Because I was mad

For the past few months my depression has been, I dunno, in remission or something. I've been feeling pretty good. Happy, even, some days. But the depression monster is creeping back in. I have days that are not good. The good days are not as good as they were a couple of months ago. Yesterday was a very not good day.

I don't know why. I can't think of anything that has or has not happened to tip me over. I'm overly sensitive, which smacks of hormones. On Saturday night C and N failed to include me in a project they were doing, one that I'd mentioned an interest in. I was incredibly hurt, more so than the situation warranted. I don't know, maybe that had something to do with why I felt a bit off yesterday. But it doesn't explain why I got so upset on Saturday. I just don't know.

So, about yesterday (Sunday). Self-loathing was the theme of the day. In related news, I needed a haircut. Why am I uncomfortable about getting my hair cut by professionals? My theory is that, to me, a haircut is an intimate encounter. Not as intimate as cuddling, but more intimate than sitting beside someone on a bus/train/airplane. I don't want just any stranger to cut my hair. Even the woman who cut my hair for 10 years was too much of a stranger. She moved out of town, and I'm not going to Erie or Cleveland or wherever she went just to get my hair cut. I was kind of used to her cutting my hair, but I wasn't comfortable.

But the hair was annoying me. It has that habit. Feeling unworthy to get a professional cut, I cut it myself. It's a mild, perhaps passive-aggressive, definitely less painful form of self-mutilation. No one was at home, Sproing and Superman having gone out to do something they told me they were going to do but I now forget. I think it involved washing the car, but no matter. I got my scissors and went into the bathroom. I emptied the garbage can and put in a fresh liner, then sat on the edge of the toilet, leaned over the garbage can, and began cutting my hair. And crying. Crying silently, which is how I usually cry. I'm good at it, except for the annoying sniffles that I can't stifle. It's a duct thing.

When Superman and Sproing got home, they came into my office where I was sitting doing my homework (or goofing off online, like I am now). Superman looked at me in surprise and asked what I'd done, why I'd done it, something like that. I forget exactly what he said. Sproing knew, though. He said that I got mad and cut my hair. The kid knows more than he lets on.

It looks pretty bad. I can't figure out if I'm upset about that or not. I'm staying home today, but I have school tomorrow. Maybe I can convince Superman to even up the back. I took the clippers to my neck with very uneven results. It looks bad and/or funny, depending on one's perspective. Oh well. I cut my hair and now I have to lie in it.

What's your opinion?

One of my courses this semester is an independent study research on a topic of my choice. Well, duh, the topic of my choice is homosexuality. The Gay. LGBT. Queer. But I obviously need to narrow that down to something more specific. I know a few things I don't want to study, mostly involving politics and activism. Oh, I heartily support efforts to improve the social-political climate for sexual minorities. (I learned that term recently, referring to lgbtq etc. as sexual minorities.) But I know I don't want for that to be the focus of my study.

I am interested in the process of "coming out." There are a lot of things I could focus on there, including coming out issues for adolescents or minors, coming out in college, after college but still young, coming out in mid-life, coming out while in a heterosexual marriage (or shortly thereafter).

Bullying of those perceived to be gay is another hot topic. This seems to happen mostly to young men and the transgender, I haven't seen anything about overt bullying of lesbians though I may be misinformed.

Whatever my focus, I will need to read a shit-load of academic articles on that topic. Therefore, the topic needs to be discussed in professional/academic journals. No, I haven't looked in the databases to see what's there. Articles should be fairly recent, I think within the past five years, though the time limit my be different. I'll need to ask my advising professor. The exception to that would be seminal articles, those from longer ago that have brought significant new ideas to the field. I'll find those by reading the more recent articles, because the recent stuff will refer to the older significant works.

The format of this course work is article review/annotated bibliography. I won't be giving my personal opinions or anything interesting like that. My professor will teach me how to read articles for the content I need and how she wants me to write the annotated bibliography for each article. I'm not entirely clear yet on what needs to be done, but it is past time for me to begin looking for articles. Which necessitates having some idea what my topic is.

So what do you think? Give me your opinions about what kind of glbt research I should look into.

The obligatory snow post

I like the word "obligatory." How do the British pronounce it? I pronounce it "o-blig-uh-tory" though I've heard it said with the emphasis on the first syllable, "ob-lig-uh-tory."

Moving right along...

Today was supposed to be the first day of spring semester. Didn't happen. We got snow instead. This little southern town closes down when it snows. We had 12+ hours of mostly steady snow beginning sometime in the middle of last night. Things slacked off in the early afternoon before changing to sleet, then freezing rain. That's what we've got now, freezing rain. Our high temp today was about 31F I think, though the weather widget on my desktop never got above -2C. I have my desktop widget set on Celsius just for fun.

Superman went to work for a few hours this morning. Driving wasn't too bad early this morning. I left home at 5:40 this morning to take C to the donut shop. He didn't want to drive in this nastiness. It wasn't bad, really. After I dropped C off I went to the grocery store to buy marshmallows and Hershey bars, thinking we had graham crackers. Got home and damn, no grahams! Before Superman went to work he took Sproing with him to pick up some grahams. Sproing and I have been snacking on s'mores throughout the day. I've had I think 3. Goodness knows how many the boy has eaten.

Anyway, Superman got to work sometime around 8:30 this morning and was home at noon. By then the streets were much worse. Snow had packed down and iced over. Actually, on my way home from the grocery at 6:00 I took an unexpectedly wide turn onto the road that leads to our house because I was going a bit too fast at 15 mph to make the turn without sliding. Thankfully traffic was extremely light. Now with all this freezing rain everything is coated with ice. I've heard a few cars crunching down the road in front of our house this evening. Damn fools out there hot-dogging it. I only say that because I'm not out there having slip-slidery fun in my little buggy. Our front stoop is iced over. I'm afraid to go out the door for fear of slipping on the ice and having my overly ample backside hit the ground hard. However, if I had good snow boots and some deicing salts and a big 4-wheel-drive F-250 with good tires, I'd be out there having a blast.

The snow in our front yard is about 6 inches deep. That's more snow than we've had in over a decade. Right now it's still fun, as long as I get to stay inside.

But I really need to get started on this school stuff. I have an extremely full schedule. I plan to read the first chapters in at least three of my textbooks either tonight or tomorrow. Our first assignment in Senior Seminar is due Wednesday. I've only got to answer a few questions about the first reading assignment, it's no big deal, but I do need to read the book. I'm glad we've got an online network at school where the profs post the syllabus, assignments, assessments, etc. I can get started on a few things. Can't do diddly for my two studio art classes, but oh well.

In other news, Superman, Light and I went to Atlanta for a conference this past weekend. I drove up to get Light on Thursday night, and we left home early Friday afternoon for Atlanta. It was a Filk convention. Any of you ever heard of Filk before? It's a geeky thing that both Light and Superman really like. It's sci-fi/fantasy, which isn't so much my cup o' tea, but the songs can be funny. I enjoyed the people most of all. Strange, I know. I don't like people much. It took until Sunday morning for me to warm up to most of the folks, but Superman helped me some. He had some lively conversations with a few guys and dragged me into the fray. Good people. Odd, but good.

On the bright side, I got to make a quilt square. One of the ladies in the group puts together a quilt every year at this annual conference. It gets raffled off at the end of the weekend. She brought a bunch of fabric, some of it pre-cut into squares of the proper size, and other tools and notions for constructing quilt squares. A few people took the opportunity to make squares for the quilt. When I asked on Sunday, she said she got a dozen squares (8") which is a nice size for a wall hanging or maybe a small lap quilt. She'll take all the squares home and put them together, then mail it to the raffle winner. I don't know who won the raffle. I didn't buy a ticket, not because I don't support the cause (money for the Filk group for further conferences and associated expenses, as I understand) but because I really didn't want the quilt. Filk isn't my thing so much. Also, I didn't have any cash.

And why did I not have any cash? Because I left my purse at home! My purse, which isn't big, but carries my wallet with all my credit and debit cards, my check book, my camera, all of my ID, and a nice full jar of lip balm for my poor chapped lips. I packed carefully, made sure I had everything I needed. I helped Superman and Light carry stuff out to the car. I set my purse down on the cabinet that's in our foyer, and walked right past it on my last trip out of the house. Oy. Superman has all the debit and credit cards that I have, and he had a bit of cash. It's a good thing I didn't need to show any ID. I got along quite well without the purse, and it was kind of nice to not have to worry about toting it around. But I was glad to have it back when I got home.

So, this Filk thing is a small-ish community of odd birds. Nice folks, like I said. There are quite a lot of pagans represented in the group, and not a small percentage of the glbt. I gotta tell you about this guy that Superman met. Really nice guy, kinda loud, and funny. He's 5 years older than Superman. He's a bit overweight, but not as big as I am. Anyhow, on Sunday morning he and Superman were both in the consuite. (What the heck is a consuite? Also spelled "con suite." I've never heard of it before. Obviously I don't hang around conventions much.) They were chatting, getting to know each other. At some point in the conversation this fella said to Superman "You're hot." Then he said he hoped he hadn't offended my dear patient husband. No, there was no offense taken. When Superman told me about it, I thought the whole thing was kinda hot. See, I'm not the only one who thinks my husband is sexy!

Stuff to do and getting stuff done

On today's agenda: go to school to get the rest of my schedule figured out. I need to add two classes, as if I didn't have enough already. Right now I have six, but two of them are itty bitty one or two credit things, basically hoops I need to jump through to graduate. I have one art class, advanced sculpture, and I want to add advanced ceramics to my schedule. The other class I have to add is another itty bitty one hour thing, fieldwork.

Fieldwork. Working in the field. Not the wheat field, either, thankfully. That sounds sweaty. I need to volunteer for a few hours (times two) in some agency or other in the "helping profession." (I dislike that term, but it's what they say.) I'm supposed to have two units of fieldwork to graduate, and the one time I registered for it last spring, I ended up dropping the class. So I need to work twice as much (notice I didn't say twice as hard!) for two credits. I can't remember how many hours are required for the semester, but if I start early and pack them in tight, I think I can be done well before the end of the semester. I think. There is fear involved; fear of calling to arrange the volunteer particulars. I'm such a wuss.

Having said that, I just called two places. Left a message at one, and found out from the other (shelter for abused women, or something like it) that I need four different background checks. The nice lady is going to email me the list and directions for accomplishing these. They need 3 years driving record, and background checks from the child sex offender registry, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, and something she called the central registry. All fees payable by me, of course. Eh, school expenses don'tcha know.

There's nothing quite like telling you that I'm afraid to call (or do something) to motivate me to do it. Perhaps I should do this more often, eh?

Alrighty then, if I'm going to get stuff done, I need to get going.

Back for another trip around the sun

Happy New Year. I didn't make any resolutions. I know myself better than that.

I am reading a book that Light strongly recommended. It's Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking. It's a good book, but I'm not totally into it. Because I am too afraid. Honestly, fear is a huge problem for me in regards to making art. For instance, there are a few things currently in queue for my sewing machine. They require some creative attention. I have been avoiding the sewing machine ever since the end of last semester. I want(ed) to get some sewing done over the break. Maybe. OK, part of me wanted to sew. Another part is afraid to. And I get so angry at myself for being such a wuss. Let's move to another topic, this one is making me squirm.

Diva. Now here's an uncomfortable topic of conversation. For those of you just joining us, Diva is my 13 year old adopted daughter. She currently resides in a residential treatment facility (RTF) for the emotionally distressed. Or something like it. Colloquially speaking, she's in the loony bin.

I may have mentioned a few weeks ago that the RTF was going to get an MRI scan of her brain. They did an EEG back in November (I think it was) that showed abnormal results. Today Diva's therapist told me the results of the MRI. Diva's brain is abby-normal.

The official diagnosis is (let me see if I can remember it) Periventricular Leukomalacia. (Yes, I got it right.) A preliminary Google search gave me lots of information that has nothing to do with Diva's symptoms. Evidently most children with this condition develop neuromuscular problems, specifically cerebral palsy. Diva has excellent control of her motor functions. She's a good dancer, even. What happens with this leukomalicia is the white matter of the brain is deficient, damaged, or somehow abnormal. The white matter is what's beneath the gray matter. It's not what the brain uses for thinking, but contains neurons that relay information from the thinking parts of the brain to other parts of the body (where the muscular systems are affected) or to other parts of the brain. As I understand it (don't bet the farm on this explanation) Diva's white matter does not adequately relay information from one brain action to another, from one thought to another. She has a lot of trouble making cognitive connections. For example, cause and effect aren't always evident. I realized many years ago that there is a disconnect somewhere in her mental processing. Now I know why.

In one psychological test she took a few years ago the doctor found that she has problems with her short-term or working memory. This is the memory cache where you hold onto a phone number while looking for a pencil and a place to write it down. Stuff stays in the working memory for a few seconds while the brain determines whether to keep it, and if so, how and where to store it. When I was helping the child learn to read she'd see a new word in a sentence, I'd help her sound it out, then she would forget the word by the end of the sentence. Sometimes if it took a while to figure out the word, I'd have her restart the sentence so she could get the whole flavor of the meaning. But when she got to the same word the second time, she'd have no idea what the word was. Talk about frustrating! I used to think she was doing it on purpose to irritate me. I fussed at her. Now I know that at least some of that was genuine. Do I feel bad about fussing at her about it? Maybe a little bit. What with all the other polluted water under that bridge, I don't feel much guilt about this.

And let me tell you the latest foolishness she pulled. On Boxing Day evening around 9:30 she ran away from the RTF. She hooked up with a couple of 16 year old girls from her unit and they sneaked out and jumped the fence. One of the other girls called a friend of hers (a guy, young but over 18) who picked them up and took them to his house across town. Thankfully this idiot lives with his mother (that's what I understand from what they told me) who saw the fool sneaking in with three under-aged girls. The mother realized it was a very bad idea for these troubled run-away teens to stay with her son overnight. She called, or convinced one of the girls to call the RTF, and a couple of the staff drove out to retrieve the girls. They got back to the facility at 2:45 a.m. And boy, is Diva ever in trouble!

All of the work she's done, all the advancements she's made in their program levels since going to the facility in early April are gone. She has to start over as if she just arrived. This means that she won't qualify for outings and other rewards until she moves up the ranks again. Perhaps she can advance quicker than she originally did, having been through it before. I don't know. We saw her on the 27th, the day after she ran away. She was pretty upset, and didn't contribute much to the conversation on our visit.

We did not go see her on Christmas Day*. Frankly, I didn't want to. I wanted to have a nice Christmas, peaceful and laid-back, therefore going to visit the Diva was not on the program. We planned to go on Boxing Day, but the weather was sketchy. It snowed most of the morning, and we weren't sure about the roads. It's 70+ miles from here to the RTF, on old county back roads that don't receive much maintenance. The roads probably were OK, but my heart wasn't into a visit. If my motivation had been stronger I may have made the trip. So we planned to see her Monday. Then we got a call from the RTF informing us of her shenanigans. Superman talked to them a few times Monday morning, trying to get the whole story. Actually, they had called us around 11:00 the night before, but we missed the call because we were asleep. We didn't leave here as early as planned on Monday because we wanted to be sure we could see the fool child.

Superman and I went to see Diva. Her therapist, who was officially on vacation, had come in to check on things and happened to be there when we arrived, which was good. The four of us had a visit/meeting: Diva, the Therapist, Superman, and me. Diva didn't say much. Mostly she slouched with her arms crossed and her head hung low. It wasn't the most pleasant visit we've had.

Diva called tonight. She was pleasant but vague when talking to me. When she talked to her daddy she told him that she'd had a visit with the lady from one of the state mental health agencies. This is the agency that wants to help bring her home. I talked about this in a recent post. Anyhoo, Diva told Superman that the agency lady told her that if she has very good behavior from here on out, she may be able to come home in three months. Oh HELL No!! Especially not after that bullshit she pulled last week. Shit.

In related news, I talked to Twitch on the phone today. (I took him back to Charlotte yesterday (Monday).) The topic got around to Diva coming home. His opinion: Oh HELL No!! He said he doesn't want her to be near us, meaning his dad and me. There's something about the cavalier way she threatened to kill us in our sleep (it happened last March) that has all of us pretty creeped out.

This has gotten long. I'll quit now so you can get back to your life.

*I visited her the Wednesday before Christmas, and took a big bag of presents to her. She had gifts from us, and there were also gifts for the residents from other do-goody organizations. It's not like I ignored her entirely. We talked to her on the phone on Christmas Eve and, if I recall, on Christmas Day as well.