moominmuppet

Tired and melancholy today, not really sure what direction I'll end up going with this post. So much to mention or discuss, so little time or focus at the moment. I suspect it's going to be a grab-bag.

Last night I had insomnia until this morning. I think I finally got to sleep around 7am. I suspect the lack of sleep is probably a lot of why I'm feeling relatively emotionally fragile; being underslept does an awful lot to give me roughly the emotional maturity of a temper tantruming three-year-old. Also, I am so damned tired of itching. I wish I knew what was setting it off, because hives and eczema climbing up my arms and intermittently popping up all over the rest of me is really damned irritating (no pun intended). Also, the vision changes with the trileptal have been getting pretty non-trivial; it feels almost like my eye focusing ability is partially paralyzed; it's like sudden onset presbyopia. It's been especially bad in my right eye; the other day when I did a quick check, I couldn't focus completely at _any_ distance. *sigh* Oh, just fucking grand. I'm scheduled to see both my GP and the Chronic Pain Rehab Program coordinator tomorrow. Life got annoying thanks to med effects, and I called my doc to ask her to do a quick vag smear for me so we know whether the two doses of diflucan in the past few weeks have really sorted things back out. This appt was _supposed_ to be about fibro followup, and I've got a lot of stuff I really need to discuss with her along those lines. Just got a call back from her office. They can fit in the pelvic, but at the expense of _everything_ else. Her schedule's too tight tomorrow, so now I have to schedule another appt, maude knows how long a delay that's going to be. I've still got my fingers crossed that we can multitask enough during the pelvic for me to catch her up on some of the biggest issues, at least. At the moment I'm feeling thoroughly frustrated.

Some linketies related to life here at the moment:

A friend of mine, Mitch Andelmo, died early Monday morning, late Sunday night, however you want to look at it. A story had come out earlier that evening, I had been reading about it, about a car driving through a barricade and straight into the crowd at a street festival. -- This death has hit my local community hard; I didn't know him, but many people I care about are deeply grieving at the moment.

CKG Benefit for IDKE XIV (The International Drag King Community Extravaganza) -- I do believe this means that IDKE is happening in Cleveland this year!!!! I adore Drag King performances with a passion, and IDKE is especially meaningful since it was one of the first dates for me and Katy and Tori lo those many years ago.

Baltimore Gay Life -- speaking of Katy, so proud of her! Those awesome folks on the cover are folks Katy hired and works with. Go her, go them!
And the interview! (the one about The Den)
Also in happy news, Katy's on her way through town this coming weekend, so I'll get at least a bit of time to catch up and see her in person. Hoorah!
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First of all, two Audiobooks I just finished:

The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales -- I really enjoyed this one; excellent narration and music, silly and giggle-provoking. The narration was extremely over-the-top in terms of expressiveness, which is good for drawing young kids into audio stories. And having seen the book, I know a lot of the humor is in the illustrations and arrangement, so I was really impressed with how well that was conveyed in a purely audio form. I'd still recommend getting the hard copy, but for $1.36, I don't see how you can go wrong with this (well, except for using an Audible Credit for it, which would be hugely wasteful -- always spend cash for anything under $17 or so). 20 minutes of excellent car entertainment, especially for young kids who are old enough to recognize the shape of familiar tales being satirically twisted. Also likely an excellent accompaniment for the book, which is well-worth owning in its own right.

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power
Publisher's Summary:
"One of my favorite ideas is, never to keep an unnecessary soldier," Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1792. Neither Jefferson nor the other Founders could ever have envisioned the contemporary national security state, with its tens of thousands of "privateers"; its bloated Department of Homeland Security; its rusting nuclear weapons, ill-maintained and difficult to dismantle; and its strange fascination with an unproven counterinsurgency doctrine.
Written with bracing wit and intelligence, Rachel Maddow's Drift argues that we've drifted away from America's original ideals and become a nation weirdly at peace with perpetual war, with all the financial and human costs that entails. To understand how we've arrived at such a dangerous place, Maddow takes us from the Vietnam War to today's war in Afghanistan, along the way exploring the disturbing rise of executive authority, the gradual outsourcing of our war-making capabilities to private companies, the plummeting percentage of American families whose children fight our constant wars for us, and even the changing fortunes of G.I. Joe. She offers up a fresh, unsparing appraisal of Reagan's radical presidency. Ultimately, she shows us just how much we stand to lose by allowing the priorities of the national security state to overpower our political discourse.
Sensible yet provocative, dead serious yet seriously funny, Drift will reinvigorate a "loud and jangly" political debate about how, when, and where to apply America's strength and power - and who gets to make those decisions.
©2012 Rachel Maddow (P)2012 Random House -- An entirely accurate summary. The audio version is read by Rachel herself, which was extra enjoyable for me. I plowed through this, despite normally having to drag myself into reading material on war like drinking cod liver oil. I found it fascinating and very usefully educational about how we got where we are. I laughed more than I expected. I understood more than I expected. I'll let better reviewers than myself tackle it beyond that, but definitely highly recommended.

Doctor Who: Starry Night TARDIS Jigsaw Puzzle -- See this awesome puzzle? See my icon? See this awesome puzzle? It's now in my Porta-Puzzle (the only way to do a puzzle in a house with so many pets) thanks to Bec and Jer! I spent most of last night working on it; it's wonderfully challenging, with no hard edges or unique color blocks, and lots of swirling gorgeous. As I commented to Chad, puzzles are great for my OCD traits; it's all about making order out of chaos, with bonus shiny colors! This one is extra-special, since it's from one of my favorite Doctor Who episodes of all time.

Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids -- While I admit to being a bit baffled by this being at the Natural History Museum of all places, it looks like a lot of fun! This is the tentative plan with Kidlet this coming weekend.

Also, I have plans to go out to a party with Erin this weekend, too. Wow. Out of the house twice in one day voluntarily? What is my life coming to?

I also have good news on the health front; doctor appt yesterday about the fibro, and I finally have a scrip for provigil! Woot! Only took two years, and I'll have to be really careful about monitoring for mania, but this will make a huge difference in my quality of life (I was on it before, so I'm really quite sure about that). Even being all exhausted today feels more manageable knowing that once I fill the scrip I'll actually be able to _do_ something about it.

The other thing I was thinking about was why I post what I post, and what goes into selecting the Linketies. A few people have asked me recently, and this is what I brainstormed:
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This was an extra-uber-special date weekend. Along with it being a Chad weekend, my very long-term sweetie Katy arrived for a much-anticipated visit.

And this is where it gets hard to explain just how overwhelmingly lucky I am. It was a mellow, relaxed, silly, sexy, fun weekend with them and the household. Good conversation, Apples-to-Apples, West Side Market shopping and much nomming of excellent and tasty food, movies (introduced Chad to Brazil!), and much cuddling and napping (the only minor downside to the weekend was my own frustration with my fatigue levels).

I'm just regularly amazed at the awesomeness of the people in my life, and the dynamics between them. It is, essentially, my youthful pipedreams come true. I have my big communal household with critters and garden and wonderful creative/queer/kinky/poly/hippy friends. I have activism work I find rewarding. I have amazing partners and really incredibly low-drama and fulfilling relationships. And I've been rather shocked by finding a primary partner this past year who is capable of embracing all this about me. I have a community and home and work environment where I can basically just be myself. I have accepting biofamily and friends who celebrate all this goodness with me.

I'm 37. I've had these sorts of dreams for my life since I was a teenager. At many points along the way I despairingly thought that maybe it was all a pipedream, and I should just "be sensible". I especially thought that while learning all my painful poly and/or shared housing lessons over the years! But you know what? I did learn lessons. I did get better at communicating, and interacting healthily, and all that good stuff. I grew up, and my dreams didn't really change, they just matured along with me. And often I look around at my life and have a bit of trouble believing in it. Things aren't perfect -- there are always financial and health and other life stresses -- but they're damned good. Things that made me smile this weekend: two of the most important people in my life getting to know each other better, my partner and my housemate cuddled up on the couch together, late-night post-fun nom-fest, silliness and giggling and pictures and love. And communication -- so much goodness in the communication department. It amazes me how easily both Katy and I and Chad and I accomplish that these days.

Chad and I dropped Katy off at RTA for her trip home, and then he dropped me off at work on his way home. I'm here, I'm exhausted, but life is good. I feel like everything wonderful about my relationships with Katy and Chad has been abundantly reaffirmed. Also, special appreciation to my housemate G, who's a marvelous part of my life! And for Katy's fabulous wife, Miss T, who added her own special flavor completely unawares!

Well, I already posted this, but apparently I still have more to say. The way Chad and I fit together just continues to blow me away. It's no easy thing to start seriously dating someone who already have several long-term relationships. Even with the best of intent, it can be a hard road to walk to find one's place in the dynamic. His ability to accept not just me but also my existing partners regularly amazes me. Seeing them welcome him into my life has been a joy, as well. And it really does feel like the solidity between him and me is so based in mutual respect for each other's needs and autonomy. I never feel like he's trying to claim me, or possess me, or turn me into anything except who I truly am. As hypersensitive as I am about such things, he's doing a near-miraculous job. I love you, Chad!

Request for feedback first, since the rest of this gets med-specific and rambly (no, really, I'm sure you're just fascinated by my annual bloodwork!)

One of the frustrating things about mood disorders is that they make it really hard to objectively evaluate mood patterns in retrospect; when I'm up the whole past looks brighter, when I'm down, it looks like depression, depression, depression, with a few isolated bright points. I'm trying to make some decisions about med management changes, and some outside perspective would be helpful when I get back in to see my psychiatrist. There are folks who follow me here who've known me in person, online, in high school, college, and every point since then. From whichever perspective you happen to have, what do you notice in my behavior (online or in person) in the way of depressive or manic symptoms (or anything else you think might be relevant), in terms of type/duration/severity? Feel free to message me privately if you're not comfortable leaving a comment here or FB.

The last few days have been rough. I disapprove of global warming being able to screw with my health. Blarg. Wednesday I finally finished up with my dental work, though! Thursday I had an appt to see my primary (she handles all my fibro/bipolar/migraine crap with some input from specialists as necessary). Appt went really well, everything around it sucked balls.
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So, since a big focus of my gifts for Kidlet is going to be helping to create his personal library, I've been thinking about bookplates. Overthinking about bookplates, actually. Given that I can barely manage to think straight at the moment, we'll see how I do in explaining any of said thoughts.

On a practical level, they're useful for at least slightly increasing the odds of getting one's books back. Additionally, I have a lot of children's books already at my house. When he visits, being able to keep sorted which are his and which are mine probably isn't a bad idea.

Also, in the very long run, as he gets old enough to think about the idea, it's a nice little reminder of what a valuable thing a library is, and the history of just how valuable (and by extension, how lucky we are these days). And I do want to encourage him to develop a mental concept of "his library" -- that's important to me too.

Personalized bookplates are incredibly easy to get these days. I don't actually want to go with one of the very kid-oriented designs, because I'd like the bookplate design to work for him across various ages. I'd also like it to engage him, possibly lead him to look things up. I think of it as leaving little seeds to sprout into interests if they hit fertile soil. In looking at possibilities, I discovered it's important to me to use the phrasing "ex libris" or "from the library of" rather than "property of" -- the connotations are radically different for me.

I've been chatting with Chad about the idea I had for what I'd like to work up, and here's what I've come up with so far...

My icon above is a line from a truly marvelous poem about the wonders of books:

An Afternoon in the Stacks
By William Stafford

Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move.

I'm thinking:

Closing the book I find I have left my head inside
--William Stafford
Ex libris Kidlet Lastname

(in a nice font with appropriate spacing and such)

The single line from the poem works by itself, but is an implicit encouragement to go look up the full poem, maybe encounter other poetry in the process. This is what I mean about seeds for interests, basically; maybe Kidlet will do that, maybe some other kid who inherits a third-hand copy of one of his old books might do so. Doesn't hurt to toss out seeds. When I look back on my childhood, and the things that sparked my interest and further explorations, they're often from little seeds like this.

I'd like to keep the bookplate itself white or single-color, with small line illustrations in each corner:
A TARDIS -- For adventure and exploration, and the fact that books are so much bigger on the inside (and, of course, because Doctor Who is meaningful to me and I like dropping seeds about it). This coloring page TARDIS looks like a good candidate for shrinking down.
A Magnifying Glass -- For science and learning (and because it'll be my first sciencey present to him). Something like this one could work.
A Penguin -- This one was a struggle; I want something to represent Kidlet in a meaningful way, but what to choose for a three-year-old? Every taste changes every other week. So, I thought what I'd do was mark the point of our meeting; when I first met him, he was obsessed with penguins (still is at the moment).

For the fourth corner, on the bottom right, I'd like to include what is essentially a visual signature from me. Two little line drawings, a Moomin and a Muppet.

The thing is, as soon as I had that idea, I ran into the big struggle -- which Moomin and which Muppet????
Of the Moomins, I use a Muddler icon a lot, but I don't actually identify with him on a core level -- he just represents my muddled mental state. There are a number of other characters in the series that I love, but few that I identify with, per se. As I was pondering it, I came down to two final choices -- The Autocrat (Daddy Jones), and Hodgkins. Both are from The Exploits of Moominpappa (link is to a great, but spoilery, review), which is my absolute favorite of the series. And as much as I adore The Autocrat, I really think I'm more of a low-key Hodgkins type myself.
Of the Muppets, well, there are a lot more choices. My overall "favorite Muppet" (using an unreasonably broad definition that includes Henson creatures from other films) is Aughra. She's not easy to make into a recognizable small line drawing, though, and isn't really technically a Muppet. That leaves me torn between Bunsen Honeydew, Animal, and Gonzo, although I'm currently leaning toward Gonzo (and continuing to wander the Muppet site to see if I'm reminded of any other characters that suit me better).

Also, I've decided that once I work this out, it's something I'd like to use in the long-term as a kind of graphic signature for other applications, so it matters to me to get something that really feels like a good fit.

Once I figure out his bookplates, I plan on using the same template to make my own, with slightly different symbols in the corners. Probably still a TARDIS, and probably still my graphic signature, but I think an octopus and something that represents my interests in sexuality and gender for the other two. To prevent confusion, if I do make up my own from the template, I'll also make sure Kidlet and I have different color plates.

OK, this is ridiculous. It's already 9:30 and I haven't even gotten back to my giant unfinished post from yesterday yet! And after that, I have ideas for an Explorer's Kit I'd like to assemble for Kidlet.

Doing a lot better today. Feeling fine physically, and my mood is mostly back to normal too. I've got some stressful stuff I have to deal with on Monday (financial stress crap), but I've talked myself down from my usual freak-out/avoidance thing, and reminded myself that I've actually done things in the past year to minimize how badly I can screw up (separating household and personal finances was a huge element of that; takes so much stress off my worrying about my own personal fuck-ups). So, there's that. And once I deal with it I'll feel much better. *nodnod*

In the meantime, I can't do anything about it today or tomorrow, so I'm going to have good days and not wind myself up. I have tomatoes fresh from the garden, brazil nuts, and lots of other goodies. I've got all the Six Feet Under discs that finally arrived yesterday. As I said to NL earlier today, this particular mess may be stressful, and hit a lot of my anxiety buttons, but life doesn't suck.

Live updates on Occupy Wall Street
More: Dozens Of Protesters Arrested At Occupy Wall St. March (more links in the comments)
More: "Occupy Wall Street" Protest Has International Support; Setting Up for Long Haul

Texas GOP Rep On Cuts To Family Planning: ‘Of Course This Is A War On Birth Control’

Several brands of birth control pills are being recalled because they, uh, don’t work right. The brands included are:
Cyclafem 7/7/7 Cyclafem 1/35 Emoquette Gildess FE 1.5/30 Gildess FE 1/20 Orsythia Previfem Tri-Previfem
Basically, they’re labelled wrong, so you can still get pregnant even if you are taking them correctly. -- I posted about this previously, but please, please, please spread the word on this.

Miscarriage No Longer Considered "Emergency" For Medicaid Patients In Washington State
More: This is what health care rationing looks like

Anti-abortion protesters target clinic’s landlord outside child’s Md. school
Related: here's the site the clinic's landlord organized for volunteers interested in helping him -- I've signed up to send email and make calls for an hour a week.
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One of the things I very greatly appreciate about NL is that he's not at all offended or threatened if I pause in the middle of things to explain why X works for me, or Y doesn't, or to give him suggestions on things I know really get a reaction from me, or explain why I think there's a "grand unifying theory" on why I react the way I do. Hell, last night I gave him the anatomical patient-instructing educational tour of the skene's glands, complete with walking him through palpating them and a discussion of how I use notions of homologous structures in trying to better understand and empathize with my partners' reactions. This morning we had a really good short conversation about how one of the unifying traits of sensation I like is pressure. It's so common to so many different elements of what I crave that I basically assume that it's just part of how I'm wired neurologically.

I'd kind of like to expand on all of these, and also what having a broad range of sexual experience does and doesn't teach you.
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A good friend asked me the excellent and deceptively complicated question of why I write.

I only had a few minutes before I had to walk out the door, and ran out of time before I'd run out of reasons. Wanted to put it all down here in a more expanded and complete form.

( this might get -- you guessed it -- long )

Yeah, yeah. I know, you're sick of hearing about it. Just be glad you're not my poor housemates.

In reply to a question about whether falling hard for someone is a bad thing in my life because it could lead in too traditional directions:
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