Plus, you know, all the keggers

In the last few weeks, I've gone to:

• a lecture on emerging adulthood
• a workshop on rank and class in the workplace
• a dialogue with the legendary Vincent Harding
• a discussion on Native American mascots
• a discussion on how environmental disasters disproportionately impact the already underprivileged
• a health screening that checked my BMI, cholesterol, glucose, and blood pressure
• a lecture by Naomi Tutu (daughter of Desmond) on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
• a discussion on bullying and GLBTQ youth isolation
• a whole bunch of free meals

...all at my job. You?

Day 7 of my month of gratitude: I am thankful to work on a college campus — and in a college town.

Wonder full

Is there anything better than finding the new thing that goes in the "Funny ha ha" folder in your reader?

You know you may get bored with it in a few days, but right now, it's the funniest thing you've ever seen.

My two most recent:

• Damn You, Auto Correct!
• Our Valued Customers

Yours?

Day 6 of my month of gratitude: I'm thankful for the magic of new discoveries on the internets. God bless faddish snark.

My best pun was about a horse and carriage, and I couldn't pull it off

Sometimes, when I have a hard time thinking of what I'm thankful for, I ask a friend.

I know where you think I'm going. Yeah, yeah, friends are great, but we'll save that for another post.

Twice, my friend said "handsome butches."

And it was probably just because she is a handsome butch, but she's not wrong.

Side note: The only other suggestion she gave twice was "otters," but she was wrong there.

Day 5 of my month of gratitude: I am thankful for handsome butches and other gender outlaws, both those who enrich my life personally and those who just make the world better for all of us.

Protecting anonymity

Hey, Anonymous commenter on my last post.

I'm apparently bad at this.

But I know how it is. You know me in person and you're concerned, or you stumbled here from somewhere else and really hoped I'd keep it going, and then? Disappointment.

Thanks for keeping me honest.

Day 4 of my month of gratitude: I'm thankful for the folks who keep me honest, even when they don't want me to know who they are. This post is for you, as are the next six.

The cop-out post, already

As I mentioned in my last post, I missed Day 2. So today, you get a bonus to keep me on track.

Bonus Day of my month of gratitude: I am grateful for mulligans, for all those second chances I get without thinking about them.

Video killed the broken heart

The irony of my missing my second day of a month of gratitude is that I actually have a few post ideas stockpiled so I won't have any trouble doing one a day. Stockpile does not help with the remembering to just do it, though.

A friend of mine from college and so many experiences beyond college I don't know where he's a friend from anymore used to say that most of what people talk about is other people they know and television. We discussed why that was a lot, but the idea is, we're all looking for discussion topics in common, and if you don't have friends in common, you probably have TV people. Luckily, he and I had (and have) lots of people in common.

And then a podcast I listened to after my last difficult breakup — on the subject of handling breakups — suggested the TV series on DVDs as a strategy. The idea there is, you always have people you know waiting for you at home that way. You can watch Mary and Lou and Rhoda, or hang with Chandler and Monica and Joey and Rachel, or whatever. I took that to heart at the time, and it worked. In fact, in retrospect, TV series in syndication got me through every rough part of my childhood and adolescence — and although many people had much worse childhoods and adolescences than I did, I needed those friends from M*A*S*H and Welcome Back, Kotter and Happy Days. I really do gravitate to shows about circles of friends, not because I didn't (or don't) have friends of my own, but because there is comfort about a circle, a group, that you can call on when you want them. TV gets a lot of blame, and it probably deserves it, but we watch it for lots of reasons, and there's one of them.

Oh in case you were concerned, I just finished watching all of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That's what brings this to mind, rather than any fresh wounds. Don't worry.

Day 3 of my month of gratitude: I am grateful for TV. Blessed, blessed TV. Any suggestions for what I should be watching next?

k thx

It's not that I don't like blogging, you know. I love it. I love it more when you read what I write and tell me how funny and smart and awesome I am.

But sometimes, in life and on the blog, I get distracted, overwhelmed, unmotivated, for about a million reasons, almost none of them interesting. And then I don't do anything well.

But the cool kids are doing this month-of-gratitude thing. And I'm hoping that, if I post my gratitudes here, every day for a month, I will:

• Get back into the swing of blogging
• Get more motivated generally
• Get happier generally
• Be more deliberate about what I do and engage with
• Reengage you people, who I miss, a lot

Now, it's still me. I'm not sure I'm capable of a month of mushiness, even if it is warranted. So, with a little luck, I'll be able to be a little creative in the ways I express my thanks. Maybe there'll be:

• Photos, or bad drawings
• Funny stories at my expense
• Funny stories at others' expense
• Religion
• Politics
• Sex (OK, probably not.)
• Links to other places on the internet that are even more interesting than this one.
• Bulleted lists

I don't know. But I'm ready to give it a shot.

Day 1 of my month of gratitude: I'm grateful that I have this space, and that you — yes, you — are reading. And will be extra-grateful if you'll tell me what kind of stuff you want to read, this month and all the time.

In case we're not Facebook friends...

[bzzzzgrrrl] is spending this National Coming Out Day all the way out and happily queer, and encourages her LGBTQ friends to do the same. Straight allies, I will accept cocktails, dinner, and/or cash. (Or, you know, Flattrs.)

Life in a cliched hypothetical situation

Sometimes, in the mornings, I like to go for a walk or a run.

Sunday morning, I was out for a walk, and I found a wallet on the ground.

In it was:

• A barely-expired non-driver ID
• A bank card
• A little loose change

Since I live in a small town and had her address, it was easy to find the young woman who'd lost the wallet on Facebook. In fact, we have one mutual friend. I sent her a message:

[Name]-
I was walking on [my street] in [my town] this morning and found a wallet with your ID and bank card in it. How can I get it back to you?
Best,
[bzzzzgrrrl]

Three days later, she responded:

my phone # is [phone number] and i had $98 in there too. thank you so much, you're a life saver.

Followed semi-quickly by another message:

ive been struggling without my wallet and i assume someone took the money right? not you but some1 who saw it took the $ then ditched on [my street] i bet. That was all the $ i had until the 21st. and i jst learned that im pregnet so the timing sux but im greatful you at least found it. thank you from the bottom of my heart. i can meet you in keene, jst txt cuz i dont have $ for anymore mins. k hun thanx once again!!!!

So.

Obviously, I would have mentioned that there was cash if I'd found cash. I didn't.

Four things:

1. What kind of jackass takes $98 but leaves the wallet on the ground? Stupid litterers.
2. Should I be worried that she's going to assume I took the money, because, see #1 above?
3. What are the odds this is a scam of some kind, because, see #1 and #2 above?
4. Is it ridiculously cynical of me to even think of #3?
   

An epidemic

I haven't posted to Facebook yet about how my people die a lot lately, because I don't know how to do that in that few words. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Sinclair's post is an excellent place to start (Warning: the post is great, but the site and its advertising are NSFW).
If you don't want to click through after that warning: five boys in twenty days killed themselves after being bullied about being gay (which, as anyone who's been in a middle school or high school in the last forty years knows, may or may not mean they were actually gay).

I can't say much that others haven't said, but I also know that not all of my readers spend a whole lot of time reading the brilliant words of other GLBT folks online. You come here for the funny stories about your ordinary (if exceptionally clever and good-looking) friend's stories of life in the country. So I'm writing about this in case it means people will see it who wouldn't have otherwise.
Here's what I feel:

• So, so, so much sadness. So much grief, not just for five teenagers who have died in twenty days (as if that's not enough), but for the loss to my communities: for the shining lights they were while they lived and the brilliant suns they could have become: People who could have helped others survive torment, people who could have raised families, run for office, been extraordinary friends and activists and artists and scientists and clergy and and teachers and businesspeople and citizens and lovers. And hell, maybe they would have become horrible people. They still would have deserved to live.
  
• And all of the above? I also feel or so many other people who have died for the same reason whose deaths haven't made the news. People who were so scared of what could happen that death seemed better.

There are many solutions, and we should do them all.
Here's mine: Expose children to queers.
Openly.
All the kids need this: Potential bullies, potential targets, potential bystanders.

• Queers, we need to get over the fear of how society will react to our reaching out to kids, specifically. We need to be out, and we need to get to know as many kids as we can. We need to expose them to our lives and our friends' lives. We need to show them that we live lives both ordinary and radical, sometimes at the same time, and also sometimes not.
• Non-queers, you need to do all you can to ensure that children see that bullying is not acceptable, and that queerness is. I'll be your token, but I am not enough. Exposure to me is the barest tip of the iceberg. Also: Stop worrying about "how you'll explain." No one's asking you to teach a five-year-old about anal sex (though you'll probably want to do that around the same time you explain vaginal sex, incidentally, if you're serious about this normalizing, because to do otherwise suggests that you assume she or he will encounter straight sex before or to the exclusion of gay sex).
• Everyone, make sure the books and movies you choose for children incorporate a range of experiences. Let them fall in love with the gayest characters. Buy this stuff and ask that your library do the same. Money talks. If you buy it, they'll make more.
  

Dan Savage's It Gets Better project is a great place to start. Ellen Degeneres's video is a great start. But if the famous people are going to promise children that it will get better, all the rest of us need to make sure that it does.

UPDATE 10/1 at 4:22 p.m.: Six. I am trying not to cry at my desk at work.

In which the jaded spinster discusses marriage

So, you know, I'm single. And open to dating, if you know anyone.

But when it (infrequently) occurs to me to wish I were married, it is usually for one of the following two reasons (in order of how often it occurs to me):

1. I wish I had someone to help me move this heavy thing, or
2. I wish there were two incomes to cover these utilities.

Are there other advantages to marriage, you married people? Single people, are there other reasons you wish you were married?

I ask because the internet asked me...

OK, not the whole internet. Just Kristy. And now that I reread her post, she didn't even ask. But whatever. The post is written now.

What's in your purse?

My answer comes in two parts, because I don't carry a purse.

Part One: I do have a work bag that does double-duty as my gym bag, and it contains:

• Sweat shorts I've owned for one million years
• New long sports bra
• Sneakers
• Socks (white sport)
• Socks (black dress)
• Armadillo's burrito bonus card
• Mederma for the giant scar on my leg
• Cell phone charger
• Pencil (yellow, pink eraser)
• Trish reversible necklace
• Oz pendant slide
• Duchess ring
• Moonwalk ring
• Zen bracelet
• A toothbrush
• A San Francisco bike map and walking guide that I must have stolen from my cousin Laura in January and didn't know it until now — sorry, Laura.
• The program to Katya's Holiday Spectacular!, a drag show I attended in January
  
• A $50 voucher from Southwest
• Two jalapeños in a zippered baggie
• One quarter
• Two dimes
• One nickel
• Four pennies
• Keys to my office and house, on a whistle/compass/magnifying glass/thermometer keychain
• Business cards (lia sophia) in an elegant business card holder
• A to-do list from over a month ago
  
• My kitchen timer

Part Two: My rock-star friend and I were just discussing the other day what I'd do if I won the lottery, and what would be in my purse under those circumstances.

me: first i would buy all the jewelry in the whole catalog, even the stuff i didn't like, so people could see it
rock star: heh
me: i get a 70% discount, so that would come to about $6,000, i think
rock star: that'd be like the change in the bottom of your bag... dude
me: yup
if i had a bag
which i would, if i won the lottery
because $6000 wouldn't fit well in my jeans pocket
the way my current change does
rock star: or you'd have to get a really really tight belt to hold your pants up
me: unless i had it in $1000 bills
in which case it would take up the same space as the $6 i have there now
but cumberland farms would hassle me when i went to buy a diet coke
so, yeah
when i win the lottery, i'll get a purse and all the lia sophia jewelry
rock star: good plan

So, now I'm asking. What's in your purse or equivalent?

Flattry will get you everywhere

So, this Flattr thing.

Have you heard about it?

If not, and you're interested in a very cool, passionate explanation, with video, my friend Mike has that covered over here.

If you're just interested in a short explanation, it's a way for you to support the people who are responsible for the good stuff on the internet — without it costing you too much. And if you're one of the people who creates that good stuff on the internet, it's a way for you to start getting that support.

I think it's a good idea. I hope you'll join, so I can give you money when I like what you're doing, and other people can, too.

And obviously, if you like what I'm doing, I hope you'll hit my handy new Flattr button over there on the right.

Aw, hell. Now I need to write stuff people will like or find interesting. Soooooo out of practice.

What, you DON'T come here for the nail polish stories?

I had a pedicure yesterday. It was a fine pedicure, mostly, except that I kind of hate the color I chose. So, now what?


None of the options seems like something I would do, but I have to do one of 'em. Majority rules. If you have other suggestions, I will entertain them in the comments.

UPDATE 8/4/10: Someone got in just under the wire! When I checked yesterday, minutes before the poll closed, it was a three-way tie, so I went to get a polish change and planned an update about how you people were no help at all. Now I see that a late voter broke the tie for me. In the interest of keeping both the majority-rules spirit and the new color on my toenails, I have removed the polish from my fingernails and am letting them go naked.

Um, before I tell everybody what the big surprise is, would you like to tell me what you think the big surprise is?

Remember way back, when I told you the hilarious story of my rock star friend?

Well, she's back. And she is not the rock star of this story (OK, there is no rock star of this story), but it was too hilarious not to share with you, nonetheless. I heard it yesterday, and am still laughing about it 24 hours later.

me: tuesdays tend to be big meeting days
just got out of my fourth and last of the day
RS: ugh. that is a lot of meetings. we just had a weird forced surprise birthday celebration for 25 people. it's really ridiculous to try to surprise 25 people at the same time
me: ha!
yes
is that everyone who has a birthday in the summer?
RS: june and july
me: ah
RS: but it was totally silly. because several of us were told we had to some how get our boss, plus 5 colleagues up to a conference room 4 floors up on a floor we never go to
me: heh
how did you do it?
RS: we just told them what was happening and to pretend to be surprised. because we could NOT figure out how to do it and also it was a rescheduled surprise party from last month that they all knew about the first time
me: hee
RS: when we all got upstairs, the "surprisees" were herded into one room (with no explanation) while the surprisers went into another room. and then the surprisees filed in sloooowly about 3 minutes later as we said surprise 25 times.
me: omg
wowsa
RS: yes. it was like an episode of the office.

Train the trainer

I've been working out a little more lately. Yeah, I'm pretty awesome.

I started running about 6 weeks ago, and recently decided I needed to add some strength training to that. I am very gym-phobic, which is bad for someone who wants to add strength training. But I work at a college, which is good for the gym-phobic, because personal trainers cost $40 a semester.

My trainer is adorable. She's young and tiny. She dots her i's with circles. She wears sweatpants with things written on the butt. I try to get past these things, really, I do, because I know my dismissiveness is both harmful to the trainer-client relationship, and is also just a sign that the patriarchy is leaving its mark on me.

And yesterday, at our second session, I had gotten over them. We'd had a great workout; she's fun but also on top of things.

And she works in the evenings, which at a college gym in the summer is a boring time. Since she was bored, and since I irrationally love fitness tests, we decided to do a bunch of them yesterday. Including a skin-caliper test, which she was very excited about, because most people don't want to do them.

Afterward, we chatted about my body-fat percentage, and what a healthy percentage would be (25%), and what a really fit percentage would be, if I wanted to be more serious about my running (21-22%).

"But you don't want to go below 20%," she said. And I could hear her gearing up for the anorexia talk, which I was very pleased to hear her do, because I think that's just good responsible training. "Once you get to around 17%," she said, "you stop —"

And then she paused.

"I would normally talk about losing your period when your body fat gets too low," she said. "But at your age, I know, menopause..."

People?

I am 38 years old.

And yes, that makes me twice her age, literally. But come on.

The first MOREning,* in longhand notes, text messages, and random recollections

Yeah, I know it's Wednesday and the conference is over. I'll be on my way home before you know it. But I finally have a minute while my roommate gets dressed before we go out to the post office (and to stock up on cheese and beer) to type up my impressions of Monday morning.

Written in my notebook at the time:

Maybe a lot of conferences are like this.

If so, I don't go to them.

It is 8:25 in the morning and the environment is basically indistinguishable from a rock concert. People are excited, hollering at each other fromacross the stadium — did I say stadium? Yes, I did. We're in the US Cellular Arena.Music is blaring, wchich obviously means people are dancing.Chairs are filling in with 5,000 lia sophia advisors and managers (and a handful of guests). It is a frickin' party up in here.

Of course, it's not exactly like a rock concert.

Departures from the theme:

• Virtually the whole crowd is women, all ages, 18 to very old.
• If an outsider observed the scene, she or she might reasonably assume we are seated by outfit. We are actually sitting pretty much by management unit, and some units are very excited to dress alike, in rhinestoned jean jackets or t-shirts that say "Bling It On" or flashing pink glasses.

At some point, I put down the notebook and started texting a friend.

Me, 8:48: My new goal in life is to get you selling lia sophia so you can come to this conference. I don't know how to explain, but these are our people.
She, 8:51: I was JUST thinking about what it's like and envisioning you there.
Me, 8:54: It's 845 here and it is a f*cking rock concert. Loud music, dancing, screaming. We are waiting for the recognition part to begin.
Me, 8:55: And a lot of matching t-shirts. Working on the blog post already.
She, 8:55: Cheer camp flashback
Me, 8:56: If your cheer camp had 5000 people at it.
Me, 9:04: I will stop texting in a sec, but it has turned into a literal rock concert now. With a band.
Me, 11:06: The queen of advisor sales just got a cape, sash, and tiara. That should be you.

A couple random things I meant to include that somehow made it into none of the above:

• We also had, both mornings, "butterfly stories." These are women who come up and explain how lia sophia has entirely turned their lives around. As far as I can tell, they're supposed to make you cry. I did at the second, not at the first.
• The band in question was Maske electric string trio. They were terrific. There were pyrotechnics. Ooooooh, work conference.
• When my manager was named #2 in the country for recruiting (woo-hoo!), she did a cartwheel on stage. People thought that was awesome, but not weird. And that is a difference between this conference and most of the ones I go to.

*That's a little joke. MORE is the theme of conference, as in, "Motivation, Opportunity, Recognition, and Education." See how cute?

Just checking in

This day has been pretty much indescribable. Nonetheless, I do have a lengthy description written of at least our morning session. But I am tired and wounded (explanation also to come, if I'm not too embarrassed for it). So instead, you get this brief thought:

I would not have thought that all those lesbian dances would leave me so well-prepared for a lia sophia conference. But as it happens, I was the life of tonight's particular essentially all-women dance party, probably because I have been to a few and am unafraid to be one of the first on the floor.

Side note:

I do not believe I have mentioned here before one of my favorite hobbies. I love, love, love to be in the background of other people's photos. I have this secret hope that people will recognize me in the background of their friends' pictures.

I am never obtrusive, never ruin a picture. But if someone is taking a picture in a crowded public place, where there will already be people in the background, I will do my damnedest to be one of them.

One year, I went to Disney World and the Olympics, while living in the D.C. area. I was in heaven.

This conference should provide me some better than average opportunities.

Oh, like you don't have any little games you play through your life. I saw you, not stepping on the cracks. Tell us about it in the comments.

My new secret club

(I actually wrote this yesterday midday, but I'm trying to spread out the posting.)

I left home at 4:50 a.m.-ish, which was later than I'd hoped, but still, as it turned out, enough time for me to speed the Oldsmobile to the Manchester, NH, airport. And immediately, I started spotting women wearing the same jewelry I was wearing, the same jewelry I had in my bag, and the jewelry I had been dying to see in person but didn't own yet. Some of them were louder than others, making a big thing of it. I preferred the women like me, who smiled shyly in acknowledgment, but spoke only if we happened to be right next to each other in line. Manchester is not a large airport. It is, in fact, tiny, which is most of why it's desirable to me. And still, there were easily a dozen of us, heading from that airport to the lia sophia conference in Milwaukee.

I didn't sit with the other lia women on the plane.

And then, we got to Baltimore.

I am writing this on the plane from Baltimore to Milwaukee, and probably a quarter of my fellow passengers are fellow lia sophia advisors. That means there's more acknowledgment. At BWI, One woman rounded up as many of us as she could spot in lia sophia jewelry for a picture. I will be on some stranger's Facebook page tomorrow.

Seriously, it is like belonging to a gang with a secret sign. The closest I have ever come to vaguely bonding with so many strangers was when I was in Rotary (there's a story I should tell) and wore my lapel pin around. That would get me, usually, about one nod a day out of the thousands of strangers I'd walk past. I still have a Rotary credit card, and that sometimes gets me a "Really? You too?" from dinner companions I don't know well. But this? This quarter-planeful of new pals? This is brand new, and I'm barely out of Baltimore.