Addendum

Of course, all the strength in the world won't help you a wit if... you forget the Ikea box with the actual bed slats in it.

Yes, I have three academic degrees.

Fucking shit. Guess who's sleeping on the floor tonight?

Brilliant.

Thoughts on Strength

For all my talk about women's strength being so incredibly important for self-defence and self-confidence, I haven't talked much about the actual practicality of strength, and how great it is to be able to take care of yourself as far as everyday shit goes. Maybe this has something to do with self-confidence, too.

Jenn and I did our pilgramage to Ikea today, and managed to pack up the entirety of a queen-sized bed and another whole trunkload of shit. It took the two of us to move one of the more ungainly pieces of the bed puzzle, and as she picked up her end, I watched her biceps clench; ah, yes, the benefits of working out with free weights regularly. Does it look great? Sure. Yea. But more importantly, it means you're able to heft 50-100 lbs without too much trouble.

I came home and started the purging of the old bed, pulled out the 50 lb box of paper underneath it, deconstructed the old single bed and cleaned up. I'm starting to put together the new one, and I'm thinking, you know what? This being strong thing? This is really cool. It's cool that I can live in a house with another woman and we have absolutely no trouble keeping our shit together. I change all the light bulbs, cause I'm taller; I can heft the stuff that she has trouble with; she can grab the tail end of something to make it easier for us to move it around. We can make all the basic household stuff work. I can tie the trunk of the car closed when neccessary. I know about the wonders of WD-40 on everyday items. I know how to use tools.

We make our own money. We handle our own transportation. And we can heft around our own shit.

We were watching Vanity Fair last night, a good movie full of women freaking out about how they're going to marry, worrying about their reputations, freaking out about sex or lack thereof and not getting to hop about with whom they please. Watching other people throw them into poverty, watching them using their wits to get out of it.

And you know what, shit's not great right now, there's a lot of people who'd be happy if my place in this world was as constrained as theirs was, but for now, I'm enjoying this life; being me and free and strong and smart and capable. It's not often in history that women have been able to build lives for themselves without being *too* heavily stigmatized. And yea, I'm lucky; we live in a big city, so there's more freedom. I recognize the constraints.

But right here, right now, it's nice to be alive, and not too bad being female.

One of Life's Great Mysteries

How the hell Jenn and I fit a queen-sized bed into the back of her car.

Gotta love Ikea.

More later; women in sports, the annual pilgrimage to Planned Parenthood, & regular bitching.

Blog Down

Blog will be down for the rest of the week while I work through some stuff, do some housekeeping, get my shit together, etc.

I need a break from all things computer-related for awhile.

Women, Boxing

Women beating each other up. Blood and spit. Female aggression sold as objectification of women. In fact, women should just go back to being card girls only: holding up those "Round One" signs. At least then there's nobody freaking out about their place.

What do the women have to say about it?

Well, nobody's asking, of course.

This guy didn't seem particularly concerned with why women get interested in boxing, why women would want to know how to fight, or why they continue to fight in a sport that trys to sell many of them on looks before talent (Ah, a League of Their Own, anyone?).

Like most women's sports, women's boxing isn't taken seriously, women aren't encouraged to do it - much less get good at it - and they're sold as being freaks or sexual objects before athletes. Anna Kournikova, anyone?

Somebody's still making women tennis players wear ridiculous little skirts, and it has nothing to do with their ability to play the game... and women boxers aren't being encouraged to train or taken on by the best of trainers because it's seen as a sport even more ghettoized than its male counterpart.

Does that mean women shouldn't be "allowed" to particpate in boxing? I mean, if it's so scary to see women in sports, out goes the WNBA, women's soccer, and tennis - short skirts or not.

Cause women being strong is scary.

Of course, his argument here isn't with women's sport: he feels women are being cheated into thinking that they can "compete like the boys" when in fact, the sport is incredibly ghettoized for women. What interests me is that he doesn't seem to grasp just why so many women keep coming back to it. I don't know that it has as much to do with the Rocky movies as he might think.

The problem with women's boxing isn't that women are doing it - it's that women's sports aren't taken seriously, and this one's no exception. The fact that there's often more blood involves doesn't matter a wit.

Brutal women, indeed.

What the fuck was he expecting? Skinny blonds in tutus?

via Jeff

Zombie in a Winter Storm

The only problem with trying to sneak in extra time with Brendan while in NJ/NY is that I spend the rest of the next day utterly sleep-deprived.

Not that is wasn't worth it, mind you. I'm just not exactly functioning on a high level today.

Must go drink more coffee...

Much-Anticipated E-mail

Note from my NY/NJ "boss" to the project team:

"Office hours are at your discretion."

Basically, try and be here before 9am, and stick around until at least 4 or so, OK?

Oh, finally.

Snowing here, too.

Legos Do Escher

Neat.

via Alas

Trolling Through Blogs for Useless Trivia

It's Sunday. Looking for useless trivia that doesn't piss me off. Not finding much.

I think I'm going to go out and buy books today.

Decompression

This weekend has been reserved for much-needed decompression time. The problem with go-go-go nonstop is that I need down time in order to properly evaluate everything that's going on: to look at what's going on, re-evaluate what I want, and figure my shit out.

One of Jenn's buddies from California is over for the night, and I opened up the door to find a tall, blue-eyed guy in a suit staring back at me, and felt a startled jolt at the idea that ah, yes, this was the guy I'd been hearing about for the last five years, standing at my doorway... and I looked at him, and he looked at me, and sweet fuck, he's pretty. And damn, yes, he's currently single.

We all went out for dinner, and the plan after that was to go to the Hancock Tower for drinks and then go out to the Second City comedy club and have a night of it... but after dinner, when we came back to the place so Jenn could switch coats, I realized I really didn't want to go out on the town. I just wanted to be home. I leave for New Jersey again on Monday. All I want is this time, here, in my own bed, sleeping and mulling over everything that's going on. I haven't had enough downtime.

So I bowed out of the rest, and here I am, preparing for bed, trying to work some stuff out, wondering about life, about what I want, about how everything can fit together, wondering about... just, everything, and how it can all go spectacularly wrong and change you forever, for better or worse.

I wonder, sometimes, if relationships are just sort of like the rest of the things in my life... something I'm so afraid of, but need to come to grips with in order to live fully.

I've been told that vertigo is not, in fact, the fear of falling - it's your mind fighting your body's desire to fall. We have a tendancy to desire those jumps, those freefalls into space, and what we fight, the battle we wage, is desire against logic.

For some bridges, the big kind, the ones you jump off in order to die, these are good battles to fight: having some wit keeps you breathing. But for those more modest bridges, the ones, say 55 ft. tall with a freefall into water, well, those are more realistic bridges; the ones our mind might fear, but the sort of jump that will make us different, better, for having jumped it.

That's what I'm decompressing.

Good, Old Fashioned Romance

Everybody needs a little lovin'...



via Greg.

Ah, Chicago

Oh, I'm home....

Thai food, beer, soaking in the tub, decadent reading of multiple books...

Oh, yes. This is the good life.

You're In Trouble

Mosh just took me aside with the immortal words, "You're in trouble," and put me in a closed-door meeting with him.

Thoughts running through my head:

1) Somebody's been checking my internet time. I'm screwed.

2) Somebody found my blog

3) Somebody found out that I'm staying at the Grand Hyatt week after next

4) Hopefully, I'll be fired.

In fact, Mosh was totally being a smartass, and he'd brought me in to discuss my $1000 yearly bonus that just got deposited into my account. 40% is stock, 60% is cash, but all of the taxes come out of the cash, so I've only got an extra $221 in my account.

Not exactly a high-roller.

I was thanked for doing what I do (what do I do, exactly?) and thanked for my willingnes to travel, and told what an asset I was and blah blah and hope you'll be here many years to come and blah.

I swear, people can totally sense when you're completely fed up with your job and ready to jump ship.

The Pope

Gosh, sure is lucky he had the choice to have an elective surgery, huh? Sure is great that the Catholic church thinks going to the hospital for an elective surgery is OK, if it can potentially improve and lengthen your quality of life.

How thoughtful of them, to let him choose how he'd like to be cared for. I mean, could you imagine having the procedure in place that could potentially allow him to lead a better life, but him being unable to make that choice because his religion said that only God could play God and that humans had no right to interfere with the body's "natural" processes? Like, say, birth and death?

He sure is lucky to be a white man with choices. White men sure are lucky that way.

So Incredibly Illegal

This is just sooo incredibly illegal that I didn't even think it was worthy of bringing up: it's just so illegal. You just can't do it.

But that was when I lived in another country.

Why aren't they demanding the sexual health and histories of the men whose sperm instigated these pregnancies? Aren't promiscuous men equally suspect of being "sexual perverts" because they fucked around?

Oh, wait, I forgot: women are the sexual gatekeepers. Guys get a Get Out of Jail Free card.

This is fucking grotesque. It's a mockery of women, of the supposed "equality" of women, and it's a fucking smack in the face for every fucking woman who's fought to keep her body off the state chattle market.

Bull fucking shit. Bullshit. This isn't treating women like human beings. Watch yourself being put back into line, chiklits, one Kansas attorney general at a time.

I want a record of his sexual history, seeing as everybody's sexual history is now of the utmost importance to the State.

Fuck you, asshole.

Random Links

Alaskans make me proud... Check out the latest shuttle commander... Here's what happens when your parents get pissed off with what you write...

D.H. Lawrence gets taken to the mat:

It is hard to take Lawrence's preachings about 'phallic tenderness' seriously, other than as a reflection of the deep-rooted fears evoked by the first phase of the sexual and economic emancipation of women. He is the ultimate spokesman for a particular type of male personality, so defended against a devouring mother that he is crippled by fear of commitment.

And, Look! The Gays Are Taking Over the Phillipines, too! In the army, no less! All this gayness! All this marriage! Too much love and happiness and this world might just EXPLODE!

And, for your workday amusement... Practical Applications of the Philosopher's Stone. For Drunks.

All via Jenn. Cause lord knows I haven't had the time to find all of these myself...

Hotels Suck

I don't know that I can do this "living out of hotels" thing much longer; this is probably the loneliest state of existence, ever. Being nomadic is fun and great, and I've done that - but when I've done that and lived out of a backpack and enjoyed it, I enjoyed it because I didn't really have a home or a life at the time. I was really just doing the nomad thing. Now I've got an actual home and an actual life, and this is a killer.

This is seriously wacky. How do people do this? I mean, I know all of the guys have been married and divorced at least once (including Yellow, who's only 34); I guess you do this shit and have to give up everything else. And you know what? It's not a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Damn. I've got a lot of work to do this weekend to get the hell out of this job and figure out my shit.

Deja Vu

New Jersey. All next week. AGAIN. Weekend home.

NY city the next week, Mar 6-10th.

I knew things were bad when I arrived at the Hilton in Denver and thought, "Oh, I'm home."

This can't go on much longer.

She Won! She Won!

Amanda won the Koufax for Best New Blog!

Yay!

Thanks for voting!

Tipping Point

Well, had my expected little freakout at the Denver airport today. Made a beeline for Taco Bell, though I wasn't hungry, and ran into an obsessive desire to then eat a chocolate croissant and ice cream. About the time I got the ice cream, I was sick, and threw most of it away, but it was good little mini-binge the likes of which I haven't run into in a long time.

I've been reasonably good the last couple weeks; not eating great, but definately not binging. My workouts are sporadic, but they're getting done, and now.. and now...

I'm incredibly stressed out, I have too much going on, and I'm really fucking exhausted. I have no idea how the hell or if the hell I'm supposed to be doing whatever the hell I do at work, and I'm flying to New York again tomorrow morning, and all I want to do is be home and write books.

The reason I don't like the idea (for myself) of using drugs like, say, appetite suppressants or anti-depressants is that I think that when my body freaks out like this, it's trying to tell me something, and that something is usually, "You're unhappy. You're doing too much. You're losing sight of what you want. Slow down. Back off. Rethink."

A bunch of stuff has been going on all at once, and I haven't had the downtime to mull it all over and figure out what to do with it. I have such a huge, long list of shit (need to study for the LSATs, make my June test date appointment, gotta gotta gotta drop those two sizes [meaning continuing to eat right and exercising way more than all this traveling allows] if for no other reason than that there are far better clothes available in a 12 and I need to clean up my look, need to ask for a raise and/or dump this shit job [they'll squeeze until you say STOP], need to finish my fucking latest novel, need to get three more short stories in the mail [which will require, you know, *finishing* them first,] and etc. and more bullshit, and other bullshit and more...).

And it's a lot. I'm going to try and see if I can get away with only spending half of next week in NY, or a day in NY or whatever, as I've got a computer training class in downtown NY for Mar 7-9, and shit, I need some time at home. I need a life. This is getting fucking ridiculous.

And I know it. My body knows it. It's getting really pissed off at me.