Irked.

I just hate the transformation that takes place. Put him in a group of his peers or anyone slightly older and he suddenly becomes very insensitive. He jokes about personal topics, makes comments about my body, or just generally agrees with whatever is said, no matter how offensive. I'm pissy because of a one-word response - how stupid is that? I know (we all know) how powerful words can be, but it's also really up to me to decide how much I'll let it affect me. Right? I thought so, but some part of me won't let me trivialize it. Here was the exchange. Conversation between W, myself, and a Libertine* friend began friendly enough with slight jabs and normal banter. The conversation turned jokingly to the many ex-girlfriends W and Lib had in common. The snippet that stuck in my craw?

Lib: Ohh, (Ex #2), now she was a great piece of ass. She was great in bed.
W: Yeah!
(Sudden, excruciating silence. Nearly audible, "Oh...shit." from W's brain as it catches up.)

Never. Ever. Ever discuss the Ex in terms that sound even remotely approving unless current girlfriend is very laid-back or is friends with said Ex. He knows I'm neither of those things.

His need to be accepted by Alphas overrides the part of his brain that stops him from getting in trouble with the girlfriend. I'm trying to find the humor in it but it really just stings. It's not ok to talk about ex's, especially kindly, and especially in an intimate way. Of course my mind went berzerk trying to decode the tone. "Did I detect a note of longing? Of appreciation? Enthusiasm?" I don't think there was any of that, I think it was mostly just, "Acceptmeacceptmeacceptme," but that doesn't make the icky feelings go away.

The brother of said Lib friend noticed a distance between W and I for the rest of the evening. Literally, as we're normally attached at the ankle, hip, and shoulder, but I put a distance of about 20 feet between us at all times. He attempted to figure out what'd happened without actually asking, but when his hints turned up nothing, he decided instead just to give me a big hug and sit on my lap for a bit. Anything for a smile, right? He's a good friend, I like him.

So.

I'm pissy lately and don't feel like hurdling over the emotions the way I used to. It takes longer these days for me to get over slights and mistakes. Either I'm giving up or I'm just not able to ignore things the way I used to. Maybe my brain is full of ignored moments and won't accept anymore. If I'm cranky for the next few days, I apologize; I don't know how long to be angry over one little word, but I guess I'm going to figure it out as I go.


*The Libertine Friend: Male, one who tries to liberate his male friends from the bonds of their committed relationships. He's usually single, or else is in a failing relationship, and will use any means necessary to embarrass, humiliate, or cast in a bad light any pal's girlfriend in an attempt to prove his point that all men should follow their raging hard-ons to impale as many females as possible. Preferably bulimic bi-curious ones with daddy issues who like body shots and Jell-o wrestling. The Libertine is a complete pudwhack and is not to be endured.

It Must Be Something

...in the water. I just found out my lovely cousin is going to be a mama! (And no, my last post had nothing to do with this news.) It seems everyone around me is popping out offspring. I know four women who either just had a baby or are in the process of making one. Erika's baby is going to be absolutely beautiful, I can't wait for him/her to arrive.

((((YAY)))

To Pass The Time
1. Shampoo/Conditioner: Hemp Shampoo, Teatree-Mint Conditioner

2. Soap/Body Wash: I use W's, which is Herbal Essences (He got the urge)

3. Laundry Detergent/Fabric Softener: Tide, no fabric softener

4. Perfume/Cologne: Either B&B Coconut Lime Verbena, or CK One

5. Toothpaste: Regular old Crest

6. Daily Hair Necessities: Shampoo, sometimes, and an elastic

7. Music You're In To Right Now: Amy Winehouse, Nouvelle Vague, and Sublime

8. Makeup: Sometimes the full face, sometimes none

Favorites:
9. Favorite Food(s): Bruschetta, Guacamole (homemade..mmm..)

10. Favorite Drink: Rum & Coke, even after the infamous night at the Hammer

11. Favorite Fruit: Peaches

12. Favorite Vegetable: I enjoy onions and peppers, I put them in almost everything

13. Favorite Candy: Skittles

14. Favorite Movie(s): Empire Records, Sexy Beast, Waking Life,

15. Shoes: my regular sneakers if I must, or barefoot if I can get away with it

16. Shirt: really, I like my blue hoodie. But when I have to look like a grown up, I like my purple shirt

17. Bottoms: My darkest blue jeans or my comfy skirt

18. Underwear: Nein

19. Jewelry: a woven leather cuff, four rings, sometimes earrings but not usually

20. Actress: I also enjoy Emma Thompson, I also like Kelly Bishop

21. Actor: Kenneth Branagh and Joaquin Phoenix

22. Store: Staples (Few people understand this. Thank God for Deanna.)

23. Grocery Store: Market Bucket or Shaw's

24. Cookie: My homemade chocolate chip cookies

25. Thing You Sleep In: sometimes W's t-shirt, usually nekkid

26. Restaurant: I'm a fan of street vendors, but I also like The Rosa

27. State: Drunken. ;-)

I Was Born In 1984

..the very last day of '84, to be exact. But ya'll knew that. Child of the 90's, I am, and you probably are too. Here's the main section of a bulletin currently being passed around ("You know you're a Child of the 90s if..") as well as some of my own thoughts:

You can finish: "ice ice _ _ _ _ "

You remember watching:
-Doug
-Ren & Stimpy
-Pinky and the Brain
-AAAAAAAH Real Monsters!
-Rocko's modern Life.
(And the Angry Beavers!)

You've ever ended a sentence with the word "PSYCHE!"

You just cant resist finishing this . . . "In west Philidelphia born and raised . . ."

You remember:
-TGIF
-Step by Step
-Family Matters
-Dinosaurs
-Boy Meets World.

You remember when it was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons. (When you had to get up in the MORNING to see any cartoons, after 9:30 or so it was too late.)

You got super excited when it was Oregon Trail day in computer class at school.

You remember reading "Goosebumps"

You took plastic cartoon lunch boxes to school.
(Bonus points if you had the kind McD's used to give out, with the raised pictures on the outside. I kept crayons in mine.)

You still get the urge to say "NOT" after (almost) every sentence . . . not

When everything was settled by:
-rock paper scissors or
-bubble gum bubble gum in a dish or
-daddy had a donkey inky binky bonky.

When cops and robbers was a daily activity.

(When girls were cool if the knew the "special" way to clap to Miss Mary Mack)

When we played Hide and go seek at moodys, until our legs grew numb.
(I don't know Moodys, but I remember tree-tag.)

When we used to obey our parents
(Or opted to play outside so we didn't have to.)

You used to listen to the radio all day long just to record your FAVORITE song of ALL time.

"Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?" was both a game and a TV game show.

Captain Planet. He's a Hero.
(Gonna take pollution down to zero!)

You knew that Kimberly, the pink ranger, and Tommy, the green ranger, were meant to be together.

You remember when Super Nintendos and Sega Genisis became popular.

You always wanted to send in a tape to America's Funniest Home Videos . . . but never taped anything funny.

You remember watching Home Alone 1, 2 , and 3 . . . and tried to pull the pranks on "intruders"

You remember watching:
-The Magic School Bus
-Wishbone
-Reading Rainbow on PBS.
-One Saturday Morning
(What about Square One?)

You remember when Yo-Yos were cool.
(And kooshes, too)

You remember those Where's Waldo books.

You remember eating Warheads.

You remember watching:
-the 1st Batman
-Aladdin
-Ninja Turtles
-3 Ninjas movies.

You remember Ring Pops.

You remember drinking Surge, and Tang.

If you remember when every thing was "da BOMB!"

When they made the new lunchables so that you could make pizza AND tacos.
(Or the first lunchables, period.)

You remember boom boxes vs. cd players.
(I remember the guys who used to walk around with radios on their shoulders.)

Making those little paper fortune cookie things, and then predicting your life with them.

You played and/or collected "Pogs" :)
(I had one that was bubblegum scented.)

You had at least one Tamagotchi, GigaPet, or Nano and brought it everywhere.

. . . Furbies.

You haven't always had a computer, and it was cool to have the internet.
(My first interaction with the net was researching Snoopy for art class in 7th grade.)

When Windows 95 was the best.

You watched the original cartoons of Rugrats, Power Rangers, and Ninja Turtles.
(And played with pizza-scented Ninja Turtle action figures)

Michael Jordan was a king.
(And Brad Renfro was a dreamboat.)

YIKES pencils and erasers were the stuff!
(With mini treasure trolls pencil-toppers.)

All your school supplies were "Lisa Frank" brand.

You remember when the new Beanie Babies and Talking Elmo were always sold out

You collected those Beanie Babies.

Carebears
(Popples!)

Gak was the coolest stuff invented.

Lambchop's song never ended.

The old dollar bills.

Silver dollars, which were cool to have.

You remember a time before the WB.
(Life before Dawson... I miss it.)

You collected all the Troll dolls

If you even know what an original walkman is.

You remember wanting to sit on the orange Nickelodeon couch.

You've gotten creeped out by "Are You Afraid of the Dark?"

You know the Macarena by heart.

"Talk to the hand" . . . enough said

You always said, "Then why don't you marry it!"

You went to McDonald's to play in the playplace.
(I still do. Is that so wrong?)

You remember hit clips being the best thing ever invented.

You remember playing on merry go rounds at the playground.
(Trust me, it's even more fun to break into a playground to play at night.)

Before the MySpace frenzy . . .

Before the Internet & text messaging . . .
Before Sidekicks & iPods . . .
Before MIKE JONES . . .
Before PlayStation2 or X-BOX . . .
Before Spongebob . . .

Back when you put off the 5 hours of homework you had every night.
(Cause you weren't sure which pocket it was in in your Trapper Keeper)

When light up sneakers were cool.

When you rented VHS tapes, not DVDs.

When gas was $0.95 a gallon & Caller ID was a new thing.

When we recorded stuff on VCRs.
(Or just missed the show, because you knew it would run again in summer and that was sufficient)

When we called the radio station to request songs to hear off of our walkman.
(And to vote for the "Top Five at Nine")

When checking out drawing books and that one book about the rainbow fish from the library was THE cool thing to do.

You had slap braclets!
(And the resulting welts from overzealous friends.)

And you know what a crazy bone is...

Way back.

----
Never thought it all might change when I was older. Slap bracelets, tag, Goosebumps books, cops 'n' robbers, and even Warheads (in some public schools) are now mostly banned from use by children for various asinine "safety" reasons. Slap bracelets are the gateway prop to fetishism, after all, and playing tag (or any other game) has proven to be the source of slight discomfort to children who just aren't good at it. Poor dears. The 90's were the beginning of the end, I think. I don't quite miss them, but they sure were better than what we have now in alot of ways.

Stolen From Tylor

1. I've come to realize that my last kiss was .... given oh-so grudgingly

2. I am listening to... The whir of the fan

3. I talk fast...when I'm drunk, or arguing.

4. I love... a clean bathroom

5. My best friend... seems to have found a new best friend.

6. My Car .... is a petrie dish and currently soaked in Lysol

7. My love life ..... is painful.

8. I hate it when people ask .... why I take care of Kailey, or why I don't do it more.

9. Love is.... elusive.

10. Marriage...terrifies me.

11. Somewhere, someone is thinking.... "Jello shots are delicious!"

12. I'm always... questioning God.

13. I never....react well to tickling, unless I can tell you just want to kiss. Then it's all good.

14. People....are EVERYWHERE.

15. My cell phone ...doesn't exist.

16. When I wake up in the morning....I go back to sleep.

17. Before I go to bed I.... sit around and think about what I want out of life.

18. Right now I am thinking about... how inappropriate my expectations for last night's party were

19. Babies are... EVERYWHERE.

20. I like.... costume drama.

21. Today I... found my blue hoodie.

22. Tonight I will ... keep transferring blog posts from Myspace to Blogger.

23. Tomorrow I will ... call OfficeTeam, visit Madre, and finish cleaning my car

24. I really want to... get some answers here.

25. Someone that will most likely repost this... probably no one!

Why I Don't Like Church

I realized today that I wasn't crazy when I was younger. Sure, I had all the adolescent paranoia and I definitely felt the need to prove myself, but I realized today it wasn't just me being weird.

When I was younger, I was terrified to go to church. When I was really young, it was because there were some crazy people who went. Not God-crazy, but just weird. I got my hand slapped once by an old woman I didn't know because I was playing with a chalkboard, that kind of thing.

Then I got older, to around 11, where I knew who to avoid and I had a few friends I could sit with, and things were cool for about a year or two.

Then I quit dancing, and I moved from a public school to a private school. Those were significant changes, because previously we had all had dance and school in common. Suddenly, I was brushed aside. For some reason, I started feeling a need to improve myself, but I didn't know how. I didn't wear heels to church (I'm a barefoot or sandals kind of girl). I didn't wear short skirts or low-cut tops to church, I didn't talk, giggle, or pass notes during service. It wasn't cause I didn't have anyone to talk to, but I thought it was direspectful to dress and behave that way. I somewhat envied the girls who thought differently, because there were more of them than there were of me, but I can't say I judged them for what they did. I just didn't care. It wasn't me, and I was ok with our differences.

But they weren't, and they didn't make an effort to hide it. They were never outright mean, but they were never friendly in a way that seemed genuine, either. For a few years, they didn't even try to be friendly. I had considered a couple of them my best friends, and it stung that I was left in the dust. I tried to keep up for awhile but it was no use.

I remember one particular incident that I'm sure none of them will recall. In Sunday school one time, a friend of mine put forth an "unspoken" prayer request. Those were common, where someone wants prayer but doesn't want the problem made public. I was the only person in the room who didn't know what was going on, and they all proved that by talking in half-sentences about it. When I, out of curiosity and a desire to help out, asked what was going on, I was told by everyone that it was a "marshwood" thing and I was therefore no good to them and didn't need to know.

There were some young people there who were just outright mean. Say the wrong thing, wear the wrong thing, you'd hear about it. So I didn't blowdry my hair before going to church - I wasn't there to impress people, I was there to learn.

I still don't know what it was all about, but I'm still hurt about it. That type of attitude prevailed for a few years, before someone stepped in and said, "Hey, we're losing people in the church because we're not being friendly." For awhile afterward there was a very forced friendliness. I had stopped going to church altogether at that point but dropped in one sunday to make my mom happy. A rush of about six people who had previously been intentionally exclusive came over to hug me and tell me how much they missed me. Thirty seconds later, they were standing in a circle chatting with each other, with me on the outside, wondering what had just happened. Did anyone respond when I said goodbye? Nope.

They were friendly out of guilt, but not because they really wanted to be friends. By the time they were faking friendship, I started thinking maybe I was just being paranoid, but after talking about it to a couple of people today, I realized that maybe I wasn't crazy after all.

I don't really have a point in writing this. Maybe I'm hoping one of them will find it and read it (though I understand that they believe Myspace is "addictive" and so have mostly deleted their accounts; to which I say - don't blame a computer program for your lack of self control when you use it). I wanted to give a public reason why I avoid church, why I don't always smile and say hello when I walk by. You were so wrapped up in yourselves that you didn't realize you were hurting people, and you hurt more people than just me. Most of you are still doing it and don't even know, because you feel superior to people like me.

I live with my boyfriend. I'm helping to raise his out-of-wedlock daughter who he had with another woman. I chose to go away rather than fight to stay a member of your church. You're so high and mighty because you go to Bible studies together, you've never had sex (though I'm sure some of you have come really close) and you'd never consider associating with someone "like me" outside of church, where you're forced to "love" everyone. Whatever.

I know what Christianity means. I was lucky enough to be raised to believe that Jesus loves you despite your mistakes, and he doesn't stop loving you when you do something wrong. Remember that other people don't know that, and when you're so visibly judgmental of anyone who's life choices are different, you are scaring them away from something good.

I make no apologies for who I am or what I do, because my life is none of your business. Maybe that's why you never let me in. I wasn't willing to become one of you, and you just didn't know what to do with me. It never seemed to occur to you to just try being nice. Anyway... I'll come to church because I want to be there, not because it's a social club. I don't want your scrutiny, and I don't want you to try to "save" me. Jesus saved me already, I think you're just stroking your egos.