foreplay
Steve: The place was advertised as an open floor plan.
Me: Open foreplay!
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May 31st 2005I Misheard When
Archive for May, 2005
Operation Hey Let’s Tear Down that Load Bearing Wall: The Thank God for Jordan Version
I’ll never forget how my brother Jordan came up from Boston over Memorial Day weekend and spent all three days working on our wall. And he did it voluntarily, knowing exactly what he was getting himself into. We, the clueless homeowners, had no idea what we were getting into.
Before Jordan arrived, Steve went to town on the drywall.
Jordan arrived the next day and brought a truck load of tools and set to work, telling us what we needed to get and how things needed to be done, as well as measuring and sawing and hammering. As he worked, he often broke into song or other sayings, which we refer to as “Jordan Originals”.
Steve became known as “Big Dog” and our cat Casper was “Skiddly do do”.
Temporary walls had to be built on either side, in order to prop the house up. Good thing that Jordan knew about that part, cause we sure didn’t.
Then the drywall had to cut to size and nailed in. Then there was the smearing of some stuff I forget the name of, then the joint compound. Jordan did ALL that. We sat and watched, duly impressed.
We took down a door and built a wall there too. Jordan suggested we have a window of some kind in the wall so that it wasn’t just blank.
How cool is that?
Before the drywall went up, we left a little something for posterity:
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My Life So Far
For the past few days I have been reading, and then practically re-reading My Life so Far by Jane Fonda. Like many of my generation, the only thing I knew about Jane Fonda when I started the book was the fact that my Mom had one of her workout videos in the 80s.
I found it to be powerfully touching and insightful, maybe because I had no expectations when I started the book. I was amazed at how many of the realizations I’ve had in the past year leapt back at me in the pages of the book. So many of the same thoughts and feelings (except, thankfully, an eating disorder) that I thought only belonged to me. Since I was 11 or 12, in my analytical way, I would frequently trace the roots of these experiences to having a hearing loss and how I coped with attempting to pretend to be a hearing person in a hearing world.
For most of my life, my silence, exclusion, feeling unseen and unliked (not disliked, just not liked) always seemed to come back to the fact that I could not hear well enough in crowded hallways and cafeterias and dances and get togethers of my adolescence. I was, and still am in certain situations, completely imprisoned by silence. I chronically compared myself to the girls who were always talking, laughing, and surrounded by friends, and found myself to be painfully inept.
Jane wrote “I didn’t know where the anxiety came from, I just thought that was how life felt for a girl once she hit the you’re-supposed-to-be-feminine age- feeling like an outsider, nose pressed against the windows, hungry to get in, not knowing that it was myself that I was outside of; but then, how could I be inside myself when I had discovered I was not perfect?” (p 83).
Jane wrote about personas, how she borrowed aspects of others’ personalities while inside feeling convinced that she was boring and hoping no one would find out. From this, I begin to think that my hearing loss didn’t so much create this anxious, painful experience as it actually stripped me of a disguise. I did not have the ability to borrow and create myself that most girls, like Jane, had.
Even though many had these feelings of anxiety and exclusion, and many were coping in much more secretive and self-destructive ways, they could cover up in trying on different personas. They could be talkative or flirtatious, a goth or a druggie or whatever else, and through that, be validated (as girls learn to do) through being part of a clique or having a boyfriend. This didn’t necessarily help anything, but the appearance was very deceiving. I could not try on any persona, let alone my own. I endured silently, waiting it out and hoping for when it would get better, and deeper, and more real.
Or until somebody invited me to a party or something. Either way.
Repeatedly, throughout my teenage years, I had dreams with the theme of being in a large clothing store or standing in front of a closet. I would walk around and around, picking out clothes, trying on clothes, trying to find an outfit that felt right, that was me. In my dreams, I never found it. Either I was fruitlessly searching, or to my horror, I ended up in an outfit that was ludricrous and all wrong. Unlike many girls at that developmental age, I could not find different personas or ways to be. I was acutely aware of how imprisoned I was and couldn’t pretend.
Then the words, the same words I used in a recent entry, popped up. “Not taking myself seriously, I gave myself away- to films that weren’t very good and to people I didn’t really care about.” (p 134). I think it is most painful when women give themselves away emotionally to men, because men do not and cannot reciprocate or understand the extent of what is being given to them. The experience then becomes for the woman like that of having an addiction, dependency characterized by extreme highs and lows. Sometimes, consciously or unconsciously, men encourage or need this kind of power trip at the expense of the woman. (Not to be “male bashing” here, this can also happen the other way around.)
I agree with Jane when she writes that feminism is not male-bashing, it is recognizing that both genders are suffering from socialized gender roles. Men also are affected in other ways besides having power or privilege, and suffer for it while being cut off from certain feelings and experiences.
Ultimately we reach a point, in transitions or in therapy, if we stick with it long enough, when we manage to cast aside defenses that no longer serve us and our feelings of hurt, anger, anxiety and confusion. What remains is the work of mourning. Mourning is not simply tears but felt throughout the body.
Mourning entails not only letting go of others or accepting one’s self, past experiences, what was or never was. Mourning is also reconciling the universal ways we have been shaped and hurt by society. Mourning means learning what does not belong to you, and letting go of unresolved issues that is passed on through the generations in the family. I am not my parents or grandparents. I cannot carry, re-enact and fix anything for another, as much I as I would like to.
I am inspired by all the work Jane has done and still does for causes she believes in and to help others. I wonder if I could do that someday. The immediate fear that jumps out at me is that, outside of a quiet room or the writing medium, I will not be comfortable enough with myself and my hearing to lead or to work with groups of people. But that is perhaps an excuse. Maybe I am just afraid. Risks need to be taken in order to find out.
The outfit I have on now is pretty good.
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May 28th 2005Books & Hearing loss & Introspection & the Past
shoes
Steve: If you don’t remember those shoes, there’s a sign you have too many shoes.
Me: Derrick thinks I have too many shoes?
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May 28th 2005I Misheard When
Yes!
You know the scene in Castaway where Tom Hanks finally succeeds in building a fire and he beats his chest jubilantly and growls “I have created FIRE.”
That was me yesterday after I found the pea plants emerging in my garden.
I have created PEAS.
May 25th 2005Everyday life
Screw this
Perhaps I am not so ready for the next adventure. This week finds me making very little effort to research, network, or find another job. I need some time. I want to find something different, and better, than the jobs I had before my internship. Community mental health is a minefield and I have already been burned, and burned out, plenty. I need to know what I am looking for.
Damn, maybe I am in the wrong field. I wish I was a Milton police officer.. From the Milton Independent-
3:17 pm - Family Fight, Rte.7; 4:42 pm - Juvenile Problem, W. Milton Rd; 1:30 pm - Citizen Dispute, Bert’s Park; 9:49 pm - Animal Noise, Rte 7; 10:06 pm - ATV Incident, Waterwheel Way; 10:23 pm - Animal Problem, Middle Rd; 10:45 pm- Breathing, Baker Lane.
Juveniles, animals and breathing, oh my.
I spent a significant portion of the day drilling holes into cabinets and installing knobs and handles. At the condo, we grasped drawers and cabinets by their edges to open them all the time. I never thought anything of it. But now that we are in a HOUSE, I am going to have HANDLES. Naturally, I could not resist making several innuendos to Steve about all the screwing I was doing today.
Speaking of innuendos. My favorite t-shirt that I own:
May 23rd 2005Everyday life & Pictures
Why he’s sexier than ever
How is it possible that I have been in a relationship with my husband for over seven years without discovering until recently that he is a handyman GENIUS? Ever since we moved into our house he has undertaken various projects which he completes in the time that it takes for me to go to the BATHROOM and he makes it look so easy.
Examples to back up my statement, my statement that causes my husband to roll his eyes and not believe me, even though I am exclaiming and covering him with kisses after each project:
Singlehandedly designed and constructed a way to carry the boat
A bridge across a stream, as well as creating the path to the river
A support thingy for our compost pile
The hammock chair we bought on our honeymoon in Mexico
The things I did:
Hung up a flower pot. Note our wind chime- it appears to be a frog prince, with butterfly wings, sitting on a ping pong ball.
Planted some seeds. In the dirt.
Transferred some plants and stuck ‘em in a big outdoor pot.
Just wait until I chronicle Operation Hey Let’s Tear Down that Load bearing Wall.
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May 21st 2005Everyday life & Pictures & marriage