish, rude, or snobby. She had the incredible gift of making everyone around her feel very comfortable.

Class is something that you either have, or you don't, and no amount of schoolin' is going to make someone like Paris Hilton classy. But class is also about a set of societal norms that we're supposed to conform to, yet another thing that tries to squeeze women into a nice tidy little box, prepared to be a doormat for the world to politely wipe its feet on, on the way to bigger and better things.

There isn't anything wrong with polite behavior. I think the world could use lots more excuse me's, please's and thank-you's, not to mention the fact that we have to now be 'told' when to turn off our mobile phones, because we can't figure that one out on our own anymore. Dude, were you born in a barn? The lack of manners, backsliding into an ever-increasing laissez-fare attitude to public behavior isn't a good thing. But a return to 1950s style societal norms isn't a great idea either.

I'm really on the fence with this one, can you tell? Years ago, I read an article in *cringe* Reader's Digest about rudeness, and the writer rather eloquently told a story about being bullied in a department store and then seeing something similar happen to her three year old niece on the playground. She wanted to rush in, protect the girl from the bully, but instead, she stood back and waited to see what the child would do. Out of the mouths of babes, y'all, because the little girl put her hands on her hips and said to the bully, "You. Are. Rude." And the boor backed up, blinked, and said, "I'm sorry."

Huh. Too bad if we did that to other adults we might get shot. Because it sounds like a great idea to me. You. Are. Rude. Pointing out the behavior just might get someone to recognize their own boorishness and stop and think for a second. In my fantasy, everyone-is-as-nice-as-me world.

You call THIS releasing information?

Before I start to rant about the press conference that wasn't, I must first get the obligatory fangirl squeeing out of the way. I haven't written anything specifically about Jensen Ackles for about a week, so it is time. Came across this picture on TWoP and oh. My. God. Wait. Let's look at that again. Freckles! How cute are freckles? And the eyes! ...um. Stopping now. My mother reads this blog sometimes, y'all.

So President Idiot took the stage to 'speak to the 'merican people' the other day, and as I was too busy wallowing in my own angst, I didn't take much notice of it. You can watch the Q&A session on YouTube. Or you can read the transcript here. We're talking about the firing of the US Attorneys, if you missed it. He suggests at one point that people read the e-mails that they released, voluminous pages and pages of stuff that contradicts almost everything the administration has said to date about the scandal. Pretty funny, coming from someone who is barely literate.

In another snippet, he asked for continued patience on the Most Meaningless War Ever (TM) and said that it would interfere with NATIONAL SECURITY if the troops were allowed to come home. Because, y'know, that's the reason for everything these days. Oil prices too high? Well, if they were lower, it would cause problems for our national security. Anything else that's bothering you? Blame it all on the need for hyper-awareness of national security.

The dems, and rightly so, lambasted these pronouncements as soon as they were issued. This administration releases information so grudgingly, so reluctantly, is it any wonder at all that the support for the president has gone right down the tubes? The Clinton Administration's habit of polling, polling, polling, and doing what the polls liked wasn't good either, but somewhere in between there must be a happy medium that allows the gubment to work the way the framers of the constitution intended, a government of, by, and for the people.

My frustration with the constant stonewalling that the Idiot Administration does is really an interesting thing. In this time of everything, all the time, instant access to any type of media that you choose, it is incredible to me that there hasn't been a huge backlash by the general population, and not just liberal nuts like me who think that the administration has the obligation to communicate with the general public on a more consistent basis.

The fact that they don't, that they choose not to, seems to mean that they've got something to hide. Or a lot of things to hide, and not just the fact that the president can't SPEAK ENGLISH. Because we know that already. Maybe the thing is that the powers that be, the men behind the curtain, are afraid that if they stick the idiot in the public eye more frequently, he'll do or say something so stupid that it would cause the whole house of cards to fall. Not that I buy into theories like the Illuminati, or anything like that. No. Really.

Interesting news from Texas

A little while ago, I wrote an outraged rant about the Texas governor Rick Perry sidestepping the legislative process by signing a law that requires girls going into the sixth grade to have been given the new HPV vaccine. My issue with that is that I think if the shoe were on the other foot, and it were a boy cancer prevention vaccine, no one would be talking about requiring it for anyone.

My header at the top of the page used to say that I wrote about the disparity between expectations of public male and female behavior, but I took it down because I so rarely do anymore. Yes, society expects vastly different public behavior from men and women. Yes, it still pisses me off. But pointing out every single instance of it solves nothing and only makes me mad, so it takes something special, like this issue, to make me put that hat back on. And I've been very busy blathering on about something else lately. What?

The news today is that the Texas legislature is firing back, passing a bill with 119 votes to 21 to overturn the law. The Texas legislature doesn't work the same way as the federal Congress does, so there is no surety that this will pass, or that they would override a veto if Perry chooses to veto the measure. They also only meet every other year, so if it does not pass this year, it will be 2009 before they consider it again. (How do you get a gig like that, working only every other year? I'd like to know.)

Now here's something that makes me vaguely unsettled. Conservative Christians are also against this law, not because they think that it was really wrong of the governer to usurp the legislature, but because they feel the vaccine will encourage promiscuity. Heh. It doesn't happen very often that I am on the same side of any issue as conservative Christians, but in this case we are on the same side for different reasons.

My stance on it is about personal choice and privacy. It should be the decision of the person getting the vaccine (or their legal guardian). Not the legislature. The privacy thing is that once you've gotten this shot, mandated by the government, then you must have a record of it to show the school. Are we puppies, with our 'papers' or people? I suppose that you could look at any government issued identification the same way, using that logic, but this is very different from, say, a passport. And it also reminds me of some of Twisty's recent posts, tagged with the label Men Hate You. I never really thought about it that way until I started reading her, but the more I look around and think about it...yeah. She's right. *Sigh.*

Reading the Bloomberg article that I linked above a bit further, I find that Rick Perry has ties to Merck, the vaccine's manufacturer. Dun dun DUN! And people wonder why I'm a conspiracy theorist.

Motherhood and the Darkside known as MySpace

Tuesday and it is brain-dumping day!

I opened a MySpace account the other day. And before you call me a fucktard, and tell me that someone my age and marital status has no business being on MySpace, you ought to know why I did it, because that provides so much more fodder for making fun of me.

It can be traced back to my fangirly-ness, and my admiration of Jensen Ackles. He shot a movie last summer that hasn't been released yet called Ten Inch Hero (which is still looking for a distributor, apparently) and the movie's production people have a MySpace page. They also have a blog here on Blogger. The film is about a sandwich shop, not someone who is ten inches long, gutterface. Yeah, yeah, I know you were thinking it, 'cause I was too.

Anyway, on the blog, they announced a contest for fans to try their hand at making some manipulations of photos of Jensen. The film has not actually released any pictures of Jensen's character, Priestly, who wears a Mohawk and is apparently pierced and tattooed within an inch of his life. So fans have been making their own, with hilarious results. And the filmmakers put the submissions from fans onto their MySpace page. But to see them? You have to have a MySpace account of your own.

I don't NEED a MySpace page. I have enough trouble keeping up with this blog, getting my book finished, and taking care of the crap over on LiveJournal that DH and I do for our little piece of suburban hell. I spend too much damn time on the computer as it is. Friends of mine from high school have MySpace pages, and I've been urged to do one before...but there was never any reason to.

Curiosity over which of the pictures the filmmakers thought were the best, however, got the better of me, so I set up an account of my own. First, let me say that I'm not in love with MySpace's interface. That's probably only because I'm not used to it, and as humans, we're all pretty resistant to change. I digress. Secondly, I have to tell you about the photos...and then I'll get to why this has me thinking about motherhood. And no, the motherhood thing and the fangirl thing are NOT related. (I hear sighs of relief out there...)

Some of the pics are fun, but I've truly gotten old when punk hairstyles don't do much for me anymore. Once upon a time, I was a punk chick, with a bit of purple hair (carefully hidden from my parents) and I greatly admired the day-glo and easter egg shades of hair. My friend V would buy Manic Panic, and I think that Ultra Violet was the shade of purple that I had, but I couldn't swear to it.

In true late 80s/early 90s style, I had a tail of hair that was longer than the rest of my really long hair. (I could sit on it, y'all, that's how long it was.) I went to visit V, and she had just dyed her whole head purple. She had some of the Manic Panic left over, so we decided it would be a fantastic idea to dye my tail purple. With my head hanging over her mother's laundry tub in the basement, we proceeded to try to dye just the tail purple. Laughing uproariously, getting the dye EVERYWHERE, we were having a grand old time. When we were done, not just the tail was purple, but the whole underside of my hair, from about the middle of my ears down. And the laundry tub, and the floor, and our hands, and our clothes were all purple too. When my hair was worn down, it didn't show. Pulled up in a pony, or piled high on my head, you could see it.

So I do have some experience with the punk hair thing, although I never had a 'hawk. I generally put some washable day-glo pink spray or temporary dye into my hair for Halloween, because I like it and can't get away with it in my workaday world. But these pics of Jensen all punked and gothed out don't thrill me. There are maybe two out of 12 or so that I think are cute...and then I just want to cut and wash his hair. Sigh. All I want for my next birthday is to be about 24 again. Because this getting older crap really isn't very much fun. Better than the alternative, but still. Thirty-two vs. 24? I'll take 24.

After looking at all the pictures of Jensen as Priestly, I decided that since I'd bothered to set up the MySpace account, I should pimp out my own page, and began messing around with the settings and my profile. For a brief while, I had a real picture of my real self out there, but I've since removed it. It was not photo-shopped, since I don't have that program, but I did mess with it in the photo manipulation software I do have, MGI Photovista. I think it was still very recognizable as me, though, and my paranoia got the better of me, so off it came.

And then in the profile settings, there are a bunch of things that have radio buttons to click...married...single...divorced...gay....straight...bi....and I clicked all the appropriate toggles....married....straight....smoke, no....drink, yes....and at the bottom was a section about children.

I spent a few minutes staring at the screen, lost as to what I should click. Here are the options.

I don't want kids
Someday
Undecided
Love kids, but not for me
Proud Parent
No Answer

I eventually clicked Love kids, but not for me. But that decision was only after much soul searching. I'm at an age where I am maybe running out of time to have a child of my own. I hear the ticking of the biological clock, loud and clear. Hear it, but I'm NOT LISTENING!

All through my 20s, I was steadfast in my resolve to not get preggers, and in the fact that I never wanted to have a child. And for the most part, I still feel that way. The idea of my body being pregnant really grosses me out. Which is NOT to say that I think pregnancy is gross or disgusting, I don't. As long as it isn't happening to me. If that makes any sense. Carrying a child is the most natural thing in the world for a woman's body, but I don't want MY body to do it. Never? I hear my mother and grandmother ask. You will miss out on so much joy, they say. And maybe that's true.

My cousins are all older than me, and we're a tight-knit bunch, so there were babies being born every time I turned around in the family all throughout the decade of my 20s. A few friends even had kids that young, and co-workers of mine had a few as well. I love babies. Friends call me "the baby hog" because I'll steal away a newborn at a party or other gathering and hold the baby for hours. But I don't want one of my own.

Which makes me feel very strange. Unfeminine. Somehow, I've gotten the memo that in order to be a complete, whole woman, I must be a mother. The roles of my career, wife, sister, daughter, friend, writer, baker, cook, reader, knitter and fangirl are not enough, and to be all that a woman ought, I should be a mother as well.

Isn't THAT a load of bullshit? Do you hear early feminists rolling over in their graves? 'Cause I sure do.

And is it any wonder at all that I'm completely out of my mind if these are the connections that my brain makes every day?

Scooter Libby Verdict

Yes, I know that the verdict was handed down earlier this week, but I've been busy writing about my obsession and International Women's Day, so this had to wait for a day when I am not being a really ridiculous fangirl. And since that is EVERY DAMN DAY, y'all....well, I think I can put it aside long enough to snark about the Idiot Administration. Right after I tell you that I resolved to stay off the forums for three whole days to see if I could do it, and....no. Couldn't. Oh, wait! I lied. I was off of the CW forum for 4 days, but only managed to stay off of JRAU for about 2. I was on the CW boards last night until one in the morning. Oy. Moving on....

No sooner was Scooter declared GUILTY of obstruction of justice than the media machine began cranking out rumours of a Presidential Pardon. While that would NOT be the dumbest thing that President Dumb Ass has done to date, (umm, going to war in Iraq gets my vote for the most idiotic thing that man has done) it would be the latest in a string of really stupid decisions. His presidency will be remembered in history as the most flawed American administration ever. Ever. The stonewalling of the media, the steadfast refusal to release information to the public, the tendency to steamroll over anyone who disagrees, the victory lap on the aircraft carrier....I digress. But it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if there is a presidential pardon.

I caught a snippet of an interview with one of the jurors on NPR or the Beeb, and he said it best, saying essentially that Scooter was the fall guy. Where is Karl Rove in all this? Why wasn't the Veep charged? Because you know that he ordered the outing of Valerie Plame as sure as you know that the sun rises in the east. Conspiracy theorist? Me? Well, yes.

Poor, poor Scooter. While I was searching for a link to the info about the guilty verdict, I found a website collecting donations for his defense fund. I'm not linking that simply because I refuse to lend credence to such idiots, their description blurb said "Because we know he's innocent." Yikes.

Let's start the pool now that he's not going to get any jail time at all. Anyone with me?