a fine pair
(also on my myspace page)
We’re finally getting a Hooters.
I feel like what puts a city on the map as a part of the civilized world is a Target store. My husband feels the same way about Hooters. Yes, he only goes there for the wings.
I don’t know how I feel about Hooters.
In principle I think any business which hires only women to be service staff and asks them to wear some sort of cutesy clothing is exploitative and perpetuates stereotypes and perceptions our society doesn’t need.
In reality though… people can do what they want. Maybe the waitresses are making tons of money that will help them get through college. Maybe they’re having a fantastic time and lots of wonderful high quality socializing and bonding is going on there.
I don’t have boobie insecurity either… As a married matron and a mother, I think I can reasonably get away with saying that I have a fine pair, at least I think I do anyway, at least when they are hiked up in proper foundation garments.
Most guys look. Why shouldn’t we be honest about that? It’s not the same as actually being disloyal to the woman they truly love. It’s sort of like how women slaver over adorable and overpriced clothes at the baby store or the designer boutique, with no intention of purchasing. We look, it looks nice, we move on.
Wait a minute… wait a minute. No, it’s not.
You know what?
Women’s bodies are their property. Our bodies, regardless of gender, are our property. The opposite sex has no business judging.
I have become very sick of how judgmental our society is of bodies, especially when real bodies are nothing like that standard (unless it’s via lipo, plastic surgery, and implants, or just a very very rare genetic combination).
I don’t know why we can’t glorify breasts that have breastfed, or tummies that have birthed babies, or bodies that are healthy rather than just adding up to some kind of arbitrary measurement.
You know that automatic, reflex thought I think guys, okay all of us, have, due to evolution, whenever we meet someone for the first time? In a barely perceptible flash we decide whether that new person is either worthy of procreation or he or she is not. I believe it roughly translates to, I’d do her. Or, he would probably make great babies (no we do not actually think it in those words!! most of the time, anyway) or no dang way.
In reality, this is how we are. We’re human, with the entire spectrum of civilization and reptile brain that comes with it. We need to be honest about it, not be too hard on ourselves about it, realize that it’s one in an entire minefield of factors we use to choose mates, and move on.
But in principle and also in reality, when we look at someone’s body and, whether intentionally or not, judge it for its suitedness for procreative activity (with or without procreation), whether we find it beautiful or not, we are completely out of bounds. Completely. It’s that sort of willingness to define someone else that is part and parcel of abusive thoughtways (I love me some Patricia Evans).
And furthermore, guy who is putting down some woman for having a body you wouldn’t sleep with, who fucking asked you? Whether that body, or that pair, pleases you or not, do you think you’re on, or could ever get on, the list of procreatory invitees? Please.
You might… you might not… but keep your judgement to yourself, until you have grown to know someone as a person. One’s body belongs to oneself, and oneself only.
Signed, your postfeminist friend, who has slightly procreatory pictures on her myspace page, so sue me,
shaky
today
Today’s myspace post:
just today
Current mood: 
calm
Going today up to way in the country to see the dear friend who kept shaky baby back after maternity leave ended but she was too young to go to Montessori school. She doesn’t drive these days, but even so, it’s a lot to ask her to be the one to always drive down here.
She’s such a neat person. Among many other things, like me, she abruptly left a youth of recreational drug use (although for me it was pretty strictly alcohol and cigarettes only, and she grew up a lot earlier than I did) to become a mother. She is a wonderful caring hippie mommy. She trusts her instincts and is suspicious of The Man. She is much stronger about parenting in a way she believes in… at some cost to herself, I might add. I am far too selfish and unsure of myself to be as strong as she is.
She cloth diapered. For the first few years I knew her every time I came to her house there were stacks and stacks of adorable clean cloth diapers. She cooked healthy home made foods instead of giving her kids processed foods. She breastfed for a long time. She had her second baby at home, pretty much by herself before the midwives showed up. She is staying home with her children in spite of her family’s limited income. Like me she still has that punk edge, and issues aplenty, but her babies come first.
This girl and her sister– well they are ten years and more younger than I am, but they remind me of my best friend in high school. The day I met each of them I just got this good feeling from them. There’s just that deep, real, been there done that honesty and sense of humor about them that I would like to associate with country people… but I have never met anyone like these girls.
Their backgrounds are different yet similar… trailers yes, but my best friend in high school had wonderful loving parents who stayed together and these girls had hard, harsh broken home childhood– and came out just as hard headed, beautiful and determined, more so really than my dear friend from high school. You know how redneck girls are often so much better groomed– better haircuts and makeup– than city girls? None of them went to college. They are all three very smart, big fish in small ponds who breezed through high school without having to study, but without bothering to worry about college. They all have horse sense and an ability to see through the bullshit, their own bullshit, and others’, and call it like they see it, that sometimes just has me rolling with laughter. They are nice girls, but they don’t let being nice keep them from seeing and telling the truth.
I can’t describe it. There are some people who just remind you of the good parts of your childhood in such a way that you can truly be yourself, whether you’re seventeen or thirty seven, as if those twenty years never passed.
Twenty years… I’ve been thinking a lot about that number, as my reunion is coming up this summer. It hardly seems possible. I am still just as frivolous, just as cool, and almost as stupid, as I was when I was seventeen. I hit a turning point about thirty, and another as my baby began to grow and I slowly became a mother. But inside… my essence is pretty much the same. I’m a party girl. I am deeply introverted and shy– but I need my friends and community. My imagination paints huge beautiful emotional and visual pictures in my head, and after all these years I still can’t manage to write them down. I love, love, love to work, like in the garden or cooking or quilting or on the house, but I fucking hate doing the grind of someone else’s routine if I can’t see the bigger picture.
I don’t know how it can be that this time has gone by. Time goes faster and faster, and while life doesn’t necessarily get easier– okay, I must admit I prefer my problems now to the problems I had in my twenties– not easier, but… I dunno. Anyway, life becomes more and more precious every day.
I have some deeper and darker thoughts regarding just how precious life is but I’ll have to save them for another day. I want to tote the baby quilt up there
to work on while the kids play and we talk. I want to get some garbage out of the house because it’s trash day and it’s good feng shui to keep this stuff moving all the time. I wanted to take some vegan cupcakes up there too but I’m starting to run out of time.
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Currently listening : Bareback By Hank Dogs Release date: By 02 February, 1999 |
ADD
add
Current mood: 
working
My stepson was eating his dinner and humming… humming… humming. We had all eaten separately so he was sitting at the table by himself. Humming. He wasn’t bothering anyone. It was just odd.
He hummed himself to sleep last night. At least I think humming was what he was doing. I wasn’t brave enough to bust in on him to find out.
I was doing dishes and I was thinking, that kid has ADD. He really does have ADD. I know I have it… we had doubts as to whether he had it and took him off his medicine. I freakin’ love my medicine. Maybe he has it after all.
I kept working. I was deep in thought. started humming Dinah Washington doing Cole Porter’s I Get a Kick Out of You.
Humming!
“Hyperactivity in ADHD adolescents can also take the form of finger drumming, restless legs, excessive humming/singing/whistling, and even object-drumming. ADHD teens often turn kitchen canisters and tables into drum sets.”
http://www.enotalone.com/article/4122.html
I also walk around whistling almost silently, as my Dad did. I don’t jiggle my legs any more cause I don’t like it, but he does. He’s a ball of nervous energy.
My husband and I were agreeing that kids have probably always been this way.
You know why kids didn’t act this way (bouncing, running, tumbling, popping up from their seats) as kids? Because their parents beat the shit out of them!
For me… medicine is great. I love it (who wouldn’t? it’s amphetamines!) and I experience significantly better quality of life. For the kids, though… I’d rather they not take drugs.
For them, and honestly for myself, I’d rather try to learn to work with our personalities and ‘lead from strength’ rather than think of it as a disorder and try to force all us square pegs into round holes.
My stepson, and my daughter, have very intense concentration when they are engaged in something they really value. They just don’t have it in them to handle mundane shit. I wonder where they get that. (?)
I sure would like to go the unschooling route, with both of them. Who knows what I might have accomplished if I could have started working with myself as I am, instead of how I was supposed to be, from childhood. And, to be fair, I wonder what kind of useless I might be if I hadn’t forced myself to study, get grades, and hold jobs all my life.
It’s all good, but knowing what I know (or think I know) now… we’ll see what the future holds for all of us.
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Currently listening : The Essential Dinah Washington: The Great Songs By Dinah Washington Release date: By 03 November, 1992 |
I am shaky!
I thought I’d just try it, and shure ’nuff… shakyegg was available on myspace. Dear ones, I am going to move this show over to myspace. I am not to good to do what millions of other assholes are doing all around the world– or at least all over America. I am so tickled. I need the anonymity, unless, of course, you are already my friend, or would like to be.
I don’t have much up there, right yet. But I will.
One thing that is particularly viral/icky about myspace is that you have to register to see someone’s work on myspace. And I’m sorry. It’s free, but some of my freethinking dear ones might not like it. If you don’t want to register as yourself you can do what I did and register under a pretend name. I even have a pretend hotmail account with my name nowhere on it– shakyegg@hotmail.com.
But anyway for that reason, at least for a time, I will probably try to post whatever I post on myspace, here as well.
So, here’s yesterday’s post…
If you have a chance, please check me out at www.myspace.com/shakyegg
and as always, don’t out me!
Take your chocolates and go home…
My husband is away for work this week (don’t even think about it, bad people… my dogs will tear you limb from limb… huh. echoes of the Hank Dogs… I’ll be putting them on here next). He’s sorry he’s gone for Valentine’s day, and I don’t really mind at all, I can do kids’ stuff (maybe, just once, I can be the fun parent in my stepson’s eyes?) and I don’t want those hallmark f-words telling us when to express our devotion to each other. whether we feel devotion is of course beside the point. I just don’t want to be told how and when to show it, even if there were any.
But I was reminded of the Drive By Truckers song Feb 14. I loooooove these guys sooooo much. I always make sure to note that I’ve been following them all over the Southeast since they were playing to a crowd of twenty at the Nick in Birmingham, and I’ve adored them absolutely and slavishly the whole time. I had the good fortune to see them twice lately, and… well my brother, who is a pretty spiritual, but also a pretty practical and pragmatic dude– he’s not emotionally cheap, I think, is a good way to put it– he said the Louisville show was a spiritual experience, and my wonderful hardass sister in law cried at the end too, making me feel like less of an alcoholic sissy.
One of the things I love about them so much is the way they balance disappointment, disgust, hurt, anger, grief and loss– in other words, reality?– with so much pure love– in romantic songs as well as in the general worldview they seem to express in their work. It’s amazing, and I think that, in a teacup, expresses my deepest understanding of what it means, at least for me, at this time in my life, to be human. It’s deep, man. And… their shows RAWK.
I’ll have to write some valentine bitter love poetry later.
Right now… the baby is playing starfall.com… I am listening to radioparadise.com and I *love* it. Love it. I need to get her fed and bathed, as tomorrow is another new school week.
A girlfriend brought her three over here today… we, okay I, sipped wine, it gave her a headache sadly, and smoked cigarettes (just for today, i’m quitting again tomorrow) and watched our kids run amok in my small football field of a back yard.
It was wonderful to see them all playing in the sun. It is so freaking hard to get my stepson, particularly, to just use his body!! It makes me sick, how sedentary we all are, and the joy of truly running full out, tackling your friend, rolling around on the ground just laughing… what a terrible loss, not to have that.
It was lovely. Other than that I got fword-all done. No that’s not true. I did one load of dishes. The baby quilt is nearly pieced, I bought the batting and the backing is cut to size as well. I gotta get it done by Saturday! I can do it.
And… so the dishes are stacked everywhere in the kitchen. I have plenty of time. Cause I don’t work. And it feels soooo good to be able to say that.
blog/myspace
I’m considering abandoning the straight blog for myspace. And outing myself. Just considering, now. But myspace is distracting me from blogging. I do more creative and thoughtful work about life the universe and everything here… but myspace is so easy and fun.
What do you think? Change my avatar yet again? Out myself? As a person who hopes to run/have a business, can I be as truthful as I would like on a blog or myspace page linked back to my real identity? And then there’s the whole, I’d be glad for my parents to view some blog items, but others are definitely grownup friends only… I don’t know. And then my credibiilty as a healer? Maybe a myspace page for the healing business, as well, would help with the integration of my aging hipster gen-x slacker mommy body, issues, and rebellion with my healing work soul. I haven’t been able to manage my extra blogs lately… maybe if one of them is linked to my business I will have an easier time.
I never checked my hotmail account linked with this blog… so if someone was trying to get in touch with me to give me a writing contract, I’ll never know, now. They cleared my inbox.
Christ. Who knew that one would have to have a personal marketing plan? No, not one, but two, one for the fun and flawed person one really is, and one for one’s vocation?
Here’s my myspace post for today.
Add to it that, yes Lord, once again, I am *not* pregnant. This is a good thing.
doing and not
Current mood: 
creative
what I am doing:
playing on myspace
playing with my brochure for the healing business and panicking a bit about getting it done and out to people who might use or spread the word about my services
wasting time, I am sure
listening to Gorillaz and dancing (badly, I gayrontee, cause I am WITE) in my chair
having some success with the drawn out process of rescuing the pan I scorched, involving short boils and long soaks in things like baking soda, dish soap and vinegar
forgetting many things I should be doing right now
What I am not doing:
finishing my grocery list– a very detailed process, or I make it so, due to the veganism and my extreme dislike of grocery shopping so that I try not to go very often
making it to my appointment to get another scrip for yummy, yummy ADD medicine before I give up me pills in me new (probably happier, certainly more organic) life– I’ll probably have to pay for the one I forgot as well as the rescheduled one for monday
finishing sorting/tagging/ironing the items I will put in the consignment sale tomorrow– really I’m not going to make a damn penny. It’s just about the pass to shop early. Okay. It’s also about the penny, cause if I shop early I can’t really afford anything, right? And getting the stuff out of my house. It would probably be better if I just ‘blessed the world’ with them. I’m a huge fan of flylady. Maybe that’s what I should do. How valu’ble is my time?
babyquilting
I have just over an hour till I have to go get my boy, go get photocopies made of the brochure or at least of my tags for the consignment sale, and go grocery shopping, and, since I’m eating Indian food with the girls (y’all come!) leaving my husband and kids with nasty a-holes and lips, I mean, hotdogs for supper. Yeah, that’s what they actually asked for. Cause you know I’m suddenly vegan. And likin’ it. Well the Indian place — thank goodness we have an Indian place now!– has vegetarian, I’m sure it’s not vegan, but I’ll lower my standards cause it is gooo oood.
But I digress. I have slightly more than an hour before I pick up my boy from school, and we drive around listening to Eragon on tape while we do our errands.
So. Let’s go finish the shopping list and see how much quilting can be done in one hour. Probly more than I think.
Add to that myspace post that I have now goofed off such that I only have less than an hour to go work on that baby quilt.
Add to that that I have quit smoking. Again.
tireder than dammit
Tahini sauce, falafels (more like fritters cause I made the batter too thin) tabbouleh and megadarra– I have got to learn to be quicker in the kitchen. I guess I’ll get used to it. You know, my husband [who is most graciously acting happy to take leftovers for lunch tomorrow, what a sweetie!] did all the cooking for a long time. And you know what else? The reason there’s more cleaning to do all of a sudden is that… nobody cleaned before. And there’s a double whammy… not only do I think I should have all this time to clean, but we’re home, and cooking, and playing, and messing it up.
I’m not complaining, particularly. Or, maybe I am. My bed calls, and I have cramps, and I think my poor kid was such a brat today because she suffers from side effects of singulair, which I happened to give her this morning… but I am soooo happy to be complaining about this, rather than thinking about going to my shitty job tomorrow. We are broke, yes. But I am happy.
And I do love that bed.
overheard
shaky mommy: let’s get ready for bed, sweet heart.
shaky baby, vehemently with slightly clenched teeth: I am THREE YEARS OLD. And I am going to STAY UP.
blessing way
It was supposed to be for the pregnant women, but I felt awfully blessed myself.
Don’t think I’m a freak (even if I am, you don’t have to tell me) but there’s just something really special about massaging your pregnant friend’s hand after her paraffin dip. Our society so rarely allows touch to be comfortable unless it’s between a mother and a small child, sexual partners, or a paying client and a massage therapist. It’s sad. But I’m so acutely conscious of that taboo that I really respect it all the time, even when I’d rather not. My mother’s family, and my Best Old Friend’s family, are touchy. I love it and I miss it in my life.
It’s nice to have a context in which it’s appropriate to just do healing, caring touch because you like someone, no strings or weirdness of any sort attached. Energetically speaking (because that’s what I do) that was the high point for me, I think. That was the moment I could feel really nurturing and grateful for the friendships.
Everyone brought yummy food or craft or gift items. I was particularly proud of the fuzzy slippers, but it was all yummy — beaded friendship bracelets and paraffin dips and foot spas and scrap book pages and flowers and eye pillows and aromatherapy and food food food!
It wouldn’t have happened without the generosity of the attendees… and my husband spent about two hours cleaning this morning– things that bothered me, of course, but I just didn’t have time to fool with it and so was going to let it go. Then he hid away with the kids upstairs for three and a half hours so that we could have girl space.
This is one milestone I really needed to clear before I could get on with my life. And I have much to get on with, but that is fodder for another post.
Now I have to bust my ass to finish the baby quilt for the next pregnant lady event. It will be my pleasure. I got my sewing machine out to do the eye pillows so it’s just a quick step to starting to sew that quilt top. Maybe I have enough for two to even three girl babies, if the one whose mommy won’t find out or reveal his gender happens to be a girl–but I predict boy, let me go on the record as predicting boy, cause of how he sits– hope we get to find out soon!
on veing vegan
I know it’s weird. I’ve been in the south so long that no other mode of feeding myself has made sense to me in years. Grease, gravy, meat, lard, white flour, dairy, eggs, sugar, these are the good things in life. The Farm Journal cookbook my mother had when I was a child still has quite a grip on my sense of good eatin’.
But on the side… my parents were always raising a garden or harvesting fruit off of trees. My mother was making peace corps peanut butter stew on occasion, and other experimental high nutrition, uh, delicacies. She baked most of our treats rather than buying them. My parents made, when time and crops permitted, wines, jams, jellies, maple syrup even. My father swore off white bread, cool whip (ooh was I pissed about that), ‘pasteurized process cheese food,’ and hydrogenated margarines and other fats. So I guess the seeds were being planted.
I know I don’t have to explain myself. But here’s an article that talks about the poisons in our meat and dairy.
http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/2004nl/040800pucesspool.htm
I guess you could say it’s probably just propaganda. Everyone seems to have an angle or a ‘cure’ or some snake oil to sell… because of healing school, I’m not really about that. Our soul destiny is our soul destiny, it’s magical thinking to imagine we understand true cause and effect on every level, and it’s not the content of our decisions that matter, but the spirit and awareness of them.
And you know the real reason for me is animal cruelty, which is as bad in the dairy and egg industry as in the meat industry. But the benefits of stepping away and eating whole foods and meals rich in veggie proteins and flavors are just a wonderful side effect.
Moderation in all things, and to each his own… my kids are going to be exposed to processed nonvegan food when they socialize, in school lunches, etc. Hell. I ate pizza with cheese at Stevi B’s with my husband yesterday, and polished off my child’s velveeta shells and cheese, which we ate because we can’t afford to waste food.
I don’t feel like being a veganazi.
But I am enjoying working on our budget and menus so much, and I think it will have real benefits for us in the long run. I love my husband for being willing to taste and choke down these strange meals. The kids have to taste everything but I don’t make them eat much, just a few bites of each weird entree, and then we can have peanut butter and jelly or something. The kids will, if nothing else, experience a reduction in the toxins their bodies have to fight, and will be exposed to a broader range of what can be considered delicious and good food.
It’s such a sea change for me… not only being willing to care for myself and improve the quality of my life, but really having a zest for it.
a shout out
My darling brother, it was your birthday, yesterday or the day before. I should have called my mother and congratulated her for bringing a truly wonderful human being like you into the world. I worship your spirit, your sweetness, your sense of humor, your kindness, your edge, your commitment, your willingness to go there. I couldn’t ask for a more special friend– how is it that you are actually related to me, and permanently in my life? When I think of how other of my friends aren’t close to their siblings or families… man.
I see you, at about fourteen or fifteen maybe? coming around the side of our house in the dark, with a flashlight covered in brown paper in your hand, and a pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket of your army surplus jacket– you’ve been out smoking and seriously contemplating the night sky. What a guy! The car wrecks… the brushes with the cops somehow always satisfactorily concluded… the stunts nobody would believe if they hadn’t been there… terribly funny, at least to me, or at least it was funny then, when we were sort of superhuman, and… angels must wrap you with their wings. I know they gave me a brother like you.
I love you so. I am so tickled with many of the turns your life takes, even as I kibbitz from the shore. You are so willing to just do it. I am just thrilled with your latest especially… caring for your baby and your amazing wife, my sister, and following your writing star. You’re the greatest.
