Shorter Hair, Better Attitude?

I went back to the therapist and got my hair cut.  I think getting my hair cut probably did me more good.  It felt good anyway, to see the heaps of dead ends fall away and to feel lighter and less tangled.  The therapist, though, was less helpful.  Not that I hold it against her.  I was in a much better place today than I was last week and so I wasn’t weepy or anything.  I was myself and so we talked like adults and she had no good advice for me.

Or she had good advice for me but it wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard from you guys or come to on my own.  In other words, it wasn’t any different than I learned out sitting in Mack’s holler consorting with my dead folks–the way is clear.  My perception of the situation is accurate and my options are what I believe them to be.

So, you know, that makes me feel better.

Here’s my problem, as I see it: I don’t trust myself.  I don’t trust in my inherent awesomeness.  And so, even when I know the right course of action, I have a hard time trusting that it would be right for me.

Let me put it another way.  If a friend of mine had come to me a year ago in a similar state to me a year ago, I would have recommended that she change her situation and I would have felt confident, because of the awesomeness of my friends, in the rightness of that advice.

I can say it now, but I have got to learn to know it in my soul, that I deserve that same support and loyalty from myself.  I, too, am as awesome as the folks I know and love.  I am not your pity project.  And it’s insulting to everyone–to me and to you–when I entertain this notion that I suck and that folks only care about me out of pity.  Not only that, but it continually puts me in a position where I feel so compelled to prove to folks that I do deserve their respect.

That’s just stupid.

Ha, y’all, she cut a good eight inches off my hair.  I went to pull it all over my shoulder and there’s nothing to pull.

What Is Said vs. What Is Heard

That cutie Bob Krumm and Adam “Grrr” Kleinheider have me thinking about how hard it can be to have discussions across political ideologies, just because it’s hard to even understand each other.

Let’s take Kleinheider first. He’s talking about abortion and he says:

All this bill does, from my reading of it, is take the constitution out of the equation. It merely states that the constitution contains no inherent right to abortion. It doesn’t say that you can not legislate for or against abortion it only states that the constitution does not proscribe it either way.

Does Kleinheider not get how big a deal this is? I honestly don’t know. What if you believe, as I do, that a woman cannot be a full citizen if she cannot control what happens to her own body? If a woman cannot decide whether to let another being use her body to sustain its life, but instead must acquiesce to the wishes of the state, she’s not free in the same way men are. Her biological differences are being used to create legal distinctions between her and the “real” citizens.

When I read that quote from Kleinheider, I read:

All this bill does, from my reading of it, is take the constitution out of the equation. It merely states that the constitution contains no inherent right to bodily autonomy. It doesn’t say that you can not legislate for or against bodily autonomy it only states that the constitution does not proscribe it either way.

And, honestly, there’s no way I can have a good-faith discussion about abortion with anyone who refuses to acknowledge that underlying current to the discussion–that I don’t have any inherent right to decide what happens to my body–and who cannot address my concerns about it.

Which, actually segues nicely into Bob Krumm’s post today (since he’s still finding the ERA silly, since there’s no threat to women’s autonomy or anything).  Bob says:

America and its allies are superior. (Don’t think too hard on it; it’s simple math after all. There are only three options in any comparison equation: greater than, less than, or equal to–and argument in favor of the latter two is specious at best and treasonous at worst.)

And I don’t think I’m an idiot, but I literally cannot understand what Krumm is saying. If we determine–through use of math!–that the United States is the best country in all of the world, what does that mean?  Because I believe that the bar is so low that, even if I believe that the United States is the best country in all of the world, I still think we have a lot of work to do in order to reach our full potential.  It’s pretty damn easy to be the best country in the world when most of the countries in the world suck as much as they do.  So what?

Is Krumm suggesting that we have no more to do, that this is as good as it gets and that anyone who complains should just suck it up and be thankful we’re not stuck some other country, which might be a real hellhole?  That’s just weird to me.  It’s like we’re sitting around in this beautiful 230 year old house that needs to have the foundation shored up and some holes in the roof patched and some massive rewiring and plumbing, and we have a house full of people who have those skills and could easily do that work and yet, every time someone suggests we get started on it, folks like Krumm start hollering that, if we think the house is so god damn ugly, we can go live in the chicken shack and see how we like it there.

Dick Replies

When last we left our friend, Dick Masterson, I had informed him that I was secretly a dude.

He writes back:

From: Dick Masterson <dickmasterson@gmail.com>
To: Aunt B. <appropriateaunt@yahoo.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 3, 2007 12:21:54 PM
Subject: Re: Blogger?

I think about it every day.

You’re a dude? That’s good to hear. Too many women types cluttering up the internet these days.

How does one get a link on your blogroll?

-Dick

Y’all, this has made me laugh so hard, I almost am crying.  I haven’t yet decided how to respond.  But I’m pretty convinced now that he’s an elaborate prankster.

Self-awareness

I’ve received another disturbing email this morning. It’s a picture of me pouting on a 4-wheeler. I am, I hope, in negotiations to keep that photo from ever seeing the light of day. I would rather no pictures of me made their way onto the internet, because, of course, I’m trying to retain some semblance of plausible anonymity.

But, I’m sure some of you are curious. So, if you were to stick me on a continuum, I’m probably somewhere between this and this. So, imagine a fat naked kid who tastes as sweet as can be, sitting on a four-wheeler looking terrified and upset and that’s what you’re missing.

As you can imagine, we’re all better off without having that mental image confirmed.

A Glazed Donut…

I woke up this morning to the following email:

From: Dick Masterson <dickmasterson@gmail.com>
To: appropriateaunt@yahoo.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 3, 2007 4:30:26 AM
Subject: Blogger?

Maybe it’s you and not Blogger that’s got it wrong.  Try having a man show you how to use it.

-Dick, http://www.MenAreBetterThanWomen.com

An email like this prompts a lot of questions, ranging from “If you’re so cool, what are you doing sending me email at 4:30 in the morning?” to “Dick Masterson, is that not the perfect gay BSDM porn name?” to “Do Klansmen send emails with links to their websites to Black bloggers? Or are misogynists the only ones who are convinced that the people they hate need to be informed that they hate them?” to “Is this Exador and Sarcastro playing an elaborate joke on me?”

Anyway, it got me thinking that there really is no good way to respond to this.  If I ignore it, I’m a humorless bitch.  If I get outraged, I’m a humorless bitch.  If I assume it’s a joke, I’m stupid.  And so on.

So, I sent him this email back:

From: Aunt B. <appropriateaunt@yahoo.com>
To: Dick Masterson <dickmasterson@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 3, 2007 6:40:07 AM
Subject: Re: Blogger?

No worries. In real life, I am a dude.
b.

p.s. You have my vote for most awesome name ever. Do you do porn? Have you thought about it?

Ha, maybe that’s only funny to me.

So, I was distraught but, happily, Feral Momtook my mind off weird crap on the internet and instead focused me on brother-sister sex (for the record, we’re both against it) and the joys of getting mistaken for your brother’s wife (which happens to me, too) AND, happily, the pleasures of oral sex.

It’s come to my attention that men worry a great deal about losing their penicular skills as they get older, and yet, I keep thinking, did God not give you ten fingers, ten toes, and a tongue?  Do you see lesbians running around complaining about a lack of penis?  No.

As Feral Mom says:

“what would I do with a vagina?” Answer: Lick it until your tongue cramps up and your face feels like a glazed donut. Don’t think! Just do it.

“Your face feels like a glazed donut.”  That’s some sage advice right there folks.

Ha, in retrospect, this has been a meandering post, but enjoyable.  I hope you all made it clear to the end.  In my opinion, that’s the best part.