Category Archives: beauty

what have I done, part 2: 15 pound boogaloo

Posted on by

Remember yesterday how I was telling you the mild panic attack I had over the fact that I somehow ended up purchasing what amounted to 15 pounds of crocus bulbs, and I was contemplating how many holes I’d have to dig (which will always be too many holes because I don’t like digging holes or really yard work of any kind) in order to plant 15 pounds of bulbs, and I was pointing out that I likely wouldn’t get them all in the ground before snow fell, because what kind of fucking idiot buys anything to plant in mid to late October in the mountains of New Hampshire (I’m not a Swiftie, but it’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me)?

Welp, few things to follow up on:

1. It snowed last night. Not a lot, only a dusting, and we were frankly lucky to get all the way through October without snowfall, as that’s not the norm around here. But still.

2. The bulbs got delivered today, and you guys, something has gone awry in this process somewhere. The UPS tracking had said 15lbs, as established. I was figuring it would be a fairly good sized box, at that weight. My dog’s food comes in 12lb bags, for instance, and those are…good sized boxes. So I had a concept in my head of what to expect. However, the box that showed up is…well, it’s small. It’s not tiny, but it’s like maybe only a little bigger than a 5lb sack of flour. So that was weird.

3. What was weirder was that, when I looked at the label on the box, it actually says 16 lbs:

Exhibit A

4. What’s even weirder than that, is that when I picked the box up, it was most definitely not 16lbs. Not even remotely close. It was in fact so far off of 16lbs that I immediately pulled out the kitchen scale to weigh it:

Exhibit 2

That’s 2lbs 11.4oz, for the record. That’s 13lbs and whatever whatever ounces short of the reported 16 pounds.

I don’t understand. Like, how did they get it THAT wrong? A pound or two, sure, I can see that…but 13 pounds? That seems like ‘thumb firmly on the scale’ territory to me.

I mean, it was a flat shipping fee so it literally doesn’t matter even one bit, but this is the kind of shit that mystifies me.

Anyway. There may or may not be more updates about this situation as it unfolds.

what have I done

Posted on by

A couple weeks ago, the weather was dreary and depressing around here. I mean, it’s late autumn in New England. The odds of dreary, depressing weather are usually pretty good. Anyway – on this dreary day, I was looking up information about forcing flower bulbs indoors. I have some mini daffodil bulbs I bought as a pot of actual blooming flowers last spring and then, predictably, left them in their pot out by my front steps all summer long and never put them into the ground. The bulbs had started to sprout new growth recently and it got me thinking about whether I could just bring the pot inside, let them grow over the winter, and end up with another cheerful pot of mini daffodils next spring. As with most things in life, the answer was, “well, it’s not quite THAT easy, buckaroo”, which was just about the time I got distracted with the idea of instead buying some crocus bulbs to plant outside for spring. There are currently three individual crocuses that come up in our yard each spring and the amount of joy they bring my serotonin-starved brain come late March or early April is hard to quantify. The idea of being able to multiply that joy many times over simply by digging some holes and dumping some bulbs in and then forgetting about them was especially appealing on aforementioned dreary and depressing day, so I indulged in a little retail therapy and bought a selection of crocus bulbs. I got two different sets: one is just crocuses, and the other is a “Farewell Winter” mix (which I immediately renamed as the “Fuck Off, Winter” mix) that has crocuses, mini hyacinths, and…I don’t know, other stuff. I’m not a botanist. I’m just a person with seasonal depression, regular depression, a credit card, and poor impulse control.

So, I placed my order for the bulbs. There was a warm spell coming up in the forecast and I thought, ‘perfect, I’ll be able to get the bulbs in the ground while it’s warm and they’ll be so happy that, come April, they’ll completely fix my life and everything will be glorious’. A few days later, I realized I hadn’t had any sort of shipping info yet, so I looked up my order on the website. The order still showed as pending, but the company is based in Connecticut, which is only like a four hour drive from here (which, for the non-Americans that might be reading this: that’s what qualifies as relatively local here. I know, it’s bonkers, but this place is huge), so I thought to myself, you know, no big deal. Once they ship, it won’t take long to get here and I can still get the bulbs in the ground while the weather is warm. Certainly before we have any hard frosts, anyway.

I’m sure you can see where this is going by now.

I placed the order on Oct 20th. It shipped…yesterday, Oct 31st. Not only is the few days of warm weather we had long gone, but we’ve now had two nights of hard frosts with temps in the low 20s. Conventional wisdom with bulbs is to plant a few weeks before the first hard frost (which, as an aside, I have always found that to be problematic logic because how the fuck am I supposed to predict when the hard frost hits, you know? This is New Hampshire. It’s like the weather spins a roulette wheel every couple days and you get what you get. Snow in mid May! 75 degrees for three days in mid October! Mother Nature does what she wants and we all just hold on for the ride. But I digress). That window has clearly slammed shut and been locked for the season. Crocus bulbs specifically are pretty hardy though…they come up through the snow, for fuck’s sake…so I’m thinking probably putting them in the ground after a few hard frosts isn’t going to ruin them.

Today, I got an email from UPS saying that my shipment has been delayed and that they’ll be delivering the bulbs tomorrow rather than today. Ok, fine, I wasn’t going to get to do anything with them until the weekend anyway. While looking at the tracking info, something struck me, though: the weight of the package shows as 15lbs.

Fifteen. POUNDS.

I guess I didn’t realize just how many bulbs I was ordering? Because I was not expecting it to be 15 GODSDAMNED POUNDS. Like…that’s a lot of holes to dig. And I am not what you’d call a very ambitious person when it comes to physical labor. I pay someone to mow my lawn. I whine when I have to shovel a path through the snow for the dog. I will 100% call roadside assistance to change a flat tire rather than do it myself. I am a modern woman who certainly CAN do hard things, but I’ll be honest, I’d kind of rather not most of the time if it can be helped. Which, should I have taken this into consideration prior to hitting that “Place Order” button? Probably, but that’s really giving me more credit than I deserve in the realm of capacity for forethought.

So, yeah. It might take me several weekends worth of hole-digging to get these shits planted. I may very well be out here in the yard digging through snow to plant them by the time all is said and done. But you know what? Fuck it. Worst case scenario, none of them take and I have created a makeshift snack vending machine situation in my yard for the local rodents come spring. Best case scenario, I put all the bulbs in the ground, completely forget where I put any of them, and then have the unmitigated joy of seeing them all pop up around the yard in the spring.

Best BEST case scenario, I get all the joy of seeing the crocuses coming up and also have some kind of life-changing revelation about how hard physical labor is a means to salvation or some other Puritan bullshit and I suddenly gain a new interest in doing yard work and cleaning my house.

I’m not going to hold my breath on that one, though.

I want a whole yard full of this in April.

undeveloped

Posted on by

I found an undeveloped roll of film the other day. It was in a bag of random stuff that has gone through at least three house moves with me. I’m pretty sure I haven’t used my non-digital camera in close to 20 years, so this sucker has been around a while.

Exhibit A: ancient technology unearthed from the depths of a bag of junk.

There’s a place in town that still processes film and prints pictures, so I’m going to drop this off to be developed soon. I fully realize that it’s so old and has been stored so disrespectfully (for real: it has been banging around kitchen junk drawers for many years), that it likely won’t even turn out. But I’m curious enough about what’s on it to want to spend the money anyway, just on the off chance.

I used to take tons of pictures, often with the aim of wanting to be artsy, but I wasn’t very good at it. So, more than likely, this is a whole roll of pictures of branches or a cornfield or something similar. There is one other possibility: I took a trip to Kentucky to spend time with a boy circa 2000-ish (don’t quote me on that date, I’d have to get the scrap book out to confirm). I shot two rolls of film while I was there, but only one ever got developed. This may very well be that second roll of film. That was a weird trip and quite frankly, a weird time in my life in general (although, when is life NOT weird, honestly), and I have mixed feelings about the possibility of having that little time capsule available to examine. The boy doesn’t matter—he’s long gone and there were no deep feels there anyway. But I’m equal parts nervous and intrigued at the prospect of perhaps getting to see a glimpse of myself, or at the very least, of my perspective, from so long ago. Aging is such a mindfuck in that, the older you get, the more sure you become of yourself in some regards, but the more you (or a lot of us, anyway), tend to understand that the only constant is change. We are somehow always the same person we’ve always been in a general sense, but there will have been tens or even hundreds of versions of us from year to year, day to day, sometimes even minute to minute. And that’s fine—that’s completely natural. But it can feel very odd, especially if you’re an overly sensitive, always-in-your head person like me.

Anyway. If the pictures come out, I’ll post some of them. If nothing else, they should be good for a laugh at my complete lack of photography skills.

ditch lily aspirations

Posted on by

In New England, we have these orange daylilies that are pretty ubiquitous in the summer. They pop up all kinds of places: yards, abandoned lots, fields…and they’re especially common growing in ditches along the sides of back roads. A lot of people actually call them ‘ditch lilies’ for exactly that reason.

My neighbor hates ditch lilies. He has several flower gardens around his house that he tends meticulously, and one of his spring rituals is to find and dig up any ditch lilies that have somehow found their way into his beds. They grow via bulbs, but sometimes they don’t all come up at the same time, so it often takes years of successive diggings to get them all out. The last three springs since we moved here, I’ve watched him ferret out any burgeoning patches of ditch lilies and carefully dig all around them. He pops the whole clod of soil out, (presumably so to not further spread the lily bulbs), loads them into his wheelbarrow, wheels them down to where our driveways merge together, and dumps them down over the bank toward the brook.

The thing about ditch lilies is, they can grow just about anywhere. They need barely any dirt, they don’t need a ton of direct light, they’re pretty drought-resistant. There also happens to be a really nice layer of mulch in the form of wood chips from last year’s fallen tree that was cut down, chipped, and the chips dumped along that bank. So this year, right at the juncture of his driveway and ours, we now have a big cheerful new stand of ditch lilies from all the clods of bulbs he’s been dumping over that bank for the last few years.

I do kind of wonder if he glares at them every time he comes down his driveway, or if he’s fine with them as long as they’re not in his flower beds. Either way, I appreciate the symbolism: something discarded and unloved thrown into challenging circumstances takes root, rises up, and flourishes, waving its bright orange flowers at its oppressor on a daily basis, as if to say “you can’t keep me down, fucker”.

We could all use some help in the resilience department these days. May you find the ability to root where you’re thrown, rise up again, and tilt your face to the sun with a smile while knowing those fuckers can’t keep you down.

I’m a writer, Jim, not a photographer. But you get the gist.

the mechanic

Posted on by

A few weeks ago…ok, probably a month ago? I’m bad with how time works. My brain reads hours as minutes and weeks as days more often than not.

Let me start over.

A month or so ago, I’m pulling out of my driveway when my neighbor flags me down. Our individual driveways merge into one small road that goes out to the main road, so we see each others’ comings and goings fairly regularly. I roll down my car window and smile.

“Hi there! What’s up?”

“Did’ya know your tail lights are out?” His voice is gravelly from years of heavy smoking. He’s got about four visible teeth in his mouth, presumably due to the same.

“Oh no, are they?” I had no idea. I’m never in back of the car when it’s running, let alone braking.

“Both of ’em. The one in your back window is working, but it’s small. Better get those fixed before you get hit,” he says sternly.

“You bet. Thanks for the heads-up,” I say. We pull away and continue along down the drive.

Of course I instantly forget about the tail lights.

A week or so later, he flags me down again, this time headed into our driveway.

“Tail lights still out,” he mutters. His rheumy blue eyes betray that he’s more disappointed than he sounds. And he sounds pretty disappointed.

“I know it, I meant to stop in at AutoZone and get them fixed but I’ve been busy, and then I forgot, and…you know how it goes. But it’s on the list, I promise.”

He nods and waves me along. As we pull up to park, I say to my husband, “You watch. One of these days he’s going to get sick of my shit, come fix those tail lights, and not even tell us”. We chuckle and don’t think much more of it.

This afternoon I’m sitting here working and my cell phone rings. It comes up with the neighbor’s name so I answer it.

“Hello?”

“Hello. Your keys in your car?”

“Uhh, no. Why?”

“I was gonna come over and fix those tail lights.”

“Oh, I’ve got an appointment at the garage next week, I was going to have them do it then.”

“Not safe to drive around without ’em. I’ve got the bulbs and the tools. I’ll come do it for you real quick.” And then he hangs up.

Well. No sense arguing, I guess.

He’s maybe 15 years older than me, but he looks much older. Decades of heavy drink and smoke will do that to a body. He recently had part of his pancreas and stomach removed, spent six weeks in hospital, and was out mowing the lawn in ten-minute bursts within a week of coming home. Once he was feeling better and moving around more easily, he started in on trimming back the limbs along the shared part of the driveway because he wants to have it widened and re-graveled this fall. His flower garden is extensive and immaculate. The man truly doesn’t know how to be idle.

While he’s here fixing my tail lights, he notices that my tires were really worn down. I say I was kind of putting off replacing them because I’ll need to buy snow tires soon enough anyway and I don’t really want the expense of buying two sets at once. He leans down, brushes the dirt off the sidewall of a tire and reads out the size.

“195/65 R15. I think I have a set of used ones in that size at the shop.”

“Oh! That would be great, I’d be happy to buy them off you.”

“Used. They wouldn’t cost you anything. You couldn’t run them a whole season, you’d still have to buy a new set come spring. But they’d get you through inspection and last you ’til you get your snows put on.”

“Ok, well…let me know, I guess. My inspection appointment is Thursday.”

He nods slowly, then starts walking down the driveway, back toward his house.

“Hey, what do I owe you?”

He turns his head halfway back over his shoulder as he continues walking.

“Nothin’. It was just a couple lightbulbs. See ya.”

So I guess the moral of the story is, if you’re forgetful and not good at car maintenance, get yourself a mechanic neighbor with a lack of boundaries and a generous heart.

shine on

Posted on by
I made some cupcakes for work this week. They’re Valentines themed. Mostly it was all an excuse to teach myself how to make Swiss buttercream and play around with piping, if I’m honest. There was very little altruism toward my coworkers involved. It was more a case of “I will make these pretty things and give them to people, then enjoy them telling me how pretty they are”. And my therapist would tell me that there’s nothing inherently wrong with that motive, but admitting that was my motivation makes me feel like at least six different flavors of Awful Human Being.

But I digress.

So I made these cupcakes. Aren’t they pretty?

img_20190212_143530_257

Delicious emulsified sugar and fat

You can’t see it so well in the picture but the actual cake part is colored – it has swirls of white, pink and red. In order to get a true red cake batter, I had to use A LOT of red food coloring. The pink in the cake is pretty bright so that used a fair amount as well. There was only a little bit in the frosting, but still…all told, definitely a lot of artificial coloring going on.

One of the core tenets of baking is that you should check the finished product for poison by eating some of whatever you made. I mean, you don’t HAVE to, I guess…but then how would you know if your coworkers are actually enjoying the baked goods or just choking them down to be polite? Short of taking Susan aside and asking her if she was really being sincere when she said your buttercream was delicious, you have no way of knowing. So it’s a good idea to test the finished product and KNOW that it’s delicious, no matter what face Susan makes when she bites into it.

Point being, I ran a BUNCH of tests on the finished cupcakes yesterday, which means I consumed rather a large amount of red food dye.

You may be starting to suspect where this is going and you’re right, but stay with me. You might as well, you’ve come this far.

This morning my poop was predictably quite pink. Most food dyes end up turning your dookie green, but red stays pretty red through digestion. This is exactly why, when you prep for a colonoscopy, they tell you not to have anything with red food coloring in it for a few days before the test. The inside of your colon can get stained by the food dye and then the doctors have a hard time figuring out if the redness is due to disease or just somebody being overzealous about, say, eating Valentines cupcakes.

ANYWHO.

I have this one coworker who really likes baked goods. Honestly, she just likes free food in general, but she REALLY likes baked goods and has been known to consume quite a lot of whatever anybody brings in. Which, zero judgement here, but when she and another coworker were in my office and she was motoring through her second cupcake and talking about getting a third, it occurred to me that she probably didn’t realize just how much food dye was in them.

So of course I brought it up. Because that’s a reasonable thing to talk with your coworkers about, right? I mean, she engaged instead of running away or saying anything along the lines of “hey let’s not talk about poop”, so I don’t feel like I can be FULLY blamed. I may have also brought up the fact that you can make your poop sparkle by eating lots of edible food glitter (a theory I have tested and proven). It’s not like it was a completely unrelated subject at that point, after all.

One coworker, the cupcake fiend, thought it was pretty fantastic and vowed to go buy some edible food glitter to impress her kid and husband with in the near future.

The other coworker, who had been not exactly inching away but definitely leaning slowly further and further out the office door toward the hallway for the whole conversation, wore a look somewhere between bemusement and resignation as she examined her now empty cupcake wrapper.

I have a feeling she probably didn’t go back for seconds.

Oh well. Can’t win ’em all.

hair today, gone tomorrow

Posted on by

To say my partner is a good guy would be a profound understatement. He is truly one of the kindest and most generous people I have ever met…and I’m not just saying that because I have to share a bathroom with him. For as long as I have known him, he has always made a point of giving to others. Whether it’s his time, his money, or even his most treasured belongings, he’s always happy to step up and help someone in need, and to do it with a smile.

Mark’s most outstanding physical trademark has always been a very long ginger ponytail. He’s always been into heavy metal music and long hair tends to come with that territory. Plus, having a long ponytail was something polite society didn’t really want him to do in the time and place that he grew up, so maintaining it was always kind of an act of defiance for him, a little way of flipping off said polite society and all it stood for.

 

After 30+ years of maintaining the long hair, he’s now ready to give it up, all in the name of charity.  Because, like I said, he has a habit of taking being a good guy to a whole different level.

IMG_20150216_122952396

He was watching sports on the TV above us. I guarantee it.

The charity he’s choosing to support with this endeavor is the National Immigration Law Center. Unless you’ve been living under an actual rock for the past couple years (is there room under there for me? Seriously, I can bring snacks), you understand why NILC has become so important to so many people. Even so, I still encourage you to click the link above and read more about what they do and how they are helping some of the most vulnerable among us. They are a vital resource in these days of seemingly constant shifting interpretations of immigration law and, quite frankly, human rights.

I’m going to throw up the link for Mark’s GoFundMe campaign below, but I’d like to  point out here that NILC is a four star rated charity and has a direct funding agreement with GoFundMe, so any donations made to Mark’s campaign will go DIRECTLY to NILC, not to his or my bank account. I don’t want any ambiguity on this – we will not personally be benefiting financially from any donations made. Which, of course, is as it should be.

Here’s the campaign link.

If you want to throw a few bucks at it, we’ll love you forever. If you don’t have any money spare but you want to share the link around to get more eyeballs on it, again…undying love. If you want to shut your browser window and forget you ever heard of the NILC, well…you do you. I don’t have the time or energy to be mad about it.

Thanks for your consideration!

the power of rhubarb compels you

Posted on by
Have you ever wondered how hard it is to become a minister? Well, wonder no more, friends and gawkers! For I, Rhubarb Tiberius Swank, Queen of Steves and Lego Dinosaurs, Starter of Many Things and Finisher of Few, Supreme Glittering Viscountess of Run-on Sentences and Abuser of Ellipsis…es?, have recently had holy orders conferred upon my person.
That’s right, I’m now officially an ordained minister!
Why, you ask? Well, that’s kind of a funny story. And, as with a fair number of my questionable ideas, it all starts with Facebook…

dissolve

If you don’t know what this means, I’m a) very sad for you, and b) think you’re probably up past your bedtime.

So, the other day I was skimming through my Facebook feed, as I am often wont to do of a weekday afternoon when the rigors of sending the same emails to the same people over and over again have inevitably brought my brain to teeter on the precipitous brink of madness. It was during the initial aftermath of the recent SCOTUS decision about the case where that asshole baker in Colorado decided they didn’t want to make wedding cakes for gay couples. There was a friend on my feed posting about how she’s ordained and would be happy to perform marriage ceremonies for any gay couples in any state, etc. That made me smile of course, because love is love. People should be able to marry whoever the frig they want (assuming both parties are down with it, obviously), and it ain’t nobody’s business what flavor of human another human likes to boink.

But it also got me thinking. Not the boinking thing, I mean (although…), but rather, the ordination part. The person who had posted this was someone I call a friend, but I’ve never met her in person. We’ve never had any talks about beliefs, philosophy, or religion, but given the avenues through which I became acquainted with her, I was pretty comfortable in assuming that she leaned pretty atheist. Rather than send her a message and start asking all kinds of probing questions about her personal beliefs and religious affiliations, I instead took myself over to trusty ol’ Google and typed in “how to get ordained”.

Side note here: if anyone ever truly hacks me, I’d be 97% willing to give up my credit card and bank account information in exchange for the solemn promise that they not compile and publish a comprehensive list of my lifetime Google search terms, because HOLY POLE DANCING CHRIST, I would never live it down. Like…you don’t even know. You don’t WANT to know. It’s that bad.
Aaaaaanyway.

One of the first things that came up in the results was a site called Universal Life Church. Having never heard of them, I was 50/50 on whether it was some kind of “every sperm is sacred” situation (you know, the ones who say you can’t even masturbate because THINK OF THE POTENTIAL CHILDREN), a cult like that one that starts with an S and ends with -ology and kind of sounds like the word ‘science’ (I am genuinely afraid of them and refuse to type out the whole name online. If you aren’t afraid of them, you need to watch Louis Theroux’s movie about them. Google it. I’m not even linking it because I’m convinced they keep track), or maybe just a nice, gentle, UU-type “don’t be a dick and everything will probably be alright” kind of thing.

Wait, that was three options, not two. So rather than 50/50 I was…33.3333/33.3333/33.3333…ish. Shout out to infinite decimals, heyyyyy.

Fucking A, where was I?

Ok, yes. Universal Life Church. I held my breath, clicked on the link, and was immediately greeted with a cheerful banner image of a dove in flight, with the words “We are all children of the same Universe”. Following this was a link to a video of Conan O’Brien proffering his own certificate of ordination from Universal Life Church. I exhaled. These were clearly my people.

There was a big blue button mid-page that said “Online Ordination”, flanked with what I originally thought were lightening bolts (me, internally: fuck yes, let’s get Norse up in this motherfucker! Zap me with some Odin-juice! Wait…), but what I now see are actually rough approximations of olive branches. Which make more sense, to be fair…but are a little on the boring side.

I clicked on the button. Through the dark arts of tiny HTML gnomes with pixel-axes (get it? Heeee), I was whisked to another page which said a bunch of stuff about how this ordination was legal in all states, how I couldn’t lie and give a fake name, some crap about online communities that were available if I had questions, etc. Much more interestingly, there was also a sidebar showing some of the other famous people in addition to Conan who had been ordained through the site. You know,  in case I needed more confirmation that I would be in truly esteemed company. The list included such luminaries as:

  •  Lady Gaga
  •  Stephen Colbert
  •  Ian McKellan
  •  Paul McCartney
  •  Richard Branson (maybe not as compelling of a selling point as they think)
  •  that Beneflick Clumbermonk guy, and…

…wait for it…

…waaaaaaitttt…

…Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, who I personally have oft considered worshiping as a supreme being in and of himself.

sold

 I couldn’t hit that next big, blue, definitely-olive-branch-and-not-lightening-bolt-festooned button that said “Begin Ordination Now” fast enough.

The next step was a web form to fill in. First and last name, email address, state and country of residence, and password to use for the site. I filled it all in and read the fine print at the bottom, which was just some junk about being 18 years of age, and how to access your paperwork later on.

I hovered over the “Submit Ordination Request” button for a minute, wondering what I was getting myself info. Would there be a background check? Would I have to submit references who could vouch for the fact that I’m not secretly a puppy-kicker? Would I have to demonstrate my knowledge of…well, anything?

My gaze floated back up to the ecstatic pearly grin of Mr. The Rock. It was almost as if he was offering a benediction through the computer screen, a blessing for my interminable curiosity and the weird places it often takes me. And my roody-poo candy ass, of course.

f7bb86bbbe9353179a5bd66084e2220a

I’m shining it, Mr. The Rock. I’m shining it! (If you’re unfamiliar with The Rock’s wrestling catchphrases, that’s going to sound really sordid out of context. I acknowledge this, but I do not apologize.)

I don’t THINK I actually uttered the words “I’m doing this for you, Rock…” out loud as I hit the button. My co-worker didn’t ask what the shit I was talking about at least, so I’m probably safe.

A split second after I hit the button, the screen flashed up with a big certificate with my name across it (my real name…I didn’t lie to the church like I do to most of social media), proclaiming me officially ordained, legally capable of performing marriages…

…and starting my own ministry.

[ Imagine a picture of my official certificate here. I can’t actually show it to you because it costs $39.95 to download and I haven’t coughed that up yet. You’ll just have to trust me.]

That’s right. I could actually start a Church of Rhubarbology, if I so chose. Or a United Church of Swank. Or I could start a religion where there were ascending orders of holiness named after the chapters in The Hobbit, where you’d have to complete thematic initiation rites for each order. I could start an actual church devoted to the worship of perfect avocados. Or the smell of freshly cut hay.

I COULD CREATE THE CHURCH OF LATTER-DAY STEVES.

squirrel

Praise Nuts!

In all seriousness, though: I didn’t actually do this as a joke. I saw the potential for amusement in it, sure…but my sincere motivation was to be able to make myself available to conduct marriage ceremonies for people that might otherwise have a hard time finding someone to do so. It is remarkable and continually infuriating to me that we still live in a country where some people can’t love who they want to love without being given a load of shit about it. If my silly little ordination adventure can be counted as taking a stand against that oppression, then I’m truly proud to do it.

And if you’ve already got an officiant for your big gay wedding but are having trouble finding someone to bake you a cake, I can sort you out there, too.

I promise I won’t even make you have rhubarb as one of the flavors.

Gay_flag.svg

 Happy Pride!

a month and a day

Posted on by

It’s been a month and a day since we lost Junior.

This morning on the way out the door to head to work, I almost turned to Mark and asked him to check if Junie’s water dish was full. The dish hasn’t been in its spot for a month and a day.

I don’t hear him anymore, at least. For the first few days, I’d swear I could hear him snuffling in the living room or at the foot of the bed at night. I think my brain just automatically knew what sounds he’d be making when, and was filling them in of its own accord. My brain only wants to be helpful with remembering things when it comes to me being haunted, I guess. Go figure.

We still have all of his stuff. His bowls got washed and tucked away in the cupboard almost as soon as we got home. His harness and leash are still on the back seat of the car, which seems perfectly fitting as going for rides was just about his favorite activity. Most of his toys are still piled up in the same place we always returned them to on the rare occasion we bothered to tidy them. A few of his special toys got put aside in other places – his little stuffed bantha sits atop the carved wooden box his ashes are in on the table-cum-altar in the living room. LeRoy, the wee squeaky giraffe whose squeaker gave out but who Junie still often picked up and tried to make squeak, now resides on the bookshelf with some other mementos. L’Alligator the stuffed alligator whose head I once had to surgically reattach due to Junie’s frequent, enthusiastic attentions, sits on the desk upstairs in our bedroom. He’s a far quieter night sentry than Junior ever was, but we do feel like he’s getting the job done OK so far.

His beds are still there, all four of them (one for each bedroom and two in the living room), though Mark moved the one from the foot of our bed into the spare bedroom, and I tucked the favorite living room bed under the other, deeply hated living room bed (he took after me and had a complicated relationship with beds), so that we wouldn’t have to see them empty. We really should get rid of at least two of the beds. One belonged to our old dog Buttons and predated Junior by several years. The faux sheepskin atop the other one bears the scars of much scuffing, as Maltese tend to like to scratch up their bedding into a suitable nest before settling down to nap. We should go through the dozens of toys and donate some of them to the local shelter as well…but we’re not there yet.

It’s only been a month and a day, after all.

 

 

cropped-dsc02958.jpg

L’Alligator and Junior

virtual reality

Posted on by
Last night my phone finally got sick of my procrastinating ass and forced me to install a system update. Along with the system update, there were also a bunch of updates to the apps I use, including the camera software. It looks a little bit different, but I can still find everything I need, so I didn’t think much of it.
This morning I took a selfie to show off my hand-knit neck wear to some like-minded friends, and I noticed that the camera automatically took two pictures, which seemed odd. I kept switching back and forth between the two pictures, trying to figure out why one looked slightly different than the other. One looked just a tiny bit eerie and it took me a minute to realize why.
IMG_20171115_113322073-COLLAGE.jpg
Do you see it? The program filtered out the freckles on my cheek and the scar on my nose, and made my skin just generally brighter / whiter.
AUTOMATICALLY.
It didn’t even give me a choice. It just assumed that I wouldn’t be happy with my face. Because who actually likes their face anymore, you know? Who WOULDN’T want to be touched up a little?
Yes, I’m making a leap by talking like my phone is making assumptions, but the simple fact is that while the phone itself can’t make assumptions, the people that write the programs that the phone runs absolutely can. They are collectively assuming that no one feels like their face is good enough anymore. They are collectively deciding to feed us an ALTERED version of reality FIRST…then offering the actual reality as an afterthought.
That’s not only sad to me, but scary as well. It’s SO easy to fake things nowadays. Altered pictures, fake social media accounts, news being spun to fit a network’s or publication’s bias. Who do we trust anymore? What do we grab on to in order to not get sucked into this crazy vortex of reality being constructed for us?
The way my head is wired, I need to check in with what’s real on a regular basis or I start to feel like I’m disassociated, detached…like I could happily float off into the deep end of the Crazy Town pool and let myself drown. To combat this, I go outside and spend time in nature. I visit friends in actual meatspace, face to face. I read about science because I find fact-based things grounding and soothing. I practice yoga and meditation, both of which remind me that I am here, right now, with each breath.
And I look at myself in the mirror or in pictures. Not like Narcissus gazing at himself in the pool, but looking at my own face for a moment and remembering that I am not just the constant barrage of feels pelting the inside of my skull. I am not actually a (mostly benevolent) ghost floating quietly in the background of all these rooms that I enter on a daily basis.
My wrinkles, my freckles, my scars…they all remind me that I am a person, piloting this meatsuit through space and time, having real experiences and doing real things.
I’d rather technology not decide to take those reminders away from me with the assumption that I value luminous, freckle-free skin over…you know…my actual face.