Be the change you want to see.

I must have been 18 years old at least, one of my dad's clients who was also a friend, had been dealing with a long-standing lawsuit against the California banking commission. Deno Evangelista, my adopted Uncle, used to run a student loan business for colleges and he got done dirty by the CBC, which was a regulatory commission, probably still is.

One of the things they did to him was and I don't remember exactly how this fell out or what was the thing that they were accusing him of doing but they sent authorities of some flavor, to his office and they confiscated all of his s*** like all of it: like his own art his own personal possessions the furniture the files everything. In a lot of ways Deno went from being a really rich man to being a man fighting for his own dignity. He was representing himself with my dad's assistance and he did pay my dad for the collaboration/consultation time. But my dad had been working with him for years by the time I was 18. Comes a day when Deno has to actually serve some paperwork on the CBC. And the reason why I know that I was 18 is you have to be a legal adult in order to serve legal paperwork on somebody.

I know he must have driven from Sacramento to San Francisco to do the thing. I don't remember the drive very much, but I expected that he was funny and entertaining, he was always kind and generous and funniest hell, full of stories about being Italian in America and coming over on the boat with his mom. He was probably in his late 60's when I knew him and I discovered later he was dealing with skin cancer the whole time I knew him and when it metastasized he died I think only a couple of years after my dad. My dad died in 1994.

Anyway we went Into in San Francisco. I have this packet of paperwork. I went up to the office (I remember the office pretty distinctly) and I remember the people in the office, largely because once I mentioned that I was there to serve papers it was like... Did you ever move a rock and suddenly you've uncovered an ant hill and everything on the floor is squirming and moving and running away? Because that's basically the impression I had of all of the people in the office. It was as though I, instead of walked in and said I have papers, had walked in and said Oh, I have a bomb.

I have never felt so much like a pariah as that moment.

People were legitimately afraid not of me but what I was holding. Of course I didn't understand the ramifications of what I was doing and I didn't understand the way that people work together in an office and the kind of ways people try to shrug off the responsibility for something even when it is theirs.

I remember saying multiple times I need to give this to somebody. And at one point saying I'm just going to set this on the counter and being told no. And the people they were really afraid! I remember that they told me that I needed to leave it outside the door of the office, which in retrospect is some kind of bullshit and I'm sat here rolling my eyes 32 years later.

The law is powerful. It should be used to go after wrongdoers, it should be used to fix injustices, it should be used to make people do right. I grew up with my dad a lawyer, and I think I always had a sense of he had this ability to shape the world with his words and his actions. And then here's my Uncle Deno, this one person, who doesn't even have the legal training, but who is trying to stand up for himself and for being disenfranchised, and like I said I didn't know it at the time but he did that on top of being pretty sick as well.

The law should be used to set things right. To protect people. And if it's scary to you and you haven't done anything wrong then I feel somebody's using the law unethically. Or else the laws are wrong or unethical, which also has happened frequently through history.

I don't know: I just suddenly thought of that moment and that feeling last night, late last night, remembering Deno. He had this crazy shock of white hair and a bulbous nose and glasses and a big grin and just a big way of talking and storytelling and a booming laugh. He was a good guy and they did him dirty.

I don't think I have a moral for this story, just that I got a chance to be part of something important before I understood what I was actually part of. But sometimes that's part of learning to understand.

this is the first day of our second week in Australia!

we started with three days in Melbourne
one night in Healesville, another night in Alstrop(wrong but i can't remember the place name, will correct later) last night in Canberra, where we saw the old parliament and the Indigenous People's tent embassy (need to look up the proper name of that as well) and the New Parliament where we got a specialized tour focusing on recent Indigenous Rights progress (are you sensing a theme? my husband Gets Me.)

then we drove from Canberra to Sydney, and he's been shorting himself on sleep and Didn't Tell Me till this morning... nightmares about work oh my GODS

but we arrived safe,
and from what I understand the city from where we are is a) very walkable and b) has decent public transit. So I'll be looking into that while he works from Monday through thursday. we stay till Sunday morning, and I'll be looking into kitschy shopping and bookstores and pubs and coffee shops during the day while he has work.

goal: I want a guidebook of California published with an Australian perspective, and maybe to find a queer bookstore. and to catch one of my nanowrimo friends while I'm here. =)))

i made us a nice green salad (they don't do salads in restaurants?? here?? wtf??) for dinner and it's 11:30 pm here and we're gonna go crash shortly in this little air b n b.

TW: murder, nightmare
Woke early from a dream in which three old white men were gonna murder me because I'm a woman who's loved women. They were about as competent and careful as the Sheriff and Boss Hawg in the Dukes of Hazzard, so...it was still terrifying. Before I snuck away, one of them hollered, "YOU'RE GOIN' TO HELLLLL" and I hollered, "psssht, YOU'RE THE MURDERER" They were measuring temperatures in the neighborhood to determine the best place to dump my body, in that way dreams have. And another one said, "we'll be killing you right over yonder" and I said "welp, you'll have to carry and drag me" and he said "great, we'll be able to get some kicking in" and I looked down and he was wearing heavy boots.

In the dream we were all in the house that I grew up in, so I knew a great hiding place. And a bunch of old friends were, again in the way of dreams, playing music in the back yard, just the far side of the sliding glass door. I had to sneak out through the back room that used to be my parents', stay low to the ground so they wouldn't see me from the house, to get to them.
Megan and Sandy and Nicole and Pandora were all playing music.

I got over to them without being detected and Sandy looked down at me (I was still close to the ground) and I leaned up and whispered in her ear "they're gonna murder me because I've loved women" and Sandy's face changed like a STORMCLOUD.

And then I woke up. With all these feelings and this fear and this run run run run run feeling. And it took me an hour to sit down and write this.

NEVER AGAIN IS NOW. Their hate and fear and entitlement has always been POISON. And there's a BODY COUNT TO IT.

I have people who would help me if I were in mortal peril. People are dying.

I wanna believe that if the dream went further, I would have hid, and my friends would have taken care of the problem. But in real life, I'm one of the ones who is gonna help take care of this.

Be afraid. Do it anyway. Interfere with ICE. Join a protest, or a liberal church who's organizing legal aid. Call the congresscritters and tell them what you demand. Spread the truth. Be kind and compassionate and help each other out. Debug your mind and heart of racism, sexism, classism, A bit at a time. Decide to treat people equally, no matter what your brain may sneaky try to tell you. Hear those voices, acknowledge they are bullshit, and practice to do better.

Do the work, rest, get back up and do the work. The work looks different: feed and teach the kids, help people who need help, take care of yourself, learn about our terrifying history of racism, sexism, and queerphobia. Rest again. Pick a job. ANY JOB. Being frozen indecision is no longer an option. Too many things to worry about? Pick anything. Do something to make the world better.

the prompt for day 9 is "Spider Baby" but I looked that up on Wikipedia and reading the entry is plenty enough horror/scary for me. So from me, you get Spider instead, today.

Spider:
I know you,
I know how you move.
That skitter-pause, skitter-pause
Or the swoop-swoop-swoop of the daddy-longlegs.
*
Spider, I know you.
Your webs are annoying
and also beautiful.
Deadly, and a reminder
of how life has rhythms of birth and death,
of feeding and being consumed.
*
You are tiny. Usually.
Why do folks fear you so?
What makes the shudder go down their spines?
*
I mean no shame
to those with a full blown fear
but I trained myself to be kind
when my mother mentioned you eat mosquitoes.
(because MOSQUITOES, ugh)
*
I use the cup and paper to relocate you
I deal with your incursions in my house
and I roll my eyes at the giant fake spiderwebs for Halloween.
*
I am not afraid of you. <3

This weekend Jeff is travelling with our gf Jenn. So not to feel lonely, I set myself up with a lot of social things, in multiple cases things I'd never done before.

Friday night I went to Renee's birthday party.
Saturday I went to a Halloween party that Amy and Bill and Kimberly were invited to, and they included me.
Sunday I went with Luisa to a Sikh temple for what I thought at the start was a Diwali celebration but upon reflection, may have been a regular Sunday service.

I could unpack and tell stories about each of those days, but this morning when I woke up I realized there were two specific things I wanted to write about.

one is: three straight days with extroverting.
two is: two straight days with going out around new people while dressing high femme. Even did makeup and hair. wow

yeaaaaaah. that was kind of a lot of effort, you know? Both those things.

I have tried to convince myself for literally YEARS that I'm an extrovert. I'm actually coming to realize that I'm almost certainly an introvert EXCEPT FOR THE FACT that my default mode when I "introvert" is to HERMIT.
and then I don't see people, I don't touch or get touched, I get depressed, and it sucks.

maybe I just suck at the introverting. Today's a kinda gross brainweasel kinda day already, I'm working on managing my pain and getting some food so I can brain better, and I still have to take my morning meds.

maybe I don't suck at the introverting, but there's something else going on there.
but I'm pretty sure I do suck at the introverting.

also, though, i seem to have hard anxiety at the extroverting. GAH
or maybe it's just that I did three days of being around People I Don't Know and that's stressful.
*sigh*

okay, now it's time to take a moment about the femme thing.
I've been tending to dress butch for several years now. Jeff never expressed that he cared about how I dressed except to say that he didn't really like women wearing makeup and that he didn't do well with lots of perfume. So for several years I dressed practically. I didn't have any kind of expected or cultural dress code to meet, not since graduating waldorf in 2011, so I've been wearing a lot of jeans, cargo shorts, nerdy tee shirts, sandals, and or boots.

this year I decided I was going to try and reclaim some of the femme I used to *think* I knew how to do.

yeaaaaaah.

Briefly, dressing butch /feels/ like blending in, dressing femme /feels/ like "look at me, look at me!" and I have anxiety over being seen. I don't feel like I know how to handle it when I am /seen/.

when i was a kid i was humongous levels of anxious (I was going to say "ridiculous levels of anxious" but this shit ain't ridiculous it's fuckin' SAD because I didn't have any safe place or people growing up. I couldn't even trust my parents). I used to pretend I had some means of being invisible. Because if I couldn't be safe with people, maybe I could make them leave me alone.

I can trust and relax around small groups of people. five or six seems to be the maximum.

Eye contact is hard except when either I don't care or it's low emotional stakes, like with a waiter or a clerk in a store, or when I really trust someone.

I don't know if that makes me odd, "normal" or just me.

I feel a little better just introducing this topic here (these topics? is flavors of anxiety a single topic or a multiple topic?) and also incidentally finally getting my breakfast and caffeine an hour or more after waking.

self care yay!

body still hurts, going to see what I can do about that. I feel like a tightly wound spring, if a tightly wound spring could still have healing soft tissue damage post RSI and post broken bones. UGH

i'm fuckin ridiculous.

I was feeling insecure and low about the new person I've started seeing.
Was like, IDK when I'm going to get to see her, what if she doesn't want to anymore, the insecurity brainweasels just set up shop and were gonna settle in for the long haul

and then I thought of how I would describe the situation to y'all.

and the truth is, she's a single mom with shared custody,
she's a full time student,
she's seeing other people, not just me,
and she just had some important scary family medical stuff go down.

and I went, "duh. Of course she doesn't have time JUST RIGHT NOW."

and like, I allowed myself to relax and to, like, go live my own life. Cos she's got to live hers.

I'm allowed to WANT things, but nobody's obligated to totally rearrange their life so that I get them.

...I should maybe figure out how the hell to tell someone I want to see more of them without scaring them.

#lifegoals #isuppose

anyway.

just wanted to say thanks Blogiverse for a way out of my own head.

*mwah*

My dad died at the end of April, twenty years ago in about two weeks.

Recently I've been reflecting on life with him, and life without him.

After he died, Mom sold the house we'd grown up in. The yard sale paid for the moving van, and got rid of lots of extra stuff; furniture, record player, vinyl records, duplicate china. But Mom and I were still packrats.

She and I moved from that 5 bedroom house to a three bedroom house, where we dedicated one of the three bedrooms and most of the garage to storage. We were mostly storing crap, as I can freely admit at this distance.

We come by our packrattitude honestly in my family. Both Mom's parents were raised during the Great Depression and slogans included "we'll fix it later!" and "don't you dare throw that away, you're going to want it!" Every house had multiple junk drawers, and piles of stuff in closets and garage.

The "guest room" of this rental house was crammed full of boxes, bags and piles of my "craft crap". There was some stuff in there which might have been useful, if I could ever have located the treasure among the trash. Do you ever think, "man, I know I have this tool/supply/fabric/colored marker in my stash, but I just can't FIND it," so you buy another whatever it is?

Can't count the number of times I bought duplicates of things I already owned. Embarrassing to think of now.

Anyway, the house itself was decent, if dated (1970's ceramic tile floor in living room and kitchen, yo) and a little chilly in autumn and winter. It had an in-ground fish pond and some space to garden and hang out in the back yard. Sometimes we had visits from local wildlife. Once I was walking to the kitchen to start the coffee and saw a white crane as it took flight out of the fish pond, and once a skunk tried to come into the house seeking dog kibble.

But the most mysterious visitor was inside the house. It took us a few weeks to realize what was happening, in spite of finding gnawed electrical cords more than once and little dark pellets scattered at the corners and edges of rooms.

The epiphany hit us one evening when I went into the craft crap storage room and found tufts of ... dog hair? but dog hair of the wrong color. Our dog was Captain, a tiny black Pomeranian. Our first dog had been a tan and brown Pomeranian named Montana, and my little brother had saved up a bag of her hair before she died ...

Wait. There's the bag, how did it get...

chewed open

Dammit. *shudder*
We had a rodent in the house.

Immediately started sorting through my entire stash, grieving damaged goods I had always "meant to do something with" or "couldn't bear to give away", and tossed them in the trash. Sent bags of unwanted but undamaged fabric to the communal sewing stash for my Renfair friends, and took several boxes to Goodwill, including the hideous latch-hook rug project in white yellow orange and olive that I started when I was eleven and never finished.

Mom called an exterminator, and they brought something I didn't know existed, sticky traps. We had at least one sticky trap in each public room. A few days later I discovered a rat, deceased, under the living room table. It was stuck to the sticky pad, partially atop the electrical cord to the lamp, which was also stuck to the pad. Mom was a trouper, and sorted the mess out. This involved breaking the leg of the rodent to detach the sticky pad from the cord.

I didn't have the cojones to do this; she did.

She threw the rat and sticky mess into the trash bag and the trash bag into the trash bin, while I made disgusted noises and felt faintly guilty at making my widowed mother do it.

Mom always sorted our messes out.
Mom has always been awesome.

This has been my week 5 entry for therealljidol and the prompt was "A Better Mousetrap".

Please go read and enjoy my colleagues' entries here. To vote for my entry, link will be *here*

Thank you for reading!