May 19

A How-To Manual on Women

This is a quickie for the day. I attending a barbeque and don’t have much time. I love you cats, but someone is offering to feed me food cooked on an open flame. Food AND fire, that is a guaranteed good time.

So I am thinking about starting a new section on my site where I add helpful tips for men on how to survive the women in their lives. I have a unique perspective on this because of so many years being “one of the guys,” and I think it would be a great service to the world if I shared little pearls of wisdom with the less women savvy members of the male species.

Here are a few examples:

We aren’t like you. It doesn’t make us crazy or irrational, just different. If we can adjust our thinking to include you guys, you can do the same.

Tell us we are pretty, or some variation thereof. Always, everyday, especially if we look like we put effort into making ourselves pretty for you.

Don’t call your woman bro, dude, buddy, or anything else you might call your male friends. We serve different functions than your doods, and should be addressed differently. You don’t want us treating you like we would our bffs. Trust me.

Yes, we are going to over analyze everything, especially in the beginning. That is how women work. Yes, it will drive us insane. It is because we care. If we aren’t analyzing every little thing, then we don’t give a shit about you. If you are looking for a quick bang it is one thing, but if you want a relationship, it is good to have to reassure your woman. Suck it up and do it.

Don’t expect us to know what is going on with you, especially in the beginning. We can’t read your mind, anymore than you can read ours. If you are stressed out, you act funny. Many women will take that acting funny to mean there is something wrong. If you tell us it is work, family, your dog, or whatever, we will understand. It is much easier to explain that then to deal with hurt feeling and pissed offness.

That is what I have so far, and I need to go get dressed for my meat cooked over an open flame, and, you know, seeing my friends.

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May 17

I Believe

I believe that most normal people are good.

I believe our bad behaviors are taught and thrive on fear.

I believe in living balls-out like it all matters.

I believe that not trying/doing/loving/giving/being for fear of pain hurts someone more than failure and heartbreak.

I believe our basic goodness, if embraced, can overwhelm those without it. It can both fight things that are wrong and heal wounds.

I believe compassion and openness are more difficult, scarier, and more rewarding than selfishness and greed.

I believe it is far harder and scarier to love and accept than to hate and judge.

I believe the benefits from loving and accepting are well worth that work and fear.

I believe pragmatism can be a bullshit excuse to not stand up for what is right. Just because something has always been done a certain way or because everyone else always does it is an excuse to hide behind when it looks hard to stand up for something.

I believe we can change things for the better. I believe it is possible. All we have to do is make the decision to be better in small ways. Everyone has bravery and strength in them.

I believe most people are desperate for genuine human connection and to be loved for what they are. We are just afraid to seek it.

I believe so many things that are wrong with the world is taught. Our values are messed up. Our ideas of strength and weakness are askew. We can fix this. We just need to recognize that it needs to be done.

I believe faith in something is vital. I don’t mean we all need religion. I mean we need to believe in something, be it love, God, science, our families, something. Without faith, life  can become meaningless.

I believe there is a way to analyze why something is not for us without judgement. It takes introspection and thought. I fail at this quite a bit.

I believe failure is the least of things.

I believe we should seek balance and empathy.

I am going through one of my doubt phases. My dreams are screwing with me again, and I forgot for a little bit who I was and what I believe. I decided to list my beliefs and stare at them hard. I think they are good beliefs.

I need to just keep pushing and keep believing.

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May 15

I Got Nothing

How I aim to live my life

The past several days have been a complete loss for me. Ihave done stuff, but mosty, the stuff I did just interrupted the sleeps I had.

I got home from Tina’s house and turned into a cat. It has been sort of glorious. Hell, if I didn’t have to cook dinner after I wrote this, I would take another nap, because I fracking can.  I didn’t write Saturday because I wrote on Friday, and because I was busy with napping and the craziness of a three year old’s first dance recital. I amazed at how much work Tina put into making her daughter’s recital amazing. If I ever breed, my poor kids are going to be so neglected compared to that. I am not woman enough for that. Mostly, I just chilled with little dood, and he got me addicted to The Last Airbender. (I so needed something else geeky.)

So, I find myself without much to say. I wish people would stop yelling at each other on the internet, and take more time listening and less time judging. If I ever spawn a critter of my own, I am going to rename the internet into “Mommy’s Daily Dose of  New Ways I am Fucking Up My Children” machine.

Oh, speaking of mommies… My mom and I share a mad love of The Hunger Games and disgust for modern politics. We were discussing how politics weren’t news but more like a reality game show like “Survivor.” We ended up discussing what would have happened had the Republican Primaries had been decided in the arena like The Hunger Games.

Here is what we came up with:

Michele Bachmann, Mit Romney, and Newty Boy would have ganged up as the Career tributes.

Ron Paul would have ran out to chill in some trees and watch folk kill each other.

Herman Cain would be a deadly damn assassin, moving slowly and picking off the other candidates.

Rick Perry would have been Cain’s first victim. While Perry was busy fixing his hair talking to the cameras, Cain would have totally snuck up behind him and snapped his neck.

Rick Santorum would go off on his own. He would meet his end when he charged the Careers with a sword yelling jumbled scripture and took out Newt. Michele Bachmann and Romney would kill him promptly afterward.

Cain would try to set a trap for Romney and Bachmann. He would kill Romney but Bachmann would kill him by ripping out his jugular with her teeth.

Everyone would have forgotten about Ron Paul Flying around in the trees.  I can’t even imagine a showdown between Bachmann and Paul. I think it would be more likely that she would accidentally kill herself while trying to get to him in the trees, like accidentally gnaw a tree down on herself. That woman had crazy eyes. CRAZY EYES.

Okay, I think I am done offending everyone and getting myself on even more watch lists.

gnaw gnaw gnaw

 

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May 11

Hormones, Emotions, and Women

This morning at about 2 am, I posted the last blog making fun of a reaction I had to something last night.  I used a lot of hyperbole to highlight what I thought was so funny about it. My incredibly intelligent friend Amy (T) posted this comment in response:

“Every woman on earth knows the PMS Shame Spiral.”

I was going to call BS on this, but I do know PMS varies, and that there’s the more severe PMDD, so I looked it up: http://www.womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/premenstrual-syndrome.cfm

anywho, what I really want to call BS on (which you didn’t do or say, but many men do) and I take exception to is when others brush off your emotions because you’re “PMSing”. If I’ve been asking you for a month to do some agreed upon chore that’s your responsibility, and I finally get fed up with it when I’m about to start my period, it doesn’t change the fact that you should have done the fucking chore already! It makes me mad when men can say you’re just mad because of that, and try to get around the actual reason why you’re mad. Now, in your case, that’s not the situation, as Viking didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s completely understandable to be let down, sad, frustrated, angry, etc. for a canceled date. Anyone looking forward to something would be, regardless of period or gender status (especially the more effort one has put in to said event). Sorry Tina had to deal with your frustration, but you shouldn’t be down on yourself for having a reasonable emotion. (sorry about this comment being slightly off-topic, but that’s been boiling in me since one of your posts ages ago about PMSing and men calling the women out when they get emotional- which dodges the true reason why they’re upset).

I was typing up a response to her comment when I decided to continue the dialogue here since her comment was so good, and my response was massive. (Beware any further comments might be copied and posted because this is a topic that interests me.)

Here are two prevalent sides to the hormones and emotions conversation:

  1. All female reactions during her period are overreactions and, therefore, invalid.
  2. Hormones have no effect on a woman’s reactions.

Number one annoys the hell out of me, but number two is also false, at least in my case and of many women I have observed. I also think both stances can be harmful.

Normally, when I am overreacting to something because I am hormonal, I am reacting to something valid. The first side obliterates that and demeans my emotions. On the other hand, the extremity of the reaction is not the same as it would have been at another time.

I am naturally a passionate person. I willingly admit this. In fact, I think this is a great thing about myself. Like I said a few posts ago, I used to try really hard to stamp down any emotion I had, but now, I own that I have emotions, even ones that make my life more… interesting. Normally, though, my emotions do not result in fits. I am quickly able to assess and react to emotions, so I can pick a logical, rational way to handle them.

This ability to assess emotions is vital to handling my world. I am the only person who can control my reactions, and I am the only person responsible for my emotions. The people I let into my life are responsible for being considerate of my emotions and thinking of my feelings, but it is not their job to make me happy or any other emotion. When someone wrongs me and apologizes, they apologize for their behavior, not for my emotion. The overreaction I keep mentioning is when I get so caught up in my emotions that I skip the assessment step.

Saying my hormones have no bearing on my emotions keeps me from fully assessing my own emotions and taking proper responsibility for them.

No matter the age and gender, hormones affect us. The emotional response is there, just like the other symptom. I personally think the desire to deny the symptom is because the effect varies greatly and because we fear admitting any effect on behavior validates the highly dismissive attitude. It doesn’t.

I admit to my overreactions because I believe in taking responsibility for my own emotions. I think it is important to understand my reactions and figure out how to best understand them. I also feel like my willingness to admit when I am overreacting validates the times I do have extreme emotional responses. If I attempt not to be the little princess flying off the handle because the wrong person brought me my drink (I saw this happen) and take responsibility for my own emotions, when I can analyze my hurt or anger, and find it valid, I can stand by it.

 

 

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May 11

I Can Never Unsend That

The PMS Shame Spiral

A good illustration of my crazy

Every woman on earth knows the PMS Shame Spiral. We overreact or otherwise behave badly while we are pmsing, and, before we know it we are sucked into a vortex of crazy. We jump from one reaction to another knowing full well the entire time we are behaving irrationally, because our emotionally rational selves are banging on the glass walls of the hormone powered box they are trapped in. We can’t stop. We throw out our arms, dig in our nails, and lean back, but we continue bouncing from one reaction to another.

I’m not saying we are wrong to react. The biggest problem with the PMS Shame Spiral is normally the thing that sets it in motion is a viable thing to react to, but we see the magnitude of our reaction is askew. By the end of it we feel like such a big box of crazy that we can’t make heads or tails of it.

My Big Box of Crazy:

Wednesday night, I had one of the most incredible dates in the history of dating. I was supposed to have another one tonight (I haven’t slept yet so it is still Thursday), but the Viking had an emergency at work and had to cancel.

Sane, not on the first day of her period, Selina would have been really disappointed but still happy because she was with her BFF and going to have a great time. I would have understood that things like this happen all of the time, and work can be an asshole. I would have been sympathetic to him, and I would have recovered fabulously.

Unfortunately, this didn’t happen to that me, it happened to the whack ton of hormone crazy me. I was devastated and annoyed, because I had already shaved my legs.  Oh sweet mother, I pouted. I was flew into full force pouty princess mode. It was embarrassingly bad. Poor Tina. Me and her two year old threw the fits of the century. In my defense though, I just moped and sighed and acted emo, the kid threw stuff and screamed.

During the height of the pouting, I was being super insecure about something, and instead of thinking it through, I sent a terrible pouty text message. About ten minutes later, I realized I sent a jackass text message to the person dealing with a crap storm, and I couldn’t unsend it. So, I had to send another text message explain that I was a juicebag.

Yeah

Then I realized I had been pouting like a gorramn 2 year old and making Tina’s life miserable instead of realizing it could still be a great night. Tina had asked me for a favor earlier in the height of the emo fit, and I told her no without even thinking of it. This woman has done nothing but bend over backwards to be great, and I was too self involved to do one stupid thing. Even if I hadn’t been in the middle of a PMS Shame Spiral, I would have felt terrible when I realized what I did, but with the crazy filter broken all to shit, the Spiral deepened.

I spent the rest of the night apologizing and moaning about how bad of a friend I am. So, Tina, who has her own shit going on, had to deal with not only the pouting but also me freaking out and feeling guilty. Because she has the patience of a goddamn saint, she didnt smack me.

Then at midnight I was brushing my teeth, feeling like the biggest juice bag on the planet for being an emotional wreck, and it suddenly struck me what was happening. The fantastic thing about Tina is when I walked back into the other room and started with ‘So, this is why it is okay that I am crazy,’ she started laughing, and we made fun of how big of a nut job I am.

That silly, silly vagina tax.

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May 10

Simple

There is so much going on in the world and in my world. I know there are many many things I can write about. I can only think of one thing though. I am completely, gloriously happy.

I never want it to end.

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May 08

All Quiet

Tonight was my night with the second love of my life (my first love was, and always will be, Tom Selleck) Tina’s son. I’m babysitting in other words. I love my babies. I am a fantastic Tia, but I can never be as good as their moms.

Right now Caius is in a stained up wife beater and pajama bottoms that are about three inches too short for him, but he is fed, mostly clean, and asleep. We read some books, I put him in his crib, he screamed for awhile, and then silence. He could have escaped out the window for all I know. I never went to check in on him. If you see a tiny escapee red neck baby, he belongs to me.

I had about ten minutes of quiet. I almost never get ten full minutes of quiet. The baby was asleep, Tina and Sam were off gallivanting, and the television was off. At my house, the television never goes off, and it is always on full blast. Glorious quiet.

Now, that Tina and Sam are back, I am going back to circling into their whirly world. Their whirly world exhausts me because they wake up so early and play so hard, but somewhere in all of that crazy I find bits of me that I lose sometimes.

It is totally worth being worn out until sometime next week.

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May 05

Why The Simple Things Aren’t

Movie Poster from Where the Wild things Are

Movie Poster

Where the Wild Things Are is on ABC Family right now. I need to own that movie. I’ve thought so since I saw it in the theaters.

Aside from having an amazing sound track by one of my favorite female singers (Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), it is one of the most emotionally powerful, complex, and visually stunning movies I have ever seen. It was billed as a kid’s movie, but it has far more depth than what I ever expected. The movie is about growing up, learning about emotions, and understanding other people.

We are born with emotions, and it seems like they should be so simple to understand what they are and how they work, but it isn’t. Growing up we are bombarded by all of these feelings and reactions that we are simply not born equipped to deal with. We are given emotions but not the innate understanding of what they are and how to deal with them. As if that wasn’t complicated enough, we have to learn that others have emotions too, and we have to learn how to interact with those too.

Here is the thing: no one is the same, and every situation is different. Some of us are taught that emotion is dangerous, and we must hide them, or tightly control them. Sometimes we teach that there are acceptable emotions and unacceptable emotions.  For some reason, people think anger is more acceptable than hurt or scared, so we teach our children to be angry. We teach our kids that vulnerability is bad and should be avoided at all costs. We teach them that real adults armor themselves, and any visible emotional reactions outside of set parameters is wrong and weak.

I’m not saying this is wrong. I still don’t understand to this day how to find that balance between feeling and letting feeling control us. I started my adult life by locking things down tight. I had serious depressive issues and, if I didn’t lock emotions away, they would overwhelm me. I had to be cold to survive.  Even after that, I felt allowing too many emotions in made me vulnerable, and I feared vulnerability more than anything. The older I get, the more I understand my fear of being hurt and being locked down tight hurt me more than anything life had thrown at me. I realized that we survive pain if we allow ourselves to feel it and move through it naturally.

Now, as a grown ass woman, I am trying to navigate this amazing field of emotions, I didn’t figure out a way to deal with when I was younger. It feels like being crazy, but in the best way possible. I still have those old voices, though, telling myself to lock down any emotion and go forth. Those instincts to be a passive observer of my own emotions, to look at them with a clipboard full of notes, instead of feeling them, is still there. I still feel the shame at letting myself feel and not control. I just don’t know.

Which is healthier? Am I happier? I think I am. I feel batshit crazy sometimes, but when I feel happy, it is like when I am swimming under the water. I am hyper aware of every part of me and everything around me. When I am under the water, every sound counts more, I can feel my lungs, and the light through the water makes everything look different. It is a lot of emotion, and I am letting it effect my productivity. Should I lock it down?

I don’t know.

I also don’t know how we teach kids to understand what they are feeling and how to react in a healthy, productive way, without pulling from their emotions. How do you teach a child to see their anger is from being scared, and how to deal with the fear? I’ve known adults who couldn’t see the distinction, and let the anger reign. Can we tell kids that they will never fully understand emotions, but they have to try? I mean, that is the point of it, is trying to understand emotions as they come.  At what point do we stop putting all the emphasis on control and start trying to understand? I’m thirty, and I don’t know when I should control and when I should feel. I’m barely past the protecting myself against all pain part.

I just don’t know. The simple things rarely are simple. I’m not ready to quit trying to understand yet.

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May 03

Cracked.com, You Did It Again

Okay, I have a reason for not posting Tuesday, a really good reason actually. I had a strange and short bout of food poisoning Monday night and early Tuesday. At one point on Monday night, I was leaning on the bathroom wall crying and falling asleep. Sexy, I know. So I was asleep almost all of Tuesday day, until I realized I wasn’t going to die Tuesday evening. YaY for not dying.

I had no idea what I was going to write today until Sara linked a Cracked.com article. This one was as mortally offensive as the first one I wrote about, I don’t think anyway. I do have delayed rage reactions sometimes. It really did focus in somethings that have been floating in my head, but I have been hesitant to write about. Screw it, I talked about food poisoning, dating is far less icky.

four douchebags in a row

Unless I was dating one of these dudes. Dating these guys is ickier than food poison any day.

The idea of playing hard to get pisses me all the way off. I agree with Gladstone here on this.

You know what most of the precepts of modern dating pisses me the fuck off. I know, I know, I don’t have the success rating to warrant having any sort of viable opinion, but honestly, I am pretty okay with being single. I would rather live a battery powered love life than do a lot of the bullshit that goes with the dating dances. I’m not talking about shaving and high heels, I am talking about the games.

Dating for normal people is like urban-fucking-warfare. There are rules and tactics and weapons. Woman huddle together and have strategy meetings and try to figure out the psychology of the enemy (the guys they are dating).

Hard to get can kiss my ass. I know I am “blessed” with traits that make it hard for me in the romance department. I have an … impressive… stature. I am loud, opinionated, smart, funny, and apparently possess intimidating confidence. (My own father told me that my confidence intimidates people, after he asked me if I didn’t scare away the guy I am dating after the first date. I think he was joking about the scaring away part. Probably.) I have come to realize that these things are not always bonuses. So, what am I supposed to do?  Pretend I am not these things until a man is comfortable enough to “overlook” these qualities in me. Okay, yeah, fuck that.

I am flawed, crazy,emotional, and weird, but I am also amazing. If someone else can’t handle it, then they are not right for me. I am a bit of an expert on trying to fit myself into a shape that would work with someone not right for me, and I know it never works. I always end up losing bits of myself in the process.

I don’t believe in playing it cool. If I like someone, I want to be able to tell them. I’m not saying I think it is a good idea to gush to a man how much you want to have their babies after the first date. My guess is that emotion is something you should examine awhile before sharing, but if I feel a real connection with someone, I am going to tell them. I would want them to do the same with me. It helps calm insecurities that would be normal on both sides.

Also, societal pressure about sex is pissing me off. I don’t know how much men feel but women have it from all sides and it is crazy. We are bombarded with all of these messages from everywhere with what we do with our ladybits. If we give it up too soon, we are giving away a valuable chip, but if we don’t give it up quickly enough either the guy will get frustrated and go find an easier mark, or we are letting down our feminist sisters by caving to patriarchal chastity demands.

Straight up. Do what feels most comfortable to you. Fuck societal pressures. If you want to sleep with a guy on the first date, do it. If he thinks you are a slut, then he is a juice noodle that you don’t need. If people tell you that you are trading away a chip (Kathleen gave me this brilliant analogy, she has some amazing thoughts on this I wish she would write down and publish) and leaving him with nothing else to look forward to, then point out to them he can look forward to more sex with you.

I am on the other end of the spectrum, I am a snail’s pace sort of gal. I can’t separate sex from emotions, and I have always known any attempts to do so would just leave me hurt. I don’t think sex is dirty or wrong, I am just not interested in it without emotional attachments. This makes me a bit of a unicorn, but that is okay. Believe it or not, some of the strangest pressure against my attitude is from other women. I’m not moving at a snails pace for patriarchal ideas that my value lies in the lack of mileage on my lady garden or to hold a power over a man. I move at my own pace for my own reasons, and the only one who has any say is the man I am with.

Another part of the dating warfare is women analyze everything. We analyze EVERYTHING. This is part of a conversation I with the Viking I am dating (another Kathleen-ism) is men don’t think about things nearly as much as we do. We think ourselves into craziness. Good men say what they think and mean it, and if they are playing games, then they are assholes, and you can’t accommodate for assholes.

Women weigh everything. We turn conversations over and over like stones in our hands until they are worn smooth. We do this to other women unintentionally. A friend harmlessly asked me about the hug at the end of a date, trying to explain what three different hugs have been scientifically proven to mean, my brain imploded, and I panicked like a damn deer in the woods. She didn’t mean it to happen, like all of the other women in the world, but we, by nature, overload ourselves.

I made the decision that I am too damn old for worrying about all of this shit. I am not the urban dating warfare type, and most advice doesn’t apply to me. If I screw things up with the incredible Viking, I am screwing them up on my own terms. This way at least I know I blew them up by being me and not trying to be something else. Also, I might drive myself less crazy.

Yeah, I meant this to be a response to the article, mostly it ended up being a rant about dating.

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Apr 28

Is It Supposed To Do That?

So this is going to be a kinda short crappy post. I have important shit to do, you guys, important shit. Actually, I thought today’s post might slide, and it would have, if my freaking nail polish hadn’t have peeled all off and forced me to re-polish them at the last minute. That is how full of awesome I am.

I’m slathered with lotion typing like a dainty little flower. I am pretty sure instead of shaving off my leg hair, I just took the first few layers of skin off. I think the hair is still there though. /Shakefist.  Being a girl is strange business.

So I am going to post a funny picture for your viewing pleasure:

This is the exact opposite of how I feel right now, even with my irritation at my leg hair.

I am going to go finish working more on making myself as presentable as possible. Tuesday there will be a real post.

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