elionwyr | Recent Entries

I'm behind in Life Update posts, but I wanted to jump out of sequence and post about the adventure Bones and I had last Friday.

I grew up canoeing in a water reservoir called Blue Marsh, located in the Reading area. I've always felt pretty confident in a canoe, and have been eager for a long time to try my hand at kayaking. A friend told me about ocean kayaking, and that sounded even more amazing...but I've never had the opportunity to try any variety.

Bones found a Groupon offer that made such an adventure wicked cheap, so we decided on a date, slathered on the sun protection, and headed off to St Joseph.
( Cursing! Kayaking! Waves of doomity doom! Clickity to read more! )

...I have no idea how to start this post.

My real introduction to Marty was the day of janusaries's 50th birthday party. We were trying to surprise her, and it was a day of maneuvering around varied challenges. Marty was helping me get food for the party; when we returned, we found that his wife, Bobbi, had fallen and hurt herself, and so he was off, taking her to the hospital. This was perhaps the only time I met Bobbi.

My primary connection to Marty was through janusaries and the other costumers I met during my years at Castle Blood, and so my memories of him are..well, as unique as everyone else's. :) I helped him get into costume by gluing on his ear tips for his Vladeratu costume. We worked together on the haunt during the off-season. I remember, fondly, meeting up at the local diner, where all the out of towners used to go for meals in October. He never seemed too tired, or too cold, or disinterested, or anything except engaged and excited to see What Comes Next.

He was the kind of man that was multifaceted in unexpected ways. He told stories about running away with a circus in his younger years. He had been a horror host in the early years...so early that he's one of those that did the job but had no real record of it, like so many others. He donated much time, energy, and money into that backyard haunt in Pennsylvania because he loved it, he believed in it, he wanted to give back to the haunt that gave him a chance to perform in front of hundreds of people a year. I think alone says volumes about him. He attended haunt education seminars because he never seemed to want to stop learning, to find new ways to contribute to and create his performance space.

He's most known for dressing as a vampire and for coming up with new ways to interpret the look. But not surprisingly, his passion went to the literary vampire as well. He could discuss the topic at fascinating length - not a surprise. I don't think he did anything timidly.

He mentored so many costumers. He MC'ed at conventions all over the east coast (and in Canada, I believe). While working for him at the Balticon Masquerade one year, I found I hadn't been put on the volunteer list. The Balticon staff person looked at me and said, "Well, no one uses Marty's name without permission, so I'll add you to the list." But to see him walking around the halls, you'd never know how much the people around him respected him. Not really. He was always busy - most of our con time was limited to a quick hug as he headed off to his next job - but he was always approachable, always interested, always engaged.

He was an active and frequent bidder at sci fi con art shows...which gives you an idea of how varied his influence of support could be. He was active in Techno Fandom. If he worked for your con, if he believed in what you were doing, you couldn't ask for a better spokesperson.

In the end, I knew Marty from the edges of his life..and even that tiny bit enriched my life.

And so, speaking about the edges...let me tell you about Marty's patches.

Marty had a rather fabulous embroidery machine. He loved doing custom work for his costumes, and during one of my earlier years at Castle Blood, he showed up with a gorgeous patch that featured a bat emblazoned across it. Underneath, he had stitched his character's name.

I love bats. And I shyly asked him could he maybe possibly maybe maybe make such a patch for me?

I was probably not the only person that asked, and he didn't give me a definite yes or no...but on Halloween, he presented every cast member with their own bat-decorated name patch. We're talking..maybe 30 or more patches, a few inches wide. Fairly detailed work. And he did it as a gift, and he did it for new cast members after that.

He created '13th anniversary' patches for us. He even, at my request, came up with a few steampunky "Castle Blood Labs" patches for me to choose the one I wanted to add to my lab coat for my scientist character.

I'm sure I have no idea how busy the man was. And we weren't close friends. But this is the kind of generous soul he possessed.

He inspired in many ways...either by mentoring, or by being tirelessly enthusiastic, or just by being quietly generous and supportive.

He will not be easily replaced.

Rest well, Uncle Vlad.

More memories of Marty:
Marty Gear finding fandom
RIP Marty Gear
Farewell, and Fangs for the Memories..
Interview with Marty at Anime 2012
An example of Marty participating in a Masquerade presentation
A clip of one of Marty's bad vampire jokes (this was for a segment he did for "Midnight Monster Hop" and is one of MANY MANY MANY jokes he told over the years at the varied sci fi con Masquerades he MC'ed)
and an online memorial may be found here.

I am a cop, sitting on a bed -thin mattress, no boxspring - watching the sky through a barred window, waiting for my partner to check in.

The sky goes lightning-fast from dusk to dark to dawn. Time has tesseracted.

We are separated, and I can't find my way back.

I howl out a protest..

"Dusti? Are you with me?"

Bones is holding my hand in the dark. I've cried out in my sleep again.

My speech is slurred, but I stammer out a description of what was going on, why I screamed. I apologize.

"You're not alone, my Squirrel."

He drifts off to sleep as I murmur another apology.

The dreams only fit a few of the descriptors of night terrors, so I'm not sure entirely what to call them...other than embarrassing. Frustrating. Upsetting. Sometimes, terrifying. I can usually remember the part that made me scream, and I can usually figure out what my sleeping brain is struggling with, but that's not as reassuring as one might think.

While I can trace my anxiety back to childhood, I didn't have nightmares of this magnitude until I started having panic attacks in my early 20's. Nightmares? Yes, I had them, but not many, and they were generally repetitive: someone is chasing me, meaning me harm, and I am hiding/running/trying to get away. Those dreams stopped once I moved out of my father's home.

The screaming dreams have varied themes. Ironically, I thought I'd conquered one of the themes this past weekend. There is a recurring dream of me having to go into a house, usually to live there, and Something Bad is already there - a ghost, an animosity - and I am struggling to find a way to deal with it. Usually, I lose, and I wake up screaming. But a few nights ago, I worked my way through the entire dream, and woke up feeling relieved, even accomplished.

Last night's dream touched on one of the more common themes:

I am alone.

No one will hear me.

No one can help me.

That is the dream that started them all...the dream that inspired a strangled scream so horrible that it hurt my throat and terrified my mother, who thought someone was literally trying to kill me.

I think about the teenager I used to be, asking my psychology teacher to explain nightmares because nothing he had described in class connected at all to my dreamscape. And I think that's what I find most frustrating about nights like last night. Once Upon a Time, I didn't do this.

I want that to be my reality again.

For a few years now, I've had a go-to crafter for many of my gift-giving needs. But it's wicked greedy of me to not share her with y'all, and so - la! - allow me to introduce you to

juliewicz's Etsy shop, Natural Charm!

Natural Charm's first jewelry creations were pieces that incorporated flower petals made into beads.

juliewicz was inspired by rosaries made from rose petals. She tweaked the process and came up with a way of making beads that were light-safe and waterproof, and then went about making jewelry collections, such as The Josephine Collection.

I own a few of her bracelets, and I'm pretty tough on the pieces I wear, so believe me when I tell you that - as delicate as those beads look - they hold up VERY well to daily wear!

The Natural Charm product line has grown over the years to include:

...rosaries...

...map pendants...
(you can get these in heart shapes, squares, or - for lovers separated by too many miles - map pendants that include the two relevant cities of your choice!)
(you can also get special map pendants that highlight Halloween-favourite towns like Salem, or your favourite National Park!)

...pieces made with coffee and tea...

...pendants that contain kitchen spices or candy...

...cuff links for the guys...

..and there's a line of pendants that include hand-stamped tags such as this one!

juliewicz is always willing to work with you to create custom, unique pieces, either from what's in your mind or from flowers from your special life events. And because she loves me, she's offering a special discount right now in her Etsy shop. If you place an order and use the coupon code DUSTIISAWESOME, you'll get 15% off your order!

If you're on the book of Face, you can follow Natural Charm at https://www.facebook.com/NaturalCharmJewelry, which means you won't miss out on whatever new bit of magic the store has to offer! :)

I was organizing wrapping paper/boxes/tissue paper/gift labels the other day - consolidating, getting rid of stuff we won't use, that sort of thing - and pulled out a poster to show to Bones.

I'd been storing it in my gift wrap container for safety's sake..but that was a fail. Parts of the glossy paper had become stuck to others, and it tore as I unrolled it, leaving my image intact but destroying the areas around me.

"Well, I guess that's the Universe telling me to let it go." And I threw it away.

It had been a gift from a fellow actor at a past haunt job. He was a good friend; the poster, a sweet gesture; and while I've purged most of the things from those years of my life, this was one item I'd wanted to keep.

But it made me think about the things we cling to - the physical mementos, the 'wish I'd done that better,' the sadness of lost relationships.

I spent a pretty wonderful span of five days with Bones' family last week, watching how a functional family operates. Part of that was watching how the mix of cousins interact with each other; that, in turn, made me think about my own childhood and lapsed relationships.

I grew up with cousins-by-marriage, older than all of them by a few years, and - as far back as I can remember - never really feeling like I was allowed to view them as family. I didn't know how I fit in, and I wasn't given much of a cluestick to help me figure it out. I loved them, and I appreciate all the good memories, but when I moved out of my father's house at 17, I lost contact with all of them. I searched for years online and couldn't find them. They're some of the reasons I've striven to make myself fairly easy to find online if you really want to do so. I've spent over 20 years hoping that someone would reach out. Now, they're on the Book of Face, and I've sent friend requests...and then canceled them after a few weeks. Because although hope springs eternal..well, 20+ years is a long time to hope. They know where I am. Maybe someday they'll reach back. I do have contact now with blood-relative-cousins, and that's not without its own bit of awkward. We don't share a past, though we do share touchstones of family names. In the end, it's the family connection I longed for as a child, and that means more than I ever articulate.

I watched a pack of cousins play and talk and laugh together this past week. What a precious gift they share!

I watched, and I was tempted - so, so tempted - to write a letter to my three step-cousins.

But..ya know? 20+ years, man. None of us are the kids that played in the back room of Grace's house, or explored the field behind her home. We're all halfway through our adult lives.

I half-wrote that letter in my mind, and then I thought about that destroyed snapshot-poster.

Love doesn't go away just because you aren't smacking someone over the head with it.

Riki, Philip, Sarah - I love y'all. I'm so glad you touched my childhood. I wish I'd had the tools to do things better. I hope Life has had more joy than anything else. Part of me will keep on hoping, because that's who I am, but that letter's going to stay half-written in my mind, and that door in my life will stay cracked open just a touch, but one of the biggest things I've been learning is how to let things go. Because there isn't much joy in angst, and my trying to force a relationship just isn't good for anyone involved.

As obvious as it sounds, I think Life is less about fighting with what is to make it what you want and more about listening and enhancing what you have.

So this is me learning about letting go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Drama Free Thursday" is the brainchild of

popfiend - visit here for all of his yeah-you-should-read-'em posts.

I'm doing one off schedule because it's been months since I've done one at all, so - la! - you get a surprise DFT. :)

The goal of DRAMA FREE THURSDAY is pretty simple: These are posts that offer a different approach to stressful situations. Drama happens when we react without thinking, when we respond emotionally to a situation.

So! The first rule of DFT is - say it with me - "Your Mileage May Vary." What works for me may not work for you. And that's ok.

Second rule of DFT: YMMV. :)

Third rule of DFT: Discussion good. Drama? Not so good. Let's try to avoid it in the comments. Tell me you don't agree, tell me what the world looks like from your perspective, because I can guarantee you're gonna have something to say that I hadn't considered. This blogger's soapbox is only an inch or so high...so please, share your thoughts and perspectives on whatever is posted here. (That rule goes for my LJ in general, of course, but it makes sense to repeat it here.)

<3

* Michigan makes him sneeze. A lot. Like, multiple fast sneezes. We keep checking to make sure his head is still attached. He's not showing any signs of being sick, so we assume it's just new plant stuff in the air...

* He BEGS. For HUMAN FOOD. And then he EATS IT. He's become very focused on what's going on in the kitchen.

* He chased a moth around last night, batted it around, and ATE IT. With no hysterics involved, like when he was younger and would try to eat crickets and then the crickets would cling to his tonsils and he'd try to hork it up with escalating hysteria until it would finally go down his throat.

* He chased an airsoft pellet around this morning until it went under a door. And then he sulked.

* He does regular laps around the house.

* He's being wonderfully social with the other cats.

MICHIGAN - AND BONES - HAVE BROKEN MY CAT. IT'S LIKE I DON'T EVEN KNOW HIM ANYMORE.

Current Mood: surprised

Anger is almost always a sign, Dusti, that you've been quiet for too long.

Speak up, buttercup -
The Universe

In unrelated news, joy is almost always a sign, Dusti, that I've heard you.

Posted via LiveJournal app for iPhone.

In 2012, Cedar Point opened a new attraction in the park - Dinosaurs Alive. It places varied animated dinosaurs in natural settings, and the visuals are just awesome.

( Read more... )

Wednesday morning, Bones saw that Cedar Point was offering 300 free tickets to the park to those willing to be there at 7AM for a shoot for The Travel Channel. Participants were told they'd be asked to ride MaxAir a bunch of times, maybe be on camera talking about the ride, definitely be on camera during the ride.

The park is about 4 hours from where we live, but we decided to go for it...even though it meant getting up at 3AM. Which eventually meant actually leaving closer to 3:30AM. We weren't sure we were going to get there in time but...la! We made it, all three of us wearing Doctor Who t-shirts (geeks represent!) with only a few minutes to spare!

( Read more... )

Current Mood: bouncy

Last weekend, Bones and I were driving around town, looking for yard sales. Along our journeys, we saw a sign that said, "Michigan Hosta Tour," and pointing down a road that was out of our way.

When I was preparing to move out to the midwest, several friends offered me plants to take with me. (This is because they know I HAVE A PROBLEM and probably need a 12 step program to deal with my plant addiction.) So of course I said, "YES PLEASE." But I focused on things I knew Bones would like, and that would be hostas.

He had moved a bunch as well when he relocated to our home. I didn't realize quite how many until we looked at our combined pile of plants and realized we both have a problem.

So. Hosta tour?!?! Heck yeah!

We followed signs to a cul-de-sac in one of the many local neighborhoods that's sprouted up along the edges of a lake. And we promptly lost our sense of bravado.

"Do we...just walk into that person's yard?"

"Um. Maybe?"

We looked at the varied people doing just that. "Will they know we're not in their club?"

"Not if we don't tell them. And if we don't belong here, I think we can outrun these people."

"Ok. Let's go!"

( Lots of pictures follow! )

Before we left, I grabbed Bones' hand. "Hey! Wait!"

He looked at me expectantly.

"Kiss me in a beautiful garden!"

He smiled, and did just that. "These kinds of adventures only happen when I'm with you," he said softly.

That feeling? That one right there? It's entirely mutual.

<3

Yesterday, I posted about gay rights, and said that there was hope regarding DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman).

Today, I am tearfully jubiliant.

Today, the Supreme Court ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional. This means gay marriages are now allowed federal benefits. This affects taxes and benefits and immigration laws.

California's Proposition 8 was also voted on today, and the decision was made that it's unconstitutional. Today's vote means that gay marriage is again legal in California. This fight has been going on for years - history here - but basically Proposition 8 sought to overrule the California Supreme Court ruling that supported same-sex marriage..but only for a window of years. And the Supreme Court just said, in effect, "Nnnnnope."

These stories have received lots of media attention, and that's awesome. However, major media managed to miss another amazing story as it was happening in a western corner of our country last night. Senator Wendy Davis stated her intent to use filibustering to block a very stringent anti-abortion bill in Texas that had strong support from the GOP. Senator Davis went to Twitter to ask women to share their stories with her so that she would have enough on-topic material to successfully filibuster for a goal of just over 12 hours. (She made it to 11 hours before the Republicans declared her discussion points as being off-topic.)

The stakes were very high. Had this bill been passed, almost EVERY abortion clinic in Texas would be forced to close. It would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy - regardless of health risks to the woman . Many clinics would have to be upgraded to 'ambulatory surgical centers' and doctors would have to have 'admitting privileges' at nearby hospitals.

Senator Davis stood and talked for 11 hours. No bathroom breaks. No food or drink. No sitting or leaning. She was not allowed to use her back brace. She had an amazing amount of Twitter support throughout the night, and supporters that could be there in person were on site to cheer her on...literally, when the Republicans tried repeatedly to shut down the Senator's filibuster. When the filibuster was finally stopped at the 11th hour, the protesters helped stop the bill from being passed.

How close did the bill come to being passed? I'm going to quote from that above link:

Initially, Republicans insisted the vote started before the midnight deadline and passed the bill that Democrats spent the day trying to kill. But after official computer records and printouts of the voting record showed the vote took place Wednesday, and then were changed to read Tuesday, senators retreated into a private meeting to reach a conclusion.

At 3 a.m., Dewhurst emerged from the meeting still insisting the 19-10 vote was in time, but said, "with all the ruckus and noise going on, I couldn't sign the bill" and declared it dead.

You read that right. The official record was changed so that it looked like the vote was passed within the deadline.

Thankfully, that lie was caught and corrected.

The fight isn't over. It looks likely that Gov Rick Perry might call an emergency session to have this revisited. For such a stringent bill to have gotten that far..it has a frightening amount of support. It's all yet another horrible example of how we must keep watching the news. Be aware of what our representatives are trying to pass into law. Be aware of how we can - and do - and are - fighting it.

More info about what happened last night:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/25/wendy-davis-abortion_n_3500359.html
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/26/wendy-davis-texas-abortion/2459135/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/06/26/key-moments-from-wendy-daviss-11-hour-filibuster/
http://www.chron.com/news/texas/article/Ex-teen-mom-heads-filibuster-versus-abortion-limit-4622978.php

For those of you who may not know, this is Lurk, my cranky old man kitty.

"Meh."

Yesterday, we received a surprise present from The Pyratical Cat which contained, among other things, a bag of ZOMG potent catnip, several catnip mice that the younger beasties of the househould promptly drooled all over, and...these.

They're all about the size of a placemat, and at first I thought that's exactly what they were. That, or perhaps throw cushion covers.

The truth was rather much more awesome..they're kitty blankets!

This little beauty in particular was made of awesome and win and too many cookies to count. Bones! How perfect! AND it glows in the dark! Honestly, it wouldn't have had to do anything else in order for me to love it. BUT...

This is me trying to illustrate that there's an opening on either side of this particular blanket. One side has a larger hole than the other, so that you can...

...SLIDE A HEATING PAD INTO IT!!! Lurk, you see, has been showing signs of arthritis for a while now, and Jen (the owner of The Pyratical Cat) had suggested at the end of last winter that I try making a heating pad available for him after I kept finding him pressed up against heating vents in the house. So this prototype blanket is Jen's attempt to make Lurk more comfy - in a nice safe Halloweeny way - when the weather starts to get colder again!

These next two shots are just to give you an idea of what the other blankets look like. They don't have that special sleeve feature - that's reserved just for Lurk's special blanket! - but wow, I love these fabric patterns..!

If you swing on over to The Pyratical Cat on Facebook, you'll see that there's a wide variety of fabrics to choose from - piratey to feline to magical to just plain ol' pretty! And I can't tell you strongly enough how dang good the quality of catnip she's using in her toys. Jen's always looking for new ways to amuse the felines - one of her products, called ROUS - is designed especially for those kitties that destroy regular cat toys. She also has (I may be getting this name wrong) a toy called a 'kitty kickboxer' that really appeals to the cat focused on hunting/kicking reflexes, and she makes collars and leashes as well.

Also also, you should be VERY aware that everything sold by Jen has been designed AND TESTED by her before it's offered for sale. This means you know these products are as safe as she can possibly make them!

The gothier versions of these products may be found at Macabre Merchantile (or, if you do not inhabit the Book of Face, http://macabremercantile.com will get you there, too).

The Pyratical Cat is coming soon to Artfire at http://www.artfire.com/ext/shop/patron/ThePyRaticalCat, but be aware the store's internet presence is still being tweaked. Liking the FB page is your best bet to not miss out on the awesome!!

Originally posted by

kylecassidy at Civil War

I've been running through the Woodlands Cemetery for a while now, it's been built up to encourage people to use it recreationally, and it's been used as a picnic spot for more than a hundred years, it's oddly not odd to go to the graveyard and spend time outdoors. Anyway, there's a jogging course at Woodlands that's almost exactly a mile and it's fun and lovely and you sometimes have the whole place to yourself and you sometimes see people and dogs. A few weeks ago I was running far from my house when I met a woman parked in a car along the side of the road just taking in the scenery, which was ... trees. Living in the city you crave and appreciate a forest, anything green that doesn't have a little fence and a bag of mulch around it is special. We got to talking about how marvelous it was to find a big patch of woods to either run through or just sit in your car and watch and she told me that down a particular path and to the left a certain number of yards there was a Civil War graveyard. How interesting I thought. So this afternoon

trillian_stars and I rode out bikes out there in search of it.

There's a large cemetery the bulk of which is made up of the tombs of wealthy Philadelphians from the 1800's. It's been abandoned and forgotten for years and it looks like a movie set. Far away from everything else there's a fabulous forgotten beauty about it. There's a scene in Logan's Run where Logan and Jessica escape from the domed city out into the outside -- neither of them have ever been there before, and they walk along forgotten roads and eventually into a building covered in vines that we recognize as the Lincoln Memorial. It always impressed me as a kid, that something important could be forgotten.
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I was walking to the Megabus stop in Pittsburgh last month, and passed by several large banners advertising Gay Pride Week. Adam Lambert was scheduled to perform. The downtown area was well decorated with rainbow flags. While this isn't unusual in 2013, it still gave me pause.

I grew up in a small town - lots of corn and cows - and two things in particular made me stand out from the crowd. My parents were divorced. And my mother was gay.

Both things were facts of my life from a very young age..though I can't claim I understood what "gay" meant other than "mom isn't going to remarry because she's gay."

..Think about that for a minute.

"Gay" was something to be embarrassed about. My brother and I weren't supposed to know that my mother wasn't dating men. There was a lot of pressure on me as a child and a teen from my stepmother to not be too much like my mother. "It's ok to love your mom," she'd say, "BUT.." and then would list out all the reasons I shouldn't.

My stepmother and I fought. A lot.

I loved my mom. A lot.

What I didn't love was the pressure. If I had female friends..well, my god, that might mean I was gay. If I had male friends..well, let's not talk about sex, let's just be glad she's not hanging out with too many girls. I grew up very repressed, very much asexual, very much unsure how to handle the question of possible attractions. Which is, of course, a huge part of being a teenager. For me, it meant I was wearing shirts buttoned up to my neck and I was pretty withdrawn. Again, part of being a teenager! To this day, I can't really tell how much of what I was going through was 'just being a teenager' and how much of it was 'ZOMG I don't want to make the wrong choices.' I do know that, despite having worked with hundreds of teens at this point in my life, I still have some 'no touch' programming in my head. My stepmother taught me that women aren't affectionate to girls, and something I've been told repeatedly as an adult is that I am a little too hands-off when it comes to kids in my life. *sigh*

That all said, I loved the gay community. My mom's network of friends welcomed me. I felt safe and accepted there. Were it not for that community, I think I'd have been in much worse shape as a kidlet.

That all said, the only dating I dared try as a teen was with guys. Three total during my high school years; of those, one was a cad, one was a rapist, and one was sweet. Very sweet. I didn't know how to handle 'sweet' and we only had a total of maybe three dates before I moved to Philadelphia.

But going back to being a repressed teen with a bit of access to the gay community in Philadelphia...I can't say it wasn't confusing. I learned what the 'uniform' look was for lesbians at the time. I went through some fear regarding what my mom's friends might think when they looked at me, because I didn't understand sexuality at all. I thought 'sexual creature' meant 'wants sex with anything that's your preferred gender.' While no one ever said or did anything that crossed a line with me - because they weren't pedofiles - I have to admit that it took me a bit of time to figure out that I wasn't someone anyone HEALTHY was looking at as a potential girlfriend.

I was a teenager, I was an 'honorary lesbian,' but I wasn't on the menu, so to speak. And of course it's ironic that I had that fear with people that would never have hurt me, but didn't have the sense to stay away from a man who had no such good sense. Alas.

There was a time when my mom's friends - the ones that loved me so much as a kidlet - didn't accept me as an adult because I was not, in fact, gay. Alas. There was a time when some of her friends assumed I must be her girlfriend because we spent so much time together socially, but - ZOMG! - it was scandalous because I was so young..I could be her daughter!!

..Ya think?

I figured out the inner workings of my heart, eventually. I've dated men and women, but have only had sexual relationships with men. I define as 'bisexual.' I think the majority of people that know me do *not* define me as such. Which is ok. I've learned over the years to not care so much about what other people think.

I don't generally say much publicly about the fact that, for me, Love is all about the person and nothing about the plumbing. And heck, I believe in reincarnation - I always have - so wouldn't it be a special sort of hell to reconnect with someone you loved madly in a past life but you can't love now because their chromosones are a bit different? That doesn't make a lick of sense to me.

But..yeah. I don't usually say much publicly about it. My partners have known, because honesty is a huge damn part of a relationship, but the general populus doesn't really need to know the inner workings of my heart. I changed that attitude a bit earlier this year when a blogger I'm very fond of, Jenny Lawson (aka "The Bloggess") posted stuff on her Twitter account that surprised me in support of the Day of Silence, April 19th. Relevant Twitter quotes from Jenny - and links to her original content - follow:

I don't totally get the #dayofsilence thing. I'm sorry. I'm just going to be loud and bisexual as usual.

"Are you still bisexual?" Sure. You don't lose your sexual identity when you get married. This is why I prefer "loud" to "silent."

"Why didn't you write about being bi in your book?" I've never written about any of my past relationships anywhere. Some things are private.

He knows but doesn't care. Instead of choosing him out of 50% of the population I chose him out of 100%.

So. I'm a little more vocal than I've been in the past...irony, since I've given all of my heart to a wonderful man. :)

But to circle back to my original point...

I passed by all those wonderful signs in Pittsburgh. I saw ads for Gay Pride events here in Kalamazoo. I think about how impossible this stuff seemed in the 70s and 80s, about going to events with my mom and being so scared, so so scared I might be seen on the news, that it might get back to my dad that I was at a gay rights march. I think about her being so scared at the threat from a lover of outing my mom in the news and ensuring she would never see my brother or me again. I think about the bits of the Pittsburgh Gay Pride event I saw last year - people wearing wildly inappropriate outfits, kissing their lovers, with no fear of violence.

I think about stories like what happened at The UpStairs Lounge massacre in 1973.

I think about the fact that being gay- being LGBT - still means, in so many places, that you can't get legally married...and if you can, you still don't have a marriage recognized by the US that would allow your spouse US citizenship. (But there's hope on that front). Being LGBT often means people will assume you are a pedofile, you are a poor choice in parenting material, your desire to marry the person you love means you secretly want to marry your pets..

When you really look at what people still say, still believe, today, it's beyond insulting.

But. When you look at what people still say, what people still do, what the political parties in this country are still pushing in their agendas..have we come that far from burning a group of gay Christians - their friends, their parents, their guests - in a bar?

How do we make it so this doesn't happen again?

How do we keep moving forward and ensuring that gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered stops meaning "less than"?

I walked down that street in Pittsburgh last month, and I had all kinds of thoughts and emotions about those bold as hell banners. And part of me was a little scared, and most of me was "HELL YES." Because all of me still hurts that my mother still can't legally marry her partner, can't have the same rights my husband and I do.

We keep moving forward. We keep showing what the faces of GLBT actually look like, what kinds of people we actually are.

http://calmingmanatee.tumblr.com/image/51480181386

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And said, "I know what that means, so I'm following the rules."

And inside that rose..

..a ring made by ayalanta. Sunstone!!

And a proposal.

And a yes.

Honest to goodness never thought I'd want to marry again.

Honest to goodness deleted his phone number more than once over the course of our friendship, being pretty sure we weren't friends...nor should we be.

I was wrong. So wrong.

And I love him more than language can express.

...And I'm looking forward to changing my name.

Holy poop I'm engaged!!

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Happy Birrrrthday to Youuuu,
Happy Birrrrthday to Youuuu,
Happy Birrrrthday Dear Dusti,
Happy Birrrrthday to Youuuu!

A few years back, not so long ago, heaven and earth erupted into a major celebration with the news of your impending adventure into this very time and space. You see, someone like Dusti Lewars doesn't come along all that often. In fact, there's never been a single one like you, nor is there ever ANY possibility that another will come again. You're an Angel among us. Someone, whose eyes see what no others will EVER see, whose ears hear what no others will EVER hear, and whose perspective and feelings will NEVER, ever be duplicated. Without YOU, the Universe, and ALL THAT IS, would be sadly less than it is.

Quite simply:

You're the kind of person, Dusti,
Who's hard to forget,
A one-in-a-million
To the people you've met.
Your friends are as varied
As the places you go,
And they all want to tell you
In case you don't know:
That you make a big difference
In the lives that you touch,
By taking so little
And giving so much!

Dusti, you are so AWESOME! For your birthday, friends and angels from every corner of the Universe, including buddies you didn't know you had, will be with you to wish you the HAPPIEST of days and an exciting new year in time and space. You won't be alone!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Dusti!

Mike Dooley
Orlando, Florida, USA

PS - Dusti, this is going to be YOUR year!!

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The questioning of what fashion presents as beautiful is - heaven knows! - far from new. It's a little surprising to me that rail thin is still held up as any sort of ideal, but a glance across magazines and television shows that so-thin-her-ribs-are-showing is still the look of choice.

There's logic to it, of sorts - if you believe sizes for models were at one time cut too small, or that it's a matter of draping. Maybe it's 'heroin chic'. Across the decades, the celebration of thin in fashion has been loud and unstopping.

That said, change is a-coming. Vogue banned too-thin models earlier this month. H-M received a lot of positive press for choosing a 'plus sized' model recently. And Abercromie and Fitch has been loudly attacked for its very public limitation to no sizing over 10. And people are talking more and more about the frustrating crazy sizing of women's clothing. As a woman, you can't go from store to store and assume a size 12 or a size medium is going to be consistent. (Women know this. Men may not.) Some of that..creative sizing is known as 'vanity sizing'...which only addresses the 'you really wear a size 12 but we'll call it a size 10 so you feel better about yourself - here, go buy 12 pairs of our pants!' The reasoning for sizing things like women's t-shirts into a size smaller than you'd expect..well, that still escapes me.

But women are growing ever more aware - and vocal - about calling designers on pushing thin as normality.

And, folks? It's backfiring.

I see thin women being harassed for being thin. Not cool. They're told to go eat a burger. They're told they look like men. They're attacked for what, in all the cases I've seen, is their natural body shape - whether it be because of their genetics or because they work very hard on diet/exercise/lifestyle to look they way they do.

It's ok to be thin. Really. Honest and for true.

I also see people that are so ready to be offended by fashion that they attack designers if a thin model is seen wearing their creations...even if there's a wide variety of sizes in the fashion show.

Case in point? MayFaire Moon.

Here's the webiste:
http://www.mayfairemoon.com/

Go on, take a look. You'll see there's a few different models on the home page alone. For those that don't know the beauty of MayFaire Moon, this is Nikki, the owner and creative genius behind those gorgeous corsets. She's curvy and she wears her corsets at every show her corsets may be found. This makes her the most visible model of her work.

She doesn't put sizes on her corsets. Most of her work is custom, and I don't think there's a woman yet that has asked her for a corset and has been told, "No, you're outside my size range." I personally have seen her do beautiful work for people of all sorts of sizes and shapes.

..And yet.

And yet she gets criticized for not using enough curvy models.

This is one example of a MayFaire Moon fashion show:
http://pixelationphotography.com/2011/09/mayfaire-moon-fashion-show-at-dorians-parlor-september-2011/

Lots of shapes and heights and sizes. But over and over, people will see a shot of one thin woman and question why there aren't curvy/plus sized models.

It is, in my not-at-all-humble-opinion, that people see what they assume is there. When you point out that they're mistaken? I haven't seen a single person back down and say, "Oh..oops. You're right." Or maybe just a 'wow ok so I didn't see my exact body shape represented, so I overreacted.' Instead, there's an accusation and - I assume - a flouncing off rather than a discussion, or a consideration that maybe Nikki is one of the designers out there doing it right.

And so this is my take-away point, Gentle Readers:
Yes. Challenge those who are designing, who are choosing models, who are selecting representations of beauty.

AND ALSO? Pay attention to the entire picture. Acknowledge that yes, beauty comes in all sizes - YES, THIN COUNTS! Just as much as curvy! - and that, as in all things, you need to look beyond the one photo, the one glimpse of a story, before you can form an educated opinion.

(And if we could all start taking the time to remember that there's a *person* or two connected to that photo - that if you say a mean thing about the photo, you're talking about a person and that person has feelings - if all y'all could stop being cruel because you think you're anonymous? That would be pretty awesome.)

Things I Have Learned Over the Last Few Weeks:

* Your terror of the dentist is not unique. At all. At all.

* Electric toothbrushes are weird and - if you have tendencies towards hypochondria - using one feels like you are taking a sandblaster to your mouth.

* Waterpicks are chaotic evil. They will spit their tips at you, spin the tip around and aim for your nose or your mirror or anything except your teeth, and be altogether far more difficult to control than you'd think.

Because they're also sentient.

Water that is either too hot or too cold will not be a good time.

Go in wearing eye protection and a hair tie..I keep thinking, personally, oh, THIS time I can keep my hair out of the way.. and by the end of those two minutes or so, I've hosed down my hair, eye, nose, and mirror, and I look like I've been mugged by the waterpick.

...Good times.

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I started working full time, when I was maybe 19, at a company that had great benefits. I didn't take advantage of many of them in the 18 years or so I stayed there, and when I found myself jobless, benefitless, and going through a divorce..well, there were a whole bunch of things I suddenly realized I absolutely should have acted on when times were better.

That foot I broke at a haunt? Never actually got x-rayed, and now I've started feeling evidence of arthritis. Beauregard the Benign Tumour? Let's try really hard to not think about him, ok? And teeth? Well..the last time I thought I had a cavity, it was an ear ache, so maybe all the little bits of almost-augh-pain is the same sort of thing, yes?

Like too many other people, I just dealt with health crap on my own. Swine flu? Walking pneumonia? Who needs a damn doctor? Shake it off, man.

It is, of course, ridiculous that I have a job with benefits and have only now started taking advantage of them. Much of that us because of fear. Beauregard went for over ten years without being checked. I was friggin' terrified over the maybe-time bomb ticking away in my kidney. At 43, I might be peri menopausal. I needed a mammogram (or so I was told). I'm fair skinned, so heeeey I need a skin cancer scan. And I sure as hell need bifocals.

And my honey kept poking me about stuff..mostly the dentist.

The biggest reason I finally went through these five months of tests and exams and scans was..I should say its because I'm something like an adult. If I'm paying for insurance, I should damn well use it. I confess that each exam has been terrifying. (The only one I panicked my way mostly out of was the skin check. I'm simply too modest. I couldn't let a set of three doctors look at me so closely.)

But I really wanted to know if there was a reason for the terror. I want to have as many years as possible with Bones. I don't know if there will be a pause before I can't insurance for me - for us - and if Beauregard needed a car scan (and he did) I needed to do it now when the cost was $25 and not thousands more.

Knowing that, at the end, there was really nothing to worry about except taking better care of my teeth because my goodness, tartar sucks..I praise my peasant ancestors, I do I do. (Not that I really know they were, but I'm assuming a lot.)

Now if I could tame my waterpik so it'll stop shooting me in the eye, that would be great. Because I promise you, Gentle Reader...that shit hurts .

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elionwyr

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February 2020

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...there are squirrels in my head...

"Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really have."

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So Bones took me on a carriage ride Friday night.

TUT birthday

on questioning the wrong people about fashion design, modeling, and curves

Adventures in dental hygiene

The joys of having health care

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February 2020

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