Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: being me

  • Don’t Worry, Be Stabby

    Here’s a little song I wrote
    You might want to sing it note for note
    Don’t worry, be stabby
    If anyone should give you trouble
    Don’t have to stab them once, make it double
    Don’t worry, be stabby
    Don’t worry, be stabby now

    Don’t worry, be stabby, Don’t worry, be stabby
    Don’t worry, be stabby, Don’t worry, be stabby

    Someone posts something makes you see red
    Just stab them a little, don’t make them dead
    Don’t worry, be stabby
    You read comments, now your head aches
    Get out the forks, ice picks, and stakes
    Don’t worry, be stabby
    Don’t worry, be stabby

    Don’t worry, be stabby, Don’t worry, be stabby
    Don’t worry, be stabby, Don’t worry, be stabby

  • No Emotional Pleas Here

    I don’t believe that gay marriage should be made legal in the United States of America. I believe it is already legal. I believe that every law that has been put in place to thwart this has been unconstitutional and against both the supreme law of the land and the spirit behind that law.

    For as long as I’ve had some knowledge of the existence of same sex couples, sometime before the age of 10, I’ve believed they could get married. I wasn’t completely oblivious, I knew none of them were getting married. I just figured it would take a few to decide that they wanted to enough to go through the bother of being the pioneers. I thought there would be some fuss and squabble, but that the courts would support them. It was so clear in my mind, that it wasn’t even in my mind, it was in my core.

    The first hint I had that things were not going to go “my way” was when I started to become aware of the domestic partnership movement. I was already married (in Seattle) when Seattle started registering domestic partnership. When Disney began offering benefits to same sex domestic partners (announced in 1995, after my husband was already working for them) I groaned in frustration. I did not see these things as victories. I felt that these “improvements” were just going to make it take longer until the “right” thing happened. I strongly believed that the money being spent on benefits for same sex partners should be spent to hurry up and make same sex marriage the reality in the outside world that it already was in my mind.

    I was naive. I didn’t understand the ugly battle that was ahead. I assumed that same sex marriage wasn’t happening and widely accepted yet, because overall people just weren’t thinking about it yet. I didn’t know how strong and visceral the opposition would be. Yes, you’ve read me right. I was once young and naive and expected more from people than endless annoyance and the strong, twitchy desire to stab them. Or, really, I was just self-centered and I hadn’t bothered to ask people for their thoughts on the matter. The truth is, even among most of my liberal friends at the time, domestic partnership was more than good enough.

    There was a lot I didn’t understand yet, that I hadn’t thought about yet. I hadn’t wondered why I was so accepting of things which were not the status quo. I’m still not entirely sure how it happened. By all rights, looking at my family background, and considering the people who raised my parents, and how my aunts and uncles turned out (I came from Catholics on one side and Mormons on the other) I should have been more like those other people who found the idea of same sex marriage foreign, and bizarre and abhorrent.

    I was in my thirties before I thought to ask my father why, despite not having been raised by activists who talked LGBT equality, it just seemed like the most natural thing in the world to me. We had a great talk, with flashes of insight but no definitive conclusions.  Nonetheless I am grateful for the fact that my parents basically just raised me with the notion that decent people should be treated decently, and really, assholes should be treated decently too, because the way you treat others is more of a reflection on who you are than on who they are.

    So, way back in 1994 when I got married. I didn’t look at it as a political act. I definitely didn’t see it as a religious act. By 2000, thanks to California Proposition 22, I was embarrassed to be married. I was ready to do away with the entire notion of marriage as a government institution, let the religious folks keep it, and make federal domestic partnerships (same and opposite sex) the law of the land.

    Another 13 years have gone by, and this year I will finally find out if the Supreme Court does what I’ve always been so sure they would do. In the end I don’t really give a shit what word is attached to it. I want adults to be able to create legal families under federal law, with all the rights and responsibilities attached to that formation of a family. I want it to be the same form of legal family no matter what their race, culture, or sexual orientation is.

    I expect the Supreme Court of the United States to find Proposition 8 and DOMA unconstitutional. That’s the truth. I don’t even feel anxious about it, I just expect it, even though logically I know that there is no guaranty.  I’ve carried around this belief for so long, it will be foundation shattering if they do not. Next, I’d like our lawmakers to get around to sorting out this notion of a legal family in a way that is equal. It’s not about love for me. Instead it is about government paperwork and benefits. It’s about next of kin, end of life decisions, and estates. I want things to be equally practical for all people, and separate is not equal.

    I don’t really feel much animosity to the majority of the other side on the concept of marriage. I don’t think most of them are fans of the Westboro Baptist Church. I have to assume that the issue is as tied up in their core sense of reality as it is in mine, and we just haven’t found the right way to bridge the gap. I understand they may never reach the point where they are in favor of same sex marriage. I understand they may always teach their children same sex unions are not considered positive within their religion or personal moral code. I do hope they will reach a point where they truly believe, and pass on to their children, that the best way for our government to protect their rights, is to protect the rights of those they disagree with.

  • Desert Mirage

    I am currently in Las Vegas, because I am an idiot, or a masochist, or both.  There is just no good reason for a person with Summer SAD to “vacation” in Las Vegas in June, but that’s what I did.

    My husband had to come here for business, and because he is always extremely busy with his start-up, I decided to come on out with him. He’d be too busy working to spend time with me, but the drive to Vegas and back would give me more time to hang out and talk to him than I get in the average week, so it seemed well worth it.

    Until it was 106 fucking degrees in the fucking shade and the fucking hotel room won’t cool the fuck off.

    I used to spend parts of my summers in Vegas. My grandparents lived here when I was a child. Mornings would start early to get some good play time in before it got too hot.  My grandfather would walk me to the local playground so I could play for a little while before the metal slide got literally too hot to use safely. Then we might walk over to 7 Eleven for a Slurpee. If I didn’t get a Slurpee, there would probably be coins left on the ledge outside the house for me to get something from an ice cream truck later in the day. They sold the house when I was 8 years old and left Vegas for a cheaper town in the middle of nowhere Nevada to retire. I drove by the house yesterday. My grandmother would be horrified to see the condition that the current owners have it in. The huge sagebrush field that I explored is now completely littered with 2 story suburban cookie cutter tract homes. Overall, it felt surreal to be there. I had planned to call my father while parked out front, but decided I didn’t really like it there, so I meandered on my way.

    I stopped at a store to look for a new purse (my current one is falling apart) but had no luck with that either. Upon exit of the store into the overbearing heat, I headed back to the car when I sign across the parking lot caught my eye.

    Rita’s Ice Custard Happiness

    Ooh, ice custard. Do I want that?
    Of course you want that. It’s happiness.
    Well, yeah, but should I have it?
    What “should”? It’s happiness. Go get some happiness.
    It probably isn’t any good. It’s probably too expensive.
    It’s Happiness, it says so right in the name, plus The Beatles say Rita is lovely.
    I don’t think it is the same Rita.
    Whatever, come on, people are always accusing you of being too negative. Go get some happiness. Be a person that deserves happiness.
    Fuck you.
    HAPPINESS
    Serious, fuck you. Alright, fine, I’ll go get some fucking happiness.

    So I drag my heat exhausted ass across the hot black top toward Rita’s Ice Custard Happiness. So. Hot. I have to walk around the building when I get there, the sign was on the back of this little section of strip mall that is floating out on the street side of the parking lot. I pass the Subway that is next door, and get to the front of Rita’s Ice Custard Happiness and am greeted by a “Coming Soon” sign.

  • About Face

    I like routine and it is easy for me to fall into the habit of doing something because it is what I do, long beyond the point of that thing being important. If I do not do it, I will feel anxious, because a thing which I am “supposed” to do, is not being done.

    I disabled my facebook account a week ago. I don’t expect to remain off of facebook forever (at least not yet), but it wasn’t working well for me (from a personal, not a technical standpoint). I was spending far to much time on facebook, even though I wasn’t enjoying that time. I was also spending too much time trying to figure out how I was going to make it work better for me, so I decided to remove that from my thoughts for the moment and just go cold turkey.

    Now, with a little perspective, I’m coming closer to deciding how to relaunch my use, and manage it in a way that is less time and energy consuming, and hopefully provides more positive than negative.

    I joined facebook (and Myspace) because my daughter was interested in being able to hang out with her friends online, and I wanted to look at the sites so I could make an informed decision. She was not yet old enough to join according to their TOS, so it was not yet an option, but I knew she’d like to have an account on her 13th birthday, so I started doing my homework ahead of time. I hated myspace, but facebook was fun for me. I had a manageable number of friends and it was nice to have a window into their lives, and for them into mine.

    Four years later I have, less than, but far too close to, 200 “friends” which is absolutely ludicrous. There are not 200 people on this planet who give a shit whether I am alive or dead, much less how my day is going or what the past ten photos of my pets look like. Hell, most of my actual friends don’t really give much of a shit how my day is going, because, face it, most of my days are going the same as previous ones.

    The thing is, I basically added everyone who ever added me, as long as I sort of knew them. I have no idea why they added me to start with. Do they just like the friend number to look big? Did they give facebook access to their email address book? I know one added me so I could play facebook games with her. I added less than a dozen people first. But, I figured if I was going to add them, then I should pay attention to them. I made friend groups so that I could post to only specific people, but didn’t use them for reading. If they were on my friend list, I read their updates. All of them. This could take a very long time if I hadn’t looked recently. Yes. I know. You don’t need to say it, and neither do I.

    Some of them are really fucking annoying too.

    Plus, I didn’t block any apps or games, so I got all that spam too. The whole point was to be there so that I could check it out for my kid, and keep an eye on her and how she used it. If she started spamming people with app shit, I needed to know it. No way to guide her along if I had blocked them all. Now, she is older and I am totally confident in the care she exercises as far as facebook apps go (and really, she can go ages without even logging in to facebook, because she is busy being addicted to tumblr instead, where half the time I want to throw up over stuff I see, but hey, she is older now, so whatever).

    So, I was overwhelmed with all this stuff to read, and the first choice was to narrow down my “friend” list. It turned out that was easier said than done, because while many had no real connection to my life, they were at least the friend of a friend (or friend of a business associate), and I worried about offending somebody, or some such nonsense. While I mostly feel it is nonsense, I don’t actually want to hurt somebody’s feelings if I can easily avoid it.

    So, I believe over the course of my week break, I’ve come to accept that I’ll just need to create reading groups on facebook, and really only look at those people regularly. Plus, try to just see what I see when I happen to login, and not go back to check on everything they’ve posted about since I last checked.

    I still find it a shitty way to communicate at any level that actually matters to me. Not to say that there are not some people that I manage to have meaningful communication on there with, but for most people, even those I care about a great deal, it just isn’t a good place for that. It is a place of small talk, and I don’t enjoy small talk. It feels like a waste of time and energy.

    I’d always prefer to have a one on one conversation, or just sit home and read a book, to attending any kind of group event. Living your online life as a group event is what facebook is all about. It is a group event that invades my home every single day. I need to manage the door much better.

    Fifteen years ago, the internet was more than a great resource to me, it was a refuge from the way general society interacted everyday. That is no longer the case. There is no way I can stop the internet cold turkey. I’ve stored my brain in the cloud. Dependence aside, it is clearly time for me to make a lot of changes.

  • Squawk

    If I was granted 10 wishes, I’d wish to be a nicer person.

    Fuck you. No I wouldn’t. I was totally lying. You didn’t believe that horseshit, did you?

    I would wish to be less obsessed with getting it perfect, and a lot more satisfied with getting it done.

    I’d also wish for world peace, via having a large number of people (think REALLY LARGE) shift to an alternate reality that they were not sharing with me. I don’t care about an end to war, I just need more peace for me, personally.

    I don’t have the top 10 all mapped out, but somewhere in there, I’d want to be able to consistently peel a boiled egg perfectly.

    I’ve read hundreds of web tips, watched videos, explored techniques and looked at gadgets. I still peel a mutated fucked up dented, chipped, and gouged egg as often as I peel a perfectly smooth egg shaped egg.

    I fucking hate slop in the kitchen.

    I have a boiled egg almost every day, unless I am eating breakfast out, have run out of eggs, or… I don’t know, am too busy puking my guts out or something (see the 2nd week of July), so it isn’t as if I don’t have a lot of practice peeling eggs.

    I like deviled eggs. I LOVE good deviled eggs. I make a damn good deviled egg, but I never do it because the process of trying to peel that many eggs drives me fucking mad. I haven’t made a batch since before my kid was born, and she is old enough to get her driver’s license now.

    The last time I made them it was because I asked people I love what I should bring to their house for a party, and they replied “Your deviled eggs!” I made eggs for the party. There was a lot of screaming and swearing and a little crying (and a lot of rejected eggs) and people at the party loved them. I never asked those friends what I should bring to their house again. I just told them what I could bring.

    Yes, I know, some people would make deviled eggs with slightly fucked up, or even very fucked up eggs, but I am not that person.

    Wait, scratch the egg peeling skills wish. If I am wishing, let’s just wish big. I want ultimate egg skillz, yo. No fishing egg shells out of mixing bowls. No breaking the yolk on over easy eggs. No fucking up an omelet while trying to flip or fold it. No curdling while making a custard. No accidentally having one roll off the counter and break on the floor while I am busy grabbing some other ingredient. You get the idea.

    Clucking chickens and their little packages of kitchen stress.

    Yes, I know. If you are paying attention and are the kind of asshole who likes to point shit out, you might be itching to type something about how if I was less obsessed with getting it perfect and more obsessed with getting it done, I’d just bring ugly tasty deviled eggs to parties, and I’d be a lot more likable. Fuck you. I don’t want to be likable. I just want to quickly peel eggs without having chunks of white stick to the shell, and I want to do with without resorting to raising my own chickens in an effort to feed them perfectly and have the eggs be as fresh as possible.

    If there were less people I wouldn’t need as many eggs to serve deviled eggs at a party.

    My morning breakfast peeled perfectly this morning. It won’t tomorrow. I don’t even know which is worse.

  • Kindergarten Education

    When I was 5 years old, I had a friend who lived one street over, but our houses lined up so that we shared a backyard fence.

    This sounds like the ultimate in coolness and convenience, but my mother decreed that I was not allowed to climb the fence to go visit her. If I was invited over, I was to walk around in a civilized fashion and appear at their front door.

    I was also not allowed to walk over to her house by myself, no matter how I complained and cajoled. We lived in a decent neighborhood, but not the kind where everyone knew everyone and kept an eye out on the neighborhood kids. Also, the way around was fairly long, and people tended to drive on her street pretty quickly, plus there wasn’t a real sidewalk.

    Eventually, one day my mother relented. I could walk around by myself, and call her as soon as I arrived at my friend’s house.

    I set off on my little adventure. I made it about half way to my friend’s house when I came upon a group of big boys. To then me, they were huge. To now me, I think they were in the 5th to 7th grade range. I continued on my route, without hesitation, for the last time in my life.

    The boys parted to let me walk into their midst, but then closed ranks behind me, and surrounded me. How many boys? All the boys in the world, as far as I was concerned, but I am guessing 5 or 6 of them.

    I tried to continue on my way, but they kept blocking me. Bumping me. Trapping me.

    “Where you going?”

    “To my friend’s.”

    “You want to hang with us?”

    “I have to go to my friend’s.”

    I kept trying to pass. They kept preventing me.

    “I have to go.”

    “Just give me a kiss, and we’ll let you go.”

    “Yeah, give us some kisses.”

    Adrenaline coursed through my body. I didn’t know that at the time, but I am well familiar with the signs and symptoms now. Fear and rage and regret and so much flight or fight, but with no understanding of how to do either one.

    Shaking I tried to pass them, and just kept saying I had to go.

    Then one boy said, “Wait a minute. I think I know her,” and they all paused.

    “Are you Jimmy’s little sister’s friend?”

    “Yes.”

    “Let her go guys.” Turning to me, “Don’t tell.”

    So, I made my way to my friend’s house, and I called my house to say I had made it there safely.

    I didn’t tell on the boys. I didn’t want to get in trouble. I was told I shouldn’t walk by myself, but I kept bugging them to let me walk by myself. I didn’t want them to know that I couldn’t even walk one street over by myself.

    Not that I intended to walk to her house by myself again.

    Hell, at least I made it to 5.

  • Comic Timing

     

     

    Why I love and hate having a smartphone – The Oatmeal.

    This seemed appropriate, especially considering I have switched to a Motorola Razr.

  • Texting Without QWERTY

    My first several cell phones did not have a QWERTY keyboard, and I did more texting on it than I did talking.  It was fine.

    Then I got the Sidekick II, and entered the much easier world of QWERTY texting. In the meantime, in the non-QWERTY world, they became helpful. Now that I am back to having a non-QWERTY keypad, I am being much pained by this helpfulness. As usual, it doesn’t help me, because there is something about the way I am wired that means most UI design works for shit for me, the more carefully designed it is, the more it tends to suck for me.

    I am trying to make the help back the fuck off, so I can text the way I did before the QWERTY phone, I was fairly fast at that. So far, I am just being hampered by all the help.

    Seriously, yesterday friend texted to ask info she needed about cooking something. She clearly wanted the info quickly, and I could not fucking manage to write a reply. I ended up resorting to finding my husband in the store (BevMo) and interrupting his booze shopping to ask him to text me what I wanted to reply, so I could forward it to her. I’m not kidding. That is how I replied to her.

    Today, I was waiting for take out dumplings and I texted my husband who was waiting out in the car.

    “15 min wait. It might take me that long to type this.”

    I was able to get a reply from him and type one response before the food was ready.

    Next we went to Paradis where we samples some flavors and then all of us chose the Orange Buttermilk, because it was SO good. I need to look at buttermilk ice cream recipes. I’ve never had it before, but I need to make sure it is not the last. I would have tweeted about it, if I had better texting capabilities, but I did not. I might have mentioned it on facebook if I had a smart phone, but I did not.

    So, that is how things are progressing during my experiment.

  • Still Experimental

    Sometimes I just leave my house without my phone, and I don’t really care. This is a new development. I used to find it very stressful if I accidentally (rarely) left my phone behind.

    A couple of times, it has been truly frustrating to not have my phone so that I could access my email.

    Mostly, it has just highlighted for me how useless the phone seems to me without that feature.

    However, rather than making me want to run out and get a phone that I can get email on, it mostly makes me think about getting rid of my phone entirely.

    So, yes, I was very addicted to my smart phone, but so far any withdrawal symptoms have been minimal, at worst, or possibly just nonexistent.

  • The Experiment

    I bought a Sidekick II in early 2005. It was my first smart phone, and it changed my life. I’d had other phones with web access in the past, but it just wasn’t good enough to be anything more than a curiosity. The Sidekick II was very usable. I could get out and about while managing my business and helping my clients. I was no longer so tied to the computer.

    I’m on my 4th Sidekick now, the Sidekick LX 2009. The first one I bought at a discounted rate and signed a contract with T-Mobile, but all the subsequent ones I bought outright, so I’ve long since been out of contract.

    T-Mobile/Danger/Microsoft decided to shut down the Danger servers on May 31st 2011. Without the servers, my phone is a dumb phone, with an excellent keyboard.

    T-Mobile handled the transition in a piss poor fashion. I had to spend hours on the phone with them, I could detail it all out, but who really cares. It was hideous and offensive. No two people would tell me the same thing. At first I was told that even though I was off contract, I’d be given a discount on a new phone because of the inconvenience of my phone no longer having the features I bought it for. By the end I was told that no way would I get any discount at all, unless I would sign a contract, at which point I’d get exactly the same discount as anyone else buying a phone and signing a contract. Zero compensation for the inconvenience.

    I originally planned to leave T-Mobile and go to Virgin, where I could get a plan that suited me well (unlimted data and very limited talk (I hate to talk on the phone) for $25 per month. I’d have to buy a new phone outright, but I wouldn’t be under contract, and it was cheaper than what a new phone with similar features would cost me to stay on T-Mobile. Plus it was cheaper per month than T-Mobile. It, admittedly, has for less minutes, but I basically see the less minutes as a bonus.

    I cut back the T-Mobile plan, because we didn’t need two phones with data plans anymore. At that point I realized it only cost us $5 a month to just have a phone that shared the minutes.  $5 is less than $25.  Of course it is cheaper, it has no data, but…

    What if I just went without?

    I’ve been living with a smart phone for several years now, and I’m addicted to the damn thing.

    I think it is a useful device, but it is possible I am deluding myself over how useful it is. It might simply be a luxury item, or it could very well be a monkey on my back, ruining my ability to think properly, since I store half my brain functions in the cloud, and keeping me from really living in the moment, because I am too damn busy posting about the moment online from my phone.

    So, I didn’t replace my smart phone. I just have a dumb phone. I’m seeing what that means for my life.

    For one thing, I find I don’t reach for the damn phone immediately upon waking.

    Actually, I sometimes leave it in the car or another room for the whole day, and don’t pay any attention to it.

    It’s inconvenient to not have the internet on my phone, but my world hasn’t fallen apart, yet.

    We’ll see.

    Anyhow, that’s why I am a little less responsive than you might be used to.