8:10 p.m. - 2007-02-14
becoming a woman of freedom
Well, I guess the guestbook is officially dead. I don't know why. I even paid for it. Sigh.
I appreciate those of you who have emailed me or posted something on your blog when you really wanted to comment. Such things warm the cockles of my heart...whatever cockles are.
The bad news is that I tried Haloscan and could not get it to work. The good news is that if you subscribe to Diaryland, you can comment to me in my notes section. Unfortunately I am not exactly sure how this works. I only know how to check to see if anyone has left me a note, which no one has yet. So basically, this set up is about as lame as having a guestbook that no longer works.
In other news...I recently re-read some recent diary entries of mine and realized I leave a lot of typos in my entries. Sorry - that is probably annoying. It is partly due to the fact that my shift button only works intermittently and sometimes in my head, I am saying the word "an" and my fingers are typing "and" instead. And the other part is that I am not a perfectionist. I put the energy into the initial writing...I don't proofread my blog, ever. When I hit the "done!" button, I have given the screen all that is on my mind, and it's empty and tired, so I have to go on to something else like checking the weather or reading one of your never updated blogs.
So, I will try to be a bit more mindful, but the bottom line is that we are all going to have to live with it. When all that is left of me...hundreds of years from now...is my diary, they will all know...every last great great great great great great grandchild will know that I was careless with publishing less than style guide perfect work. OK, less than 7th grade perfect work.
So, today was Valentines Day. We were trapped at home all the live long day, at first with no power. NO POWER. We woke up to discover that not only had ice come to visit and cover the snow, followed by more snow, but that there was no freakin' electricity. Within minutes, we were crawling around, moaning and groaning and gnashing our teeth, freezing, coffee-deprived and desperate for Internet access. The power came back on, so all is well. Except that my valentines day present was delivered to my work building today, with no one there to answer the door, my husband informed me. Poor guy. Tries to be extra sweet and have something delivered to me, and I'm not even there. Also, we had to cancel our reservations to a fancy dinner, location not yet disclosed to me. Again, this was because of the weather.
So, I made dinner and gave Kevin his presents - Johnny Cash, Live in Ireland; the DVD collection of Kenneth Anger's films; a stuffed monkey that says "I love ya baby" in a really weird voice; a sodoku cube and a pair of slippers. (That list of presents sounds more extravagant than it was...I got good deals on everything.) Tomorrow, I get to dress up and go out to dinner someplace nice. I like doing that.
My two favorite shows are American Idol and 24. Kevin's two favorite shows are Heros and Lost. (We each like all of these, except Kevin does not care to watch people embarrass themselves singing like I do, so Idol is all me.) Wouldn't you know, 24 and Heroes are on at the same time and Idol and Lost are on at the same time this week. Of all the absolute crap that is on tv.....grrrrrr. Fortunately Lost is generally on the following hour, so it's no big deal. And we have TiVo. Wow...I am complaining about something really dumb. Sorry for wasting a paragraph.
I talked to my cousin today and somehow we got on the topic of getting yhour period for the first time. (about 60% of the men who read this blog just clicked over to ESPN.com) we were talking about how HORRIBLE it was. We were laughing so hard, just recalling how much you hate EVERYTHING when you are 12 and how everything your parents say is totally embarrasing and absolutely wrong and how something as normal as menstruating is completely mortifying. You feel, at 12, about menstruating, the way you might feel, at 28, if you were forced to walk into your office naked. Humiliated. Different from everyone else. Standing out like a...well, like a naked person in an office.
How strange that it makes you feel that way at 12...alienated and embarrassed, when, as a full fledged adult, it is something that actually kind of bonds women together. Say one word "cramps" for example, and half of the women within earshot are digging in their purses to find you some Motrin. It's something that makes us feel slightly superior to men - hey, dude, roughly 20% of my child-bearing years are spent in a vague state of pain radiating from my abdomen as wear what I affectionately and secretly refer to as my "period pants" as I refrain from committing crimes like murdering stupid people when they get on my nerves. I accomplish this while going to work, making dinner and taking Aunt Mildred shopping for knee high hose. It's something that, ok, kind of does suck. But it is something that we all have to deal with, and it's something that is a part of what makes us able to make babies. Everyone who has been born, was born because of their mother having a normalish reproductive system. But for some reason, when you're 12...it's the most horrible thing in the world. And then, what do you do? You send your parents to the grocery store to get you your first box of maxi-pads...yeah, those people you can't stand and embarrass you with their very existence, they are the ones who march into the CVS to buy an armload of feminine products.
