A Little of This, A Little of That...

Just a few idle thoughts from the snowbound.

If the power stays on, I may flesh the thoughts out... otherwise, it’s bullets, baby.

My electric company is sending me emails, reminding me to charge all my devices.

Okey-dokey!

This made me laugh pretty hard:

I really can't decide which one I like best!

Found this note on a desk at work:

Now, how exactly...? Hmmmmm...

Caught an 11-year old kid copping a feel on this while he thought no one was watching:

Just wait, kid. It'll only get better...

It's National Puzzle Day!! And there's a blizzard!

I have a plan...

Anyone else finding their imaginations running amok since the announcement of The Big Split?

Or is that just me?

(Two feet of snow be damned..., it's gettin' WARM in here!)

Christmas Eve 2021

Here’s hoping we ALL get what we want for Christmas!

All the best, my patient friends.

Merry Christmas!

Closet Organization

The past couple of months have been a crazy race against time, pivoting between multiple tasks to take best advantage of the circumstances of each day: frantically painting while temps were above 50º, demolishing and replacing doors while the weather was dry, purging the basement while the rented dumpster still had room… it’s been a wild dance, with practically NOTHING getting done outside of the Focus Du Jour.

One of the side effects of cramming 96 million different home projects into 2 months is that you end up making a lot of large reprioritizations and small short-term shifts. (Like, “X can live here until I finish Y, at which point, I’ll move Q out of Y and into S, which will leave room in Y to hold X, until I finally work my way through B and can create my new H, which will hold…” etc., etc.)

Or maybe that’s just me…?

But the hectic flurry is finally settling down (at least for the duration of the holiday season) and I have begun the process of acclimatizing to the new configurations inside my house. Overall, I’m fairly satisfied. There are some spaces that need reorganization, some want a few minor tweaks, and most are OK. Ocasionally, I even stumble across a happy accident - some space I created that serves a purpose I didn’t even know I needed.

Even if that space is just a closet…

Since last April’s “winter to spring” seasonal clothing shift took place during a major bedroom renovation, cold weather items got stuffed wherever I could find an empty spot, with a mental note to “sort that out next fall.” (“Look, Ma! I made myself more work!”)

Well, now it’s fall, and I need my warm clothes, TYVM. The weather gods took pity on me and didn’t force the issue until late November, but force it they finally did. I spent the week before Thanksgiving unearthing all my forgotten hiding spots and going through the dreaded annual ritual of Trying On Last Years Clothes.

Fortunately, not everything was a disaster - plenty of things still fit (mirabile dictu) but there remained a few items that disappointed me. Gradually, it began to dawn on me that all the pieces that need to be put away again for a while (in hopes that they’ll stretch with age?) came from the same place (the wardrobe in the guest bedroom) and I found myself musing, as I rejected yet another item, “This will have to go back into The Closet of Optimism…”

Then I realized what I’d thoughtlessly muttered, and began to laugh.

Not a Closet of Failure, not of Disappointment - but Optimism.

Hope and laughter.

Apparently, my subconscious has many ways of providing what I need!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 I’m not dead, nor even ailing…, just stupid busy and beseiged by annoying setbacks.

(I’d say I’ve been running around like a chicken with its head cut off, but that seems inappropriately tactless on this particular day.)

I’ve not given up on coming back soon, I just need to get out of my own way first - even if it’s only for an hour at a time…

If you’re celebrating, have a grand day.

Otherwise, rest up for the beginning of Holiday Madness!

(and I hope to see you soon.)

Frustrations of the Season

It hasn’t precisely been a bad summer… work is sucking eggs and Mother Nature is trying to either kill us or drive us insane with the weather patterns she’s created for Summer 2021… but there is plenty that is going right, as well. 

It’s just that this summer seems particularly rife with petty frustrations - things that shouldn’t warrant even a blip on life’s radar, but which nonetheless have assumed a significance that feels positively epic. My assumption is that things seem particularly irksome because we’ve had 17 months of playing tug-of-war with the universe and are all a little short of patience. 

Whatever the reason… I’m still ready to hit things.

So I’ve turned to Practicing Pollyanna.

Gritting your teeth because you just spent $30 and 5 hours getting, trimming, and prepping a board to repair your window frame, only to discover your father went rogue during construction and you can’t actually use your Wood of Great Effort and Expense?

     Jz Wants To: Beat someone with the now-useless trimmed and painted board.

     Pollyanna Sez: Find some clapboards to trim and jury-rig - and be grateful you had them.

Devastated that your special once-a-year birthday splurge on the chocolate-dipped-with-shots bowl at Coldstone Creamery ended up all over the parking lot? 

     Jz Wants To: Wail like an 8-year old

     Pollyanna Sez: Remind yourself that you’d eaten most of the ice cream and that at least the mess didn’t land inside your car. 

Frustrated that your lawn is nothing but dirt and crabgrass while your gravel driveway has filled in with a profusion of healthy grass?

     Jz Wants To: Rail at the universe and fret over the expense of chemicals and seed.

     Pollyanna Sez: Appreciate the fact that you were given free resources to perform transplants and giggle over the thought that your lawn is now sporting hair plugs.

Maddened by the fact that the only thing flourishing in your garden this year are the 4.5-foot tall coneflowers that are growing RIGHT where you need to place your 6-foot ladder?

     Jz Wants To: Trample the flowers in a fit of pique

     Pollyanna Sez: Grudgingly finesse the ladder into place… and admire the picture it makes.

 I hope July is being good to all of you!

Lexicological Land Mines

If you’ve read here any length of time, you’ll know that I tend to bumble my way through life. I’ve never really found my niche, nor have I ever really found my anchor. (Well, SP is kind of my rock but that’s a different type of mooring than I mean. He gives my soul a center … but I still haven’t found my place.) 

Despite the worries created by my aimless existence, however, one thing I can still claim to my credit is a very strong sense of self. I don’t always like the person I am, but I accept her. Even in my younger and more socially-eager days, I didn’t put a lot of effort into trying to change in order to fit in better. I may have spent a lot of time in thinky-thought, pondering how different I was from those around me, but it was a purely academic exercise. For all the why-ing and mandatory existential angst, I never seriously considered the need for any real change. I was me, they were them, we just all needed to figure out how to get along. (And I am only prepared to do my 50% portion of that, thank you very much.)

A positive side effect of this innate arrogance confidence is that it makes a person fairly adaptable. Self-acceptance leaves you with the space to accommodate differences and discoveries. For example, as I’ve said before, when I realized I was submissive, it was a bit of a surprise but it didn’t profoundly alter my sense of identity - it was simply another thing to incorporate.

Despite that lofty claim, however, there are some descriptors that are just never going to fly - and BG stumbled onto one of them the other night. He was doing his usual pre-playtime ramping up of the heat, a thing at which he is extremely skilled. This man can use words to reduce me to a puddle of goo quicker than about anyone I’ve known. However, words can be tricky. Many have a range of meanings and nuances and the primary definition for one person may not be the first to mind for another…

So, I’m reasonably sure than when he called me “subservient”, he meant to focus on the way in which I am “prepared to obey unquestioningly”. I, however, felt like he was calling me “useful in an inferior capacity”… and that is just not a sentiment destined to heat my loins. 

     “Different capacity” - I have no problem with. 

     “Inferior”? - It’s time for you to go home now…

But until we have a chance to get that sorted out, I politely requested that he rethink his use of that particular word. And thankfully, because he is also a thinking guy, he simply said, “Whoops! Sorry that struck a nerve. It’s submissive you are” … and moved right on to fueling more heat.

I love a man who understands the power of nuance... and how to avoid a landmine.

My Week of Baader Meinhof Phenomenon

(Also apparently called “blue car” or “red car” syndrome? I dunno. I just googled, “phrase for learning a word then seeing it everywhere”… because I knew it had a name!)

Anyhow, my new word has induced a great deal of brain cramp, so naturally I need to share!

Watts the Safeword (a YouTube channel which I really enjoy) released a video last week in which Amp has his third coming out. First gay, then kinky, now he’s adding “demisexual” to his identifiers. I had never heard of this term (which has apparently been around for 15 years - Way to keep up with the times, Jz!) but nonetheless, I learned something new. Three days later, I was seeing headlines in the news about Andrew Cuomo’s daughter coming out as demisexual. (I kind of question the newsworthiness of this revelation but hey, at least I knew what they meant!) Since then, it has popped up in a number of places and I'm feeling bludgeoned by the term.

(And for those of you who are in the same boat I was before watching Amp’s video, here’s the standard definition of demisexual: feeling sexual attraction towards another person only after establishing an emotional bond with that person.)

Now, before we go any further - the reason for the excessive brain time is that this identifier rings profoundly true to me.

And yet, frankly, I struggle with its relevance.

Even after a week of thinky thoughts, I’m still having trouble coming to grips with how I feel about this new distinction I’ve learned.  

Because I won’t lie. altho’ this term fits me to a T… a large part of me thinks this is a genuinely ridiculous concept to create a flag around. 

I understand the want/need/desire for nearly all the other sexual identifiers, because those identities will impact the partners a person chooses. But being demisexual (or, “particular” as we old-fashioned folk might say) only impacts the people you do NOT choose - and frankly, I don’t think that’s anything that requires explanation. That certain people don’t make the cut is a fact of life that we must all learn to accept.

Yet despite my inclination to eye-roll over something that strikes me as largely a quibble… the funny thing is that, for once, this identification is actually something that made me feel better. I thought, “Oh! You mean that’s not just me being weird??” - and felt genuinely relieved. None of the other similar revelations in my life have had this kind of effect, not even when SP let the submissive genie out of the bottle. Submissive was a surprise - one which explained quite a lot… but I can’t say I felt relief - it was simply another thing to incorporate.

Nor was it the textbook definition that resonated with me at first. At least, not until Amp expanded on the meaning with a quote from Olivia Davis: “Demisexuality is about desire and arousal … It’s not merely that I’m only interested in having sex with people that I love, it’s also that I feel a complete absence of desire or sexual feelings towards everyone else. EVER. What makes me demisexual is that absence.” 

THOSE were the words that made relief wash through me.

Because that complete absence has long been a stumbling block for me. I have been baffled by the fact that I can be with a guy that, intellectually, I recognize as sheer, unadulterated sex on a stick… and yet not feel the tiniest flicker of attraction. I’ve actually wondered at times if I could be asexual - except that when I’m with someone I am actually attracted to, I kind of go from zero to 60 in 4 seconds flat... so it’s not that I don’t have a libido. Yet I truly do not seem to experience the same level of itchiness during periods of drought that others talk about. 

SP often scolds me for over-thinking everything (not without reason) and I have genuinely spent a lot of time worrying that maybe this seemingly-peculiar refusal to go a-lookin’ for partners was caused by my overly-active brain. Was I thinking myself into a stunted life? Prods and urgings by friends seemed to indicate that they thought so. Could they be right?

So it really, truly felt wonderful to receive some validation that all my lack of action is not inevitably because I’m afraid or I’m overthinking or I’m just a plain ol’ nebbish. The realization that others also feel this way was actually HUGE for me. 

Additionally, this need for emotional ties to create desire also explains why, for years now, my body has known when a relationship is over long before I consciously realize we’re at the end. My libido is aware of disruption before my mind has seen past the habits of partnerships.

So this seemingly silly identifier is actually responsible for quite a number of pieces falling into place, worries being soothed and puzzling behaviors getting explained. I find myself a walking example of the validity of the term.

And yet, I can't stop shaking my head over it…