bonnie

Independence Day

BY bonnie

I think I might be dating myself if I say that I always have this desire to shorten the holiday’s name to ID4. I might be dating myself, but I think the actual phrase I’m looking for is “I might be a total nerd.” But I have legitimate reasons for this:

1. I’m lazy and “Independence Day” is long.
2. “Independence” is one of those words I have a hard time spelling for some reason. It always comes out “independance”. Maybe cause it makes me want to dance? (Answer: NO.)
3. Jeff Goldblum was super hot in that movie.

Actually, now that I type that out, I wonder if anyone even remembers that the movie was nicknamed ID4 when it came out. I remember this vividly because it was my first summer working at the movie theatre and that Fourth of July I spent 9 hours straight working without any breaks at all (because my bosses were all, “Labor laws? We laugh in the face of labor laws! *whipcrack* You! Work like it’s 1894!”) and the line for Independence Day stretched twice around the mall. Srsly. Life was so hard in 1996. Without the option to buy your tickets online ahead of time or 4 different theaters totaling 106 different screens within three miles to choose from. I remember having customers who didn’t understand what ATM cards were and thought that “up to $40 cash back” meant they might win money.

I digress. The point is that we had bacon-wrapped hot dogs and Cokes to celebrate our country’s birth. We also saw a 3D movie, had cupcakes, played with glow sticks, watched fireworks, and wore our stars and stripes Chucks (well, I did) like good Americans. It was, overall, a pretty awesome day.

(There are fireworks in that picture. They’re just so tiny it looks like people standing with their heads on fire.)

Just Life, Lady Links, This is a Woman

What today has been like so far.

BY bonnie

So my day has been like this:

1. Wake up to an email from the BBC about doing a story. What? That’s normal.
2. Make coffee to try to become human for aforementioned interview.
3. Do interview.
4. Think coffee is empty and go to check cup but instead spill coffee all over everything. Also: waste coffee.
5. Cry. I am so tired. This week has been so busy and I have so much to accomplish in the next hour and I didn’t have all the caffeine. Cry.
6. Get a call from a local news station still in SOAM mode but it wasn’t about SOAM at all. WON TICKETS TO COMIC CON INSTEAD.
7. Did I mention I started my period? Cause this is all just kind of a lot to handle.

This is what my day has not been like:

1. Having the week’s Lady Links already prepared and ready to go.
2. Sitting down and having time to write up this week’s Lady Links.
3. Finishing a whole cup of coffee before noon.
4. Making a pretty little picture to post with this story so that I can be, or at least look like, a Responsible Blogger.

Well. You know my motto: Thank god I’m cute.

Just Life, Wheel of the year

Matchy-Matchy June-June (for him and her and me and you)

BY bonnie

I was looking over my most recent edition of PhotoJojo’s Time Capsule (which, if you are a Flickr person, you really need to sign up for this) and the thing that struck me is that in some ways (mostly those ways documented by photos), this June looks really similar to last June.

Take, for example, the drive-in. The kids and I usually try to hit the drive-in at least once a summer (it’s open year round here, but I am a delicate flower and daren’t venture outside at night in the winter), but we don’t necessarily try to get it done right in June. That is a coincidence (or, possibly, just an effect of how the movie industry plans their releases).

Last year:

This year:

And then there is the celebration of Litha. Which is always in June. So. Not really a surprise, I guess. But we haven’t necessarily always gone to the same beach over the years, and some of our celebrations have been more ceremonial than just running through waves and bringing home half the sand. But last year and this year we minimized. At the same… beach. So. There.

Last year:

This year:

I’ll never stop posting this picture. Sorry not sorry.

Bowling. (Which. Every time we go, or I blog about it, or think the word “bowling” I get this song in my head.) There is a nationwide program called Kids Bowl Free where you can sign up your kids for two free games each day of the summer. You only pay for shoes, and you can buy yourself a summer pass for only $25 to bowl with them. It’s awesome. It’s the only way I can afford bowling. We go a few times each summer, but the photos only happen in June, I guess, while the experience is shiny and new again.

Last year:

This year:

But here’s the oddest one. This is, apparently, the time of year where I lug giant books around with me and sit at the playground next to Trader Joe’s and read while the kids play. And photograph myself doing it (what? 7 Days is always in June, too).

Last year:

This year:

Local, Random

My New Favorite Picnic Spot

BY bonnie

Lovely, isn’t it? It’s right in town, but full of nature. It’s on a hill with views in every direction – Spanish style buildings peeking through trees on hillsides, a glimpse of downtown, the bay sparkling beyond the airport, underbellies of planes as they roar threateningly above you on the way down the unusually steep hill to land at the airport. What? That’s not lovely to you? Perhaps it’s not idyllic, but it’s kind of awesome in a Wayne’s World sort of way. Or if you like to pretend you’re Jack Shephard dying in a bamboo field.

That’s a little one.

I sat there with a friend yesterday talking for hours about life and humans we know and drinking Hawaiian Mochas* and judging airlines for how clean the bottoms of their planes are, and we learned some things about this park.

1. Aliens landed there. We heard them. It was a very 1950’s-Martian type alien noise so I’m thinking flying saucers.
2. Something (possibly the Predator or maybe well-camoflauged velociraptors) was jumping around from tree to tree, clearly planning to kill us.
3. A few times the sky literally ripped in half right above our heads. It’s hard to see such a thing because sky just looks like sky, even when it’s ripped in half, but we heard it.

OR? Maybe this is just all related to the sound waves, wind, and sky-tearing that comes along behind jumbo jets. If you prefer living in a boring world where velociraptors don’t glide gracefully from tree to tree, that is.

NOTE: My daughter hasn’t even seen Lost, but I just noticed that this photo that she took and the one above it are right next to each other in my photostream. LOST IS REAL, YOU GUYS.

*Coconut, mocha, banana, and cinnamon. Yes banana. It’s DELICIOUS. Don’t judge.

Lady Links, Social Justice, This is a Woman

Lady Links! (6.28)

BY bonnie

So that was a fairly epic week, no?

The US Supreme Court made some big decisions. One of them sets us back about 50 years in terms of racism allowed by the law (what? no. really). So that’s bad. The other one makes us somewhat closer to even with many other countries in terms of laws allowing gay marriage. So that’s good.

And then this thing happened in Texas. A thing where a woman (literally) stood up for what she believed in for twelve hours. She was constantly harassed about whether or not she was following the law. When a second woman tried to speak her own voice she was ignored repeatedly until she asked the question, “at what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over her male colleagues?” And that? Was the beginning of something beautiful. It was about 15 minutes to go before Davis’ filibuster killed the anti-abortion bill when Van de Putte poised her question and all the women in the building (and probably many of the 170,000 people watching it stream live) burst into cheers and screams and chanting for twenty full minutes. When the republicans tried to silence Davis, the people took up her cause. And then, once they finally quieted down after the deadline, the republicans voted anyway. Because fuck the laws we are here to protect that’s why. What they maybe weren’t aware of was the 170,000 people watching it stream live. The hypocrisy kills me. I think, if justice is to be done, they should be given whatever punishment they deserve. I don’t expect justice to be done, though.

Why are we still living in the dark ages? I mean, really.

It’s like Paula Deen’s thing this week. She keeps going on and on and giving these weak apologies and excuses and “reasons” without ever actually facing the fact that she is, in fact, behaving in a racist way. It’s like, if no one’s getting lynched anymore that means racism is done. In all honestly, that’s how I used to feel about feminism. As a kid I didn’t see it. Women could vote now. We had the Equal Pay Act. We were allowed to become astronauts or Supreme Court justices. Feminism: Accomplished! Right? It wasn’t until I got older (and probably also that the world got smaller) that I was able to really see how things are. But I AM a woman. It’s easier to see discrimination when you are the one facing it. Paula Deen isn’t able to face her racist words and actions because she’s white and because she sees racism as this archaic thing that people don’t do anymore cause we all use the same drinking fountains now. She can’t see – perhaps because of the environment in which she lives – that she is still perpetuating racist ideals. But racism is more than just those clear symbols we grew up knowing were (or grew to know are) wrong.

Basically what I am saying is that racism and sexism and homophobia don’t always look the way you think they look. The old criteria were just the outer layer, the easy part. Now we have to really use our hearts and our minds and deeply think and deeply feel our way to equality. And that’s hard work.

Blah blah blah. On to the links. I mean the other links.

No, wait I’m not done yet. I can’t get over the blatant disregard for ACTUAL LAWS that happened there in Texas. They LIED. They CHANGED the time stamp to make it look like they passed it before the deadline. THEY FUCKING LIED. And when they were caught, they were all, “Heh. Oops. Our bad.” And that’s basically it. What we should have heard (at the very, very least) was, “Wow. You’re right. We let our passion over losing get in the way of our jobs here. We fucked up. Badly. There is honestly no way to fully apologize for how we betrayed all of our constituents. You all trusted us to work within the laws we, as a state, have a greed upon, and we completely and utterly did the opposite of that. We have learned our lesson. In the future we promise not to let our feelings get in the way of our morality. We are so, so sorry. And we know that apology isn’t enough, but we hope to show you in the future how we will stick to this promise if you let us.” And then the people of Texas should be all, “We accept your apology,” and then vote them out at the very first opportunity. At the very, very least. And this just addresses the actual lies and clear violation of the laws, not all the shady-but-not-technically-illegal stuff that also happened. How do people live with themselves? How do people continue to vote for this party? Because the thing is that I am not anti-republican by any means, but I am absolutely anti-asshat, and too many republicans in office ARE asshats.

Ok now I’m done.

~TIAW on Tumblr and Pinterest.
~You are loved. Even by your dentist.
~This is something I always wanted to do for SOAM, but I never trusted myself enough as a photographer. What a beautiful book. I am so glad it exists.
~This isn’t about body image. It’s about women in a sense, but really as more of a part of humanity. But it’s still really fucking cool. Scientists have long believed that some people (mostly certain women) have the ability to see more colors on the spectrum than the rest of us. They’ve finally found a woman who proves their theory.
~Here’s a pretty empowering post relating what happens when a random asshole guy tries harassing the wrong (actually the right) woman. (But I have to ask. How do people just randomly text people? I mean. How did he know he was texting a woman? I don’t get it. Please explain to this old lady.)

7 Days, The Zebra, This is a Woman

Reasons to Work Out (7 Days: Day 6)

BY bonnie

I’ve been working at this body image thing for awhile now. Probably since I was first told I was fat, around eight years old (and a couple of years ago I came across some pictures of me as a kid, and you guys? I was a skinny little thing at that age. The fuck with people telling me I was fat? STABBY STABBY STABBY).

Me as a child, not fat:

I didn’t know how to sort it out at that age, but my brain was screaming out that they were wrong. I struggled with knowing what the actual factual truth was, and still feeling less worthy of being a human because of how I thought I looked. It’s evolved a lot in the last 27ish years, and I know much better now how to love myself than I used to. And, yet, I keep finding these new layers, and each time I get to that level I feel like I have all the work yet to do. It is both energizing and exhausting.

Recently as I was leaving the gym, proud of myself for having worked hard, I thought to myself, “Even if I always stay fat, at least I’ll be fit.”

And then a little voice, from the back of my brain bravely spoke up and repeated a line I’d already read and nodded furiously in agreement with in many a fat acceptance blog.

But. So what if you’re not fit?

Because I am still holding onto that desperate need to be accepted and respected by everyone always.

And, yes, I know how unrealistic that is. But it’s my core operating system. It’s a bullshit core operating system, but it takes a lot of work and a lifetime to reprogram a core operating system.

So the thing hit me: I’m still working out for other people. I may have detached the weight loss itself from my exercise routines, but apparently only with the catch that I have to at least be in good shape. Cause that’ll show ’em.

Here’s a list of things I thought I liked about working out, but it turns out, none of these things are about me at all:
~Not being out of breath when I have to climb a flight of stairs around people who might think I’m just a fat fatty.
~Not being out of breath when I run and play with my kids. So strangers at the park won’t judge me.
~Going to the gym regularly to prove that some people are just fat no matter how much they exercise.
~Secretly wanting to be at least a little bit less fat. To show them.

Dear Me,
It’s not their business. Ignore them. You’re awesome.
Love,
Me

So here’s a list of things I actually do love about working out:

~Lifting weights and watching myself grow stronger.
~Doing harder cardio and watching myself grow stronger.
~Getting all sweaty and gross. No, really. I love that.
~Being able to do the more strenuous hikes without my head feeling like it’s trying to explode for lack of oxygen.
~Feeling good overall. Happier, more awake, less foggy. Regular exercise does this for me.

I’m going to keep those in mind and I’m going to do my best to live by them, to keep me motivated to exercise for me.

I’ve been a member of this gym now for almost a year and, while I certainly haven’t gone regularly, I’ve avoided that perfectionist attitude of, “well, I haven’t gone for a few weeks now so I just give up and when my contract is up I’ll cancel.” Instead I just go when I can, or sometimes just when I do.

And so what if I don’t? Well, now I know – on a conscious level, at least – that it won’t make me a failure.

I don’t have to be fit any more than I have to be thin. My personal value doesn’t rest upon size or fitness. It doesn’t rest on my health. It also doesn’t rest upon beauty, or intelligence, or sense of humor. I am valuable because I am a person. End. of. story.

(7 Days is a quarterly self-portrait group project I have taken part in for the last sixish years. One selfie a day for a week.)

7 Days

7 Days: Day 5 (I Dream in 3D)

BY bonnie

Found these at Target in the Dollar Spot awhile back and bought them immediately because Tenth Doctor. And then I saved them especially for 7 Days. I totally forgot about them last run, but that turned out to be just perfect since today’s theme requires that my photo be inspired by movies. Win-win. Or maybe win-win-win. I lost count.

(7 Days is a quarterly self-portrait group project I have taken part in for the last sixish years. One selfie a day for a week.)

7 Days, Edumacation, The Zebra

Back to School (7 Days: Day 4)

BY bonnie

(7 Days is a quarterly self-portrait group project I have taken part in for the last sixish years. One selfie a day for a week.)

So here’s news: I’m a student again. I’m tentatively excited about this. Tentatively? Yes. Because there are still some challenges to overcome. Things like, how many online classes can I take? And if I need to take an in-person class, where do I put the children while I do that? But I am going to keep moving ahead and hoping that doors will open, even if I have to adjust which hallways I take to find said doors. OK. That metaphor got a little awkward.

Another challenge is what to do about my pervious transcript? When I was younger and in college, for so many, many reasons, I didn’t do very well in too many of my classes (mostly for lack of stopping attending than anything else). This might come back to bite me in the ass now for things like financial aid. While I understand the reasons, and while I’m glad I don’t have to start from scratch, it is a little bit frustrating that things that happened seventeen years ago might have a negative impact on my future now. But that’s just a thing. I am going to keep moving forward the best I can.

The thing that needs to be decided now is which direction? My current two favorites for major are English and psych. In fact I am currently registered as a psych major, but I’m not tying myself to it just yet. I know that no matter what I do, I want writing to remain a part of my life. I would love to support myself by writing, in one way or another, but I feel like I can do that with either major. I think that a psych major would provide maybe slightly clearer job choices than an English major and I do much better with things that are less ambiguous. I feel like I have a natural inclination towards psychology and I really enjoy understanding it. I think I could make a good counselor someday because I am able to detach myself my a situation and to see all sides of it.

More than that, perhaps, I want to understand my mother better. When she died two years ago I discovered, in reading through her medical records, that she’d been diagnosed as bipolar. I don’t think that was right, though (she never had a manic episode, ever). I am not sure why the strange diagnosis – perhaps she presented herself falsely to her doctors, or perhaps that was a diagnosis they gave her for simplicity’s sake so that she could continue to receive her disability services. I think she had some sort of personality disorder coupled with lifelong depression and perhaps repressed memories of sexual abuse. I feel driven to understand her. I don’t know if this is guilt for having been estranged from her, or guilt from just being alive when she’s not, or a deeper, primal need to understand her in order to better understand myself. And I don’t know if that is a good reason for choosing a major. But I also don’t know that it’s a bad reason.

And so I stand here at this crossroads in my life, and try to make the best decisions for me and for my future. And I feel very old, at 35, to be here only now. I regret that I missed all these years of possible education or career-having. Of course, I also realize that, without all these years, I’d never be who I am today, or even know who I am. The major I had back in 1996 wasn’t one I ever took seriously. I actually had no vision whatsoever for a future. When I was 18, I was so wounded that there was no honest way for me to see where I needed to go. I’m in a much better place today, thank god.

So, for today at least, I’m sitting down to read some Poe. And someday I’ll be able to say I’m a college graduate. Cause I can’t physically say it right now.

So what do you think? How did you decide on a major? Do you think having a personal agenda is a good or bad thing in terms of major/career choice?

7 Days

7 Days: Day 2 (Internet Friends)

BY bonnie

Jen’s here because she and Bethany are driving up to Portland to go to LeakyCon this week. (I was originally going to go, too, but my plans fell through. Boo! And while I’m very sad about that, I am sending this owl as my proxy.)

So all the 7 Dayers in SoCal got together at Brenda’s for an afternoon picnic. I brought my monopod to make group photos easier, and thanks goes to Katie for the pose idea.

And yes I’ve met nearly all of these people online (I met Summer in high school and Katie through Summer). None of them are even scary murderers. I’ve met some amazing people online – people who have become close friends, people from all over the world. I am so grateful to this little box that makes the world a smaller place.

Jen, by the way, is responsible for this new blog space and I’ve LOVED working with her. I’m so glad I got to meet her today.