Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in skeeter800's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, July 23rd, 2009
11:36 pm	My Photography Portfolio (Comment on this)
Monday, April 13th, 2009
3:41 pm	Easter I’ve been thinking a lot recently about religion. The Unitarian church has been a blessing to me. It is amazing to be around a group of people who want to think and debate and reason and figure things out for themselves. We went on Sunday because it was Easter and R felt strongly about going. The service was an essay, taken from a feminist book, and it was an adaptation of the story of Christ’s death and resurrection. It was told from the point of view of Mary Magdaline. You can read it here http://books.google.com/books?id=Jvlmr5ePKnsC&pg=PA8&dq=Mary+Magdalene%27s+Witness#PPA8,M1 When I asked R what she thought of the whole service afterwards, she said “I thought it was sacriligious”. And I wanted to cry. My heart sank and I realized that though we are quiet about it, she and I are very different, and though she has tucked it away neatly for the sake of us, she believes that one set of things is right and one set wrong and that’s the way it is, period, the end. I realized that this church may not be a possibility for her and that it may become a point of contention if I decide that it is for me. When we got home, with fear in my heart, I tried to explain it to her. I said, if I were to take you outside right now, point upward, and tell you ‘look, that’s the sky, and it’s purple.’, you would have two options. You could say ‘no it’s not, it’s blue. That’s just a fact, it always has been blue, it always will be blue, you must be crazy’ or, you could stop, and wonder. You could wonder why I think it’s purple, you could wonder if my eyes function differently than yours or if my brain just knows a different word for the same color. You could stop and wonder whether purple is right and blue is wrong or whether blue is right and purple is wrong. You could decide at the end that both might be equally likely. You could like me anyway. We could both like the sky. We could decide not to discuss its color and simply talk about the clouds and the wind and the rain and the things we agree on. Or we could go on forever, you talking blue, me talking purple, and not letting it bother us that we think of it differently. Whatever the truth is, it will still be there, it will not change because of us, or the way we think of it, or what we call it, or how we feel about it. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, March 16th, 2009
9:29 pm	Hi, I still exist. It's crazy to think it's been almost a year. I'm soon to go caving again, as it stands that was still one of the most profoundly beautiful experiences of my life. Hmm.. this year... Summer held a whirwind trip to London and Paris. In London I reconnected with Uncle John and cousin Patrick and renewed my sense of awe and comraderie and love for them both. I also spent a lot of time on my own, wandering a foreign city and navigating new places and eating at a table for one and seeing sights at my own pace and taking all the pictures i could stand to take and feeling free. It was beautiful and empowering and very much good for me. Paris was with my mother, which was typical of a vacation with my mother. Very scheduled, very expensive, very touristy, but very nice. Paris was bustling and colorful and flavorful and yes, a bit stuck up. My French was adequate to get us places and order us food and thank people for things and apologize for my botching of their language. The new school year brought me a class of 4 kids, all 4 of which I had last year. My L moved up to middle school, my K moved on to Stafford County. So it's me and M and C and T and E. They amaze me every day. They energize me and make me smile and laugh and remember what's important and what innocence and happiness are like. So far this year, M has become healthier, he's learned how to play new games, he's been working on his muscular strength in hopes of moving independently someday. C has made leaps and bounds and is walking with the help of new shoes and new equipment and new motivation. He's also learned to clap and wave and in some ways, interact with the world like never before. T has grown up so much, she's calmed and thinks before acting more often, and she's learned who not to play games with (namely me) because she's realized it doesn't work, and our lives are much happier for that. E lights up the room as always. His sense of humor, his flirtation, his perserverance, his sense of adventure inspire me. He has gotten a donated power chair which we have dubbed 'the Corvette', that he's learning to drive. He's talking more and more and being understood more and more. He is, as always, my guy that jumps in with both feet, whether it's painting or singing or swimming or pulling out pumpkin goo, he's in, and he's reminding me that I'm like that too. The grown ups in my room have finally, finally come to rest in the right places. After many attempts at staffing and several drastic failures, we finally have it right. I am the youngest in the room, so needless to say, being in charge of all these older people is totally the socially weirdest thing I think I've experienced. I have Ms. Fox, who is my right hand, she jumps in where I forget to, she loves the children gently and unconditionally, she is a 'mom' to me when she thinks i need it. I have Ms. Hawkins, who is the rock that we count on. She is there every day, is pleasant to everyone, is impossible to ruffle, and is a constant source of peace and wisdom. I try to tell her as often as I can that I don't know what I'd do without her. I also have Ms. Hyde, our newest addition. She's spunky and laughs all the time and makes the rest of us wake up and have fun and not sweat the small stuff. She's totally good for us and I'm so glad we found her. I'm still with Robbin, we've been through ups and downs and everything in between, but I think recently we've been experiencing a new sensation of hope and inspiration. We've been working on us and prioritizing us and doing things for ourselves and loving each other fiercely. I think it took me all this time to finally swallow the fact that relationships are hard and that life never just calms down and that you wake up every day and decide who you're going to be, and that if you're not happy with who you are, you've gotta decide to be different and make it so. So that's what I'm working on. Not getting angry every time I feel that I have the right to. Not making things personal that aren't. Letting go of the past and the little stuff that doesn't matter. And hanging on to the fact that we are good together and that we can get through anything if we decide that we're going to. For the first time this year, someone (other than my mother) has taken the fact that I am gay, decided that it is a weakness of mine, and decided that that would be the best way to hurt me. Things were said, accusations were made, and i came face to face with how vengeful, childish, and shocking an ignorant person with a grudge can be. Thankfully the rest of the world around me is not childish, not ignorant, and not believing a word of it. Life moved on quietly, everyone stood strongly behind me, and they gave me the strength to hold my head up and walk away. I will continue to do so. My good friend Sarah is having a baby. It's going to be a little boy. I have floods of memories of Jake and how insanely I end up loving babies that are in my life, and how much I want one of my own when it becomes possible. I'm also working through the differences between who she is and how she does things and who I am and how I do things, and I'm trying hard to not blame her for things that are out of her control, things like the fact that I don't have a baby and won't any time soon. I'm trying to focus on things like the fact that she's going to be an amazing mom and she's going to raise an incredible little person who will go out in the world and do great things, and win hearts all along the way. Oh, and on July 3rd, my very first gallery showing of my photography will be at The Griffin on Caroline Street in downtown Fredericksburg. If by chance you'll be in town, please come join us. My work will be up for the whole month of July, but if you want to join in the opening party and actually see me, you should come on the 3rd =) K, so I'm a little caught up. Hopefully more to come someday soon. I haven't forgotten you all, really. Love to all -L (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 26th, 2008
2:35 pm	Caving Day 2 Well, Tawney’s was awesome. It was much muddier and less rocky than Rehobeth, and therefore it had some tricky spots that I may not have successfully climbed without a hand from the boys ahead of me, but it was more beautiful. It had huge formations and the gorgeous moon room with the crescent of water around the edge of the room and the moon shaped crevice in the ceiling. My body wasn’t sure it wanted to undergo another day of that when I got up that morning, but I heard my father’s voice in my head saying ‘this may be the only shot you get at this kiddo, better think it over’. And so I put on a happy face, told everyone I felt great (when in fact I still had a pretty wicked headache from what I now think was dehydration), drank lots of water, had a banana with breakfast (and to potassium’s credit my leg muscles didn’t revolt), stretched well, and headed for the cave. This trip was beautiful and profound and I wish I could repeat it a thousand times over. While sitting in the darkness of the cave, I realized that this was the only pure darkness I’d ever seen. I reflected on blindness and what some of its terrifying aspects and beautiful aspects must be. I looked up and around at the inside of the earth, at the way nature had created this and people, for once, had been wise enough to leave nothing of themselves behind in it. This was what the earth looked like before us. Before humans came and brought all this noise and light and pollution. This place, where the air and water and light and creatures and time and space all live quietly, humbly alongside each other. I was privileged to have seen it, humbled by its beauty, and proud to be among the many smart people that left no trace of myself behind in it. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 24th, 2008
2:34 pm	Caving Day 1 Today was incredible. We all stumbled up to the big house around 8 this morning and made omelets in bags and sat and ate and regrouped, and they finally decided upon a cave, and we set off around 10:15. It was a long drive, up into west Virginia, but once we got there, we toured the property that housed the oldest Methodist church this side of the Appalachians. We scouted out our cave, got gear on (suits, helmets, lights, gloves, knee pads) and set off. We crawled under the fence to get to the path, then we had to figure out which was the correct entrance to the cave. The one Kit and I went down into turned out to not be the way in, and getting back out of it was tricky, and for a little bit, I doubted whether or not I was going to be able to do this. We followed Randy down into the other entrance, and the first 6 feet were TIGHT. We had to wiggle and squirm and army crawl to get down through it, but once we did, it opened up a good bit, and we began our descent. The whole climb was up and down boulders and ledges and inclines, the cave was tall enough to stand in, but there were very few spots that were flat enough to stand on without holding onto something. I met bats for the first time up close, they’ve very cute and tiny when they sleep, and none of them bothered us in the least. I can tell how easy it would be to get lost in there, even with the markings that someone had left before us, without friends that were pretty confident about it and a rope leading us out the last 50 feet, I’m not sure how that would have gone. We saw beautiful formations, lots of bats and crayfish and cave spiders, and did some tough climbing. I was afraid that my knees wouldn’t handle coming out, but this climb was blessed with lots of good hand holds, so it seemed that whenever one part of me failed, another compensated well, and my climb was really pretty smooth. Our group did a good job at communicating and keeping close to each other. Nick ventured off on his own, but I stayed close to keep sight of him, and then when I was done and ready to rest, Kit stayed with me while the boys went on together. Anyways, when it was time to get out, most of it went okay going up, but those last 6 feet, man, I didn’t think I’d ever get out of there. I twisted and turned, and there was one spot that was almost vertical, I was on my belly on this muddy incline, and there were no footholds below me, and not enough space under me to get my knees, much less my feet under me, and I couldn’t go anywhere. Eventually I wiggled my way up, got a leg torqued up beside me, and gave a mighty push and got free of it, but those last 6 feet getting out was killer. I told Kit once I was out that at one point I thought to myself ‘I can’t do this’ shortly followed by ‘I don’t suppose I have much of a choice tho do I?’ One reason I think I like this sport, there’s no turning back. Do or do not, there is no try. Lol. I feel like I’m in okay physical shape after all, I mean their driveway still leaves me huffing and puffing, but climbing didn’t phase me at all, I was fine. Even Nick said he was sore, but climbing all came back to me. After getting out, we stripped down to our lower layers, ate a sandwich and lounged in the sun, and then got back on the road. I had a raging headache after we got back that lasted a couple hours, I ended up asleep on the couch in the big house while they prepped dinner, and finally someone woke me and I managed to eat and drink and be upright for a while, but after dinner I excused myself, and now I’m back in the loft in the little house, getting ready to crash completely. We’re supposed to be up and out of here by 9am tomorrow to go climb through Tawney’s. Sounds like fun, hope I’m feeling better before then. Goodnight (Comment on this)
Friday, May 23rd, 2008
2:30 pm	And we're off Well, I’m in Kit’s car, suitcase in the trunk, headed down the highway towards adventure. I’m proud of myself. I jumped on an opportunity to do something I’ve never done with people I’ve never met in a place I’ve never been to. And I’m not afraid. I’m excited. And I think this might open doors for me. I think this church sounds pretty amazing, and I’m looking forward to slowly immersing myself in something new and seeing where it leads me. Later... So far so good. Nice folks, turns out the place I chose for my sleeping bag is the boys’ room, but I don’t plan on moving it, it’s in the room with the carpet. My mother would be appalled. Their house is gorgeous, animals are awesome, and it sounds like it’s going to be a great day tomorrow. =) (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 17th, 2008
5:04 pm	This has been a sociologically interesting 24 hours. We went to Clearwater Grill last night for karaoke, and it was pleasant as always for the first little while, and then the Coors Light folks showed up. A middle aged man who apparently is a promoter, and two young girls/women. It started out with the girls hanging on all the guys in the bar, which was bearable (although not appreciated by M and S, whose husbands were being approached). Then they danced together, which was fine. Then they danced all up on each other, with their ‘promoter’ holding onto both of them. We talked amongst ourselves at the table, and we all agreed upon being disgusted and said that we were going to tell the manager so. I asked Nick to send the manager to the table, and he came back a while later and said that he couldn’t find him, which I thought was bullshit. I ordered a beer and tried to chill out, and then the girls kissed each other, still with this middle aged man wrapped around them, and I immediately saw red, and M and S and E all immediately stood up from the table, and I realized that they were just as angry, and at that point E and I went to find the female manager. We gave her a piece of our minds and let her know that she had better get that male manager (because she said he was above her), and get him to do something about this, like now. She found him, and apparently he said he was working on it. Well at this point, the girls are on the dance floor, kissing each other, with hands roaming up each others’ skirts, and being generally very offensive. I couldn’t watch it anymore. I was on the verge of tears. I walked up to Jeff, the manager and said “WHAT ARE YOU DOING ABOUT THIS!?” and he reassured me that he was working on it, and I told him he was about to lose some very regular customers, and that if this went on I was walking out. Thankfully he did take care of it, and the two girls left, and everyone seemed happier for it. It’s people like them that convince the ignorant parts of the rest of the world that lesbian is synonomous with for-male-pleasure-girl-on-girl-action. It’s things like that that cause lesbians (and women in general) to be harassed and degraded and disrespected, and the fact that is was right there in front of me made me want to drag them out the back door and tell them exactly what I thought of them. Here we are, in this day and age when we (the GLBT community) are still fighting to be able to walk into a bar holding hands, to be able to visit loved ones in the hospital (although that’s come a long way), to have the rights that straight people have, and here are these two straight girls humping each other on the dance floor so that a couple of men in the bar could get a hard on from watching. It made me nauseous. Anyways, then this morning I was at Wal Mart by myself, getting picnic supplies, and the realization hit me that people now assume that I’m straight. I don’t know what changed other than my hair, but people are different than they used to be. I have regained the right to smile at peoples’ children. I have regained the right to have a conversation with a woman and not be suspect. I have regained the right to have a man say to me “excuse me sweetheart” when walking by me instead of having him glare and intentionally run into my shoulder. I have rejoined the rest of the world without meaning to. It makes me angry. I am the exact same person I was with short hair, only now people don’t realize. It makes me want to cut all my hair right back off and keep it that way until the world comes to its senses, quits being childish, and becomes accepting of people and their differences. (Comment on this)
Thursday, May 15th, 2008
11:07 pm	Yay California, where I could now go and get married to a woman of my dreams, and live by the ocean. If I decide to be with a woman again someday. I miss the smell of someone else. I miss someone's hands in my hair, I miss putting an arm around someone to go to sleep, I miss bare feet playing together, I miss kissing a bare shoulder while laying behind them in bed, I miss matching my breathing to someone else's. I miss giving and receiving little pieces of someone else's hopes and dreams and happinesses and sadnesses and life. I really suck at being alone. If I'm not ready to be with someone (which seems to be the case) then I wish I had someone safe to vent some of this attention on. Someone who will allow me to be physically near them without needing. Without pushing. Without pulling. Without stealing. Without hurting. *sigh* (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 4th, 2008
4:16 pm	yay weekend My Friday was busy. I got out of school at 3:45ish, ran home to pick up baby stuff (for my very small visitor that is coming to hang out next week), made it south to Richmond and to Doc's new office by 5:15. An hour's worth of appointment later we had talked about setting boundaries with my mother (which I've been attempting to do for, oh, about 12 years now). Left to go to my parents' house, dropped off baby stuff, talked them into going out for subs, ate with them, called Richmond peeps, caught up with Allison first and showed off bridesmaid's jewelry that I made for Meg's June wedding. Left their house around 9:30, went to pick up Willard. We drove with the windows down and sang which felt so damn good. It's amazing what just driving and singing does to make me feel peaceful and happy and free. We decided to re-live old times and go hang out at the park. Parked outside the gates and hiked in, found the pier, and sat, and breathed night air, and listened to the river, and identified each object floating by (must have been alligators and snakes, and the loch ness monster). It felt really good to curl up in someone's arms without ulterior motives or complication. We were both just soaking up the simplicity of sitting on the pier and being surrounded by a beautiful night. Brought him home around 12:30, began driving towards the highway, repeatedly fell asleep at the wheel, and stopped at Carytown to park and sleep. Woke up around 3, and drove on home. My Saturday was busy. I got home from Richmond around 4am Saturday morning, slept until 9ish, cooked and packed a big breakfast, showered, got into uniform, packed beverages, folding chairs, and stopped at Wawa to get cash. Made it to the station around 10:30, had breakfast with squad boys (who were in withdrawal from not having my muffins in so long), threw everything into the unit and went to school. The health fair was okay, kinda small, most of it was inside. We were outside along with the old folks running the Lions Club screening van. FD didn't show up until noonish from what I thought was an MVA turned fly-out in downtown, so it was just us, hangin out. We showed the unit to a bunch of my school kids, they all seemed impressed with the roller blading skills I showed off on Thursday at the school's skate night, and they all were kind of surprised to see me there with an ambulance. I think I'm scoring cool points with the 10 year old crowd. lol. Anyway, the health fair wrapped up about two (a good amount of time for an almost-tan), we went to put gas in the truck before coming back to the station, made it back there about 2:30, i had an hour and a half to shop for a gift, make it home, wrap the gift, make fruit salad, de-uniform, and get to Em and Mina's place. Well I did my shopping at Wal Mart (in uniform, always a thrill), got halfway home when my gas light came on, so I stopped at Wawa again (still in uniform), I'm halfway through filling up my tank when a jeep backs up, squeals his tires, and shuts off his engine, and I laughed thinking he stalled it, then when he got out and walked around the back of his car I peeked around the gas pump to see somebody's head behind the Jeep and thought 'oh shit, here we go'. Put gas nozzle back in pump, run across parking lot, yell at people to get on the phone with dispatch/find this dude's wife/get my bag out of my trunk. I hold C-spine and try to talk to this old guy, who is almost deaf especially without one of his now-broken hearing aids. He has a huge goose egg on the back of his head from hitting the pavement, and upon rapid trauma assessment I find that he's messed up his elbow too and it's bleeding like crazy, and all the while he's saying "I'm fine, I'm a marine, I'm fine, you leave me alone". I wanted to tell him 'you were a marine 50 years ago and you'd better lay down', but I took the sweet talking route instead which is almost invariably more effective. Some high school ROTC pain in the ass decided he knew all about everything and repeatedly tried to tell me how to treat/assess this guy and I finally had to tell him to get away from my patient because he was wrecking my groove. Anyway, I had someone else take over C-spine and I finished assessing, and by that time Spotsy showed up and took over, and I happily paid for my gas, washed my hands up to the elbows and hauled ass home (at this point I'm late and bloody). So I called Em, told her that lateness was unavoidable, added a shower to my list of things to do, ran around the house doing things like a chicken, and finally got everything done and made it to the party, where I sat and drank and chilled and had a lovely time. And today, aside from cleaning the house and lounging on the patio with the dog, I am happily doing nothing. =) Tomorrow is IEP writing day. I am looking forward to things being a thousand times easier than they were last year. Starting with the fact that they give me an IEP writing day, how great is that. I get a day off to fill out these ~250 pages of paperwork. Totally cool of them. I love my job. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 6th, 2008
1:03 pm	Okay, so I'm single, have been for a while now, I'm back out and looking, and the first question i felt the need to ask myself is, what am I looking for? So i started a list. -Someone who betters the world in some way, and does it for the right reasons. I have always had a thing for cops and firemen. I have seen the best and worst of both by being on scene with them, and there is nothing more attractive than someone that can take charge, save lives, and be humble while doing it. - someone who likes children and animals. someone that may smile at my kiddos and their antics (someone who thinks disabled children are wonderful like I do), someone that knows how to not scare my dog and who will brush it off like I do when the cat climbs the curtains - someone who will love the independant woman side of me, and allow me the space to be the strong woman I am, but who will also let me pretend to be scared during a scary movie (when in reality i love them) just so i can curl up in their shoulder - someone who loves music, who will jam out with me in the car and sing me sweet country songs and laugh at me when I rap at karaoke and appreciate the oldies records I have. - someone who is kind and happy. someone who does not believe in yelling. someone who will go on random adventures with me. someone that can hang out successfully with my multitude of diverse friends. - someone who will not freak out over the fact that I have dated men and a woman. It's good both ways, i can testify to that. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 29th, 2008
10:20 am	dating . I hate meeting at starbucks. Hate it hate it hate it. It’s such a boring grown up ritual. Can’t someone someday invite me skydiving on a first date? Or at least skating/climbing/hiking/swimming/dancing/ something other than sitting in starbucks smelling coffee I wont drink and feeling underdressed and way too happy for this pissed off looking business class crowd? Oh well, I’ll suck it up, I guess when I meet someone really amazing (like, perhaps, this guy? Maybe?) it won’t matter that we’re sitting in a sucky starbucks. We’ll see. I’m starting to think starbucks jinxes my dates though. It instantly turns the attractive, suave, witty man that I knew online and turns him into a portly, bald, definitely not smiling little man that I seem to be replaying. Ick. Does starbucks make me uglier and more boring too? Gosh I hope not… (Comment on this)
10:11 am	Recently, while dealing with social services on behalf of one of my kids, I had a lawyer ask me 'are you sure that's the jurisdiction of the schools?'. And I thought to myself first of all 'don't get yourself in trouble here', but second of all, i was deeply offended. I wanted to tell her that I teach special ed. That special ed is not like any of the rest of the school, and can not be thought of in the same light. That while they are at school, i consider myself their stand-in mother. I wanted to tell her that I fill their heads with things they need to know like any teacher would, but I also hug them when they're sick, tuck them in to go to sleep, feed them breakfast and lunch, pick them up when they fall down, wipe their little butts when they go potty, sing to them when they're scared, hold their hand when they cross the street, teach them how to talk to people and how to behave themselves. And with the child in question, I had been bathing her, clothing her, finding doctors for her to go to, and advocating for her on every front of her life. And then this woman had the nerve to ask me if what I do is within the jurisdiction of the school. hell if I know. What I do know is that it needed doing, and that these kids, and this child, need me to do it. And if I didn't, no one would. So what I wanted to tell her is that if she wants to remove this care from my jurisdiction and make it hers, all I need is her word that she'll do as good a job as I've been doing. And I'll go back to teaching, which is, after all, the jurisdiction of the schools. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 28th, 2007
12:31 pm	I gave myself a little talk this morning and decided if I'm going to clean out, I'm going to CLEAN OUT. My solution: to stand in the room being cleaned out, and if something does not belong in that room, to hurl it out the door and declare "you can't live in here anymore!". Then when the room is totally cleaned out, I wade through the ocean of stuff in the hallway, make various donation/trash piles, and relocate anything that needs relocating. If, at the end of all the rooms, there are items that have been evicted from every room of my house, then I didn't need it to begin with and it is leaving. A little dramatic I know, but hey, I'm home alone and will be all day and Christmas break is the only time of year I get to concentrate on my home. Oh, and I am no longer keeping clothes that are too small for me! I have clothes in my closet that I owned when I was like 12. No more. If, someday, I lose the weight, I will celebrate and buy new clothes. This is cathartic. The dog is scared tho. (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 27th, 2007
6:10 pm	Dinner with my wife: She calls and says 'where are you?' i tell her 'home' and she says 'then open the door'. So i bound to the door and open it to see her standing on the porch, in all her uniformed hotness. She says 'hey honey, how bout a dinner date?' so she comes in, recieves her usual enthusiastic hug and kiss, and heads for the kitchen. we pull all the many Christmas leftovers out of the fridge and she builds a huge plate and warms it up. I ladel out some of the french onion soup I made today into a soup bowl for her to try and add croutons and cheese and warm it up and set it on the table. She sits down at the island to eat, I warm up a bowl of soup for myself and stand opposite her at the island to eat. And then there's the beep. I hand her a piece of paper and a pen, turn the music off, and begin packing it up. She writes as dispatch dispatches the call, I put soup in one nalgene and iced tea in the other. Wal mart bag, paper towel, plastic spoon, kiss on the cheek, and she's gone. here I am again, empty house, sink full of dishes. I think to myself the same thing I tell her often: 'good thing I'm so damn proud of you' =) and I am. (Comment on this)
6:08 pm	A new year's reflections In an effort to understand myself, I decided I needed to make a list. Things I Believe: It is harder than we remember to be a child. Real heroes are the ones that do what most needs doing. Not what is glamorous. Or easy. Or clean. Or fun. The values of the poor are much more noble as a whole than the values of the rich. You should always respect an offer of love, even if you cannot accept it or don’t understand it. Most animals are better people than most people. The more good you put out in the world, the more good will be there for the taking. The better the world will inherently be, even if you don’t directly see that good again. The same goes for bad. I do not believe in God. Or a higher power by any other name. Or fate. Or luck. Or heaven. Or miracles, as much as I’d like to. I believe in science. And evolution. And probability and chance. I believe in life’s unpredictability and in it’s observable patterns. I believe in the immense power of nature, but not in it being personified. I believe that you learn something from everyone. Or at least that you could if you tried. I believe the children are our future, we should teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside. Etc. I believe that we should let children teach us the lessons of acceptance that they have not yet un-learned the way we have. Every misbehavior, every expression of hatred, every act of violence comes from somewhere. Something caused it. If we try to fight the action without fighting the cause, we are making no progress. If we try to prevent it without understanding it, we will fail. People deserve a chance. Black, white, rich, poor, disabled or not, gay or straight, young or old, male or female, flaws and all. Every one of them deserves my respect simply for them being a human being. I deserve theirs too. For the same reason. I believe that crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I believe that perseverance is doing the same thing over and over until you get closer and closer to the desired result. I think the line between the two is very thin. I think that real friends acknowledge your flaws and forgive them over and over again because they believe that you’re good despite them. All pain is relative, and you cannot judge someone else’s pain on your pain scale. I believe that home is where they love you. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, November 24th, 2007
4:44 pm	Now, we must remember that I come from Virginia, which Lambda Legal classified as "hostile"... Anyways, I am looking for opinions, theories, agreeing/disagreeing examples: Robbin has always said that people are more aggressively against us when their children are present. I didn't believe it at first, and now I've watched them take little hands and tug them urgently in the other direction, whispering not-quite-quietly-enough 'don't stare'. I get that 'you're odd to me' look on my face, because what they're saying to their children, is not that staring is rude, but in this case, that it's dangerous. I don't know why. The woman in the laundromat last week urgently telling her toddler 'no honey, stay near mommy'. Letting the little girl wander over to every other stranger in the place, letting her slip out of sight into the parking lot on her own, but keeping her safe from the two lesbians in the place. God forbid. I wonder why. Why would someone who would normally quietly ignore me become like that around their children? That means to me that they have developed a set of limits and ideas and tolerances that they operate under normally, but they are trying to make sure their children don't develop the same tolerances. At least not yet. As though prejudice is a healthy childhood thing, like an essential vitamin or mineral. As is prejudice is going to protect them from the horrors of thinking for themselves. If only they can keep their children away from the differences of the world, then their children will never be the ones to turn out 'different' in the end. Like the 5 second rule when you drop your snack on the floor, if you pick it up quick enough, the germs won't sink in... Robbie says she thinks it's because an average single adult is self-centered. They live for themself, think about themself. Look straight ahead on the sidewalk, not even noticing what it around them because it's irrelevant to them. Then they have kids and they no longer look in just one direction, they look left and right and up and down, and then they SEE us, feel the need to deal with us. I disagree. We walked into a restaurant together today for lunch and I guarantee that all ~12 people we passes SAW us. They saw us so well that i felt compelled to wave or give out autographs or something. I don't think seeing is the problem. I asked a trashman once if he ever had trouble with dogs. He told me 'never. Unless the owner comes outside and the dog feels like it had better do it's job and protect something.' Food for thought. -L (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007
2:30 pm	I'm settled into the new job, and I never realized how wonderful a job could be. I never realized how bad my old job had really gotten until I got here. Now I'm in a place where they write to you just to tell you you're doing a good job, where people poke their head into your room to ask 'what can I do for you? What do you need?', where I can voice a concern and be listened to and supported. It's utopia. And problems have come up, as they tend to do (particularly in special ed), but I've always thought that I could handle any problem in the world as long as there was someone I could go to that would say 'I understand, I care, I'll help you however I can'. What more could I ask for? I have a classroom of 6 kids, all of whome I adore. I have twin boys M and C who have hydrocephalus and who are cognitively about a year old. They laugh and cry and giggle and squeak and have these amazing, determined, joyous personalities that I can't get enough of. I have a little boy, E, who had cerebral palsy, the cutest grin in the world, and a penchant for flirting with girls. I have a little girl, T, who has fetal alcohol syndrome, and who is very social and helpful but also has very selective hearing and can be quite a handful. I have a little boy, K, who has Fragile X Syndrome and who is incredibly funny. He's a talker, he talks all day long, and says some of the most random things. He told me the other day to 'wash your mouth out with guacamole'. His attention span is that of a goldfish, so you tell him to do something and, bless his heart, he attempts to do it every time, but simply forgets what it was about a second and a half later. I have a fifth grade girl, L, who is autistic, and who aside from the occasional flip out or space out, is cooperative, quiet, and hard working. We are doing a kindergarten curriculum, working on a letter a week. We go swimming on Wednesdays (we can claim it as physical therapy, so i went for it) and we cook every Friday (occupational therapy). Our lives are crazy but happy. I'm living in Spotsy in the condo that my mother purchased as an investment property. She bought it when I was broken up with Robbin and didn't have anywhere to go, and my mother pounced on the opportunity, and I was too stupid/depressed/apathetic to forsee the many downsides of this arrangement, and they have been popping up ever since. Soon after moving into the house, I got back together with Robbin, and my mother threw a hissy fit and said 'I just threw my life's savings into this house to get you away from her!', which of course was not mentioned during the buying process. Then Robbin's landlord sold her building and she needed a place to go, so naturally I invited her to move in with me. And my mother is now in the process of throwing a multitude of hissy fits. We can't afford to move yet, but when we can, that's probably the next big transition of my ever-changing life. Robbin is, as always, what I look forward to every day. I wake up feeling lucky, I go to sleep feeling lucky. We occasionally pick at each other and fight, but hey, two women in one relationship, I figure that's to be expected. I love being with her, I love living with her, I love the way we believe in each others' dreams and survive each others' hardships. We're going to make it. Anyways, it's a teacher work day, I should go to some teacher work. Love to all (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, October 15th, 2007
6:58 pm	Monday, October 15, 2007 Last time I was sitting here at this Starbucks, I was admiring a young man’s pair of artistic jeans and thinking about Robbie and looking so very butch. I was thrilled with myself and excited about all the changes that had happened and ready to show it off. And to some degree I still am, I still get a thrill when I see myself in the mirror in a wifebeater with this haircut, or when I lace up my boots and feel so powerful and strong, it’s still thrilling to go from a young woman who felt walked on and ignorant and weak to feeling like this butch who is ready to take on the world. The difference I think is that then, that last time I was sitting here, I was giving her all the credit for making me into the person I was so happy to be, whereas now, I just think she brought out a lot of things in me I wasn’t sure were there. She brought them to the surface and showed them to me and insisted on their existence, and sure enough, here they are. Things like strength and independence and adventure and practicality all at once. She has taught me a lot about life, but she’s taught me more about myself. I will always be grateful for that. Last night we went to her family’s house and we all sat down and had sandwiches. Lunchmeat and bread and chips scattered on the table, eating and talking, Chris sitting on the floor, more chairs squeezed in from the other room, and all of us together enjoying spending time together and catching up. And then we went out and played kick ball at the park. Judy and Cindy played too and all three kids, and it was such fun. We ran and laughed and joked with each other and got good exercise and fresh air and I got to spend time with the kids. I realized how much I love their priorities as opposed to my family’s. All my family does, has ever done, is eat together. They never would have gone out and done something like that. Never would have gotten dirty or sweaty, never would have been loud and boisterous, never would have had so much pure, active fun together. And they never would have had sandwiches for dinner. Never. Family counted as company and we cleaned the whole house and set the table and had to be washed and dressed and combed and pressed and presentable. It was a status thing, a showing off thing, a look at this big show we can put on for each other thing. I never did like it. I never thought it made any sense. And it didn’t bring us any closer to each other. We didn’t and still don’t know much about each other. We don’t know what makes each other laugh and cry and remember. We don’t know enough about childhoods and friends and loves and the drama that makes life. We don’t know each other. It was all worthless. I am 24 years old and my brother is 27 and I don’t know him at all. I don’t know what he thinks or believes in. I don’t know what his favorite things are or why he likes the people he does. I don’t know why he’s chosen the career he has and what he likes/hates about his job. I don’t know what his life’s hardest or happiest moments have been. How could I have missed all that? We lived one bedroom away from each other, but we were strangers. I still remember the day he came to town and I took him to the apartment and he watched me play with my dog and hold my godson and kiss the man I loved and act like family with the friends of mine I lived with, and the look on his face was shock. He didn’t know any of it existed. He hadn’t met them or heard of them. I knew better than to have spoken of them. He realized it then too, that we were strangers. How sad. If my children grow up in poverty but learning the value of people and relationships and hard work, then they will be a thousand times better off than if they grow up in privilege without that. I am looking forward to the holidays with her family. I will always miss my own family. But I think I have chosen the life I am going to have, and I think it’s like a foreign language compared to what I came from, I just don’t think it will ever be understood or even well tolerated. I’m having lunch with my daddy today. I’ve missed him so much and the comfortable, distant-but-close way we are together, and all the hundreds of things we never do say but always mean, and it always amounts to “I love you, I wish things were different.” (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 6th, 2007
6:53 pm	Sunday, October 6, 2007 Robbin wants to be able to defend me. I always found it interesting that she thought she couldn’t trust me to win a fight with Amy and now I’m starting to understand, it’s another of those things that is different just based on our upbringings. I watch her when she fights and she gets such pleasure out of finding the perfect come back, the perfect one up, the perfect way to put someone down, the perfect thing that makes her feel better about herself. She also learned how to physically fight. How to hurt someone that way, and she knows that I never learned that, and therefore I would be useless in her eyes during what she would consider a real fight. Well I was raised that in a fight you keep your manners about you to some extent. The winner of a fight would be the one that the bystanders would say had the most back up for what they were saying. They would not be the one that sounded flashy, not the one that could be the most intimidating, but the one that would make the most sense. I learned that to battle, you battle with your wits. If she talked to my parents, I don’t know that I can trust her to not curse. To not use come backs just because she’s offended, to not lose sight of the goal and the reason for the argument. To know when it is a good time to cut her losses. To her, cutting her loses and moving on when something is not going to go anywhere would be cowardly, something the loser of a fight would do. In the culture I grew up in, walking away when your point is as made as its going to be is a sign that you are the smarter of the two. You are the one whose words and time are too valuable to be wasted, the one who is too important to repeat something a second time. Walking away is a sign of the other person’s unworthiness. My mother wants to know why I’m gay. In my own head I always answer that with ‘I’m not gay, I just fell in love with a woman’. I didn’t decide that I wanted women instead of men. I didn’t decide that my sexual needs could never be met by men. I don’t feel like a man in a woman’s body. I just feel… like I am doing the right thing. That I am choosing the person that is the best match for me to spend my life with. I feel like the stigma placed on my by the world for being gay is just one more opportunity to fight for what I believe in. every trial we go through is just me becoming more sure that this wonderful woman is worth anything and everything that could ever happen. A person’s right to make their own choices, no matter how nontraditional, is something I’ve always believed in, so making a nontraditional choice and immediately believing in it’s righteousness came quite naturally to me. I have always believed that people are people, no matter what color, size, shape, etc. they are. So meeting someone with a soul so beautiful and falling in love with them because of it and despite all challenges, came quite naturally to me. Being an outsider to most of society is something I’ve always lived with, and for most of my life I didn’t have any idea why I was an outsider. Now, being outside the norm doesn’t bother me. I’ve been there forever, but now I know why I’m outside the norm. I have a reason. I have something that I can easily claim as my difference. I don’t know why that should be a good thing, but it is kind of refreshing. I want to run away to California. Pack up the house, the dog, find friends to stay with until I can get on my feet, and go. Leave this stupid house behind. Leave behind my family, who will probably be happier without me. Leave behind my phone and all the people that know how to call me. Leave behind the people I never want to see again. Get a new place, a new job, new friends. A real fresh start, not just a new start with fresh strings attached. I want to feel free. I want to have a chance to make my own choices and live an independent life. I shouldn’t have agreed to this house. That has been abundantly clear since the beginning. This house was a bad idea. I should have listened to my father when he offered to help me with an apartment for a year. But my mother, my passionate, whimsical mother decided that no, she was going to buy a house, a perfect house, that would constitute Herculean effort on her part, that would be undeniable sacrifice, that would give her infinite leverage. A house that she thought would make her happy. But nothing will ever make her happy. She will never be satisfied with anything in this life. She will die someday a bitter, dissatisfied, broken old woman. And she will blame it on the rest of the world for not allowing her to manipulate everything to her liking. She wants so badly for the rest of the world to make her happy so she can quit hating herself. And that will never happen because she does hate herself. Christmas is approaching and I am excited and dreadful. I cannot wait to do Christmas with friends. I think that is the one day of my year when I feel the most normal and happy and loved and perfect. My memories of last year’s Christmas with friends is my shining moment, when I felt like I had a family, when I felt like the world was right and that things would be okay. I don’t want to think about my family right now. And their holidays. And how they will be alone with my mother who will inevitably be manic depressive and will make it a horrible holiday. My poor brother and father who will be there, trying desperately to make her happy, trying to appease her, and to no avail. She will not be happy. She will not let them make her happy. And their Christmas will be defined by that. By her horrible reaction to my life. That will make their Christmas. And I feel terrible about that. I don’t really want to think about Christmas with Robbin’s family, feeling so foreign. Watching the kids do their ungrateful rampage through peoples hard work and high hopes. Getting gifts that reflect the givers’ lack of knowledge about me. Eating food that they have eaten every year for Robbin’s whole life but that is not food that I am used to eating at Chrismas. Even the little things make me realize how steeped in tradition Christmas is, how we place so much magical importance on things and preferences and the repetition of what has always been. I am watching her sitting here by me on the patio and I am watching the pout of her upper lip that I love so much. I am looking at her rolled up jeans that Betty thinks are so butch, the ink spots that were, inevitably, my fault because I always wreck her laundry, her watch that it took me months to pick out, her hands that have spent so much time holding mine, her curls that I want to wrap my fingers in thousands of times, the way she is just sitting out here, mostly asleep, just because I needed to write. She didn’t say a word, didn’t show any sign of impatience, didn’t need to know what was going onto this computer screen, just sat and let me do what I needed to do. I love this woman so much. Always have. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 15th, 2007
4:30 pm	update It's been almost a year, and so much has happened, and yet I haven't really written about any of it. I stayed a year with Childhelp. It was amazing and insane and I learned a lot about children and crises and me and the rest of the world. I had a classroom of my own, which I managed to run. I revisited the fact that I do not, ever, under any circumstances, want to manage adults. It is not my forte, I do not like it, I did not sign up for it, and doing it or failing to do it (with my TA's) made me unhappy and stressed. I spent a little time with a lot of kids and a lot of time with a few kids. My R, my dear, sweet little R, who, if I won the lottery tomorrow, I would take home and take care of forever and teach what it feels like to be loved... I am scared for him. I don't know if he will ever find a family to adopt a ten year old with lead poisoning who is perpetually unable to focus long enough to even learn the letters of the alphabet. But he can hug and be observant and thoughtful and he longs for people's attention every day and he tries and tries despite how hard it must be to try, and despite all his hardships and the awful things people have done to him and as many times as he's been abandoned, he opened up and he loved me. Without reservation. I will miss him terribly and think about him every day. And A, who has changed so much this year. She came in angry at the world and incapable of being rational and sure that everyone was out to get her, and shaky in school. She has learned to speak this year, make sounds she couldn't make before. She struggled through telling herself to say it right during every word, and now, after all this time, she sounds so good. She worked on being able to read, every day, and from a child who had trouble with three letter words, she reads books by herself. Most important of all, from a child who said "you hate me and you're going to leave me like everyone else did", she and I stuck together and were honest with each other and made promises to each other that we kept, and we worked through her angries and her tantrums and her moments of irrationality, and because she saw that I loved her anyway, she learned to love me back, and that adults could be okay. And she will be going to a foster home soon, and hopefully she will open up and let them love her. I have faith in her, she has become mature and smart, she will be okay. I will miss her terribly. I will miss the children's smiles, their love of the animals, their hugs, their corny jokes, playing with them at play time, eating with them at lunch, watching them play after school, and the few moments where they come out of a crisis and let me hold their hand or hug them or wipe away their tears and actually talk to them. I will miss them waving at me and yelling hello and saying "watch me! watch this!". I will miss each and every one of these kids. Even my grumpy little W who drives me absolutely insane. I will miss the sunrises over the fields here, I will miss the sound of laughter outside my classroom door after school, I will miss the horses and dogs and sheep and the cat, I will miss the deer on the entrance road, and driving through the village while it's still asleep. I will miss this classroom that I have worked so hard on, I will miss the few staff members that come in sometimes to talk to me, I will miss the others who I can tell love children no matter what. The rest of it I will not miss one bit. I will not miss the adults who act like children. I will not miss watching children be handled and spoken to roughly for no reason. I will not miss the gossip and the drama and the lack of professionalism. I will not miss having a pessimistic boss who snaps at people, doesn't interact with the children, and finds fault with things instead of supporting the good things. I will not miss the movement of people in and out. I will not miss not knowing what has happened to a child that I watched, taught, nurtured, mothered, and loved for the better part of a year and never hear another thing about once they leave. I will not miss being ignored, used, walked on, and insulted. I will not miss the rest of this place. I am headed for a job in the city of Fredericksburg. I have a class of moderately mentally retarded little ones. The principal says five or six kids, three are in wheelchairs and come with one-on-one aides. I am overwhelmed by the thought of learning a new set of rules and routines and schedules, figuring out who gets picked up by which therapist and when I'm supposed to do what and where things are and who to ask about what. I am excited and nervous about the thought of having parents to interact with. That will be a first for me. I am nervous about being gay and being a teacher and the various people that may have issues with that. I am excited about having structure, and support, and people that specialize in helping me with things (thank god- a reading specialist!). I am not looking forward to dressing like an uptight person every day like most of the world does. Oh well. I have two weeks of teacher work days before I get kids, so hopefully I'll be confident enough to fake confidence by the time they get there. Anyways, I am still sitting at work (the old job) and am getting very hungry, I'll have to write about home and love in the next installment. As always, love to all. -L (2 Comments |Comment on this)