As I was saying.

матрациAbout Summer? It hasn’t come yet. Everyone on Twitter and Facebook and in real life are all complaining about the weather and I get it. The weather totally sucks ass. My garden is getting to look so beautiful but things can not grow without sunshine and we have not had any sunshine to speak of for longer than a day at a time. And it rains all the time and I’m totally sick of it.

It’s useless to complain about the weather because there isn’t a thing one can do about it, but it certainly does make one feel a bit better and I do take some comfort in knowing that a month from now it will be over 100 degrees and my air conditioner will freeze up and I’ll be miserable and hot. I can’t wait.

There’s a lot going on in Portland today. It’s PRIDE weekend of course and that’s always fun. It is also the Rose City Rollers Championship Bout! Cher’s team, the Guns N Rollers will be playing for either third or fourth place, (We’re Number Three!!!) I’m hoping that they will win so that they are not the winners of losers two years in a row, but however it turns out, it will be an incredibly well-fought and well-played game, I’m sure.

I’m helping to put together the new blog for the league and have recruited some very good writers who are contributing some amazing material, check it out, link to it, comment. Please.

Also my latest column came out yesterday in Just Out and it may be interesting to the fellow RSG’s out there. Please let me know what you think.

Finally, my grades came out the other day and I’m happy to report that I completed another term of higher education with a 4.0 GPA. Not bad for a deadbeat I suppose! It is a very good feeling to work hard towards something and know that it is all for a good reason! Life is pretty damn good!!!

How To Be a Deadbeat Mom

My sniffle turned into a sinus infection and a possible case of Pertussis. I didn’t have the Pertussis test because I had already take antibiotics for the sinus infection and they would have been effective for the Pertussis if I did have it. Instead I got loaded up on a variety of cough medicines and an inhaler. I scare people a little when I cough and it’s annoying. I feel like I’m going to puke.

But it’s much better and even though I got a little behind in my school work, I ramped up pretty quick and I’m now looking at one more week of classes and two finals until I’m finished with the term. This makes me so very happy for so many reasons but mostly so I can just take a breath.

Despite what some people may think, going to school full-time and managing everything else that I manage in my life, (the list is too long to give justice by making a list,) is one of the very hardest things that I have ever done in my life. I realize that I set my expectations high for my achievement, but I don’t think that I could do it any other way. I want to do well. I want to learn everything that I can so that I can pass that knowledge on to my children and to others in the world. This is how a society elevates–through education. Ignorance breeds apathy and I don’t want to be ignorant or apathetic. I want to make a difference in the world and I will do that by working hard, learning a lot and passing that knowledge on in whatever situation I can.

Recently I was told that my going to school full time is a luxury and that my earning an advanced degree is not beneficial to my girls.

Obviously this is a value judgment and that needs to be taken into consideration. It is also a judgment made in ignorance, which is very sad for the person who made it. Finally, it is a testament of exactly why my getting an advanced degree benefits my girls.

I was also referred to as a Dead-Beat Mom. Hmmm. I thought. If I am a dead-beat mom, I should probably know how to be one and let others know as well, so I compiled a list.

How To Be A Dead-Beat Mom
By: The Recovering Straight Girl

1. Give up your career and educational ambitions (even if you haven’t yet figured out what those ambitions are) in order to stay at home and raise your children. (This alone qualifies you as a deadbeat mom because you won’t be bringing in any money and contributing to the household financially.)

2. Support your partner emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually as he or she focuses on his or her career and educational ambitions while you stay at home and raise your children.This includes but is not limited to: caring for the home, meals, shopping, childcare, education for the children, social calendar etc. so that your partner doesn’t need to spend any time worrying about any of these things and can focus solely on his or her educational or career goals. (Really, what do you DO all day long?)

3. During this time, allow your partner to financially support you. Loser.

4. When you eventually go through a divorce, accept the state ordered spousal and child support for you and your children. (Fully take advantage of your ex when you should get off your lazy ass and get a job making a salary large enough to support you and your children. What? You haven’t worked outside of the home in over ten years? What? You don’t have a college degree? Who’s problem is that? Obviously you should have been DOING something with your life for the last ten years.)

5. Re-marry/partner. Share household duties and expenses with your significant other. Whatever you negotiate with your current spouse/partner is up for approval from your ex.  Relying on your partner to provide for the girls is not acceptable.

6. Go back to college to earn your degree. This is the ultimate sign of a dead beat as going to university and going to college is a LUXURY, and really . . . How does a masters degree help the girls? We just don’t see how they’ll benefit from you getting a masters degree, most likely eight years from now. I actually don’t think you’ll graduate at all, hopefully you’ll prove me wrong. But so what if you do, how does that benefit the girls?

7. Be sure to put your financial WANTS (like getting a college degree) ahead of your children’s financial NEEDS (like pursuing a hobby, extra-curricular activity or outside interest.)

8. Take out thousands of dollars in student loans so that you can afford to give your children the things that you think they NEED (food, clothes, shoes, shelter, lunch money, deodorant, school fees, etc.) and many of the things that you think they WANT (more clothes, make-up, straighteners, laptops, cell phones, dinners out, camping trips, summer camps, etc.) Paying for the girls expenses out of your financial aid money is not acceptable.

9. Try to teach your children that valuing love, friendship, community, the environment and education are more important than having everything that we want when we want it. Support your children emotionally. Probably every deadbeat dad, or in your case deadbeat mom says this.

10. Finally, don’t have a job while going to school full-time and taking care of your family. Even if you do work part-time, make sure that whatever it is that you do (like say, freelance write,) isn’t acceptable to your ex. You choose not to work full time, you choose not to work part time, you choose not to work at all. Meanwhile, everyone around you picks up the slack so that the girls can have things that they are accustom to.

There you go. Now you can also strive to be a deadbeat mom. It’s a lot of hard work but if you follow the steps I’ve outlined, you should be able to achieve your goal.

The commentary is italics is not my own writing. They were lifted from someone else and were sent with all due respect.

Keep me abreast on how your progress is, I’d love to hear about it!

Baby it’s Cold Outside!

It’s freezing in Portland. Like really cold. I don’t mind so much though because it is also sunny, which in Portland in December is like a little holiday miracle.

I crashed my car on Thanksgiving. I made a turn too fast and smashed into a tree. Can you believe that? And I’m a really good driver and very careful; this was my very first major accident. My car is at the body shop place and it will take a week to fix her. It totally sucks. No. No one was hurt. It was just Cher and I and the dogs but we were all very fine, the car did its job protecting us. I was thankful that we weren’t hurt and thankful that we’re well insured because fixing a squished car ain’t cheap people.

My column came out the other day and I hope you’ll read it. Here’s the link. It makes me sad to read it myself so I’ll warn you that it’s sad but I think that it’s important to talk about stuff like this. It’s about suicide and I wish I would have mentioned in the piece that the month where most suicides take place is January, which is just around the corner. People get bummed out and depressed around the holidays (which is kind of ironic considering that the holidays are supposed to be so joyous!) If you or someone you know is someone who gets depressed around the holidays, please reach out to them or talk to someone you trust and love. If you don’t have anyone to talk to, email me and I’ll talk to you. You can reach me here.

After you read my sad piece, read my friend Sarah’s piece about wine! It’s amazing!

I have finals this week so I need to bust out three papers in the next few days and it’s probably something I should start now. Wish me luck please, I’m teetering on getting a B in one of my classes and I’m not happy about it. If you’re in the neighborhood, please drop off some candy for me. Candy helps me to think better. If you’re in the neighborhood at night, drop off some wine. I’m out and don’t have time to go to Trader Joe’s. Red please. Thank you.

Oh What a Beautiful Morning

Now you’ll be singing that song all day, won’t you?

It seems that summer has arrived in the Portland area, I shouldn’t probably say that because now it will rain until July but I don’t care because I’m going to enjoy the sun while it is here. I have a bunch of new plants to plant this weekend including a new blueberry plant to go with my other blueberry plant because my oldest daughter Mikayla told me that you have to have two. I guess they get lonely and don’t make berries if there is only one. I also bought three pots for my front walkway. I’m going to do something LeLo told me about last year and make a Thrill, Fill, and Spill pot. I’ll take a photo, it should be cool.

We went camping last weekend. On Memorial Day weekend. HG told me to remind her not to do that again. We had a beautiful spot right on a river but a couple of hundred yards down the dirt road there was a group of about 40 people, all with loud pick-up trucks who enjoyed blaring heavy metal as loud as possible. They also enjoyed screaming. Now I like heavy metal, it reminds me of my youth and I’ve been known to scream a time or two, but never at the same time. When camping, this behavior should be curtailed out of respect for other people. And nature.

Ginger stayed home from camping because we’ve been babysitting a very large dog named Blue since last Wednesday and Gingy is not pleased with him. Blue is still a puppy and is very active. Very active. Gingy is not a fan of active large dogs.

Did you know that hugging on school campuses is the new thing? I think its nice and I may just start hugging people at school. If you see me, lets hug. School is out for the summer in 13 days, which is 5 school days and 1 final day. I’m not counting down or anything, really I love school. This is a good thing because according to my advisor if I only take 12 credits per term and don’t go to school in the summer I will graduate with my Master’s in exactly 150 years. I’ll have a lot of time to hug people.

My daughter Mikayla is being “Promoted” to the ninth grade. When I was her age we just called it the end of eighth grade but now it’s a big deal. We had to go dress shopping last night and she found one she likes that is very grown up looking. I’m not sure when it happened that my daughter stopped shopping in the girls section and started wearing a size 5 but it has. I don’t even shop for my girls anymore because I don’t trust that they would like anything I picked out. When did that happen? Luckily they still like me and still want to hang out with me. I have a feeling that won’t last too much longer.

One of my best friends from when I was Mikayla’s age friended me on Facebook. Every time that happens I reminisce about my childhood/teenhood and remember what I did back then. After that, I take a Xanax and say a prayer to whomever will listen.

Lord help me if she’s anything like I was. My mother’s wish would come true but I may end up in the psych ward. Maybe I should start packing just in case.

Word To Your Mother

On the Today Show today they had a report about how much a stay-at-home mother would earn if she were paid for her job duties. It came out to be over $120,000/year. What a lovely thought. Imagine if I had been paid that much for staying home and raising my children for all of these years–I’d be sitting pretty right now because lord knows I wouldn’t have had time to spend it all!

It’s Mother’s Day this Sunday. Did you buy your mother a plant? I’m thinking of buying my mother a plant or some herbs, I’m not sure. I was going to go out to Al’s Garden Center today and find something but it is raining like crazy and I think I’m getting either a cold or the Swine Flu, I’m not sure which. A school nearby is closed for the Swine Flu and I have to say that a little part of me kind of wishes that my institute of higher learning would suddenly need to close for a week or so (Swine Flu or otherwise.) I’m feeling very, very burned out right now. I’ve learned that it’s not a good idea to take your largest course load in the Spring and I won’t be doing that again. My grades are suffering. I’m not getting straight A’s this term, I even got a C on an exam. Yes, a C. I’m admitting it only to all of you as a path toward healing. I’m coming to terms with my failure and finding the strength to go on, accepting that I am not a perfect student after all. It’s depressing–please send chocolate.

Besides school, I have a busy week. Today is my middle daughter’s 12th birthday: Happy Birthday Halsey! She really wants a cell phone and we’ve been back and forth about it. I have a feeling it will be a go but I’ve yet to decide for sure (I’ve got a few hours left . . .)

On Thursday HG and I will be attending “Word To Your Mother”

Word To Your Mother

Friday HG’s Roller Derby Team Guns N Rollers will be scrimmaging against some lovely ladies from Washington State as a fundraising event.

And Saturday we’ll be attending the bout between the Heartless Heathers and the High Rollers!

Sunday: Mother’s Day.

When is Summer? Could someone remind me please?

Last night I had two separate dreams about one of my ex-BFF’s. One of the BFF’s that stopped being my BFF when I told her I was a lezzie. I wonder what that means? I’m not bitter. I feel sorry for her and the rest of my “friends” who so easily walked away from years of friendship, never to be heard from again. It amazes me but really I hold no ill will. One of the dreams took place in Hawaii and we’re going to Hawaii in June. Could that mean something? Next year maybe I’ll take a class on Dream Interpretation. Hopefully I won’t get a C.

Happy Early Mother’s Days to the Mothers! Have fun planting your plants.

Word.

A Quote

“Religious fundamentalism is often represented as authentic spiritual practice and given a level of mass media exposure that countercultural religious thought and practice never receive. Usually, fundamentalists, be they Christian, Muslin, or any faith, shape and interpret religious thought to make it conform to and legitimize a conservative status quo. Fundamentalist thinkers use religion to justify supporting imperialism, militarism, sexism, racism, homophobia. The deny the unifying message of love that is at the heart of every major religious tradition.”

–bell hooks, All About Love

The Third

Kathryn is taking four classes this term and three of the four classes are the type that require the writing of academic papers. She has one paper due on Friday and another on Monday. The paper on Monday is a narrative and the professor suggested writing the paper in the third person, “To give you practice writing in the third person.”

Kathryn is not that kind of writer, and besides her status updates on the old Facebook, she never wrote a single solitary thing in the third person. This makes Kathryn quite anxious and she is grateful for the three things in life that help her when she is feeling anxious: her wife, her friends, and wine/Xanax as appropriate. (Yes, that is actually four things but the last two are never hardly ever consumed together at the same time.)

Kathryn is also trying to adapt to a new schedule and the fact that her three young daughters are growing and changing in ways that she often questions whether or not she is doing a good job in raising them. She realizes that their behavior is considered “normal” but somehow this does not give her much comfort. Instead she often views these three people in her life like alien beings whose soul purpose of existence must certainly be to suck the very life out of her and draw every amount of patience, energy and money from what little she has left at the beginning and end of the day. Often she feels as though her only worth in life is what she can do for these people, what she can buy for them, where she can take them and how much she can give them.

She wonders why Motherhood is so very thankless and wonders if it is the same for everyone?

All of this causes her to secretly wonder what life would have been like had she made different choices. She looks at the young women that she goes to college with and wants to take them aside and say, “DON’T DO IT! Don’t have one, don’t even think about it. Get an IUD, NOW! It’s not what you think, they grow up into ungrateful, selfish, entitled leeches that drain you of every ounce of identity and hope for the future!”

She remembers the days when she held them in her arms, nursed them, comforted them when they cried, dressed them in cute little purple and hot pink dresses with matching tights and binkies. She remembers rejoicing in their first steps, first words, first foods, and first days of school. She remembers all of the joy that they found in their lives. She looks at their pictures from years before and her heart smiles at how adorable they were.

Some of this gives her comfort during the mornings of fighting and tears and doors slamming. Some of it gives her comfort after she has a complete meltdown and truly wants to pull every strand of hair out of her head. Occasionally it gives her comfort when all she hears in a day is “I want, I need, Can I, Will you and Why not?” Rarely it gives her comfort when she hands over her last $20 bill and has $6 in her checking account and she is then asked, “I want to do ’such and such’ and I have to turn in the money by Friday.”

She thinks about the days to come in the future. Days that she will look back at these days and laugh a little and sigh a little bit of relief. She’ll look at the grandchildren they will bring over to see her and she’ll chuckle when her daughters tell her how difficult the grandchild is. She’ll say, “I remember when you were that age. It was tough, but not nearly as tough as when you were a teenager!” Then the grandchild will cry and Kathryn will hand the grandchild back to her daughter. “She sure is cute,” she’ll tell her daughter. “Have fun with her.”

And one day her daughter will have a teenager and she’ll call Kathryn crying, not knowing what to do with the ungrateful, selfish child who for some reason has this sense of entitlement!

And that is the day Kathryn will have her true revenge.

Earlier. I had inspiration.

>online casino I came home from school today full of knowledge about normative behavior and class distinctions and how aging doesn’t mean that we’re slowly dying, it actually means that we’re changing–some for the better and some for the worst and that the big question of “Nature vs. Nurture” is actually not distinctly answered but that both things mutually affect and influence each other.  And learning how to say simple phrases in Spanish to my classmates and feeling terrified that they’re going to think that I’m an idiot and then almost crying because I want to tell the teacher, “I can’t do this! I know how to write papers and give critical analysis of text and close read and examine concepts of Sociology and give speeches. I can’t do a different language, I’m FORTY YEARS OLD!”

When I came home with all of that in my head, I was feeling very inspired to write something profound. Unfortunately, I lost it the minute I changed my clothes and made dinner and before beginning the second part of my life of taking care of my daughters and making sure that they don’t eat too much sugar, and speak kindly to each other and realize that when they say nasty things about a girl at school who’s hair is “weird” and that “all boys are mean and stupid”  is sending negative energy into the universe. Adding to that, one of them put her elbows on the table and I want to shriek for the fortieth time to NOT do that but I remember that “values” (like manners, like which side of the street we walk on, and how we celebrate holidays) are not reality but rather socially invented.

Sometimes when I am feeling overwhelmed with school, I put on my Yale sweatshirt, which was given to me by my friend M.who lives in New York (like the city.)

I think I secretly hope that if I’m wearing my Yale sweatshirt I will somehow be smarter, even though I know that students who attend Yale are the same as students who attend an inner-city college with the only difference being the opportunity afforded the Yale student due to White Supremacy Capitalist Patriarchy.

My middle daughter, Halsey, asked me why I was wearing a Yale sweatshirt when I didn’t go to Yale. I told her that my friend M. sent it to me in the mail and she thought that it was weird that he did so. “Is He an old boyfriend?” she asked. I told her no, he was not an old boyfriend, he was a new boy friend or rather man friend. “Well, why would he send it to you?” she then asked. “Because he likes me,” I told her but she still seemed rather confused. This could be because “all boys are mean and stupid,” I’m not sure. (I’m fairly sure that M. is neither mean nor stupid as he did attend Yale and sent me a sweatshirt.)

In conclusion.

I really wanted to write something inspirational earlier and it went away so instead I graced you with all of this. All of these facts that I pretty much learned Today. Yes. I. Am. Serious.

I’m a bit overwhelmed by this term’s school schedule–can you tell? I am holding on to hope that my anxieties will be put to rest just as soon as I get in to a routine but if they do not, I fear that my brain will explode into a billion teeny tiny pieces all over the Portland State University campus.

And that would be messy.

The measure of love is loss

Or is love even real at all?

I’m still fixated on “Written on the Body.” Have you read it yet? No? Why? If you had, you could help me with my paper–so hurry up and read.

Love (noun) an intense feeling of deep affection. a deep romantic or sexual attachment to someone. a great interest and pleasure in something.

But is it real? Does it last? Is it meant to last? Are there different kinds of love? If there are different kinds of love then there must be different kinds of other emotions and if so, what does that look like? That would mean a variation on Anger and Hatred and Fear and Happiness and Excitability–all difficult to define but as important and as valid emotions as love.

Is Love reality or our perception of reality at a particular time and place with a particular person, (because truthfully even though people say, “Oh, I loooovvve your dress” it doesn’t evoke quite the same emotion as when you feel love for a person.)

Does love come and go? If so, does that mean that it doesn’t exist at times and if so, does that make it a reliable emotion? Can you trust in something that ebbs and flows and is that something a person wants to use as a basis for life with another person?

Because you haven’t read the book (yet) I can’t tell you what happens but I will tell you that the narrator describes many love affairs that last just a short time (six months.) I wonder if the narrator is perhaps on to something? Perhaps that is what romantic love actually is–that fired up feeling of discontent when you can’t eat or drink or sleep and all you want to do is have sex and gaze into the eyes of your beloved. It is the raging, boiling intensity that only happens in the early throws of a relationship, which slowly dies down to a roll and then a simmer and then a bubble here and there until it cools off completely. Is that it?

Perhaps we should all just try to be a little bit honest. Love changes for everyone (even HG and I, even though still crave her and adore her and want her and need her.) It always changes because it HAS to change–no person alive could possibly handle those intense feelings for more than six months. So when it ends, does the love end too?

Hmmm. I may be on to my paper topic

I’m Melissa Lion’s Bitch

But I don’t mind so much because she’s nice to me and lets my wife kiss her when we’re out lezzie dancing, which my wife appreciates.

Melissa is brilliant on so many levels, she’s an award winning novelist, a book critic, and a college professor. On Saturday she is holding a class for Bloggers!

That sounds fun, don’t you think? If you live in the Portland Metro area, please come and tell Melissa that I sent you. Register at www.longlunchpdx.com.

If you can’t wait until Saturday to see Melissa, then you should definitely go to Backfence PDX tomorrow at The Mission Theatre (they have beer.) She has an amazing line-up planned and it should be super fun. ***

Just go, it will be fun!

Speaking of fun, I have one more class for this term. I finished my screenwriting class and finished my Shakespeare class (I wrote my final paper on the Apocalypse and how it related to Shakespeare’s tragedies–I was feeling deep at the time.)

Tomorrow is my speech on Marriage Equality and how it benefits children. Thank you to everyone who sent me pictures, I’m so excited to have so many! (You can still send some if you would like, I would love more!)

And no, I’m not discriminating against straight people and their children, maybe next time I’ll write a speech about how the families with opposite-sex parents are denied equal rights? Except that I’m not taking any more speech classes so I guess that won’t work out.

Tomorrow is also Call in Gay Day. I can’t call in gay because I would fail my class but I will do it in spirit and try not to patronize any businesses unless I know they support the Gays. I will also try to do something to serve the Gay Agenda–you know undermine the sanctity of marriage or something. Either way, I’ll do my part the best I can.

M. sent me a Yale Sweatshirt, I’ll be wearing it today. Thanks M! You’re the bestest friend I’ve never met. I couldn’t read your return address very well, can you resend it so I can send you a thank-you note? (Unless this blog mention counts or unless you purposely wrote it so I couldn’t read it just in case I would fly to New York and find you.)

After tomorrow I’ll take a breath. I want to have lunch with friends and decorate my house for That Holiday. Maybe we’ll get a tree. But I won’t think about that right now, I’ll think about that tomorrow.

That’s all Internets, now go plan your week.

***No payment or sexual favors were promised for the endorsement of these events.