Why, why, why do I have to be the kind of person that can't just leave well-enough alone?

Why, why, why do I have to be the kind of person that falls in love at the drop of a fucken hat?

Why, why, why do I have to be the kind of woman that falls in love with men that don't or won't or can't reciprocate?

Why, why, why do I have to crave intimacy so goddamn much?

Seriously.

I suppose I don't actually *have* to be any of these things.

We are all infinitely malleable, and we can alter whatever we'd like to about ourselves if we are willing to work at it. Sometimes the work is hard, and long, and we want to give up and we do give up before we accomplish the change, but that doesn't the change was impossible, just that we were frail and weak.

Which is also human nature, but that's another story.

But I guess what it comes down to is this: despite seemingly endless heartache and hurt that are no one's fault but my own, despite conflicting imperatives from my body and my mind and my heart, I just really, really don't want to change.

Giving up the parts of myself that leave me vulnerable to falling in love, eager to know other people, desperate to be known, would mean giving up the last bits of innocence I've got. I really, truly believe that giving up the optimism and the idealism and the drive that make me so goddamn easy to hurt would leave me so jaded I'd never love anyone ever again. I'd end up dead to the world.

And I don't want to do that.

I don't want to do that because it's not fair to my daughter to leave her with two parents that are both so self-absorbed and hedonistic they can't care about anyone. She's already got one. He took that road; I can't follow. I can't do that to her.

So here I am, stuck between a rock and a hard place, feeling like I'm getting my heart stomped on and the only way I can think to stop it is to kill the damn thing myself.

And it's no one's fault but my own.

And if anyone is nice to me, I'm going to collapse in a puddle at their feet and cry and cry and not stop until I've drowned myself and then I'm going to love them.

So don't be nice to me.

I can't handle it.

I had an epiphany today.

I'm talking on the phone with this man, this man I've been on a date (or two? It's often so hard to tell) with, but haven't yet slept with.

And he lays on me this speech about talking it slow, and getting to know each other before we become intimate. About how he doesn't really know me.

And that he's also sort of, maybe, kind of dating another woman, too.

He is quick to assure me he hasn't slept with her, either.

My first reaction is actually a kind of gut-wrenching dread. I've never, ever been chosen over someone else, not in my entire life. This is my insecurity.

My second reaction is indignation. Why is telling me this? Is this supposed to make whatever he does ok? This is my feminism.

And my third reaction is, "Why on earth am I at all concerned about whether he'll pick me?" This is my epiphany.

Why on earth am I concerned whether he'll want me?

I haven't really decided if I want to pick him.

I don't know him that well, either. I don't know what he believes, or where his politics lie. I don't know if will be disgusted by the fact I spend most of my summer running around barefoot, and that I have to slather myself in sunscreen to be outside for longer than an hour.

I don't know if he cuts his toenails in bed, or refuses to wash dishes.

I don't know how he feels about children.

These are all important things. Some of them are actually monumentally important.

And here I am worrying solely over what he thinks of me.

I really am a pleaser.

And this is not a good thing.

I vowed years ago that I would never again sublimate my identity to someone else's whim, but I have done it over, and over, and over again. I have done it repeatedly and without a second thought. I have not actually learned from my mistakes, as painful as they were. I have not remembered the lessons.

I am, at heart, a silly romantic girl that wants nothing more than True Love. Capital T, Capital L. I have never outgrown that fairy-tale stage of emotional development. And quite frankly, I don't want to. I don't want to give up on that dream. I don't want to develop skin so thick it can't feel when someone touches it or a heart so guarded I can't get out of myself.

I don't want to be bitter. I don't want to be alone. I don't want to give up on the human race as a whole, and it seems to me that giving up on love is the first step on that treacherously slippery road.

But maybe, just maybe, I don't have to.

It must be possible to remain open, without grasping at whatever is put in front of you. It must be possible to love, and still choose to bestow that love where it is wanted and appreciated.

So this is my task then.

This time, I choose.

FoodInc.

Everyone should go see this movie. Run, do not walk, to the nearest theater, and watch it. It's short (only an hour and a half) but well, well-worth the price of admission.

For those of you not hip enough to work for natural and organic food retailers or otherwise inclined to know anything at all about the American food supply business, FoodInc. is a rather disgusting look at the ways we produce food in this country, and all the things that are wrong with that process.






Up front, I will say (because I am a natural skeptic) that I am not convinced that 100% of everything presented in this movie is true. Like other documentaries of recent years (say, everything every done by Michael Moore) I'm sure the filmmakers cherry-picked the footage that made it to the finished version, and that means that the finished version is probably decidedly one-sided.

Still, there are some gems of facts in there.

For example, did you know that there are only 12 slaughterhouse/meatpacking plants left in the country? TWELVE. Forty years ago, there were thousands.

The Smithfield meat packing plant is operated almost exclusively by illegal immigrants... but no more than 15 a day are picked up by immigration officials.

Junk food is cheap on the shelf, because we subsidize the hell out of corn and soybeans. So it isn't actually cheap.

There are fish farms out there that are trying to teach fish to eat corn. Why? Corn is cheap.

Trying to food cows corn is what has produced such lovely fuzzy things as hemorrhagic e.coli backeria.

I told you it was scary.

However, it also got me thinking about a few things, tangentially.

For example, so many people I know say they don't bother to pay for "organic" food because the label is meaningless. That's actually completely false. "Organic" as a food label is very, very strictly monitored by the FDA. In a nutshell, foods labeled organic must be from non-genetically modified seeds that have been grown in fields that have been free of chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers for at least three years. Meat labeled organic must be from animals that have not been genetically modified and that have been fed food that could be sold to consumers as organic under FDA guidelines, and cannot have been exposed to synthetic hormones or antibiotics.

I think that most people think that the organic label is meaningless because they have a romantic vision for organic farms that is very similar to the romantic vision of conventional farms- individual farmers using common-sense, sustainable practices to produce good food without the addition of all the technology that is available to agribusiness farms.




But farming practices are not regulated by the FDA, and quite frankly shouldn't be. Furthermore, organic certification for a farm is expensive. For the kind of small farmer that we envision, it is prohibitively expensive. And it's a yearly expenditure- you have to renew certification every year.

This means that the only people who can afford organic certification, and thus sell their food as organic, are the same kind of large-scale, disgustingly unsustainable agribusiness farms that produce conventional food. It's trucked around the country and around the world before it makes it to your supermarket and then your dinner table.

And so people think the label is meaningless.

It's not meaningless, it just doesn't mean what many people think it ought to mean in their pink-rose-colored-world.

If you really want good food grown well, you should be buying direct from farmers that you can see and talk to and visit. Go to farmer's markets. Sign up for a community supported agriculture share. Can and preserve what you can't eat fresh so that you have food all year round.

It's really that simple.

You don't get to have the wholesomeness we've lost in our food supply and retain the convenience that it's been replaced with. You have to pick one or the other.

Which would you rather have?

Men are from Mars...

There is no space travel here, FYI.

So recently, the Manfriend informed me that one of his friends (not a good friend, but an old one) is getting married later in the summer and that he assumed I wouldn't want to go and that he's taking his mother as his date.

That's actually a very truncated snapshot of the whole picture.

He assumed I wouldn't want to go because his ex is standing up in the wedding, and she and I (or rather, her sister and I?) have already had one completely bizarre and moderately unpleasant run-in in recent months. Looking back, the whole thing makes even less sense than it did at the time. I ran into the two of them at a baby store, and the sister threatened to "punch that bitch in the face." She was looking at me when she said it; I assumed she was talking about me. But, the ex is happily married to another man and has (a really rather adorable) baby boy, so I don't know why any of them would care that I'm dating the Manfriend.

No sense, I'm telling you.

Maybe she wasn't talking to me. Even though she was looking at me.

Anyway, there was this incident a few months ago, so he assumed I wouldn't want to go to a wedding that his ex would be at.

I don't think he should have assumed that.

And if he doesn't want me to be at an event she's at, why doesn't he just say that, instead of couching it in pseudo-considerate and mildly condescending terms?

On the other hand, his mother has known the groom for upwards of 20 years, and didn't actually get her own invitation to the wedding, so maybe he just wanted to take her to be nice to her.

But if that's the case, why not just say that?

And furthermore, I was supposed to attend another friend's wedding with him previously, but he backed out of that one, too.

Which leaves me with this icky idea at the back of my head that I'm like the red-headed-step-child of girlfriends and he's hiding me. I don't think there's anything so wrong with me that I need to be sheltered away from polite society. Really, I'm nothing to be ashamed of. I have the requisite number of limbs and brain cells.

So I'm curious about the full reasoning behind the decision-making process, both assuming I wouldn't want to attend and immediately inviting his mother to be his date.

But I've been informed by several (male) friends that doing so would be "cling" or "controlling" and that I should "pick my battles." I'm not trying to fight a battle. I'm curious. And he is perfectly welcome to go without me, but I would really like to know the why. And have it explained to me.

My female friends tell me to just ask, because there's no harm in satisfying curiousity.

Is this a gender thing? Should I ask, or should I bite my tongue? And if I do inquire, how do I go about it in such a way as to make it clear I'm not picking a fight, not demanding he take me with him, not being clingy or controlling?

Creative juices.

Creativity is a finite resource. Or, at the very least, my creativity is a finite resource. It runs dry. I have none left.

Or, at least, I have none left for blogging. My creativity is being spent in various other pursuits at the moment. I'm decorating a room. Also plotting an installation piece for a hallway. Also helping my mother with her decorating projects. Also helping my father completely remodel a bathroom.

And then there's the baby, who requires ever-more-creative entertainment with each passing day. I swear to god, she gets bored of things more quickly than I do. A thing will engross her completely and utterly for an hour, a day, sometimes a week, but then its over, and something else must be found.

On that note, the current entertainment is walking the block. We must have made 50 trips up and down yesterday. My leg muscles are so fatigued they quiver when I stand.

Dodging the family's questions about the Manfriend is requiring more and more creativity as time goes on, too.

And then there's this fundraiser/clothes swap that I've been designated the organizer for. Does anyone have any creative ideas on where to get 25 or so clothing racks that doesn't involve the outlay of any money?

I think that the difference between an artist and a hobbyist is how the creative juices flow. Hobbyists are like me. There's a finite well, and it can only be routed into so many channels before all of them end up dry. Artists, on the other hand, feed on their own creative energies. The expending of those energies generates more energy which can be used to feed more channels and it just keeps multiplying and multiplying, and never runs dry completely. This branch or that branch might wither away, but the tree as a whole remains healthy and flourishing.

(Did I mix enough metaphors there? Trees, rivers, brain conduits. I could probaby have used a fourth if I weren't so burned out.)

It's kind of depressing to realize one is just a hobbyist.

Then again, I work with spreadsheets all day, keeping books and balancing bank accounts. It shouldn't really come as a surprise to me that I'm not actually an artist.

Big City, Little City

So, despite a metro area population of somewhere around 1.5 million, Milwaukee is really a very little town.

VERY LITTLE.

Case in point.

Facebook.

Yesterday, there was a flurry of activity on Facebook. Since the number of my friends on said interface would not populate a football team, much less a third world country, this is a rare occurrence. But yesterday, there was a lot of activity. My BlackBerry was blowing up, as they say. Probably without that "g" on the end.

Blowin' up?

Still not right.

Moving on.

There was a lot of activity. Posting, commenting, planning, all that stuff that people who hate the phone (like me) really love this social networking shit for.

And then, I get this comment notification.

Now, if you've ever tried to use the full functionality of Facebook on a mobile device, you know that it doesn't always translate. Sometimes links don't take you to the right place, and you're left wondering what exactly someone else is commenting on, because it just doesn't quite make sense. This was one of those moments. I scratched my head for awhile before getting to a full-fledged computing device.

But that's not the point.

The point is that a friend of a friend saw a comment I had made on the wall of our mutual friend, and followed up with something to the effect of "We work together, I think, even though we only ever speak on the phone." (I'm paraphrasing like mad. The exact comment would reveal personal information I'm just not ready to share with you people yet.)

But that's still not the point! Everyone knows that coworkers will eventually find you on Facebook, and then you have to decide what to do- accept the requests and set their group permissions so that they can't actually see any part of your profile, or just ignore them.

The point is, that this chick is dating this kid I went to middle school with who subsequently became really good friends with one of my coworkers at the job before this one.

Yeah.

It's like six degrees of Kevin Bacon up in here.

And since Mark Metcalf lives in Milwaukee and I've met him, all of these people can actually be connected to Kevin Bacon in six degrees or less.

Not the point. But funny nonetheless.

It just floors me that there is so much interconnectedness in this city I live in. Every once in awhile when something ridiculously over-the-top like this happens, I have to just sit back and marvel at the human condition. We are such social beings, despite our violent tendencies and our power struggles and our egos. We're social, under it all.

Also, it makes me go ick when I think about the fact the bulk of the people I have slept with in my life are Milwaukeeans. I could probably do a six-degrees thing and get myself to having had intimate contact with about half the 1.5 million inhabitants of this town.

Ew. If the Manfriend and I don't work out, I think I may have to only date people who live 100 miles or more away.

Paralysis.

My younger cousin (I was incredibly tempted to refer to her as my "little" cousin, but she towers over me by at least six inches these days) recently graduated from design school. She has a summer internship in London that lasts three weeks; she leaves on Thursday.

I spoke to her on Sunday, during my drive back up from Indianapolis. She offered to play sleuth for me, to try and ferret out the baby daddy's status (live vs. dead) and possibly even his whereabouts.

I find myself paralyzed with indecision.

On the one hand, there's "God yes, do whatever you can, find out what the hell happened, absolve me of this burden."

On the other hand, there's "This is not your responsibility and you should be focusing on your own shit while you're there."

On the one hand, there's "Who the fuck was he and why did he do this to me?"

On the other hand, there's "Do I really want to let someone else in on the depth of my shame and the completeness of my goddamn stupidity?"

On the one hand, there's "A child deserves to know everything she can about both of her parents, even absent ones."

On the other hand, there's "What is knowing anything going to do for her? He obviously doesn't care to be involved with her at all."

I find myself, in other words, completely paralyzed with the worst kind of indecision. This is not indecision by apathy or ambivalence; no, this is indecision by seeing too far in conflicting directions. I both want to know, and don't want to know. I both want to share this with someone, and don't want anyone else to really know any of the details. I both want to share with my daughter something about her father and don't want his narcissism touching her in any way whatsoever.

In the end, this is one of those situations where indecision is itself a decision. If I don't tell her anything, she can't play sleuth, and nothing will be discovered. I realize this.

I suspect the overriding factor in my decision to remain indecisive is a combination of ego and altruism. I don't want her to know how stupid I was, and I also don't want her to have anything less than a glowing experience on this opportunity. Her trip should be for her, not for me.

So another year will go by, and maybe on down the road I'll see my way to how to find out. Right now, I don't even know where to tell someone else to start looking.

Playing Hooky.

So... the Manfriend and I had a date on Sunday night. We spent Friday night out with other people. And I am going to be out of town all next weekend.

So we made a date.

Then there were technological issues.

And I couldn't get ahold of him. Because his phone battery wasn't in properly.

And he couldn't hear me knocking on his front door. Because he was in his attic bedroom.

And the dog didn't bark. Probably because the dog knows who I am.

It was a bad night. And there was no date. But I'm still going to be out of town all weekend.

You see, despite my advancing years and supposed emotional maturity, I don't deal with disappointment well. It makes me angry. I get all tensed up, I grind my teeth, my stomach ties itself in knots and then sinks into a pit of its own making. Kind of like a black-hole in my intestinal regional.

And I usually I get all tight in the throat and there are prickles in my eyes.

I'm really a very emotional person. Really.

Disappointments, especially ones in which there is no blame to be assigned, make me unbelievably nervous. I believe in an anthropomorphized Universe, you see, a Universe that acts and thinks and feels and attempts to push me onto paths that it thinks I should travel. Disappointments with no obvious source of blame are the work of this anthropomorphized Universe.

Why does the Universe not want me to get any?

WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE HATE ME?

I have decided that the Universe was instead offering me an opportunity to do what he and I have not done in this latest round of dating: spend time together in daylight.

So tomorrow, I am going to take advantage of all of this luxurious paid personal leave I have with my grown up job with grown up benefits, and I am going to play hooky.

This is what grown ups do with their sick time, right? I mean... they don't actually save it for when they're sick? Do they?

Intimacy.

I have discovered that, despite my long record of thinking (and claiming) the contrary, I have intimacy issues. There are things I will not discuss, not in any personal sense, not when it matters, not when it's important that they be discussed. This reticence stems from a fear of opening up. It's a fear of rejection and of judgment and of being poked and prodded in soft places that just won't stand up to long and/or intense scrutiny.

I have been able to avoid this realization for the previous 25 years of my life because I can be what others describe as a very open person. I will talk about a whole range of things that most people don't discuss in public. But I will discuss them in the most academic, intellectual, abstract terms. My "self" (such as it is) is never involved in these conversations, just my brain. This is evidenced by the very language I use, the terms, the connections, the dime-store psychology that is injected in pretty much every conversation I have that touches on matters personal. I strive to remain unemotional, objective, viewing a subject or a problem from all sides, empathizing with any point of view presented to me.

Of course, of course, this doesn't always work, but compared to the emotional tumult that constantly rages through my head, down my spinal cord, and seeps into every molecule of my being, right on down to the marrow in my bones, I'm the picture of serene calm.

(I think this might be somehow responsible for why I am such a sap, why I cry at movies with even an iota of emotional resonance, why beautiful music and lyrics make my throat tight and my eyes burn.)

In simple terms, then, my penchant for abstraction is an emotional defense mechanism.

And this is why, despite all my sharing and seeming forthrightness, I have intimacy issues.

I don't tell anyone my fantasies. I don't tell anyone my dreams. I don't tell anyone about my heartaches. I don't tell anyone about the moments in which I'm overcome with joy, either. I don't tell anyone, not even the people responsible for those joys, those heartaches; not even the people who inspire the dreams and the fantasies. I don't tell anyone about my beliefs, the things I feel in my soul when I see new leaves on trees and sunrises and all those other wonderous, every-day occurences that can't but leave one with a sense of awe at the absolute perfection and beauty and complexity that is creation.

I'll talk about sex, but only with people that I'm not having any with. I'll talk about God, but only in the abstract, only in the broadest and dryest of terms. I'll talk about love, but only with my head, never ever with my heart.

One of these days, I'll have to take the plunge, and break the hermetic seal on my emotional life. One of these days, I'll have to let someone in.

What's in a name?

So this morning at work, some chick called because she didn't understand why her debit card had been charged upwards of $60 when she only bought a bottle of water and some cookies and maybe some sushi.

Of course, this shit gets forwarded to me, so I start digging into it, and as I'm wading through receipts, trying to find the one for her transaction, I start looking at the names. Apparently, both Colin Powell and Robert Smith shopped at the Capitol Drive store on Saturday morning. Also, they were checked out by the same cashier about 15 minutes apart.

That must have been some morning.

But in addition to Mr. Powell and Mr. Smith, I came across some names that just made me giggle.

"Mohammad Dehbod." Oh yeah, that prophet had a hot body!

"Mark Music." Um, really? This guy must be in a band. A bad pop band. For eight-year-olds.

"Michelle A. Everage." This is just cruel. I hope she's actually a very exceptional human being.

"Algeria Peoples." My peeps be from Algeria, yo.

"Suzie Hammer." I don't actually know why this one makes me giggle, but it really, really does.

What's the funniest real name you've ever come across?

Battlestar Galactica and the Idealized Gender-Bending of R&D

Most people that know me, know that I am a big nerd. Like, a really big nerd. Part of the manifestation of that nerdiness is my deep and abiding love for the SciFi network (and I will refuse to call it SyFy for the duration of my life), for science fiction in general, and for Battlestar Galactica in particular.

This show was the best show on television.

I am not kidding. Or exaggerating. At all.

One of the many, many reasons that BSG was such a stellar example of what television can be when done correctly is it presented a vision of gender relations that, while idealized in that it was better than what we've got now, was still realistic and believable. You watched it and thought that we *could* get to this point, that it was possible. You watched it and thought, "This is the way it should be, warts and all."

Because there were warts. Human nature being what it is, there will always, always be ugly spots. And Battlestar Galactica acknowledged that.




Exhibit A: Coed Barracks.


Ah, yes. The Coed Barracks. Nothing says "gender equality" like stripping down and sleeping in a room with 20 other people, of both genders. Nothing gets you more used to the idea of the opposite sex as your equal than sharing a bathroom with them. I know. I went to a college that had nothing but coed dorms. With coed bathrooms.

When no one bats an eyelash over bodies like that, you know you're onto something. Sexual politics is the arguably the largest single obstacle to true gender equality. We are always sizing up anyone of the opposite sex that we meet; we are always thinking about them in sexual terms, and this prevents us from seeing them as human.

Also, it's pretty obvious that living with someone decreases this propensity towards viewing another as a sexual object- just think about all those failed marriages. And sexless marriages.

Exhibit B: The Coed Boxing Match

And then there's this. Men and women, equally pummeling the shit out of each other. A girl can take her hits, and dish them out, too. And she wins as often as she loses. (Actually, in Starbuck's case, she wins way more often than she loses, but we're going with generalities here.)

When two people of the opposite gender can beat the living shit out of each other, you know gender equality has been achieved. The End.

But, on the flip side, there were examples of gender relations that the producers opted not to bend. For example, the only Cylon prisoners that endured rape as an interrogation tactic were female models.

It was also only the female characters in the show that used sexual manipulation- from Six to Ellen. None of the male characters ever did, not even Baltar, who was the ultimate manwhore of television. He was manipulated by sex, but he never used it to manipulate.

So it was ugly. But it was still better than where we're at.

I guess this is growing up?

S0 apparently I can no longer hold my liquor.

I was never one of those tough chicks that can drink the rugby team under the table, but I had a very good sense of my limits (learned largely in one night in which gallons of rum were consumed) and I could pace myself well and in general keep up with most normal people at the bar. Or the party. Or the park. Where ever.

No longer.

Because oh-my-fucking-god was I hungover yesterday morning. Actually, I was hungover the night before whilst still drunk. I was in bed by 1:00 am, after having puked twice. Once nothing but water.

Then I got up and did Mother's Day with my mom and my dad and my daughter. Then I gave the baby to my mom and said, "You guys go to church, I won't make it through Mass." And went upstairs and puked again (coffee and cinnamon rolls are actually not the most unpleasant things to vomit, by the way) and then slept for another three hours.

Then I woke up and I was fine.

Went to MAM with my mom and the baby. We saw a lovely exhibit of portraits of teenagers. We wandered the regular collection. We chatted, we drank coffee.

Lovely afternoon.

I wonder somewhere in the back of my head if I wasn't trying to sabotage my very first mother's day. I'm still a little ambivalent about the whole "motherhood" thing, even if I do love the Snugglebug. Because I do love her. She's wonderful and amazing and the most interesting, littlest person.

But I will own that I am not sure how feel about myself as "mother." I'm not a mommy. I'm not a mama. I'm not a mother. I'm not really all that maternal. I'm too analytical for maternity.

But I still love her. And she's still amazing. So all I have to do is try really, really hard not to screw her up.

Right?

Repudiation.

I believe words have power. That in itself is a long, long thought process.

But I believe words have power. However, for me, this power is only potent when the words are said. They have to be out there, in the world, floating in the collective unconscious. They can't just be kicking around in my head. They can't just be in my unconscious.

Words in my head aren't yet words, you see. Words in my head are only thoughts. They are only the first stirrings of an idea, an action, a plan. To be put down, said out loud or committed to text is a sort of birthing process for the idea embedded in the words. Only after birth is the thought, the emotion, the idea REAL.

So sometimes I say things I don't mean. I attempt to only put forth the words that I can stand behind, but sometimes, an idea has to be tried out, to find out if it's true or false, real or imagined, good or bad.

Because something is only real after it's said. And in my head, I can't know how wrong something is. In my head, chasing around my own brain, I can convince myself of anything. I could convince myself the sky is orange if I really wanted to, if I did it all in my head. If I never said anything out loud.

Those things that turn out to be wrong, imagined, bad- they are the things I regret saying.

And I've said a few such things.

But I can know that they're wrong. I can know that I've moved forward from them, beyond them, to a better realm where I'm a better person and things are better.

I've moved forward. I won't go back. Not that I couldn't, but that I would not. I don't want what's back there anymore; I want what's in front of me. I want to keep moving forward.

Metaphors.

So my good friend tells me that when you've got the time and energy to come up with extended metaphors for the relationships in your life, it's pretty much a sign that the shit is about to hit the fan.

I don't necessarily agree. 

She tells me I should write it down, anyway, because that chick that did "He's Just Not That Into You" is making bank now. And she's sympathetic to my frantic attempts to start saving for the baby's college education on my $12/hour salary.

So have you ever waded into a cold lake to go swimming?

You put your feet in, it burns, you keep going. The water rises higher and higher on your legs, to your knees, mid-thighs, and then it's kind of hanging out there right below your crotch.

That's a moment of truth, right there. Up till this point, you were testing the waters. But now you're either going to dive in and go swimming, or turn around and give it up.

How cold is the water? Do I really want to do this? Oh shit, this is going to suck.

Alternatively, you think "This isn't so bad. I got this."

I'm hanging out in that cold lake. I've got arctic, icy water lapping at my nether regions.

I thought that the Manfriend was right there with me, in the frigid waters. And we'd plunge or turn around together.

Now I find out that I'm out there all alone and he's still getting his toes wet in the surf.

It's kind of awkward.

So I'm in the process of backing up and heading to shore. Maybe we'll try swimming again when the water's warmed a little.

Vulnerability vs. Neediness

I find that very often, "vulnerability" is mistaken for "neediness."

Vulnerable: Capable of or susceptible to being wounded or hurt.

Neediness: The quality of needing attention and affection and reassurance to a marked degree.

One can easily see that they are not the same thing, when faced with such concrete definitions, but we rarely live our lives in the realm of such clear delineation. We live in the emotional, baggage-laden, messy world, a world that often bears little resemblance to the neat and orderly realm of the dictionary.

When you make yourself vulnerable, especially when you consciously choose to make yourself vulnerable, it is often taken as a sign that you need to be protected, taken care of, reassured. We live in a time and place where no one is allowed to simply feel. We take pills, we go to therapists, we spend an inordinate amount of time trying to make other people responsible for what we feel and the aftermath of it.

Don't get me wrong- I'm a big fan of talking. I am a born communicator. I honestly enjoy sitting down with someone and figuring shit out.

But that doesn't mean that that other person becomes responsible for me and my emotions and my vulnerability. I may choose to allow you the weapons to hurt me with, and with that choice, I must take some responsibility for any hurt that ensues.

I have a lot of soft points. I'm vulnerable.

But I'm not needy.

A Civil Little Savage

I don't write about the baby very often. She's too new, and there are still some raw places that don't like to be poked at surrounding her appearance. Also, I'm not very good at funny or touching, and blogs about babies should definitely be one or the other.

But oh well.

My nearly-10-month-old girlchild has taken to raising her hand to get my attention.

This started about two weeks ago. The first time she did it, I thought it was a fluke. The second, third, and fourth times, I was suspicious, but not overly awed. Now it's been two solid weeks, and I am trying to wrap my head around this development in her development.

I always thought that raising one's hand for attention was a learned behavior. We go to school, we have some self-righteous control-freak teacher, and she makes us raise our hands before she acknowledges our presence in any way. In this fashion, we learn that before being heard, we must be recognized, and before recognition comes the madly waving hand that is as often as not completely ignored anyway.

(It's actually a wonder we come to associate hand-raising with being called on, since the results are so sporadic, but we're smart beings. I guess.)

Anyway. My nearly-10-month-old girlchild has never been in school. She's never been in daycare. She's never had to compete for attention with any other babies. Or children, for that matter. I cannot come up with one place that she would have learned to stick her hand in the air and wave it around to get attention.

And yet she does.

Don't get me wrong, this is definitely an advancement in communication between us. Previously when she wanted something, she'd scream at the top of her lungs. Now, she gives me a solid 30 to 45 seconds of hand-in-the-air before she starts screaming.

This has made mealtime much more pleasant.

She gets her toast point.

She rips it apart and gums it to death like the most adorable little savage that's ever lived.

Then she politely sticks her hand in the air and waits for me to notice and give her the next piece.

Conversation can carry on around this ritual. There is no yelling or crying or screaming or other loud noise involved.

Who would have thought this behavior was not learned? But I guess it's not.

However, as appreciated as the decreased volume of my life is to my poor head, I can't help but be a little concerned. Is my darling girl going to be a pushover? Is she going to be a queuer, a stand-and-wait mouse, someone who never gets what she needs because she's always too polite and considerate and patient to throw a temper tantrum when it's warranted? Not-quite-10-months seems a little early for this kind of civility.

Then I fail to notice her chubby little hand within the proscribed window of opportunity, and she howls like a banshee. And all my fears are laid to rest.

Compensation.

I whine a lot. I have come to this conclusion.

Good things (in no particular order):

The Snugglebug has four teeth, and is quite capable of feeding herself. Give her a piece of toast, and she'll happily sit there for 15 minutes ripping it apart like a savage and gumming it to death. It is adorable.

She also can almost walk. She has this Fisher Price shopping cart (that she loves to throw everything out of, but that's a different story) and she can walk along with it. But only in a straight line. So she goes forward until she runs into something, and then she stands there, banging the cart into the wall/door/piece of furniture over and over, trying to figure out why she's not moving anymore, until I get there and turn her around. Then she does it again. And again. And again. I'm starting to worry that there will be dents in the front door and the wall opposite it.

When she crawls, her little butt wiggles back and forth. I bought her pants with ruffles on the rear. My mother finds this hilarious.

The Manfriend let me fall asleep in his bed on Saturday night. I picked him up from work, and then we went back to his house, and then we started watching Lucky Number Slevin, and then I fell asleep. He woke me up when I had to go home.

He's so good to me.

My sister's mother-in-law spent a large chunk of Saturday afternoon giving me parenting advice. This is because she does not approve of the way my sister is raising her grandchildren, and she doesn't want me to ruin the Snugglebug in a similar manner. I refrained from pointing out to her that I am nowhere near as crazy as my sister is, mostly from some lingering sense of familial loyalty. I felt very virtuous about this act.

I have job. I will have health insurance in less than a month. I intend to get new glasses, contacts, my teeth cleaned, and some form of superbirthcontrol that will neverever fail.

I am especially excited about the teeth cleaning. I'm sort of a freak.

Modern Woman On-the-Go!

I have two jobs. Only one of them pays me. And, to be honest and objective, it doesn't pay me that well, but it pays me enough to get by and save for my future and the baby's education. And it comes with health insurance.

Health insurance is worth its weight in gold. Except insurance doesn't really weigh anything, so that analogy doesn't really work. Although, on third thought (yes, we are changing our minds that many times in the span of three sentences) health insurance comes with a lot of paperwork, and paperwork is heavy.

Health insurance is worth the weight of its paperwork in gold.

Moving on.

This job that pays the bills is a good job. I don't mind the work. I like the people 

well enough. I support wholeheartedly the practices and missions of the business.

But I have another job. In the seamy underbelly of the internet lives a site called ThirdCoast Digest. And it is there that I slave away in obscurity, writing and editing theater reviews, previewing theatrical occurrences, and (only recently, mind you) writing full-fledged features. I also post blogs (complete with pictures) for our resident rogue agent, who is too busy being roguish and agent-y to do it herself. I also mine through 100s and 100s of announcements and press releases in any given month. I'm not really exaggerating with the 100s. Milwaukee has a thriving arts community.

However, this job is time-consuming. It's probably a 20-hour per week job in and of itself. But I already have a full 40-hour per week job.

Now, were I not to have this adorable, wriggly, loving and wonderful thing called a baby, I could probably work 60 or 70 hours a week without breaking a sweat and still have a kick-ass time at the bars several nights a week. I've got no problem working. One might say that I am a work-a-holic in the making.

But I have got this adorable, wriggly, loving and wonderful thing called a baby.

And I want to adore her and love her and wriggle with her and wonder at her. Her arrival has definitely stopped my fall into the pit of a-holism (work-). She's my bungee cord. My stop-cable. My belay-line.

I'm not Wonder Woman. This is a hard realization for me. I want to do EVERYTHING. I've always wanted to do everything, and I've always had the time. Now I have to sacrifice bits of what I want to do, and it's a bitter pill to swallow. I'm not as fabulous as I pretend to be.

Remembrances.

As with anything in life, it's the unexpected moments that hit you the hardest. It's the unexpected disappointments, but also (and more especially) the stolen moments of joy. These moments appear, as if by magic, and light up a day, an hour, an evening.

You have to hold onto these moments.

The impulsive moments, the unplanned moments. The fortuitous moments: giving glimpses of a life that might, could be real one day. The unheralded moments, startling in their simplicity, full of sweetness and unlooked-for wonder.

And I don't mean sex, although it certainly will be remembered.

I mean the details. The smell of skin. The sound of breath, calm, then wild, then relaxed. The feel of soft cotton. The crashes, the crescendos. The silences. The whispers. The outbursts. The sly, slow smiles and the way they light up a face.

It's the stolen moments you have to hold onto, that you have to remember, because they are the map: to bodies, to secrets. They are the map to down the road, to forward in time. The map to happiness is in the abrupt and amazing grace of those moments appropriated for yourself, for no one else.

Hold onto those moments. They are remembrances worth having.

Mood Swing.

You come and get me when I'm all alone

On the corner, just skin and bones

Fever in and fever out

And you're the swinger who brings me doubt.

Lover boy, where you coming from

Down there, out back, always on the run?

Cool, cool, deep blue

And you're the shine on my shoes.

Is it in the damp heat inside of me

Or is it in the fire that we collide?

I feed you, mood swing,

But you're never satisfied.

-"Mood Swing," Luscious Jackson

I'm moody. Seriously. 

I'm swinging wildly at fenceposts, and mostly I'm missing anyway. I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm narcissistic, I'm insecure, I'm over it, I'm angry.

I can't help but feel as if I'm being unfair to the Manfriend by even *being* in a relationship with him. Because, honestly, in those quiet moments right before I fall asleep and I can be totally honest with myself, I know that I'm still in love with the Baby Daddy. I fight it while I'm awake and conscious. I fight it with everything I've got. He's gone, I've no idea where he is or if he's alive or if he'll ever be back, but if he did turn up, I'd take him back.

I'd run back to him with arms outstretched through a field of daisies.

Or maybe poppies.

But I have accepted (more or less) the fact that he's either dead, or never coming back, and so I rationalize moving on with my life.

And I do like the Manfriend. I could even fall in love with him, if I let myself. I don't let myself, for several reasons. One of them being that I know he's not there yet, and I don't really want to do the one-sided relationship thing. Another being that I am still in love with the Baby Daddy.

I can only hope that if the Manfriend ever gets there, I am *actually* over the Baby Daddy.

In the meantime, I get to deal with these lovely mood swings, exacerbated by the ongoing post-partum hormonal shifts. I want intimacy, I want sex, I want to be left the hell alone. I crack jokes about the disappearing act, then want to cry if someone else even alludes to it. I want to sleep forever, but I seem to have caught a nasty case of insomnia.

I'm kind of a wreck.

I have a dirty mouth, and it bothers me.

I gave up swearing for Lent. It has not been going well.

I have sworn like a little sailor from the time I was about 14 onward. My vocabulary is filthy, if extensive. For many, many years, I took a great and perverse delight in my dirty mouth. I was proud of it. I was also always aware when I was swearing and what I was saying.

Recently, that has not been so much the case. In the last year (probably more like 18 months, but whatever) I have noticed that more and more I do not remember swearing. Other people have pointed out to me that I have, on occasion, dropped some f-bombs and other choice morsels into situations that they were probably not entirely appropriate. Now, I'm not completely lost, as I have not yet sworn to my brand-new, shiny coworkers, nor have I sworn at a Church function. To my knowledge.

But I was sufficiently wigged out after swearing in work-related conversation with a business acquaintance (not nearly as stuffy as it sounds, but still) that I decided to give up swearing for Lent.

See, the popular culture version of Lent would have you believe it's about punishing yourself, and therefore you should give up things that you like to eat. That makes sense in someone's mind. Not mine, but someone's.

The thing is, though, that Lent isn't actually about self-flagellation. It's a time of spiritual discipline, much like any of the other spiritual disciplines that people have come to accept as way better than Christianity. It's a time to be mindful of what you do, to decrease the amount of time and energy and money that you spend on yourself and increase the amount of time, energy and money you spend on others. It's a time for stripping your life down to the bare necessities for a finite period, to shut out the distractions and focus on God and contemplation and your spiritual life.

So I gave up swearing. To make myself more mindful of the words that are coming out of my mouth, because we should always be aware of what we're saying and how we're saying it. And my own (personal) belief is that it might help make the world a better place. We can only control ourselves, ultimately, and so I can do everything to make myself the best person I can be. Which includes my language.

It's been going terribly, though. I can't seem to stop myself. I can't seem to make myself think about how I'm saying something- the words just fly out and there I am, left embarrassed and a little guilty.

So I'm thinking about giving up strawberry jam instead.

So, I bought myself a Blackberry yesterday. This is terribly self-indulgent of me, and I feel sort of ashamed of myself and sort of disappointed in myself, but gosh-darn, I *wanted* one.

Like, reallyreally wanted one.

I can rationalize why I need one, but it's all just rationalization. I do have two jobs, although one of them doesn't pay me except in theater tickets and happiness, and I do have a baby that has a schedule and I do have a Manfriend that I have to keep track of time spent with and I do have classes to take and I do have to keep track of the childcare-providers schedules and all of that.

But really, women have been managing these things for a long time without the aid of electronic devices that keep your calendar for you and nag you when something needs to be done.

Because that's really what I got it for. To sync with my google calendar, so that wherever I am and whatever I'm doing, if I'm supposed to be somewhere else and doing something else, the thing will beep at me until I acknowledge it.

Getting my email from anywhere is just a bonus. A nice one, but still. Icing on the cake.

Plus, I get to pull it out and flash it around and subconsciously tell people, "Look how important and indispensable I am. I have a BlackBerry."

I told you I was pretentious and self-indulgent.

I feel bad for this particular one because it's not just a one-time expense. It's an additional $30 per month in bills that I didn't have before. I've got this kid, and as great as it is to have a job that pays the bills, that doesn't mean I should be creating more bills for myself. It's not the responsible thing to do.

On the other hand, it is *only* $30, and I can't be responsible all the time or I'll lose my mind. I don't stay out all night anymore. I don't get ridiculously drunk anymore. Hell, I don't even talk on the phone while I drive anymore. I get something, right? Something that proves to myself that I didn't lose my entire identity when I had a baby.

Because my identity is all tied up with being able to do what I want, when I want. I'm a hedonistic hippie at my core, at the basest of base levels. My base instincts are selfish and pleasure-centered. 

So I got a Blackberry. In the grand scheme of things, there are way worse things I could do, right?