I need to get back to doing things that make me happy. I’m not on this planet to live for other people, and sometimes things aren’t always going to go the way the rest of the world wants.

I mean, I’m not going to go out and start robbing banks or anything, but I’m going to stop letting other people dictate what I’m feeling at any given time. I’ve got this habit of being too willing to bend over backwards for the sake of other people, but combine that with a wicked sense of justice and an abnormally short fuse for things that are just purely stupid and you’ve got someone who gets caught in the middle trying to fix everyone else’s problems until she can’t see a good way out for anyone, least of all herself, and then just goes off on all involved parties.

And frankly, I’m tired of being everyone else’s host-body right now. So here’s my new resolution.
People are not allowed to use me as an intermediary.
People are not allowed to tell me the same sob story more than twice.
People are not allowed to use things that are otherwise out of humanity’s control as a way of attempting to control me.
People are not allowed to leave emotions unvoiced and expect me to know what’s going on OR have any desire to fix it/give a damn.
People are not allowed to use material possessions as a source of power, emotionally or mentally.
People are not allowed to dredge up past events simply to pick fights.
True friends do not try to one-up the others, whether’s it’s for status, money, love, recognition, egomania or user tendencies.

So says the Teka. End transmission.

(And before any of y’all start getting all up in my grill about “I didn’t do that!” or “I didn’t mean it!” or any of that, I’m not targeting one or more person/groups of people specifically. I’m targeting where I see weaknesses in my ability to deal with life situations. Step off, it’s not all about you In the words of the immortal Eleanor Roosevelt: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” This is my list to myself of ways to refuse consent. )

I’ve been sitting around at home contemplating my life and not updating here, which is bogus, if you ask me.

First off: REAL JOBBITUDE. Yeah! I’m a Federal level GS6 now, working at the Capital Visitor Center in Visitor Services. Not, y’know, the ULTIMATE, but it’s a start. I’m climbing the ladder. If nothing else, I can learn to say “Ticket holders this way please” in numerous different languages. (anyone want to give me a phoenetic jump on that?)

This also means PAY RAISE, so I’ve been being a little stupider with money than I should be. I recognize that, and have pretty much stopped at this point. Yes, Mom, really.

Also, seeking out new music. I have one CD coming in the mail (see above,) but I’m looking for sort of folksy-rocky stuff in the style of Great Big Sea (who, by the way, are coming to DC this summer, and I need to get my tickets like yesterday. Same with Spring Awakening, coming in August.)

Finally, for today:
Happy Passover to my Moses followin’, pyramid buildin’ Egypt fleein’, Matzo eating Jewish friends.

Again, trying to cross-post to LJ from wordpress. As soon as this works, I’m migrating. Wonder if Sasky’s found anything to use multiple wordpress logins at once yet?

I’m attempting to see if this cross posts to LJ. It should, which should mean that the LJ world isn’t just getting a series of inane Twitter posts. Sure, those are fun and all, but not as fun as they should be.

Well, I’ve achieved DC, for what it’s worth. I’m on the second day of training to teach 35 some wiggly underappreciated high schoolers, and other than the gripping “OH DEAR GOD I KNOW SO LITTLE ABOUT GOVERNMENT” fear that keeps chasing me around in a room full of my poly-sci major co-workers, I have every faith that I can absolutely kill this job.

Until then, doing the reading homework and watching Bang Bang, You’re Dead again. (I always tell people it’s one of my most influential movies, and they always just figure it’s some wierd shoot-em-up thing. I need to come up with a better elevator statement than “It’s focused on the psychology of school shooters,” because then I just sound like some twisted wierdo. I need to start working on “It’s on bullying in schools and how REAL teacher involvement instead of lip service can have an impact on students that would otherwise be labeled “troubled” instead of “targeted”)

My father said something ridiculously profound to me tonight.

“Too bad the fact that you are not alone in your experiences in life are not apparent or communicable at the time you are experiencing them. It would make things so much easier to cope with.”

I just got finished watching the DVD of “Bang Bang, You’re Dead.” I don’t know if anyone’s heard of it-it became a pretty notorious problem-solving play after Thurston and Columbine, and it’s a free online download to read/perform.

It’s the first time in years a movie has hit me quite this hard. I’ve thought before to myself that there but for the grace of something went I, as Thurston and Columbine and all the other school shootings made the news. I’m not going to say I was any part of the Trenchcoat Mafia or that my parents abused me at home… and I think that’s why Bang Bang hit me so hard. It’s a normal kid, good student, suddenly starts getting terrorized by the “populars” at school, is an outcast without really knowing why, starts questioning who he is, what he’s doing and how in hell you’re supposed to get along in a place where they’re just trying to churn out citizens by the truckload.

That was me. Almost to a T.

Elementary school, fine, but as soon as we got to the materialistic Middles where it was what you wore and who you knew and the crap you had I was sunk.

And sadly enough, I think it was part of that outcast kid who came back to flaunt herself at Evergreen, when the prof claimed I made death threats against him. There, I don’t think it was so much a taunting as a not being able to find my place intellectually and having people like him refuse to understand.

On some level it’s the fact that I managed to come through all of it relatively unscathed that makes me think I need to be a teacher. If I can, as my father said, communicate to people at that age that they aren’t alone, whether they listen or not, at least there’s a voice there. I remember in middle school when I was in the lowest point having a teacher say “How can we help you?” and “It can’t be that bad.” I want to be the one to say “It’s that bad. It gets that bad. I have been in that bad a situation, but I managed it and so can you.”

I don’t know how I managed it, truthfully. I don’t know what beyond that I can tell a kid. I know that some part of me saw suicide as a cop out, and some other part of me realized that if I did ever kill people I might as well commit suicide for the amount of life I’d never get to have via the repercussions, and somehow that little catch22 was enough to stop me from ever acting out in a major way.
I don’t know if the kid would even listen, because god knows, even NOW I don’t want to listen when people tell me they’ve been there, but the shock of having someone say “It’s that bad” instead of “Just cheer up” seems like it might be change someone needs to open their eyes or be willing to take an offered hand for even a little while.

I want to change the world… I’m just waiting for the moment to come.

I am so VERY TIRED of having to fight the universe to look pretty. It took two days and an hour-long round trip to a different mall to find a suit, and then it took an hour of frustration and continued disgruntlement to find someone to clean up my hair… and for $30, if I had been able to take my eyes out and set them to the side so I could look at the back of my head, I’d have been able to do just as well, if not better.


I mean, curly haired truth. Most stylists have no idea what to do with curly hair unless they’ve been specially trained to deal with it. The lady that usually does mine cuts curl by curl, so that she can see how everything is falling, and she does it dry, so there’s no worry about shrinkage.


The first thing this stylist wanted to do? Wet me down. I managed to talk her out of that, but she still brushed all of my hair out, and then insisted on cutting it in all straight lines. If you cut curly hair like that, well, it’s just never going to be quite right.


I don’t understand WHY after living in this hair for 23 years, stylists want to discount what I can tell them about cutting it the best way possible. It’s not like I’m pulling it out of my ass… I WATCH how the stylist I like does it.


Between being a pants size that doesn’t exist and having a torso too short for normal jackets, I feel like the least I can ask is the ability to find a hairstylist that doesn’t butcher me. Even “ethnic” salons are out there in most good-sized cities, clearly marked, or connected within the community, but curly stylists are so hit or miss it’s ridiculous. It’s not like curls are rare, so why do I feel like such a minority?


And how come people never seem to believe that I LIKE my hair like this? Twice now, I’ve had women from the hair straightener kiosks in malls come at me and be like “Think how pretty your hair could be if we straightened it!”

Today, I finally just snapped at the goddamned saleswoman and asked her why she thought I was wearing my hair curly if I didn’t like it like that, before ripping into her about how she was just promoting the negative body image of any female who falls even remotely outside the status quo of what all the stupid beauty magazines want us to look like.
I think she might have actually gotten it, as she left me alone when I came the other way back down the mall-concourse.

And hooray to Pennsyltucky for not totally sucking for once. Maybe now the Palin Curse will fall off the Bears.

I just finished hand spinning ON A DROP SPINDLE a bazillion yards of bamboo singles that were supposed to become a pair of socks. Then, like the moron that I am, I took it off the niddy-noddy and promptly dropped it, where the cat decided it was a toy. By the time I got it back, it was more like a wad of bamboo singles.

At this point, I’m on day two of The Great Untangle, and it’s seriously crossed my mind just to make it the topper on some sort of demented hat. What a waste of some perfectly nice black and white bamboo.

And of course, the more I think about bamboo, the more I think about this:

auuuuuuuugh!

If you’re squeamish, turn back now.

As a lifeguard, I’ve dealt with a lot of icky stuff. A kid who smashed his foot open on the side of the pool doing a flip turn? Sure. A bleeding scalp wound? Sure. Someone puking/pooing all over the locker room? Sure, I’ll clean it. The big difference between those and a whole other level of ick? For those, you wear gloves. For the cleaning of the locker room/shower drains, generally we (okay, I) attack them barehanded.

I’ve seen my fair share of drain critters and most of them aren’t any scarier than a ridiculously large hairball with bandaids and soapscum in them. Gross, but never on a level of vomititious. However, once you leave the pool and go home, that’s where the scary drain critters live. While I was in a suite at The Evergreen State College, we had two bathrooms between five girls. No biggie, really, we shared pretty well, with only the occasional issue between who was in when. I tended to be the first up every day, even weekends, and as such, I’d be faced with whatever disaster the night before had left.

Okay, I’m hyperbolizing a little. It wasn’t even REALLY often a disaster, unless it was a weekend… and all students know how college weekends occasionally go.

But one day, I want to say it was a Saturday, I go into the bathroom, get ready for the shower, crank the water on, and then look down at the drain.

Bloody tampon.

I shit you not, bloody tampon sitting there in the drain staring back at me. I seriously considered just backing out slowly, grabbing all my stuff, and showering in the other bathroom, but some part of me realized that if I didn’t clean it up, the other four roommates would just let it sit there and fester indefinitely. After about a half minute of soul searching, I went for it, grabbing the bloody mess by the string and depositing it in the garbage can. Then I sterilized my hand with as much Soft Scrub as I could deal with.

Gross.

Cut to thisafternoon.

Our tub drain in the house of three girls has been backing up for the better part of a week, so yesterday I dug out the half-bottle of Liquid-Plumr I had, and hit it with that. Followed the instructions, everything seemed fine, whatever. I get in the shower thismorning, and it’s draining, but still not as fast as it had been.

Okay, whatever, I unscrew the stopper thing and pull it out and look in. The first thing that gets me is a big wad of ex-paper product. Ugh. I bare-hand it out onto the side of the tub, and it’s streaked with something that I take for rust. Okay, old house, par for the course. Then I go for what seems to be a big hairball caught around part of the drain assembly.

For the full effect of this next statement, please realize that I’m naked and soaking wet in the shower, crouching over a drain hole and poking at things.

The hairball, not so much a hairball. In fact, I’m naked and soaking wet and poking at a gigantic gelatinous blood clot that somehow survived the Liquid Plumr.

In a house of three girls, I can only assume this blood clot came from one place, as I’ve not been aware of any gaping wounds ’round here lately.

The question at this point: do I burn my hand off or just amputate?

When I went to Mystic a few weeks ago, I woke up on Sunday with what everyone seemed to think was a tick bite on my neck. Fast forward to now, two-ish weeks later, and I’m developing a head cold-sore throat, phlegm and all. Now, I happen to know that the allergen count here has been ridiculous for the past few days, and one of my housemates has a head cold currently. I’m not experiencing any other flu-like symptoms like chills or aches or anything, so at this point do i hedge my bets and believe that this is a friend-induced cold, or do I believe that I’m getting Lyme Disease? There’s just never a dull moment when you’re me.

Unless that is, you’re me in the middle of our last big roller derby bout. We played our area rival last Sunday… well, THEY played our area rival last sunday, as I was doing my best AHL callup impression and sat on the bench until the last jam, and then only got to play for :45.
I’m trying to not still be bitter, but the coach keeps saying that I have to earn my permanent spot on the big team and then pulling crap like that-how am I supposed to prove anything in :45? Even crappy hockey players get 4 or 5 shifts and 5 whole minutes to show that they’re worth keeping, and I have to cram it all into 45 seconds? Not to mention, i realized that it was the last jam and the only time I was going to be in, and felt the pressure of performing up to expectations in that coming in COMPLETELY COLD after sitting there for almost 60 minutes not doing anything.

I’m seriously considering just using my derby dues to learn how to play hockey and finding a beer league that’ll let me play instead, because at least I’ll get more than :45 of playing time.

In other news, I’m considering being Sara Palin for Halloween-I figure if I do the ugly Goodwill suit, a long brown wig done badly, bright red lipstick and carry a hockey stick I can probably sucker someone else into being my pregnant daughter.

That is, unless the internet can come up with something better.