Monday.

Yesterday started out badly.

Eliot cried when we passed the new CVS in town because they'd taken down the streamers from their grand opening. "Why are the flags goooooooone?" he wailed. "WHO TOOK THE FLAGGGGGGS?"

And that was pretty much how I felt too. The weekend is over. The flags are gone. Who took down the flags? Why isn't everything the way it was? The way I left it? The way I have come to expect it to be? It is Monday and I can't move on because someone took down the flags. Without even asking. Those. Rat. Bastards.

I don't know what's been going on with me lately, but I've been in a funk. A crappy, pissy, grouchy ass funk. And I've been blaming it on everyone else around me. It's what I do. Why? Because it's easier than looking at myself and really seeing what is wrong. Because if I shove the ugly unhappiness further and further down and refuse to feel it, it might go away. Right? Instead of accepting and acknowledging my own faults, I blame them on everyone else and their inability to Make. Me. Happy. What the hell is wrong with them? They are not making me happy. Their job is to make me happy. They are bad at their job. Ipso facto, I will fire them. You are all fired. Every last one of you. The end.

James and I had lunch at a Chinese buffet and we ate quietly and morosely and moodily. I hated that there were no corn nuggets. I hated the sweet and sour chicken. I hated the fried rice. I hated the infomercial about skincare that was playing on the television monitor above my head. I hated that James eats with chopsticks and I use a fork. "Oh, so you think you're fancy, you smug, chop stick using motherfucker?" I grumbled internally. We left without getting fortune cookies. I thought, angrily, I don't WANT a fortune cookie because I don't NEED anyone to tell me my fortune I KNOW what it is and it SUCKS. Clearly. 

But yesterday afternoon, something turned around. I can't explain, exactly. We sat on the couch and I looked at James, and I saw him seeing me. And I cried because I looked like an asshole. I had been an asshole not because I'm inherently an asshole, but because in a moment when I was scared and uncomfortable and unwilling to feel vulnerable, I was mean. I made the choice to be mean instead of open and vulnerable. I thought I was protecting myself. And that moment and that choice turned into more moments and more choices, and I realized that lately I have been choosing to be mean and selfish much too often. I've been whining and complaining about not getting the bear when I haven't even been trying to get the bear. I've just been waking up, dragging myself around, and expecting someone else to get it for me everyday.

I know that's all vague and abstract and probably makes no sense at all to anyone but me. That's okay. The point is, if you want the bear, you have to MAKE AN EFFORT to get him.

It reminds me of the scene in Billy Madison when Miss Lippy is reading the class a book about the puppy who lost his way and while all the other children fall asleep listening, Adam Sandler sits there intently until the end and then says, "Whoa whoa whoa, Miss Lippy. The part of the story I don't like is that the little boy gave up looking for Happy after an hour. He didn't put posters up or anything, he just sat on the porch like a goon and waited. That little boy's gotta think 'You got a pet. You got a responsibility.' If your dog gets lost you don't look for an hour then call it quits. You get your ass out there and you find that fucking dog."

I realized that I don't want to sit there like a goon, waiting. I need to get my ass out there.

By the time I went to bed last night, we had visited the (dubiously awarded) fastest soda machine in the world, a deer wandered into our front yard (I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince Eliot he was about to knock on the door and ask for a grilled cheese sandwich.), I got to hold a precious newborn baby, and I ended the day cuddled up next to James on the couch watching Kung Fu.

Bear = Mine. Puppy = Found. CVS flags = Don't even miss them.

And all the other metaphors and what have you.

p.s. James, baby, if you're reading this...Will you teach me how to use chopsticks? I love you. ;)

Finished beats perfect, every time.

Lessons I have learned (about sewing and myself) while making a quilt:

1. Your seam ripper is your best friend.

2. There's a certain zen moment in quilting that can really only be reached when one is ripping out the same seam for the fifth time.

3. It's okay to mess up while you're sewing. (See numbers 1. and 2.)

4. It is not as okay to mess up while you're cutting the fabric.

5. When your thread is getting janky, check your bobbin. It's almost always the bobbin. (p.s. You have a tendency to put the bobbin in backwards.)

6. Only touch the handle of the iron while you are pressing fabric, not the metal part.

7. The metal part is hot. Like, seriously hot.

8. No matter how patient and understanding your partner, it might not be a good idea to work in the same room with that person if you are someone who has a tendency to get pissed off and take out your anger out on others.

9. You have a tendency to get pissed off and take your anger out on others.

10. If you are a beginner, don't try to use a fancy decorative stitch on your binding, no matter how easy that lady on the YouTube instructional video makes it look.

11. A straight stitch gives you more control, and is much easier to rip out when you screw up.

12. Accept that you are going to screw up. A lot.

13. Finished beats perfect, every time.

14. When the pigs try to get at you, park it like it's hot.

Queer as...

October is LGBT History Month.

Also, I'm queer.

My esteemed colleagues at Dictionary.com do the term no justice:

queer

 [kweer] Show IPA adjective, queer·er, queer·est, verb, noun

adjective

1. strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint; unusually different; singular: a queer notion of justice.

2. of a questionable nature or character; suspicious; shady: Something queer about the language of the prospectus kept investors away.

3. not feeling physically right or well; giddy, faint, or qualmish: to feel queer.

4. mentally unbalanced or deranged.

Although even by their definition, I suppose I qualify as "queer." I guess I'm strange or odd from a conventional viewpoint. Shady? Of questionable character? Perhaps. I DO seem to get picked out of line at the airport for extra security screening disproportionately often... Not feeling physically right or well? Indeed. Mentally unbalanced or deranged? Sometimes. Okay, often.

They throw in a helpful [sarcasm font] explanation of the perjorative:

5.Slang: Disparaging and Offensive .

a. homosexual.

b. effeminate; unmanly.

But they make no mention of the reappropriation of the word. No mention of owning or celebrating one's queerness. In fact, as a verb, Dictionary.com offers this definition of the word:

7. to spoil; ruin.

8. to put (a person) in a hopeless or disadvantageous situation as to success, favor, etc.

9. to jeopardize.

Hmmm...I can see that. To announce oneself as "queer" can spoil or ruin others' notions of your identity. To embrace the term, and the concept of queerness, is to jeopardize the status quo, to invite questions, to shift paradigms. Disadvantageous? Certainly. But hopeless? No. Not at all. More like hopeFUL.

But I'm stalling. I do that, see. I've been fumbling my way towards this post for years now, putting it off. I'm too close, and I don't have the words. It's too important, and I'm bound to fuck it up.

 *****

The thing is, I've always been attracted to women. Not just physically, but in every sense of the word. I preferred women to men. The way they smelled, the way they looked, the way they sounded, the way they felt. Growing up, I just assumed that attraction was normal. (How lovely and innocent, to assume one's own normality.) I figured everyone was attracted to women. Women are beautiful! Women are magnificent! Isn't it obvious? But then I learned that despite what I felt, I was supposed to pair up, date, and marry a man. Because that's how it works. So I did. (Of course, it's all much more complicated than that, but this post is already going to be incredibly long, so let's just gloss over a bit for now.)

Fast forward many years, and despite many attractions to specific women, despite mutual attractions to a few women, I've only ever really had relationships with men. After 32 years and two failed marriages, I finally summon up the courage to "come out" as a lesbian to most of my friends and family. No one is particularly shocked. Taken aback, perhaps, but for the most part, people who know me well nodded their heads like it made sense.

And then, after what felt like about two minutes of being "out," and feeling authentic and proud of myself and open, I met a man. And I fell in love with him. :) Because sometimes, that's just how life works.

So what does that mean? I honestly don't know.

I guess I've been waiting to write about my sexuality until it made sense. But it doesn't. And it won't. It is what it is. You get what you get, and you don't throw a fit.

Part of me thinks I fell in love with James because I was finally able to love myself. I was finally able to not just accept who I am, but love who I am. And when I was sitting there loving who I am, he came along, and he is this person who, as it turns out, is everything I need in a partner.

He loves my contradictions, and he loves my confusion, and he loves that I don't shave my legs. And I love his crazy smart brain, and I love his at times downright mean snarkiness, and I love his chest hair. TMI? Whatever.

But I feel compelled to say these things, to write these things, because it seems disingenuous to remain silent. I am in a relationship with a man, and in many ways, that's so convenient. I can pass for straight. I can hold my partner's hand in public and not worry about being persecuted for it. I can marry him, if we want; I can have children with him, and no one will question the validity of our family. Were some terrible tragedy to befall one of us, either of us could visit the other in the hospital, be in charge of medical decisions. We could file a joint federal tax return and receive the breaks and benefits that entails. We wouldn't be hated. We wouldn't be discriminated against, just for being together.

It makes me angry. It makes me so angry that because I happened to fall in love with a man, this relationship is somehow automatically deemed legitimate, socially and politically. It could just have easily been otherwise.

*****

So although I'm in a relationship (one that I dearly hope will last the rest of my lifetime) with a man, I still call myself queer. I don't know if I'm bisexual. Maybe? I don't like the labels. I just want to be me. 

My most fervent hope for the future is that the labels will become unimportant. We should all be free to partner with and marry whomever we choose. Gender is performance, and love knows no gender. It just is. Love is when you aren't looking for it, when you don't expect or maybe even want it. Love is never a bad thing. Love should be celebrated wherever and whenever it occurs.

After all, we all belong to one another.

See? He gets it.

Reading challenge.

Eliot's homework for today included pointing to each word of a book as I read it to him. His class is learning to recognize certain words by sight and learning to understand the way the text on a page is split into words and sentences and read from top to bottom, left to right. Some of these ideas he's already familiar with; I've read to him at home since before he was born. We do quite a lot of reading around here.

It's so exciting to watch him learning and beginning to grasp the concepts he needs in order to read. He can already read quite a few words, but he tends to be rather self-defeatist about the whole endeavor. (My kid? Surely not!) His teacher sent home little "books" last week, illustrated with various animals trying on shoes and each two-page spread repeated the text, "Does it fit? Will it fit him?" When I told Eliot reading the book to me was part of his homework, I thought he was going to cry. He puckered up and whined, "But I DON'T KNOW HOOOOOW TO REEEEEAD..." I asked him to please just look at the words and assured him that I would help him with the ones he didn't know. He read, haltingly, "Does...it...fit? Will...it...fit...him?" over and over, all by himself until he got to the end of the book and looked up at me, amazed. "Mom!" he said, "When I grow up, I might be a person who works in a library because I CAN READ!"

I was so stinking proud in that moment.

I remember exactly the moment that I realized I could read, and it was the exact same kind of joyous revelation. I was sitting on the couch in our family room, and whining to my mom to get her to read a book to me. She was busy in the kitchen making supper, and she kept calling in at me, "Sit down and look at it yourself, Rachel, you can read it!" And I was all, "Nooooo, I cannnnnnn't! wah wah wah." Finally, I opened the book (It was called The Animals at the Zoo.) with a pissy attitude that slowly became less and less pissy when I discovered, page after page, that I recognized the words. A slow, begrudging smile stretched across my face and I yelled into the kitchen, "I CAN REAAAD! MOM! I CAN READ!"

It cracks me up that this seems to be the exact same path Eliot is following. (Well, cracks me up AND breaks my heart.)

But however he gets there, learning to read is so magical. Being able to read opens up so many worlds. Providing a home where reading is encouraged and loved and treasured is one of the most important gifts I can give to my son.

Here's what we're each into at the moment:

This year I've been keeping track of all the books I read (and getting new recommendations) at Goodreads. I've set a goal with the Goodreads Reading Challenge to read 40 books this year, and so far I'm only at 22. (Not counting the books I read with Eliot, of course. Pretty sure that would put me far over my goal!)

Got any suggestions for me?

I'm LOVING Let the Great World Spin so far. It's beautifully written.

Connect with me on Goodreads here, if you like, and let me know what you're reading too. :)

The assignment.

So I spent part of this afternoon writing an essay for my freshman composition class. Their first draft of the assignment was due last week, and I've been reading through their efforts with a bit of confusion and concern. I don't feel like they understood the assignment, or maybe they just didn't understand how to go about fulfilling its terms? In any case, I thought I should do the assignment myself. It isn't right to expect of others what you can't do yourself, right? I wanted to make sure that the assignment was doable, and valuable in the doing. Now, granted, this is something I ideally should have done before the semester even began and I included the assignment on my syllabus. Hindsight = 20/20.

Here I feel like sharing my little essay, my fulfillment of the requirements I put forth for all 67 of my freshmen this semester. The assignment prompt, if you're interested, can be found here.

(Warning: It's a little cheesy, but that's how I roll.)

Simplicity, Squared

A clothesline full of drying garments stretches from the upper left hand side of the square photograph to the lower right hand side. The setting is a yard in a rural area where light filters through the branches of the late summer trees. The clothing, all in muted colors, casts shadows on the long grass. In the background, two vehicles are parked in a drive. This seemingly innocuous photograph of a silent late summer day, when posted to a Facebook profile, tells volumes about the person behind the camera lens.

            This photo sends a message of contentment. It tells the story of a person who takes joy in the small things in life, and prefers a quiet, slow paced, rural existence to the hubbub of the city and crowds. Quietness and a certain measure of solitude are expressed in the picture through the lack of any human figures. Only the laundry blows languidly in the breeze. A few vehicles and the laundry itself show that people are a part of this landscape, but not necessarily the most important part. Nature is not just the background, but the setting here, as the sun casts shadows on the lawn and the green of the grass and leaves covers most of the area. The muted colors of the laundry seem to blend into the background of nature rather than standing out against it. All of these details come together to lend the photograph a tone of quiet, simple pleasure.

            It is that quiet, simple pleasure embodied in the photograph that speaks to my particular values and world view. Even though it is just a simple snapshot, the photo of laundry drying in the summer sun on my lawn, when shared with all of my “friends,” becomes an emblem of my identity. For one, it is a habit of mine to try to find joy in the mundane. A plate of breakfast, warm coffee, the sun shining on my back as I stretch out on a quilt on my front lawn—the simple things in life, to me, are what make it precious. The caption on my photograph reads, “Happiness is hanging clean laundry on the line on the first day of fall. :-D” The caption and the photo itself suggest that simplicity—symbolized by the laundry on the clothesline— makes me happy.

            The photograph also betrays my easy-going, laid back personality. Any viewer of the photo can tell that the grass beneath my clothesline is long and wild. A single dandelion gone to seed sprouts up out of the unmowed grass. The state of the lawn, slightly overgrown, though not completely untended, shows that I am a person who isn’t fastidious about appearances. While I keep my yard mowed throughout the summer, I’m not fussy about it, and I don’t care in the least if it goes a little too long without being tended. The clothes on the line help suggest this carefree attitude, as they aren’t the heavily tailored, expensive suits of someone who worries about details. Rather, most of the clothing pictured is vintage, flowing flowered skirts and light weight, casual shirts in muted, natural tones: blue, brown, black, cream. Both my wardrobe and the state of my grass show that I’m a casual person with simple, uncomplicated tastes.   

            Even though I consider my tastes to be simple and uncomplicated, I also value creativity. The square shape of the photo and the quality of light and color hint that this photo has been taken using Instagram, an application popularly used to add an interesting flair to otherwise ordinary photographs. I chose the “Amaro” filter to give this particular photograph a more vintage tone. The filter emphasizes the light shining through the leaves of the trees and gives the clothing a more washed out, muted color tone. The Instagram application allows me to share this photograph with both my “friends” and followers on Instagram and on Facebook, which gives me a wider audience for my simple photograph of laundry hanging on a line on the first day of fall.

            For some members of my online audience, particularly my sisters, this photograph will elicit some of the same memories and feelings that it does for me. As I was hanging the laundry out to dry, I was reminded of the summer days of my childhood, when my mother used to do the very same thing. Hauling a basket of wet clothes and wooden clothespins, she’d venture out to the exact same type of clothesline to perform the same chore. As kids, my sisters and I delighted in running underneath the lines, pressing our faces against the cold, wet, fresh-smelling fabric of clothing and bed linens. I thought of those days and the simple pleasures of childhood as I hung out my own laundry, and as I snapped the picture of it hanging there in the sun.

            The fact that I posted this photo for all of my “friends” to see shows my wish to connect with other people, to display my own values and receive feedback from others. All human beings desire connection to some extent. Some people use their social networking profiles primarily in order to keep up with friends and loved ones, in order to see what’s new in the lives of their friends, family members, coworkers, or even casual acquaintances. For me, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the like allow me to express myself in deeper ways than I necessarily would in person, offline. My photograph, metaphorically, and literally shows that I sometimes use social media in order to air my laundry publicly. I tend to be someone who overshares, and that quality definitely comes through in my posts. Not everyone would post a photo of something as mundane as their laundry hanging on a clothesline, but to me, it’s the next in a series of everyday posts that together reflect my personality. It’s not necessarily that I want to show off, but that I like to put everything out there, to compile my characteristics in a series of online artifacts that proclaim, “This is me. Take it or leave it.” The laundry photograph and my sharing of the laundry photograph is just another part of that proclamation:  Here is my everyday. Here is another single moment in which I am stepping back, appreciating what I have, and displaying it with pride.

            We’ve all heard the adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. One photograph can act as evidence of an entire life, in this case, a quiet but connected life made up of ordinary moments stitched lovingly together. My photograph of laundry hanging on a clothesline on the first day of fall stands as a celebration of all that is good and fresh and clean, an everyday magic. To me, it is precisely that everyday magic that is most worth sharing.

I have the power!

I want to share the evolution of my newest finished embroidery project. "Finished" is the key word here. I have about a zillion projects in various stages of non-completion, but this one I was excited enough about to see all the way through to the bloody end. (It wasn't really bloody. That's a lie.)

I was inspired because one morning I came out to the living room after blissfully sleeping in late, to observe my boyfriend and my son watching He-Man cartoons on Netflix. Somehow, I had forgotten all about He-Man. I had forgotten Cringer aka Battle Cat! And the Man-at-Arms! And even more unforgivable, I had forgotten Teela! Dear, sweet, beautiful, ass kicking Teela! I knew pretty much right away that I had to do an embroidery homage.

First, I googled images of He-Man and used a pencil to lightly trace an image onto fabric by holding the linen up to my laptop screen. I started stitching right away, and then almost immediately got pissed off because it wasn't coming out how I had imagined. I scrapped the whole thing and came back to it several days later, when I decided I'd try to run the linen through my printer. Yes! You can do that. I cut an 8.5 x 11 piece of linen and ironed a piece of freezer paper onto it to stiffen it up (You have to put the glossy side of the freezer paper facing the fabric, and it doesn't hurt to use a pressing cloth so as not to muck up your iron). Once I had the freezer paper iron fused to the linen, I crossed my fingers and sent it through my printer.

Voila!

Then I did a happy dance all over the place because this successful technique just opened up a whole new world of embroidery possibilities. I AM THE SMARTEST WOMAN ALIVE!

Then I peeled off the freezer paper, hooped the linen up atop a layer of red print fabric that I wanted to be my background, and started stitching.

When I got the edge stitching and most of the rest finished, I got antsy wanting to know what it was going to look like, so I went ahead and cut away the extra linen.

I just kept stitching my little heart out until I finished him up. (A fair amount of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe episodes were viewed during the stitching of this piece.)

Here's a detailed shot. My phone is the only camera I have right now, so the quality of the photo doesn't do justice to these stitches, but meh. Whatchya gonna do? 

To finish off the piece, I added a felt caption, then framed it using a plain wooden hoop that I covered with black electrical tape. (Classy, right?!) I always use a layer of batting between my finished piece and the hoop frame. That helps disguise any crazy stray stitching from showing through the fabric, and it gives the piece a nice, slightly puffy, full look. I hot glue the fabric edges directly to the inner hoop.

Now the finished product is hanging in Eliot's bedroom. Any time I'm working on a new project, he always quizzes me, "Is that one for me, Mom? Is that going to be mine? That's mine, right?!"

Yes, kiddo. Always.

Brave.

My son's starting kindergarten last week has been a big adjustment for all of us. For me, there's the requisite letting go, facing the bittersweet reality that my baby is growing up too fast, and the oh-holy-hell terror that is dragging my ass out of bed at 6:30 a.m. every morning to make sure both he and I are ready to leave the house by 7:30 a.m. For him, the situation is even more dire. His world has just changed, irrevocably.

It isn't that Eliot dislikes school; in fact, I suspect that he often has a great time there. Most mornings, however, he gets slow and shy and clingy, and protests that he does not like school, does not want to go today, cannot go today, is not going today. He really has to stay home and help James crush cans in the basement. He really has to stay home and put together a Lego ship. He needs to stay home and play video games. He needs to stay home and finish watching that episode of Bob the Builder that we didn't finish last night. School is too easy. School is too hard. School is too _______. Fill in the blank. He can come up with reason after reason, ad infinitum, why he simply, regrettably, cannot go to school today.

"Because you're picking me up, but I want Dad to pick me up."

"Because Dad's picking me up, but I want you to pick me up."

"Because everyone else gets to ride the school bus, and I don't get to ride the school bus."

(Eliot, like Makayla, is not impressed.)

I'm familiar with these arguments, this argument process, because I do the same thing nearly every day in my head. "I can't get out of bed. I'm too tired. I'm exhausted. I can't face this day. I can't do this. Things aren't perfect. I'm not strong enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not enough." I've been bullied relentlessly by my own interior dialogue since adolescence. I'm 33 now. I don't expect that voice to go away anytime soon. I HAVE learned to conjure up other voices. They provide a counter-diatribe. They tell the bully to shut up, go away, you're wrong, and no one invited you anyway. Even so, some days I need all the outside encouragement I can get. I'm lucky that my boys provide it:

This is the chalkboard where I often find motivational messages from James and Eliot.

So this morning, on our way to school, when Eliot looked at me with tears brimming and said, "I CAN'T do this," I gave him my talk about bravery. It's the same talk I give myself every day. I told him that being brave means doing something that scares you, even though it scares you. Being brave doesn't mean you AREN'T scared. It means you go through with that thing, whatever it is, in spite of your fear. I reminded him that lots of kids, most kids, even, are scared to go to school at first. Evidence: remember that little boy on Monday who was crying tears and not wanting his dad to leave? It's okay to be scared. It's natural to be scared. What's important is that you be brave and do it anyway.

I shared with him that today I am nervous. I have to do some things today that scare me. My job requires that I get up in front of a classroom full of people, people who are all LOOKING AT ME, and I have to talk, and sometimes that scares me. And then I told him how I manage to do it anyway. Because every time you do something that scares you, that thing scares you a little less. Every time you are brave, it gets a little bit easier to be brave the next time.

I told Eliot that thinking about him being brave at his school helps me to be brave at my school. I told him that maybe, if we both think about each other being brave today, that will help.

We walked into the gymnasium, found the area where his class waits for their teacher, and we gave each other a high-five. He sat down with his backpack, bravely waiting for his day to begin, and I walked out of the kindergarten building with my head up, bravely venturing into mine.

We don't have to pretend we aren't scared. We just have to do it anyway.