whoville

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regarding my birthday and then my post.

it was lovely. thursday night was the tennis and then on friday night mg and i went climbing and out for dinner. i had a BEER! it was the first beer and it made me slightly queasy, but i liked it nonetheless.

saturday i got up and hit rr's class and then othercat picked me up, i stopped and bought a panini and we headed north with the top down. we stopped for pies and for beer and for salad and chips and we arrived in tinytown ontario around half past four. i set up my tent in the shade and we made our beds and then beer started.

i didn't drink much in the long run but oh boy did i eat. i grazed for hours and hours and hours and we sat around and hung out and everyone was really excellent and funny. there were only maybe 20 people that showed up all told but the ones who did were wonderful. and just the right people.

funny how that works.

anyway i saw a few meteors and passed out around three am and then in the morning? horrors! i had fucked it up and my tent was in the sun and i was overheated! yeah that was the worst thing that happened to me that day.

and i got up and coffee was made and more excellent food appeared and then i got to go and PICK WHATEVER I WANTED IN THE GARDEN! ahhh *bliss*

and then do you know what we did? we went to southampton and i went swimming (BRIEFLY!) in lake huron and then i baked in the sun in my bikini. first time this year. in a couple of years? god it was great.

somewhere around five othercat and i packed up our crap and headed out and we cruised home past dairy queen and arrived in time to have dinner with hubris.

yes, it was a perfectly spectacular weekend, thanks for asking!

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so i'm grooving on my new CD from othercat [us3 - on ordinary day in an unusual place] and hubris is working on my logo and i'm thinking about something that was said to me this weekend.

you are who you choose to be, you are who you think you are and you are who you say you are.

sit on those words for a minute. take a few deep breaths. feel your lungs inflate into the back of your chair as you inhale and your ribs fall as you exhale. do that a couple of times.

so if you say 'oh i'm so ditzy' then you ARE so ditzy. it doesn't matter if you have the brain of a rocket scientist and the degree to match. if you call yourself a ditz you're a ditz. you can't help it, you'll act like one. you think of yourself as a person who is described as a ditz, you self describe that way and thus you choose to be a ditz.

i've been thinking about a lot of the things that i say about myself and what those things actually mean. do i say them because i think that they're true or because i believe that they will make my life easier?

and since i'm a shapeshifter what does that mean in terms of my identity?

see that there how i labelled myself? how i'm accepting and expecting that statement to be true? anyway i self describe as a lot of things in a lot of places and while all of those things are true to some extent none of them really describe me.

but then how do you describe something you are? isn't that as crazy as trying to put movement or music into words? trying to paint pictures of love? trying to understand cats?

when i say that i lack confidence does that mean that i bring that to myself? that the only thing keeping me from seeing myself as fabulous is that i don't THINK that i see myself as fabulous? how are my preconceived notions of who i am affecting my day to day life?

does my willingness to believe that i'm bad with men MAKE me bad with men? what if i just decide to call myself a bombshell? walk around like i expect men to do things like they used to in those old impulse body spray commercials? [woman walks by man who goes nuts and snags flowers from a vendor and chases woman until he gasps something and hands her flowers through subway doors/falling up a flight of stairs/or whatever]

if i build it will they come?

what if i decide that i like studying? or that i like a clean house? or britney spears?

*shudder*

okay i feel sorry for her but i'm not sure i could like her. [from seeing her show, we seem to worry about entirely different things...]

okay or... revolutionary thought... what if i decide that i don't suffer from pms aka pre menstrual bitch syndrome? okay good luck with that one.

anyway, when you tell people about yourself you are placing yourself in boxes in their brains but you are also putting yourself in a box in your own brain. i think some people end up making themselves into entirely different people depending on who they're with. well i know some people do because i used to be one of them.

i've been striving to be sane around people for a long time, i expect i'll manage it on my deathbed or something. i've also been working not to become someone else in groups ever since i realised that i did it. i'm a lot better at it now but i have lost some of my centre of attention talent in the doing of it. it's funny what you give up sometimes when you're looking in another direction.

i was once a natural flirt who was good in groups and now i'm uncomfortable in groups and forget how to flirt. i'm also not standing in the middle of the loud group in the middle of the party and being the loudest anymore so i can't say i'm offended by the change.

but still, why did i have to give up being a natural flirt to become more calm and grounded? can't the one stay while developing the other? what if i start to describe myself that way? how about if i just remember that it's a skill i used to have? regardless of my current word choices i did lose that talent to a great extent as i became more introspective.

i'll find myself in groups at a gathering and have no idea how to make small talk, i'll catch myself telling some inane story because i'm so uncomfortable and i can't think of any questions to ask that aren't intrusive [plus i saw that comedian on valentine's day who said, as we exited the venue, "at least i'm not on a date with one of those chicks who asks a million questions" and everyone laughed. and i said to my companion 'i'm one of those chicks' and that sort of whigged me a little. is it wrong to ask questions on a date? and here i thought it was called getting to know you. stupid uncomfortable silences] and no one else is saying a word and i miss the girl who could charm the pants off anyone at a party.

or maybe she never could but she only believed she could. ha ha ha i wonder which it is!

i've really been noticing over the last few years that i am consistently not acting like i expect myself to act and thus i've been realigning my expectations for myself. and then? yeah i go and change some more.

damm life being all about change and stuff. if i can't even know who *i* am then how in hell is anyone supposed to get to know anyone else?