happy hallowe'en/samhain

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I don't have too much time to post this because my mother is about to call me back. That said, I wanted to take the time to send hallowe'en wishes to y'all.

I think that people should take today more seriously than they do. Although perhaps serious isn't quite the right word here. Today is the last of the pagan holy days that are still celebrated. Several others are marked as well but they've been coopted into christian holidays.

In fact, according to this website:
Samhain (or Halloween)
October 31. An ancient Celtic festival which celebrates the beginning of winter, marked by death, and the beginning of the Celtic New Year. Samhain means "end of summer." Samhain is a sabbat universally observed, which is included among the Greater sabbats observed by neo-Pagans. The Druids, in ancient Ireland, once sacrificed to their deities by burning victims in wickerwork cages. All other fires were to be extinguished and lighted again from the sacrificial fire. This custom still continues in Ireland and Scotland, all fires in homes are extinguished and lighted again from bonfires, but without sacrificial victims. Samhain marks the third harvests and the storage of provisions for winter. The veil between the worlds of the living and dead is the thinnest during this time making communications easier. Souls of the dead can come into the land of the living. Samhain is a time for eliminating weaknesses, when pagan once slaughtered weak animals that were thought not to be able to survive the winter. This custom resulted in the modern practice by some who wanted to get rid of their weaknesses of writing them on a piece of paper and dropping them into a fire. Some baked cakes to be offered for the souls of the dead. Samhain was Christianized into All Hallow’s Eve or Halloween. The modern custom or trick-and-treating may have originated from an old Irish peasant custom of going door-to-door to collect money, breadcake, cheese, eggs, butter, nuts, apples and other foods in preparation for the festival of St. Columb Kill. Apples are included in many rites, especially as ingredients in brews. Dunking for apples may have been a divinatory practice.

This is pretty much the only Pagan turning point that exists in any form today. I suppose some cultures still celebrate May Day but I don't know anyone who has ever done it. Anyway othercat and I decided to mark the Pagan New Year with a New Year's resolution.

In fact we're going to lose ten pounds each by christmas. We even shook on it! (and looked apprehensive!)

This is really just so that when we celebrate the solstice in december we can eat like the gluttons we are and still come out ahead in January. You see I have 20 pounds left to chuck and he has 15 and we're both feeling inspired because hot doctor went and dropped a bunch of weight and he's looking fantastic. Yes, he got HOTTER.

I'm sorta happy about it though because i get all his old pants... and the best part? They actually fit. In fact they're *tight*. Can you imagine how weird it is to wear pants that are *tight* when you've been wearing what was effectively a sack for the last year or so?

No, I don't think you can. I'm basically walking around looking in mirrors and wondering if I should be looking at something in a bigger size, if i should lose more weight before I wear them and so on.

Why is this ridiculous?

You know the great tester or whether jeans fit or not? Well if you don't it's the roll. Yes the roll aka back bacon that hangs out over your waistband and looks terrible unless you're wearing a super baggy shirt.

Yeah, no roll. In fact smooth belly rising out of said jeans. Shut up, we're not talking about sitting down!

That means they fit right? No matter how uncomfortable it is to move in pants that are snug they fit. So that means I'm a size 32 now. Yeah dudes... I've gone from a size 24 and you can't buy jeans by waist size cause you're too fat to a size 38 and then down to an 18 in women's sizes to a 32 (puts me around 12/14 in women's sizes i think...). And that is still a little bigger than I wish to be but at least it's within shouting distance of where I want to end up.

It's so strange to be this close to the end of such a long trip. I'm really being forced to wrap my head around the fact that I'm not the fat girl who can't move. It's funny because when I became disabled it took me a really long time to accept that I was broken and that there were a lot of things I could not do. In fact I was already healing by the time I really got how fucked up my body was. I wonder how long it will take in reverse...

Here's a before photo of othercat and i:


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Been looking into flights to Italy and I definetely can't go. *sulk*

harumph!

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so now that i've thoroughly enjoyed all of the external validation i received for my hallowe'en costume I have a small rant to get off my chest.

Hallowe'en, if I recall correctly, is about dressing as something you're not for a day or an evening. Or maybe it's about dressing up as something you wish you were. Or it's about fantasy you.

Right?

So why is it that when I dress as barbarella who, although fully into sex, was a heroine and a bit of a badass that I get treated like a whore? First of all they get the guy dressed like a pimp to pose with me. But not because it's amusing that he's 5'2 and I'm 6'4 ... no because then he can pretend he's bugging me for his take.

Um what?

I'm not a whore I'm fucking barbarella. You know, Jane Fonda? The 60s? Hellooooo??

So I pointed my gun at him and looked impatient in the pic... *shrug* what else to do?

That wasn't even the most annoying part... because yeah, I've had a pvc collection for a while and I'm aware of the response that that clothing gets. What shocks me is that some of the people in this group have known me for something like two years and in that time they have *only* ever seen me in baggy jeans and tight t-shirts.

There has never been pleather or pvc.
There has definetely not been any drunken fucking or even drunken hitting on folks.
There has been no dating of anyone in this group.
NOTHING.

Well okay I was interested in a few of them over the years.

I have done nothing for two years but be respectable, show up at drum circles, play my drum and dance. I stopped dancing because some lady's husband looked at me in a way that made me feel dirty but I kept going and being polite. You know ladylike... cause yeah, I'm a lady whether I like it or not.

And then friday night one of the few coupled up men in the group who has always been kind and respectful just pissed me off like I can't even put into words. He showed up dressed as a woman (in pants which was sorta neat) and of course got a lot of attention. And since I was barbarella I got a lot of attention and so there were a LOT of pics of the two of us taken.

And he never once failed to grope me.

Not once.

Rubbed my hip suggestively. Copped a furtive feel of my butt. Leered at me. Pulled me against him hard 'for the picture' etc etc etc. And nothing would stop this guy. I tried putting people between us. I tried having my bony elbows in the way. I tried everything I could short of 'stop fucking touching me you fucking octopus' and he never got the hint.

Other men at the party? Liked my costume. Clearly enjoyed looking at it. Made jokes about my height and still treated me with respect. But that select few really spoiled my night for me.

It's hallowe'en. Be something you aren't. It doesn't give people license to grope you and treat you like a slut. It gives them license to be something they aren't in their dress... but not to change their whole manner.

*shaking head*

I just don't know you guys, I feel great that most people loved my outfit but that guy and a couple of others made me feel a little soiled. And I don't know how to respond to that OR how to handle it inside myself.

I do know that I'm mother fucking pissed off though. And that I'm done with that group.

:)

to barbarella or not to barbarella

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so i'm stuck with a small dilemma at the moment. i have this great costume idea and if i were partying downtown i would wear it and i wouldn't think twice.

but

i'm not partying downtown i'm partying in the suburbs with children and i'm just not sure how a pvc catsuit and a pink toy gun will go over with parents.

the good news? the fucking catsuit fits again! the bad news? yeah it's risque at best. really you guys if i were in town i woudln't even think about it but i have to say i'm not sure how ten year olds would react to a lady in a pvc catsuit that well... how shall i put this... fits like the proverbial glove.

i won't even mention the 5 inch platform boots or the blonde wig or the RIDICULOUS amounts of makeup.

so i guess what i'm asking is this. should i wear my tried and true tie dyed dress and blonde wig and green docs and go as 'hippie barbie' (pun intended cause yeah, i'm a hippy girl) or should i go with the ballsy costume and maybe offend some kids but at least be wearing things i don't wear every day?

Or... should i just wear a fucking sheet?

Never fear, tomorrow the pleather comes out for sure. Damn I hate the suburbs, they create the lamest dilemmas.

Oh yeah and in case you missed it:

*clears throat*

THE FUCKING CATSUIT FITS AGAIN
doo dah
doo dah
THE FUCKING CATSUIT FITS AGAIN
oh doo dah day

going to be happy all day
going to be happy all night
the fucking catsuit
fits again
oh doo dah day

*giggle*

ohhh my aching head

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which should imply what happened to me last night.

see i had a huge lunch yesterday and then not really any dinner (pretzels and dark chocolate holla!) and I cleaned a house and taught a couple of privates and then I decided to go climbing. i won't mention that I was too tired and sore to be there because of a combination of 5 laps (round trip, up AND down) at the end of the night monday and the goddess' torture class on saturday which opened up a new space in my spine.

one i suspect has never moved or at least hasn't moved since my accident. i mean it fucking hurt to let that spot open up you guys like i can't even put into words. still on monday i went climbing anyway because i was so sore and i figured why not? maybe i can stretch some stuff out.

yeah no.

so tuesday i was kinda wimpy in all of my classes and i didn't really do anything. and then i got stood up by a client! and it's extra insulting this one is because i knew him. (how funny is this... doctor refers me a guy that i had a massive crush on when we were in air cadets together... and tells me the guy is still hot!) but we figured it out, we caught up, we did the gossip about people i used to know thing and then buddy doesn't show. that's like EXTRA rude. especially because i didn't have dinner at my cousin's house because of him. (they're too busy anyway but still...)

so wimpy tuesday. followed by wimpy wednesday because i don't have to exercise when i teach privates, i just have to demonstrate sometimes and by last night i'm even more sore than i was on monday and i can't even get my freaking hamstrings to stretch. (and yes, when i'm warm i can touch my head to the floor between my knees without bending them... yes i'm that flexible... yes it's just wrong that i'm not having sex with someone and playing bedroom games with that flexibility... yes murph that was just for you.) So i figured that going climbing would actually help.

I promised myself that i would be gentle and not do too much and i mostly stuck to that. First I went and did some light pilates under the lead climbing walls [shut up I was not JUST there to look at the eye candy]{okay a little} and then i did traverses... but i forced myself to go really slowly and to try moving from my hip instead of my shoulder. And i forced myself not to use the same old same old holds and moves.

So I fell off a lot and worked pretty hard. And then I went over and worked a problem that's been kicking my butt for a couple of weeks... and then i had a very nice conversation with a very nice man which may have included some electricity. Hard to say, I'm notorious for getting that wrong...

So then... yeah... i called up othercat and said 'i don't want coffee I want beer' and he said "okay" and then foolish us had FOUR pints in two hours. And not enough water. Hell I even ordered food you guys and still... *shaking head*

I was fucking hammered off my ever loving ass on FOUR pints of beer. That's practically non italian or something. They're going to drum me out of the italian union if they hear about this. Seriously my dad will disown me and there will be full on rioting in the streets.

four pints... damm.

and i crashed too, i had to kick othercat out and pour my shot back in the bottle because i was too drunk to smell it let alone drink it.

so i slept until NOON today and drank a ton of water and still, still i have a headache. that's just uncalled for. and also explains why this is not one of my deep and insightful posts... and why there is no thought to provoke.

my brain is on strike. it wants pot and it wants water and it's thinking it may be willing to eat in an hour or so. maybe.

damm you guys my aching head!

weather veins...

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okay seriously this has got to stop. everyone i know is feeling shitty EXCEPT the ones in relationships that were started in the last month or two.

everyone.

they're depressed. they're maudlin. they're dying of alcohol poisoning (hi elle!), they're broke, i'm broke, they're not dating, they are dating, they're defeated, they're hopeless, their houses are robbed, they're deleting their blogs, their marriages are ending or their relationships are dying or they're near suicidal or whatfuckinever.

and you know something? i care deeply about every person i referenced above (but it's no one else's business who the unlinked folks are) and I want every single one of them to feel safe and comfortable telling me the things that are happening in their lives or their state of mind. Happy OR sad. Cheery OR angry. Optomisitc OR pessimistic.

Really I don't care. i just want my cared for folks to feel safe telling me anything.

That said. Dudes I think we're on some kind of downward spiral of reinforced negativity. And I'm contributing to it. I haven't done a cheerful post in days. Okay there was the eric lindros moment but still that was more me ranting because I can't believe that I like eric lindros... AND that i admitted it to my blog.

I really think that a large part of the effect is caused by a sudden and drastic shift in the weather. We (us northeasterners) were all wearing shorts and t's less than two weeks ago and suddenly it's cold and rainy and most definetely fall. It's DARK out when I go teach in the morning.

DARK OUTSIDE!

Not to mention that the air is moist and the leaves are falling the the colours they are a changing. I think there's something in the veins of we northeasterners that causes us to get a little miserable in the fall. And I think this is especially nasty this year because it's a drastic shift rather than a gentle slope. We fell off a weather cliff so to speak.

And for a change the shift sort of happened all over the continent at once. My friend in north carolina tells me that fall hit there recently as well. I believe someone in cali mentioned a shift there too.

I think that humans drastically underestimate the effect that changing weather actually has on us. I think we go along blissfully and pay no attention to the weather except as it pertains to what we're wearing and then we wonder at our moods. Any sort of barometric shift will cause a response in the body and it won't necessarily be positive.

I told a friend of mine this and he said that he didn't believe the weather had anything to do with it and then went back to being maudlin. I fail to see how the weather can be anything but connected. If it weren't involved then at least a few people would be cheery and not maudlin right? Someone other than the newly sexed would be feeling positive?

Maybe I'm just reflecting my own mood into the mirrors of the people that I see around me?

Maybe I'm not?

I just think that our bodies are a lot more connected into the energy fields around us than we realise... and I also think that that's cool as hell except when it's doing this!

gotta go teach... be well folks.

other shoes...

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do you ever have moments where a bunch of unexpected people in your life can't say enough nice things about you? as though people are bending over backward to tell you how great you are? compliments are flying and not from any of the expected places?

lately that's been happening to me a lot and i find it disconcerting. partly because i feel like i asked for it by posting my blue thoughts to my blog and partly because i suspect that my constant need for approval is really pretty transparent.

Still, very unexpected things have been said that I may have drawn out but still weren't things that i thought i would hear. Like for example I have a "graceful rolling dancing way of walking" uh yeah. i do? damn that's pretty cool. I would certainly aspire to have a walk like that if I believed such a thing were possible.

Also I have a sweet blog which is also awesome. I am a calm and sturdy presence in people's lives. I'm hella hot AND classically beautiful. I'm awesome and a deep thinker. I have an old soul... shall I continue or do you get the idea? These are fantastic compliments. These are like the 10 out of 10 of compliments someone could want and really not many of them relate to how I look. Although the looks ones are great. And not one of these comes out of my blog comments which, trust me, are REALLY good for my ego.

And yet [and this is not a cry for flattery or reassurance although I do love both of those things, it's just what I'm thinking about this afternoon] I don't believe a word of it. Not a word.

I just keep waiting for the other shoe. [yeah that seems like a theme lately]

I keep waiting for the fantastic people around me who think I'm awesome to like notice that I actually suck. To realise the cranky unhappy person I really am. To spot how selfish and ungenerous I often feel. To realise that I've fooled them this whole time. To... I don't know something shitty.

It's not like I don't know where this comes from. I can trace it firmly back to my enormous lack of friends from the day i started school until the day I graduated. Okay that last year I did sorta start to popular up but I still think it was because I started smoking and I was and still am a very generous person [read: easy to hit up for smokes.]

And it isn't just that I had no friends. I had enemies. I had people who tortured me because they thought it was fun. They would befriend me just to set me up for something. I got beat up by a gang of boys from swimming. Regularly. [did finally win that one... but it took years] In high school I was the person whose locker got stink bombed. Repeatedly. Whose locker got taped shut or kicked in or whatever. Hell my french teacher wrote a reference letter discussing the grace (??!!??) with which i handled the negative attention. IN A REFERENCE LETTER! So it's not like the teachers didn't know it was happening.

The custodian knew my on sight and by name. He could find my locker without direction. In fact when he saw me he went for his crowbar without waiting to hear what I had to say.

My mother told me recently that I used to come home from public school and tell her what happened that day and that she would be amazed that I still had the courage to speak. This implies that I don't even really remember just how bad it was. I'm just grateful that I had a mother who showed me that friends could be found in books and adults as well or I would be totally fucked instead of just screamingly insecure.

It does, I believe, go a long way toward explaining both my sense of 'where's the other shoe coming from?' and my total difficulty believing that people like me. I recall discussing this with a friend (who dumped me not too long afterward [i think because i held her hand while she had an abortion and that she then couldn't handle having me around to remind her] {incidentally that's why I know I can't ever have an abortion} [icky vacuuming noise] *shudder*) [hah how's that for effective use of parentheses? (damm I love all forms of brackets and am sad i can't use diagonals here cause stupid blogger thinks they're html)] who looked at me very sincerely and said 'but sass you're not that girl anymore' and that hit me very hard and I still go back to that moment when my insecurities get the best of me.

It does, I admit, lose a little power due to the dumping... but I can really understand how it's hard to be around people who've held your hand through that sort of thing. Or with whom you spent several months being suicidal (different friend that dumped me... and was then embarassed when I greeted her on the street). Still E was right, I am NOT that girl anymore.

I'm a smart, talented, hella hot (!! yeah right :), witty, generous, compassionate and maybe even beautiful inside woman. But still there's that little girl that nobody ever liked sitting inside that woman and going 'yeah right' or 'just you wait' or 'they're setting you up... you'll see... I warned you!' or 'did i mention there's another shoe?' or whatever.

And I still can't figure out how to shut her up. How to tell her that people *do* love her. How to tell her that even if people don't love her that she's still okay. How to fill that hole inside myself that can't ever hear enough good things because I don't believe any of them. How to look in the mirror and see the eyes or the collarbones instead of the saddlebags or the jiggly bits. How to hug that little girl and tell her everything is going to be okay and I definetely don't know how to fill up the bottomless bucket of reassurance that she needs. How to see the woman everyone else sees instead of the girl I can't let go of.

Don't get me wrong, I'm hella better at it than I was and a big part of it has involved teaching myself to speak nicely to myself. Not to call myself an idiot. Not to make fun of myself or my ways. To get rid of a lot of the self deprecation. To be NICE to myself.

That's helped enormously and took years for me to even be able to see... but still. I always smell the other shoe... I always feel like shitty things are about to happen... and I want to let that go.

I just know that the nicer my life is the stinkier the other shoe gets.

What's funny? I'm probably the most positive and cheerful person I know. *rueful laugh*

hairpin turns

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ah it's one of the posts with no title when i start typing. i wonder what's coming.

I went over to othercat's house and basically ignored he and his brother to watch the leafs get trounced by philadelphia. and i have a terrible confession to make. no i mean like SO embarrassing.

yeah.

it's true.

i like eric lindros.

*hangs head in mortification*

*pauses for some killer dark chocolate with bits of candied coffee*

[yeah you bet your ass you should be jealous, this shit is SO GOOD!]

i like eric lindros.

*and*

*dies of shame*

he's so god damm cute.

i just can't believe that i like eric lindros but i do. he stepped up and he's playing well and he's clearly got his heart in it. I mean i suppose i can consider forgiving him for that whole nordiques incident since in return he didn't get a stanley cup ring...



it's just that he played for the flyers. for like a long time. and i don't think he should be playing because seriously the guy's head is so fucked when he gets a little older.

and still i'm happy to see him on the ice. the guy really is that good.

it was like (pauses to check google) 15 years ago or something now, i mean i've changed a lot since then i guess i can let him change... it just feels funny is all. It's a habit not to like eric lindros... i'm used to it or something. i don't like having to build new thought patterns about things like this. Things like this are fixed. Tie Domi rocks as does doug gilmore. eric lindros sucks and mike modano is a fully delicious man. These things are known. One doens't have to consider them or wonder about them.

Like the villain in a harry potter book. you know who the bad guy is before you ever turn the first page.

Now if she made harry the bad guy? *that* would be surprising. but not as surprising as ME liking eric lindros.

Also, this is turning into a hockey blog on saturday nights...

Tough shit, if you don't like hockey you probably shouldn't read my saturday night posts!

:)

bleh

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[if you don't want to read my shitty mood scroll to the end of the post for an announcement]
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seriously bleh.

if i were jewish i would say meh. and i would say it with that particular inflection that the old jewish ladies get when they're particularly disgusted or fed up and yet are so far past caring at this point that it's not even really relevant anymore.

Mmehh. I can't type it of course... and i'm sure buttah and anyone she knows who hangs out on J-date knows EXACTLY the noise that I mean.

Okay damn was that as bigoted as I think it was? I've decided to leave it in case it was and y'all have opinions for me about how not to talk like a bigot or a racist and still make cultural references.

so, that's how i feel about my life today.

just when i was starting to believe that i was getting ahead in the world enough that i could do things like get a new windshield for my car that desperately needs one i got another little financial kick. On my way to teach I found my car making funny noises and definetely driving funny and immediately i pulled over to discover that YES i did in fact have a flat tire.

*sigh*

so i call 411 to get the number for where i'm teaching and beg off because even with a cab i can no longer get there in time and hobble my car to crappy tire a couple of blocks away. no, i didn't change to the doughnut. yes i did drive on the rim. yes i was aware of what that would do to said flat tire. i was also aware of how old my tires were and immediately made the decision to replace a couple of them.

so i got a couple of new tires to stick on the front of my car and moved the two least fucked tires to the back of my car and 171 dollars later off i went with a car that no longer makes squealing noises around corners, feels much more stable, and CLEARLY needs two more tires.

so 221 dollars gone. cause yeah i also don't get paid for the class i didn't teach and then i get freaking fired from the place. which was, i admit, coming anyway. I could sense it in the response of the members and in the dwindling participation but i couldnt' seem to figure out what would fix it. well i did but it's too late, they've already decided i suck and must be gone.

funny thing is that my boss likes me okay but the members hate me. so yeah. she's impressed cause i referred her to a friend of mine as a replacement. i mean if i can't have the money RL may as well right?

[i wonder if my use or non-use of capital letters has anything to do with my mood...]

so... onward, manage to cheer up a little except it's a lie. I'm NOT cheerful. I'm down and blue and maudlin and unfuckinghappy. but nonetheless onward. i manage to teach, i manage to go to band practise, i manage to pretend i know how to play my drum and i manage to accept another date with climber guy.

and then i realised. i'm totally exhausted, maudlin and miserable. do i really want to go on a date in this state? especially a climbing date when i can hardly feel my hands? no, i do not. so i cancelled and headed off to my noon class today.

and yeah we have to 'revisit the schedule' for the winter session because the class is undersubscribed and they can't keep running it with only three or four people in it.

be careful what you wish for boys and girls. I was thinking how shitty it was to have a monday evening at 7:30 class and I lost it AND my wednesday morning! I was thinking I wished to have weekends off and I'm liable to lose friday AND sunday lunch. I better be careful what i think or something for the next while.

It's like all those old jokes about the wishes people make when they find a genie in a bottle and how the wish always bites them in the ass. I feel like my random thoughts are somehow causing ass biting and that seems unfair. Not to mention that whenever I try to be considerate of people or whatever it also seems to be biting my ass.

Maybe I'm just sad because okcupid guy and I have decided that we don't spark off each other and yet I think he's freaking fantastic. All of the things a girl could want in a guy and yet somehow he and i are just not on with each other. I'm pretty sure I made a life friend though so it's hard to be upset. Except I am sort of. Which is funny because neither of us is like emotionally traumatised by this and both of us agree that it's the right thing. So why sadness?


Ahhh I'm silly :)

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*clears throat*
*taps mike*
"Is this thing on?"

I have noticed over the years that i am the agony aunt for everyone i know. So I've decided to steal a page from Everything Nice's book and offer that service here. However, if it's sexual PLEASE take it to her because really dudes she's way better at that kind of thing than I am. If however you find yourself needing a sounding board with a level head then feel free to email me questions and state their anonymity level and I'll pass on my thoughts...

so my email is sassinakk@gmail.com which will soon be linked from the sidebar as well.

*tear*

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*I* am really sad right now because I've just deleted Teresa Naomi AND stoned.nerd from my blogroll since their blogs are gone. In fact I'm seriously tearing up a little here. I know that seems ridiculous because both of them are people I've never met but I grew to count on their musings, to save up moments in my day when I would read what they had written.

Because the blogverse is a fluid and wonderful thing I know that the holes they leave will eventually fill as would the hole left here if I disappeared. That doesn't make me any less sad. At least Teresa is going to continue commenting so her sparkle and wit will continue to be enjoyed. Hopefully nerd will do the same.

It brings to mind many experiences I've had on the net over the years as people have fallen into and out of my life and as I've done the same to others. I am referring mostly to IRC channels and usenet newsgroups that were the best place in the world for a while and then eventually got killed by spammers and flamers and people trolling to cause trouble.

Now the blogverse appears to be fighting a pretty successful battle against the spammers although it can't do much but ignore the trolls and the flamers. Still they don't seem as prevalent. Maybe because here they can just find their own voice and people to be asinine with and they don't need to torture others as much.

Still and all it's astonishing how fast you can get attached to people on the net. Time doesn't move the same way here as it does in real life. Real life is full of peace and silence interspersed with conversation. There are pauses and moments of reflection that take actual time. On the internet somehow that doesn't happen. It's like the safety people feel by being alone in their homes as they post their thoughts for the world to read (or ignore) allows things to move so much faster because it causes some kind of openness that doesn't happen as quickly in real life.

I've had some incredibly intense online relationships and some of them translated into real life relationships but in all cases the timeline was accelerated because of the speed of the medium. In life we are constrained by our schedules and our phones and our time to be *with* people but on the net we just aren't.

I can email you while you're working and you can email me while I'm sleeping and somehow all of that leads to a logarithmic curve of acceleration. [uh starts slow and gets steep really fast] I suspect that I will continue to have some of my most fruitful and satisfying relationships online and that I will continue to meet people the world over that I will wish lived next door.

Of course that's part of the magic too. That you can meet people from here there and everywhere who will change your life because of their differing perspectives. The net really is a global village and is, in my mind, one of the few forces for truth and good in the world today. It's hard to lie on the net and it's hard to hate the people in (say) Guam when you actually TALK with one of them every day.

Maybe I'll win the lottery and buy a little apartment building and populate it with my net friends. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Or would it? Would it steal the magic away do you think?

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AND castu. three of my blogs in one day. man and i got fired from one of my jobs. today is not a nice day.

spark

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spark...

what is it and how do you define it?

to start with allow me to explain that I am not talking about how to light a fire in the bush when it's 30 below and windy. although I do know how to do that. nor am i discussing what happens when someone tosses a lit cigarette at a dry forest.

but you knew that.

no i'm wondering about that elusive je ne sais quoi that hits us unexpectedly. almost always unexpectedly. nearly never when or where we want it to.

now in my life i've had actual chemical reactions to very few people and i've had spark with a few others... and i wonder sometimes if you can't impose it.

I recall a man a couple of men ago that i met in irc (internet relay chat... okay y'all can think of it as like a chatroom) and then very shortly afterward at work. (We met on the net and worked in the same place... not as wierd as it sounds, the auld internet nerd crew is small in any city and that's the group i was in.) He arrived at my cubicle one day and stood there watching me work and smiling until I noticed him and I knew immediately that something would happen with him.

In the long run lac and I didn't really suit each other... when things were tough he got clingy which irritated the shit out of me which made him clingier and yeah. badness. For the record you can't imagine the level of clingy i'm talking about... sad dogs with hanging skin and drool issues come to mind.

The guy after him was totally different. We were friends for several months and then one day we started to sort of play with each other's fingers and over the course of a short while we fell in love with each other. I'm not sure whether my accident killed a relationship that would have died anyway or not, it's hard to say. I lean toward believing that it wouldn't have died unless it was supposed to but damm that was an awfully brutal couple of years to put a baby relationship through.

But with tr (#2) there didn't seem to be a spark at first. We hung out together constantly and got along great and wrote fantastic emails [no dude, fantastic] but both of us were convinced that a relationship between us would have been disastrous.

Perhaps we should have listened.

Still these are two very contrasting experiences. In both cases there was absolutely that certain something that just gets it to work for a while between two people. In both cases it turned out to be totally wrong for everyone involved and tr still hates me to this day.

He'll tell you that he doesn't but he'll flee down the back stairs to avoid running into me at a mutual friend's home. {serious... used the words 'i must flee' and ran off down the back stairs!!!}

So there you have it. Two totally different beginnings but both with one thing in common. Both had that certain something. One was just there and one developped (or was forced or was ignored at first?). This isn't the only spark I mean though.

I recall one night in a bar many many moons ago I walked up to the pool table (in a great rock bitch outfit... big hair, tight black jeans and a hot pink body suit with laces in a strategic spot) and there was this man playing pool and it was electric. Like actual electric. I was thinking dirty thoughts, he was thinking dirty thoughts... I basically wanted to take him by a belt loop, drag him into an alley and do filthy things to him for about 48 hours and I really never cared if i knew his name.

I found out his name though... he was dating my friend AM at the time and she walked up as he started toying with the lace on my bodysuit and wondering what would happen if he tugged (nothing, those laces are not structural but it is a damm evil top for playing pool in... it has almost but never fall out *down*). Seriously I'm pretty sure both of us forgot that anyone else was even in the room. I've met those chemicals one other time... and damm it was FUN to do something about them.

That's probably not the same thing as spark though... and interestingly both of those men were asses.

Now spark and chemistry at the same time? what do you think are the motherfucking odds?

I'm thinking they're reasonably slim and I'm also thinking that the chemistry aspect of it is less important than the spark. That fascination with all things about another person.

The need to know them, smell them, talk to them, hear them, to know their laugh and the taste of their skin. That's not the same as chemistry although I believe that it is chemistry in it's own right... just different.

So there's two factors maybe. Fascination and chemistry. One of which is a short term fire thing and one which can be short term but seems to have at least the potential to be turned into reality. I would say that fascination also has the potential to lead to awesome friendships.

In fact othercat and I remain fascinated by each other to this day (although we can bore each other to tears at this point too) and it looks good for us to remain fascinated for a good long time. So fascination doesn't just mean someone to love in a romantic way. It can also herald the arrival of a lifelong friend. That's another post though. [this post isn't as interesting as i recall it but gets the point across and the comments are good]

With that kind of fascination there is a certain amount of hrm are we friends or are we more and I guess really the only way to tell which one it is is to figure out if you're both feeling it. Of course then you have to decide what to do when only one of you does. To stay friends or to disappear forever. Interestingly both parties have to make that decision.

Still that doesn't answer the original question. What is spark?

I don't really know what it is, but I know what it isn't.

I recall with tr that there was a moment when we started to touch each other. When our fingers started to dance with each other as we just sat on his couch and breathed and didn't really speak. And my entire being was focused on the square centimetre of skin that was touching him or being touched by him. Like that was the only thing that was important in the Universe at that second. There are men that I've touched since then that I've had a similar response to and others where no, not so much.

And I've had full on sex with people where really my grocery list or counting ceiling tiles was more important.

So I don't really know how to recognize spark. How to know when it's worth pursuing and when you should drop it. When it's worth trying despite the odds [like my friend denon who had an online relationship with an australian for a year and then she finally came over and they were married THREE weeks later and that was five years ago now... (hmm maybe six)].

So... back to the eternal question:

what the hell is spark?

signs of change

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I was coming home from hubris' house last night after some after climbing dins and I was struck by something. That subtle shift that happens in an instant and is never noticed until later happened when i wasn't looking and suddenly it just isn't summer anymore.

This isn't about a date or a weather pattern or even the changing of the leaves although it only ever happens after the leaves get multicoloured. There is a moment, however indefineable when the Village becomes ours again.

The Village or the Gay Ghetto or whatever you wish to call it is a small neighbourhood in Toronto that attracts a large amount of local and long distance tourists all summer. Most of these tourists are gay people looking for friends, lays or just general good fun with other like minded folks. Some of them are from the suburbs and are coming to town to 'see the gays' and they tend to steadily increase until Pride and then dwindle away along with the heat of summer.

Nonetheless, all summer the Village is not ours. It's always quite amusing to be in line at the store and see three tricked out glamsters getting smokes and then a couple of locals in their PJs buying eggs. Yes I'm the one in the PJs.

You can always tell the tourists because they're the ones who are just a little too perfect. A little too glammed up. Trying a little too hard. The locals dress up to go to the bar sure but they don't care quite as much. They know that the Village and the tourists and the easy sex will be here tomorrow too. Funnily enough the locals look a lot better... it's the not trying you see. It's somehow much sexier and so much more effortless.

So there I was driving home and waiting for my light to change and I realised that the only beings crossing the street were the dead leaves blowing in the breeze. Not a human in sight. The patios were empty and closed up (although the chairs are still out instead of in the basements in anticipation of one more nice weekend patio day) baskin robbins was closed already and the lights were low.

We'll still see the tourists of course, they show up on the weekends like clockwork all year long looking for easy sex or affirmation or just a chance to be who they really are but they aren't here on tuesday night anymore. During the week our Village is a village again and we love it.

This is when the locals stop and chat on the streets, when we actually go into the 'popular' bars and have a beer instead of the out of the way ones. When we eat on Church Street instead of off a block or so. When our home becomes ours again.

Still it's always a little sad too. There's something about the throngs of eager beavers (*snerk!*) that's so much fun to watch. You can be an urban anthropologist just by stepping outside your door.

That said, my favourite weekend of the year is approaching fast. HALLOWE'EN! First of all I think my pvc might fit again so yay I get to be a leather bitch for hallowe'en but more than that... this is when the village parties. For Pride we invite the world, for Hallowe'en we party with ourselves and the people we love.

They still close the street and you can just wander up and down and admire the amazing costumes without spending a cent. Damm i'm stoked!

i've been remiss

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I have not been keeping up with my contractual obligation to myself to post to my blog every day. In fact I've missed several days lately. In my defence I've been doing things like teaching at 8am or using my blogging time to talk with my sister [yes, we're gossipping about boys. yes, it's fun] or drink with my best friend or... and since I suddenly have to get up before 9am something like 11 days out of 12 it's hard to think 'oh it's just half an hour' and make myself stay awake.

Also the closing eyes make it hard to read what I type.

So, I think I will have to start blogging in the afternoon instead of at midnight. Which sucks because I think the flow is better at night since I'm more open and less willing to self censor. Less able also. Seriously, ask any friend of mine how scattered I get when I'm really tired *grin*

It's like my brain takes a tracking vacation or something.

Still I can't complain about this, I'm suddenly teaching 15 hours a week on a SLOW week and that's only going to increase because the hot doctor will refer me clients until I tell him to stop. This shit is FUN you guys. I have to use my brain a lot and I get to see people transformed because of what I teach them.

Frankly it's awe-inspiring and even more amazing that *I* did it. [Speaking of, lsd did that thing about your pelvis improve the climbing at all?] I made these folks feel better and I did it in an hour and I did it from my heart and with integrity.

And I didn't have to work in an office or sit at a desk to do it.

I can't believe how fortunate I am to get to live this life and I can't believe how much I love this job. I've never had to work so hard to get something to work in my life. In fact just about every job that I tried before this one sort of fell into my lap. It's almost like the Universe wanted me to get a pile of possibilities out of my system and fast. Like it wanted me to be able to recognize that this really is my thing. And then it made me prove I really wanted this by tossing all sorts of obstacles at me.

Long story short? I'm fully blessed.

Fully busy too!

The only problem with all of this blessing the Universe is heaping on me? Yeah I'm SOOO sleepy! I get to sleep in on SATURDAY this week and then again Monday which should put me back together soon but...

There's also a little piece of me that's waiting for the other shoe to drop. That thinks there really is only so much positive energy to go around and I'm using all mine up. That piece is probably not really remembering just how bad years on end of my childhood were and it's definetely not remembering the really crappy couple of years after my accident.

Still, I'm looking for the other shoe.

I'm also looking to reclaim my weekends at Chirstmas and if all goes according to plan it will ACTUALLY HAPPEN! *dance of joy*

I so can't wait to have weekends again.

Speaking of Christmas. My parents live in Italy and they really want me to come and visit. Enough so that they're offering cash. The thing here is that although I love Italy and I dearly love spending time with my parents there are other factors.

For one thing if I do take time off I do NOT get paid. I'm self employed, if I don't work I don't earn. Since several of the places I work for are Jewish it's likely that I'll be expected to work Christmas (like i did last year) and since it falls on a Sunday that means I'll be teaching and also that finding a sub is almost impossible. Still I'll ask around the places I teach and see what's up and maybe hit Italy and the Italian *FOOD* for a week if I figure I can swing it.

Weird concept, it's the first time I've been invited in years.

Hrm, looking at the calendar I note a likelihood of three or four days off for New Years though... hey hubris... want to go someplace? As long as there's beer and maybe some green I'm wherever!
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Also let's see:
I've been tagged by dzer so here goes:
23rd post 5th sentence:

- my sister moved back to the family farm and is thus around a LOT more :)

in a post that was basically catch up since it's called oops i forgot my blog

and I tag... geeze who HAS 23 posts that dzer didn't get already... uh... stoned.nerd (my favourite singaporean), natalia (my favourite english nerd), teresa cause she rocks and elle cause she's funny as hell.

Okay that's it, happy Monday y'all!

habs are poo!

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In the immortal words of a three year old with the same name as my best friend... habs are poo. In other words, the leafs trounced the habs 3-2 in regulation with none of this shoot out bullshit.

Because really now, a SHOOTOUT? Shoot outs suck. Is that one word or two anyway?

I really like most of the rule changes the NHL has made [*sigh* National Hockey League you sports challenged doofuses... :)] except the shoot out. What's wrong with having a tie? It certainly kept the points interesting and it certainly didn't dump the entire responsability for a hockey game on the goalie.

Olympic hockey is fantastic, bigger ice, less hitting, more skating and much more beautiful fast hockey but the shoot out sucks donkey balls. So why why why did the NHL bring in the shoot out? Why not have a period of overtime and then a tie?

Or, as my lovely client B suggests, 5 minutes of 5 on 5, 5 minutes of 4 or 4, 5 minutes of 3 on 3 etc. I mean if that isn't fun and decisive I don't know what is. But no, stoopid shootout. I think her idea is great, it would make for some hilarious plays.

Shoot outs are poo too.

Other than that though it's certainly a pleasure to watch hockey these days. The game is fast, the whistle is largely unheard, the puck moves fast enough that I can almost sympathise with the lameass fox blue streak and there's way less stupid hitting and fighting. In fact I've watched nearly as much regular season hockey now as I did two years ago all season. Usually i just wait for the Stanley Cup. Go leafs go!


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In keeping with the theme in my previous post's comments, here's a funny quote I found the other day at a really cool used record store:
Nationalism (a definition):
Canada's nationalism is unique in the world. It's not xenophobic and does not require citizens to wave flags, get drunk at high school and college football games, place our hands over our hearts, start wars, or engage in other jingoistic behaviours. Canadian nationalism has an exquisitely noble purpose: to keep Canadians from becoming citizens of the United States [attributed to www.dooneyscafe.com]

Of course I tend to consider nationalism poo as well.
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Man my class with la goddess today was fantastic, I won't bore y'all with the details but we basically worked our pelvic floors and the connection between lower abs and sacrum. Also a little bit of rib stuff but that was remedial and not the focus. Damm my lower back feels fantastic. How does she do that? Every time she manages that.

What's funny is that my students wonder the same thing about me!

Speaking of, that saturday class today made me so happy that I gave it up. This woman shows up and before class goes 'are you going to work us today?' (I didn't say 'if you listened when i spoke you fucking cow you'd have worked LAST TIME!) so I said 'I'm going to try' and then went up to teach the class.

She skips at least a third of the exercises, doesn't listen for the rest and then WALKS OUT with twenty minutes left. It certainly doesn't make me sad to have given up *that* class.
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Have you ever noticed how a tiny thing can change someone's looks drastically? Like a new pair of glasses? Or getting contacts? Or cutting your hair? Like there's this guy at the climbing gym and he had these awesome red dreads and he was very laid back surfer guy. Incidentally I thought he was nice, cute *and* attractive... but anyway I show up at the gym the other day and buddy has his head shaved and ... wow. Total hottie.

Every time I see him now I'm startled because he doesn't look like himself and yet there's that same laid back surfer dude attitude coming out of what is suddenly a smoking hottie. It's WEIRD.

Funny because there's another guy at the gym who used to have this long pointy beard like the guy from Tool. [Was it tool hedonist? I can't remember cause I pay NO attention to what bands look like unless I'm trying to avoid telling them how bad they SOUND.] So he shaved it off. Complete transformation.

He had been really good looking in this sort of sinister way. Not that he looked evil at all, his big smile saw to that, he just had a sort of dark, handsome, eastern prince look to him and now he looks COMPLETELY different. His eyes are bigger, his skin looks lighter and suddenly he's cute instead of dark and handsome.

Similar things have happened to my sister over the years as she's changed her glasses. She's fun because I've seen a ton of transformations... and also with me. If I'm overweight AND I cut off my hair I instantly become a lesbian in the eyes of the world. If my hair is medium to long I get to like boys but if my hair is short there is no question I am into girls.

Funny thing, no one ever asks ME!

Up too late as usual... night kids!

been a while

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Holy holy crap.

I was going to hit snooze like three more times and then rush through the shower on my way to teach the last saturday class I take. (well the occasional sub sure) Unfortunately the cat knocked over a shot glass left on the desk from last night and it shattered so I got up to clean it.

What, othercat came over for a drop of Irish (or two)

Anyway when I picked up the broom my fingers were insanely unhappy. I'm like 'hold the broom' and they're like 'bitch'. Unexpectedly owwy let me tell you. I didn't think I climbed that hard really, I mean maybe I did since I fell off the route I warmed up on like 4 times and never made it up it at the end of the night.

Still and all I only bouldered for less than an hour before doing routes so I'm surprised about this. Maybe need to take an extra day or two off. Looking at my fingers I notice active callus in 23 places at this point.

It's pretty funny actually because *I* think my hands are hot. I don't think anyone else will really since they're ripped to shreds and the nails are like too short to scratch my scalp with. Doesn't really matter cause my calluses can scratch my skin just fine but I miss being able to scratch my head!

[damm i love my new desktop, so many happy making pictures drive by]

Anyway I've decided that climbers have sexy hands. If you're a climber, a weight lifter or someone who does manual labour.

Otherwise? Yeah I'm thinking the response is 'um... why do you do that to yourself?'

Because it's fun duh.

Hubris broke himself last night and we're really hoping that it's a short term injury but I have a bad feeling about this. He was having shooting pains into his scalp and down his shoulder and picking up his little bag made him wince.

Hopefully he got the back rub he was after and also I really hope he took a hot shower to ease things but yeah... shitty.

Speaking of climbers, climber guy hasn't called which, really, no surprise there. Guess you're not allowed to turn down sex on date two and get date three. Seriously dude, I have a little self respect and I don't boink people I've spent under 6 hours with. It's just sorta tacky really.

Course last time I thought he wasn't going to call he was out with Princess Valium *snerk!*

Damm my hands hurt.

Okay off to shower and teach and take a class from the blonde goddess. Hope you all have a wonderful Saturday!

***

mmm *bliss*
*hot shower*
*pumice*
*pumice*
*hot shower*
*hot shower*
*bliss*
*tooth brushing*
*glee*

off for coffee!

sometimes

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sometimes the universe hands you what you need. My eight thirty am community centre class was cancelled because of some jewish holiday (i think yom kippur and if you're jewish and you correct me i'll adjust that sentence) so I got to sleep in until noon.

*BLISS*

In fact my alarm went off at ten thirty and i reset it for noon and when I woke up at eleven thirty or so i was all 'no, i don't have to be awake' and i crashed out again. It was GREAT! I mean so awesome. I slept for ten or eleven hours and only woke up a couple of times when I was too stiff to stay in one position and the moving twinged something.

I did have a headache when I woke up and that last snooze put the coffee out of reach (so worth it) since I have to get up at the crack of dawn in the morning. Yes I know that I'm blogging at one thirty in the morning when I have to get up at seven but that's really not relevant. Right now I'm a little wired and sleeping isn't working.

So onward, I get up, I have a headache, I'm out of it and I drag myself to teach and only one student shows up. So I teach her breath. Which yeah, makes ME breathe and incidentally starts easing the muscles in my back!

And then I drag myself home and read some 'essential exercises for the childbearing year' and run back out to teach my first ever prenatal class. That was really cool and hella scary. No dudes, hella scary. These women have life in their bodies and I run a decent risk of fucking them up if I don't do it right. So I beat up their hips and shoulders and incidentally my own.

So inadvertently I put myself back together a certain amount. My mid back and neck are still upset with me but so much less than they were yesterday. I'm trashed but I'm in view of recovery in a way that really surprises me. I do have to keep throwing myself at the exercise because I stiffen up whenever I sit still but since I teach 7 times in the next three days and will go climbing at least once if not twice I'm not too worried about that.

Anyway I'm healing from the injury to my back yesterday but I'm also surprised by a few things. Firstly I'd forgotten just how exhausting it is to hurt. I knew that hurting was hard but the exhaustion factor had sort of escaped me. Funny how fast you forget that kind of thing.

Also, damn it makes you cranky just by the existence of the headache caused by the neck pain. And this is only the FIRST DAY! I feel I'll keep getting better though... can't swear to it but feel maybe that will be the way to bet. It's hard because often this kids of damage doesn't really manifest for a few weeks.

Note to self, preventative Pilates is key!
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Harriet aka the reincarnation of baby bad cat has taken (according to lividviv) to chewing wires. *sigh*
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The blonde goddess is starting up her saturday class again this week. I cannot imagine something that I need more this week!
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Tomorrow afternoon is looking good for answering email... maybe, after I go fill out paperwork to maybe teach somewhere else!
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Feast or famine... go universe!
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Way past my bedtime. :)

my neck is killing me

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no seriously killing me.

hubris and i went climbing tonight and i started out pretty cranky because they took down the 'warmup 5.8' and replaced it with a nasty 5.9. It's not that I object to a nasty 5.9, it's that I object to paying 45 dollars a month for a gym with TWO 5.8's and ONE 5.7 in it while there's about 7 untouched 5.11's laying around.

So then when I said something I basically got told that people are training now and I should expect the difficulty to go up.

Uh dudes there's a room full of routes that noone is anywhere near except during lessons AND there's piles of routes none of the so-called 'training' folks are on. So why is there a lineup for the two whole 5.8's in the gym? (Neither of which are warmup worthy btw)

Okay so I was cranky already and then there I am belaying hubris and I get out of the way of possibly falling guy to my left and get fully slammed into by falling guy behind me. Like full on back to back slam.

I wanted to die. They didn't even bother to see if I was okay. Just walked away.

So there I am with hubris two thirds of the way up a wall that is not a quick climb and I want to cry and I can hardly breathe and what can I do really but wait for the fucker to finish the route?

So he did and I dropped him and unclipped and headed for the floor to lie on and basically die. And I knew I was fucked right then I knew it but I hoped.

So I went and did laps on the only 5.7 in the place. Real laps, up and down and I got almost down the third time and did something stupid with my feet and fell. I thought for a while that maybe, just maybe, I had managed to work out whatever that ass did to me.

But no.

I did work out the back for sure but my neck is so sore. Not only is it sore but it's sore in THAT spot. The one that hurt for like two years. The one that still isn't better.

Not only did the fucker fully slam into me (and dude if you're falling off a route that hard low enough to kill someone belaying on another wall you're NOT supposed to climb that route) but he managed to whiplash me.

I did climb for the rest of the night in the vain hope that I could keep my back from stiffening up but it doesn't seem to have worked so my back and I are going to bed and trying to be warm.

What I would not give for some pot right now.

gag me with a spoon

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or long distance love.

The girl across the hall (yes fellow red deathers, it is the youngest member of our party to whom I refer) fell fully and madly for a girl in north carolina a little while ago.

They emailed. They instant messaged. One of them broke up with her then girlfriend. There were photos. There were dirty photos and there were lots and lots of phone calls. And even more dirty phone calls!

It was particularly funny when camping to watch la belle T jones for her girlfriend that she hadn't even met yet. T was threatening to walk into town or at least to the nearest store to make phone calls. Extra funny because one wrong turn and her walk would have gone from an hour to days and days and days. I was tempted but then I would have had to drive around for hours looking for the lost girl having the nic fit.

So, fairly quickly T was buying a plane ticket and M was packing. And right then I remembered how easy it is to be that young. I couldn't do what they're doing... it's not possible. To just chuck my life and move somewhere on a moment's notice?

But I owe the vet money!
and the mechanic!
and the cats? what to do with the cats? (hi sis!)
and the car? (hi parents barn!)
and all the classes and clients I have?
and lordy lordy I have a lot of crap!
and and and...

and that's it, they're both 23 or so and have nothing holding them anywhere. It's kind of the difference really because when I was 23 I *did* chuck it all and move on a moment's notice.

Repeatedly.

It's not that I wouldn't chuck it all and move, there are things that would inspire me to do that in a second, but I would have to take time to wrap up the threads of my life, I wouldn't be able to just go.

Hell, M doesn't even expect to go home! She has to due to some sort of customs crap but otherwise she would probably just stay.

Now let us not even begin to mention the staggering odds of meeting someone from north carolina on a matchmaking website AND having them make your toes curl when they kiss you... cause yeah, so less than likely.

But they're fully wrapped around each other and fully engaging in ridiculous amounts of PDA. Which does, I admit, make me really happy for T but at the same time?

Dude seriously, gag me with a spoon! [shut up, I know I'm jealous, what's your point?]

Regardless, they are just so cutesy that it's actually hard to be in the same room with them for more than a few minutes. Still totally happy for them and hope it stays this way but don't really want to hang out :)

I'm just staggered. I was so sure they would meet and be like 'uh yeah... no' and wonder what the fuss was about and instead they're showing off their hickies! (which yeah, not something I really want to think about too deeply)

Anyway I'm enjoying speculating on the odds and also sad when I think that M is being sent home in a month. I hope they figure something out. I confess I can't imagine how they're hanging out with the two of them AND t's dad in a bachelor the size of my bedroom but it seems to be working.

Ahh young love *grin*
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This was a comment I made on Natalia's blog about this post. Do read the rest of the comments as they're awesome and please go read the post right now. No, right now. Anyway, I liked this mini rant enought to post it here:

From the day we were born my parents had no truck with whining. If we got cranky my mother checked if we were wet, cold, hot, tired, hungry and if it was none of those she ignored us. You know what? We didn't whine and from the day I was about 3 I was a polite little child in restaurants.

BUT (and this is important) my parents paid attention to me. They thought I was interesting. They tried hard to amuse me while I waited for my food [this is as easy as crayons or pens and paper]. They did NOT ignore me. They did not shush me when I spoke in favour of the 'adult conversation' and they most certainly would not put up with acting up. Acting up got you taken home with no dinner. They also did not let a television babysit me.

Now I respect your right to bring your kid to the movies but why can't you bring them to the shows for toddlers? Why can't you bring them on mommy and me screening days? If you bring them to a movie that is suggested adult accompaniment and they're five you're a moron.

As for museums, if you're dragging a 4 year old to the moma you're addled if you think they give a shit. If you bring them to the science centre then they can play and learn stuff... and as long as you don't let them get overtired or hungry they'll probably behave.

As for tolerance. I am exceedingly tolerant of children and I've nannied several of them for seriously extended periods of time and you know what? I'm still firmly intolerant of parents who ignore their children and then freak out when they misbehave. If you don't think that kids are fascinating you may wish to reconsider having them. And if your kid is LOSING it in a movie theatre or a museum the CONSIDERATE thing to do is exit the space that has several hundred other folks in it trying to enjoy something.

As an example, lynette on desperate housewives got EXACTLY the kids she raised... [end comment on natalia's blog] she never once talks to her children like they're people, she never tries to find out why they're upset and when they act out she either rewards the behaviour or starts taking their ridalin. Like seriously.

What baffles me is that this has become acceptable behavious among parents. the helpless look and the 'it's the kids' excuse. You're the parent, act like it.

*end rant*

gotta sleep teaching in the am! [yes i really did publish this 30 minutes in the future :)]

itchy fingers

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I want to blog today. I feel this itch in my fingers that tells me I have something to say but I just don't know what it is.

It's been a very strange week:
I've been on several dates with a couple of people.
I've started working with the doctor's clients.
I've realised that I'm fully broke until November and pretty broke until December.
I spent most of yesterday lying on my couch with an upset tummy and okcupid guy [who (SO WEIRD) I keep thinking I should introduce to my sister].
I've been recovering from some mental stuff... which is sort of hit and miss.
I feel sorta crappy and pmsy.
I've eaten too many big and heavy meals (and a lot of meat)
I ran out of pot.
I got to see my sister for a bit and it was just enough to make me want more.
My sister and I played the game of life today (fun!).
I stage one cleaned my apartment.
I've seen a lot of my family.
I helped a friend move.
I've been short and cranky with my friends.
I'm exhausted.
I climbed a little or a lot.
I feel like I'm *this* close to snapping someone's head off.
I can't bear to set my alarm for tomorrow morning...

basically I feel discombobulated.

Also I think I'm doing too much and that I really need to start designating a hang out with sassinak at home day once a week or ten days or so or I think I'm going to lose it. I think maybe that when I cancelled my cable I took something away from myself that I needed more than I realised.

I took away my reason to lay around on my couch and be a human vegetable. Blogging is great but is somehow more tiring and interactive. At first I thought that it would replace television and while it mostly has there is a certain something that just isn't there.

I would read but I'm so tired I can't even imagine focusing on a page. A stanza of 'the art of war' is about all I can handle and that's even too much for me right now.

My sister today asked me how I felt about doing yoga because she thinks that I'm all wound up. And I am. It's just that I can't afford yoga or pilates classes that someone else teaches or really fucking anything until sometime in November... and I don't mean the first of the month either. Hell I might have to stop going out for the rest of the month to make it through.

Don't get me wrong, I'm perfectly willing to do that but it sucks. I like having a life and it's especially difficult to keep going to work when you're this tired and this broke and you don't see a penny for ages.

I've decided to give up the one class I took for saturdays because I think I need the day off more than I need the cash. Apparently a lady I know has a list of instructors that would love such a class so I'm going to hand it off. Hope the nice man who offered me the job won't be upset about it but I don't care. He KNEW it was my day off and he low balled the price so he can have a baby instructor and I can have my sleeping in.

This could bite me in the ass but I want saturdays more than I want that little bit of cash. Dear universe this doesn't mean I want the rest of the work to stop coming. Got it? Also I warned my Sunday morning at 8:30 boss that I was slowly looking to swap out of that because the time was killing me. Her I like so I told her I would give her a couple of months notice before I left and also told her that if she had another slot I would love it.

But see she didn't offer me shit pay to work on my day off and I like working there whereas saturday morning space sucks. The 'studio' space is part of the cardio floor and I can't hear anyone breathe and I'm practically shouting and they just want fitness pilates and that isn't what i teach.

Wow, resentful much?

Damm dudes I'm fucking cranky. I'm so cranky I went to McDonald's for lunch for the COMFORT FOOD!

Eep, clearly I need some sleep.

living alone

i've been working on this list and currently i'm tired and sick so i'm going to bed and leaving it to y'all to finish. Also I stole a quiz and did it and stuck my results below...
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things i like about living alone

. eating or not eating as i wish
. always knowing what's in the fridge
. smoking pot whenever i like
. endless avocado, hummus, pita and whatever sandwiches whenever i bother to have the ingredients around
. hanging out with my cats
. no one cares what's on tv
. i always get to pick the music or the dj
. i don't care that i didn't do the dishes yet
. lights, sleep, food, etc is on my schedule
. i can get ready when i'm damn good and ready
. i really have to go get ready
. having friends in whenever i like
. drinking out of the bottle/carton or eating out of the pot
. being alone at will
. no surprises on the phone bill
. very long showers

Sucky living alone thingies

. food goes bad
. dishes only get done if i do them
. no one to smoke pot with
. no one to take care of you when you're sick
. apartment neighbours
. miss cooking with/for folks and being cooked for...
. welcome home hugs are strangely absent
. the mess really is your own fault
. cooking for one is boring
. no sex
. no shower sex
. finding someone to feed the cats when you're away
. did i mention no welcome home hugs/cuddling?
. sometimes just someone being around is enough
. noone to help clean when it's time to clean
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Firefly quiz inspired by sonusexmachina:




You scored as Captain Malcolm Reynolds. Also known as "Captain Tight Pants". Simply put, you are a Browncoat-turned-pirate, but with a conscience. You are a leader of men and women, but you tend to fall for whores.

FiREFLY QUIZ
created with QuizFarm.com

Simon, the Doctor		88%
Captain Malcolm Reynolds		88%
Inara, the "Companion"		75%
First Mate Zoe		63%
Kaylee, the Mechanic		50%
Jayne Cobb, resident bad-ass		50%
RiVER		50%
Shepherd Book		38%
Wash, the Pilot		25%

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I had a very nice day today except for the ridiculous roiling gut from hell. that pretty much sucked. And yet, really nice day. Feel free to keep commenting on 'well now' or just add to my living alone list... :)

happy thanksgiving all you canadians and wanna be canadians out there!

well now

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that was unexpected.

I had a really good time with climber guy yesterday and i really wasn't prepared for that. Now don't get me wrong, I don't think there's anything wrong with dating more than one person (well maybe if you start having sex with one of them... or if you don't inform them what's up...) i'm just surprised that i enjoyed his company as much as i did. More in fact than the first time I met him.

Unexpected I guess because when i asked him climbing i wasn't asking him out... but somehow taking two weeks to plan something takes it from 'fun activity' to 'date' (especially when it gets bumped to a friday).

Several of my friends inform me that they wish they had such problems... but it really is a problem. At some point I'll have to make a decision and I'm feeling all greedy. Of course I believe such decisions make themselves and cannot be imposed on your heart for all the trying in the world but I feel sorta greedy anyway.

I am a greedy bithc. So there. Hrm, what's a bithc? *chuckle*

Anyway I never did the 'dating' thing before. I always met someone and started seeing them and we sort of fell into some sort of exclusivity thingy after a bit and dated for a certain amount of time before we each went on our merry ways. This idea that I can be seeing multiple folks is just fully strange to me.

I do wonder how it makes them feel and I do occasionally get my guilt on but then my friends are like:
have you discussed commitment?
have you gotten naked?
have you lied to either of them?
have either of them asked you to stop seeing other people?
are you READY to commit to someone?

to which the answers are no no no no and no

In fact I'm feeling a bit commitment phobic really. I always dive into things and fall for people in thirty seconds flat and I just don't want to. That never works out for me after all. It doesn't make me feel any less weird about this whole idea of 'dating' (which is apparently defined as seeing lots of folks ...) but it does help me to feel less wrong about it.

Why do I feel weird is the thing. So MANY people in my life look at me fully strangely when I start talking like this. They don't even get how it could be something to think about. Hell they don't even get why I think it's weird to have sex with someone when you're dating multiple people. Hell several of them think I should boink all the folks i'm dating/into.

They think I'm nuts actually. I have been informed by most of my friends that I should just go out there and boink someone and get it over with. I can see the temptation, I mean hell I've been working the pelvic floor for years now and it seems sort of wrong not to USE the dammed thing and yet.

I would feel icky in the morning. I don't have to love someone to boink them but I have to feel intimate toward them. Funny really cause when it comes to necking I am a full on tart. No dude a tart. I will make out with pretty much anyone that asks. Necking is like... mmmm one of my top five ways to spend an hour. It's just certain more naked acts that take me a while.

That doesn't really make any sense does it? In a lot of ways kissing with tongue is one of the most intimate things you can do and yet i'm not remotely proprietary about that.

[Holy SHIT okcupid guy this cd is fucking awesome! And it just keeps getting better!]

Anyway at least I'm having feast rather than famine for a change. I'm sure it will all end badly and there will be some 'never date sass cause she's fully nuts' club formed or something but for now I'm sure having a good time.

Still and all... multiple folks is just weird.

sabotage

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Some of this will only make sense to some of you. Those of you who succeed effortlessly will think I'm cracked.

I am poised on the brink of some major changes in my life that will include doubling my income and working on really interesting cases referred to me by a doctor. A doctor I can call up to discuss said cases with as I need and one who fully expects to hire me when he opens his own practise.

And I knew that this was all happening but it wasn't real. It was *going* to happen. There was some later involved... some time to prepare or stick my head in the sand or somehow not pay attention.

Except that later is now.

Today I saw the first referral from the doctor and we had a nice session and he booked for next week. So... one down. And it went okay really, I'm a lot better teacher than I was a year ago that's for sure and so I was less nervous and more focussed.

Next week I have (as of now) 5 clients (one this guy again) from the doctor and a couple more were referred today. And don't think that I can't help them because I can. I especially can if I can go back to him for pathology questions and listen to his reasoning and suggestions. Which I do.

But.

He's also said that it's all about how these early clients react. If they don't like my customer service or whatever then that's it. He keeps looking for someone else to send his clients too. And I WANT THEM!

I want my income to more than double and stay that way.
I want to be working so much that I can stop working weekends.
I want to save a few sheckels
I want the funky cases that require thought and creativity.
I want to buy a home.
I want to stop driving to newmarket for one class

More than that. I really want to work with excellent doctors and healers. I mean who the hell wouldn't?

It's just that I have this bit of a history where I sabotage my own success. It's like I notice that I'm about to make something of myself and I have to make sure that I fuck it up. I mean lord knows we wouldn't want to actually have a positive income AND a job we love.

That would be like wrong or something.

It's not that I don't want to succeed. It's certainly not that I want to stay this poor. Being a freeloader and resenting financial demands that loved ones put on you is no fun at all.

But it is what I'm used to.

Maybe I'm just the guy that forgot to look underwater:



(click on the pic as the text is worth reading...)

serenity

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holy holy holy crap.

first of all, if you know me you know that I very rarely go to movies. I used to go semi regularly but poverty and back pain pretty much killed it. Anyway so I went tonight to see serenity which I have been waiting for since those fuckers at FOX cancelled firefly. And yes, I really watched the show on tv, I didn't come to it later.



And it was better than I could possibly have expected. I thought it would be pretty good but I had no idea it was going to be fully excellent.

Go see it. I'm going to see it again myself...
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Incidentally I decided not to go climbing today because my fuck you finger on my left hand is in a bad mood. I've tried some holds on random objects and it's not fussed but I decided why risk it. It's not like I couldn't use the day off after all. I did climb monday, saturday, wednesday etc. I even think I got my gym membership's worth this month... so no hu hu.

I tried on some excellent shoes the other day while watching lsd shop for climbing shoes and I was sooo tempted to buy them. As soon as I get paid from all this new teaching I'm doing I think I might have to shop.



I don't like the heel thingy so I'll have to try them more carefully when I'm actually there to spend cash but my feet sure liked the shape. For sure I will investigate the rest of the mad rock line as my feet seem to fit in them. Seriously dudes I covet new shoes.

I don't need them that much, my shitty old boreals are okay but they do NOT fit in comparison.

Incidentally I found this list while I was looking for a pic of my shoes... you might be a climber... Also there is why climbing is better than sex and a few others.
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Oh MAN I made a massive tactical error in my pics directory. My half naked ex boyfriend just popped onto the screen. I feel traumatised. Okay that's never going to happen again. My poor bleeding eyes. [don't get me wrong, when i'm a lil old lady i may want the pic so it's still around, just not IN THE ROTATION!!!]

Oh man I am not recovering well from that. *goes to look at shoes again*
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I'm too tired to really post. Suffice to say it was a nice day and I didn't get fuckall done except some teaching this morning.

*sigh* of relief

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At last. At last the gui is done. There's even a super cool desktop that will do a slide show of all your pictures. I've been madly leeching from my friends and family all day *evil grin*. It's neat what turns out to look really cool as a desktop background. So few of my friends have photo directories but I intend to fill like a gig of memory with them and just leave it running like a screensaver. This means I have to get the computer reading the CD player (which it may well be doing) and dump a pile of shit in there that I have on disc too. No rush :) I wish I could get people to put up directories for leeching *grin*

Thank god this crap is done. I was getting really tired of having a non-functional pc. Also that was way too much talk of computers for a neo-hippie's blog. Yeesh.
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I just walked home from the Ontario College of Art and Design which is 2.4 kilometres from here ('bout a mile and a half) and other than two blocks on Yonge Street I did the entire thing barefoot. My feet are thoroughly happy. I sort of expected to cut myself or something but my feet seem perfectly delighted.

I think I underestimate what climbing shoes are doing to the bottoms of my feet.

Speaking of climbing. lsd and hubris and i went climbing yesterday (after a delicious breakfast at hubris' house) and I finally sent a problem I've been working on for ages. At least a month, and maybe six weeks. Now I didn't do it every day, in fact I left it alone for a week or two and sulked at it, but I had returned to it like an old lover in the last week or so.

Finally I had begun to make some upward progress and then yesterday. Ah sweet yesterday. I sent the fucking thing.

I went to do it again but I was so excited I forgot to grab the hold. I think I'll use it as a boulder warmup for a while (after traversing of course) and then probably I'll forget all about it. Damn my abs are sore though.

Speaking of abs. I've basically doubled my pilates teaching income in the last month. The best part is that with referrals of rehab patients my average hourly income goes up AND my close to home factor increases. Like next wednesday I have a client at 3, 5:30 and 6:30 at the same place AND it's a ten minute walk! Now I just need someone at 4 and it's perfect :)

I feel in some way that I need to really do something nice for my doctor friend. He's doing this for his clients of course but he's also doing it for me. I'll have to buy him dinner next month to thank him. That's the one disadvantage to this job, you get paid next month for this month. Sometimes even like the 20th of the following month.

Don't care, this is going a LOT better than I expected. I feel like the universe is cheering me on. Even better? If this continues apace I'll be able to chuck the weekend classes by christmas. Oh god can you imagine? ACTUAL WEEKENDS?!??!

Wow.

*pauses for rhapsodical moment*

wow.

actual weekends.

That would be like crack.

Mmmm momentary daydream:
road trips
weekends at the farm
sleeping in two days in a row
camping
winter camping
skiing and boarding
climbing roadtrips
dim sum with friends
sunday brunch
reading a book all day
staying up late
WEEKENDS off
not getting out of bed all day
visiting friends anywhere within about 12 hours of here (12 pushes it slightly)
sleeping in on mondays too if i can arrange it
staying home and being naked for two days in a row
turning off the phone for two days in a row....
oh my god: sleeping in on sundays again!!!!

mmmm weekends. that's almost a horny making thought

what's a word for that feeling that's really not sexual but is still full of anticipation and electricity?
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Just cause it's pretty, here's the farm:



Whomever took it please send it again, I unintentionally only saved the less resolved image when i was fixing it for my blog. And I don't seem to have it... and it has to be someone I know that took it :)
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Damm I love my new desktop. Send me photos or art! sassinakk@gmail.com

thanks!

gotta teach at the crack of dawn, night kids!

bittersweet

[Sorry about the intermittent posting the last few days, I've been catching up on a pile of shit that happened because of my broken graphical user interface and had some out of town visiting and a date]
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I find it interesting that there's a flip side to bliss and or happiness. Sometimes you have such a good time that you end up depressed for a few days or weeks afterwards. And it's not because whatever is happening in the days after the blissful thing is bad. It's simply that nothing can measure up to such goodness. This has happened to me a few times this summer in varying degrees of crashness.

Sometimes bliss doesn't really lead to a crash. Take the hillside festival, that sort of bliss leaves you even happier than usual for weeks. It has a sort of lasting happiness that affects everything that you do for weeks on either side of it. Also I'm used to it as it's an annual event. More than that it somehow makes you a better person for a while.

I was totally excited before hillside for quite some time and after hillside for at least a week. But there were other weekends that had some funny post weekend mental crap.

Like the red death campy weekend. That was an awesome weekend. But afterward several of us had a little emotional crash. It's like so much awesome relaxing goodness in some way stresses you out. Like you can't handle your life when you get back to it.



Like somehow all of that happiness was stolen from your regular life and you have to have a crash to make up for it. Like you only get so much happiness in a life period and you have to take it away from your regular life to make your vacation or away time that much better.

It doesn't always happen. I mean hillside didn't leave me crashed at all. That said, I've been there for years and i'm used to the effect and it's actually something that feeds me.

I guess that's the question. Why is it that some bliss feeds you and some bliss leaves you crashed? Why can I go to a festival and come back charged and energetically horny for more festival and more music and yet i go camping with wonderful friends and I have a post camping crash?

At first I thought that it had to do with the build up because I was excited about camping for weeks. But that can't be it because I get excited about Hillside the day it ends and I'm excited every day of the year until the next hillside [yes, i'm excited right now] and then it's better than I expect and I come home charged. So it can't be that.

Well it can, because Hillside is annual and there's no real sign that camping is going to be an annual event (and such things often don't work when you try to repeat them anyway... imitation is fine but repetition is impossible... hillside is never the same twice but it's always wonderful) and perhaps that's it.

It it were going to be an annual event then I would probably not have crashed afterwards. I would simply have said to myself 'self, it's okay, you can do it again next year. There will be more wonderful camping and bouldering and bliss with your friends. Just get excited for next year.'

just cause it's me in one of my happiest places:


I've tried to throw the same party twice before and I am here to tell you that it does NOT work... so sometimes you crash after a time like that.

Right now I have to crash in a literal sense. I haven't had enough sleep in WEEKS [so little in fact that the random tangents my brain takes when I'm tired are actually offending at least one of my friends] and I now have to be awake in under 7 hours...

Eep.

lost youth

I have tried to post this repeatedly, it was ready at midnight last night... but mozilla won't load anything but 'blogger is down for maintenance' and yet firefox loads this page. So weird. Anyway here it is... better late than never.
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Just got back from the climbing gym and i'm using my brand new functional gui. Damm is it ever nice to have PICTURES again. Now I can install a lil picture editor thingy and stop posting 2mb pics that dzer has to edit. It's sort of embarassing when you have to get a guy in guam to edit your photos for you after all.

I think the hardest part of the last week or so has been the people who decided that they knew what I was thinking when I didn't answer their mail. Considering that google mail only works if you have access to the web with graphics I have to say I got some pretty funny responses. The ones that cracked me up are the ones from people who read my blog (you know the thing where i TALKED about my lack of graphical user interface for like the last WEEK?)

Anyway i was a little surprised at how many people thought I was ignoring them.

Speaking of climbing I have a large pile of calluses that are ready to rip off and all the pumice stone in the world doesn't seem to be helping with that.
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I have to leave soon to go see my cousin's band play in some kind of showcase. I don't even know if he's playing drums or guitar these days. It should be fun I guess. It's just hard to go to a club when you can't even afford a beer.

Still that should change, I've been getting a lot of referrals from the hot doctor lately which could lead to some new clients and maybe a little cash in my pocket. Damm it would be nice to stop working WEEKENDS!

I wonder if there's parking at the Opera House...
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So yes, there was parking. Also I have discovered that fashion among teenagers has come full circle and returned to my youth. There were mohawks and leather jackets covered in studs. red suspenders and green cargo pants. really long and shaggy hair, shaved heads and a lot of kids who just looked like they wanted to figure out how to fit in. About the only change is the skintight low rider jeans and even those were sort of around when I was a sweet young thing *snicker* [like i was ever sweet!]

Also it turns out that my cousin's band doesn't suck. And of course the guitarist has an orange mohawk and skintight pants. he looked straight out of the punk corner in my high school. Okay not AT my school because it was too lame for that but definetely around toronto then and all the cool and rebellious kids were doing it. I guess the part I think is funny is that these kids are all doing it now. In their quest to become unique they are just like every teenager ever.

I guess that means I was too.

I did get asked whose mom I was and also told that I would be a cool mom. which I would. ... but geeze 'whose mom are you'??? I guess that no matter what I think I really do look my age. AND I would have had to have my kid at EIGHTEEN! Yeesh.
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My hands are killing me, but i found a cool new problem to work so i'm all right with that.

Speaking of climbing I am going climbing with climber guy next week. It's sort of funny how it happened though. I was dying to do routes the other week so i sent him an IM which he didn't answer for days and then he emails going 'did you message me?' and i'm like 'yeah i wanted to do routes' and somehow now we're doing routes on wednesday and he's asking me if i'm still seeing okcupid guy... which means I guess that he's thinking of it as a date even though I just wanted to do routes.

What's funny about this is that I have my second date (yes really 6 weeks later) with okcupid guy tomorrow. I've come full circle. I expect to spend a really nice day with him... wonder if there will be spark.

We're going to have a really nice day today. We're going to the shoe museum. What, it was his idea!? I would never inflict my total girlishness about shoes on a man but he suggested it. In fact he wants to see my shoe collection first.

I am the Imelda Marcos of sneakers let me tell you. If I could get my little Asics tigers in every colour they come in then I would. Not to mention those sweet dark blue pumas and... don't get me wrong, I like me my high heels too but since I tend to look like an elephant on stilts when I wear anything but really clunky heels I don't collect them the same way.

Damm I'm pretty stoked about the shoe museum!

Have a great day kids!