I’ve been aided over the last week by some really excellent conversation. It certainly doesn’t fix anything in any practical way, but it does help my general mood.

For starters, Chris and I have been passing some emails back and forth I’ve really enjoyed. While much of the conversation has very much been The Big Conversation, we’ve also been dishing nostalgia for 80’s punk culture and have had a bit of an ongoing fracas about which of us, exactly, deserves the love of Patti Smith.

Honestly, I think I can keep my hat outside that ring, and leave Chris to fight it out amongst all the other ardent Patti-lovers of the world. As I often tell Mr. Price, while I’ve done open relationships before, I just can’t hack poly, simply because I don’t have the bleeding attention span, the time or the patience for the regular dramas which so often ensue. As it is, I’ve already long been in the situation where my primary partner is actually my work, and making the time and emotional room for just one partner is hard enough. An affair with Patti couldn’t ever be casual or occasional, but rather, would necessarily be all-encompassing. If I can’t manage to even work out an occasional one-night-stand anymore on top of everything else, there’s no way in hell I could manage a love relationship with a goddess.

Speaking of Patti, Fish came over with her cousin the other day for a wonderful evening of wine-guzzling and cupcake-nibbling –as well as lawnmower-donation, thank christ — and what did she have in her hot little hands? Two tickets for us to see Patti at the Showbox when I get back from Chicago. Talk about a good friend. I fully expect us to squeal like Beatlemaniacs throughout, before, and for many days after.

My Aussie friend Stephen and I also got to have some great conversation this week, time differences and my being seriously over-caffeinated that day notwithstanding (poor guy).

Over the last month or so, I’ve also lucked out in netting a few phenomenal sex educators as volunteers for the advice column section at Scarleteen. It’s always been very hard to get and keep adult volunteers — I don’t really blame anyone, it’s not easy work, nor is it work you’re going to have universal love showered on you for doing. So, having Sarah and David on board now, and Jhames back, as well as a longtime youth volunteer who is now an adult public health expert, Susie, is brilliant. We also have Paul Joannides on board, too.

Getting and keeping adult male volunteers is even harder then netting adult women for help, which always bites. I could go into why I think that often is, but it’s involved and I’m in no mood for a diatribe (and after my earlier one, you’re probably not, either) about the crappy way men are so often socially conditioned when it comes to sex and sexual philanthropy, as well as the valid fears adult men now have to have about being engaged in any way with teen sexuality, even in a context like this. It’s not that it’s somehow essential that teens with questions have same-sex people answering them, but often enough, many of them prefer that. Sure, I can answer the questions for the guys, but they also have a special appreciation when adult men just demonstrate that they understand and they care, so having a couple solid male volunteers is a big blessing.

In walking Paul through some of the backend stuff the other day, on the phone we ended up in a conversation that spanned nearly two hours, and was just fantastic. It’s a rarity for me to be able to have good opportunities to just sit and share notes with other sex educators and researchers: that’s always so productive and important for any of us. Given how widely sexuality, sex lives and sexual attitudes vary, and how different the populations/generations any of us works with can be, sharing shop talk is divine. It also makes me feel less isolated in what I do, which is a pretty big deal right now. I’m thinking that if things somehow manage to look up for me and the sites over the next couple of months (the maybe lifesaver I mentioned in passing a couple weeks ago didn’t pan out: not surprised, but still a bummer), that it might be high time to try and organize some sort of regular regional roundtable of folks working in sex education and sexual health so that we can just sit around and compare notes.

But well before that, there will be Patti. And me. And not you, Chris.

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (1) »

There has been some continued suckitude lately, but also some good stuff.

I’m starting with the yuck so I can end with the yay: better for me, better for you.

For a while there (like, the two years kind of while) the Scarleteen email just was NOT working. Basically, you get a site with THAT much traffic, you get so much spam every day that even a great email server gets jammed up every day. Given the content of a lot of spam is just stuff that really messes me up to read, I had to mass delete a LOT. This wasn’t a big deal: after all, I still had many ways for people to contact me otherwise, and the boards are always open. And me missing a lot of hate-mail (especially since, as I was just telling someone today, the big haters aren’t the fundamentalists: more often they’re the pissed-off hetero college boys who feel that the information we provide is going to make their dating pool less pliable: would that I were kidding)? Not exactly a bummer.

One boon of that was that I got a lot less personal emails from users. I’m not talking about hate mail, I’m talking about advice stuff. I always make clear that I do not do advice via email (I used to, years and years back, but I stopped). There are a couple reasons why. The biggest one is that given I’m often serving minors, I want everything I do and say to be up front and center so that it’s all out in the open; I don’t wind up with anyone thinking I’m soliciting their child in any way, or having an inappropriate relationship, and I also just feel like this is often such delicate work that I really prefer a sort of public monitoring. People have insinuated about what goes on “behind the scenes” in some pretty crappy ways in the past, but since I know full well that there usually IS no behind-the-scenes at all, it’s pretty easy to shrug off and just let people be the idiots they wanna be.

Another biggie is that there just isn’t time in a day, and while in many respects, working Scarleteen is often working for free, it at least has the possibility of paying me and the org sometimes. Not so with email: while I’ve accepted a deal to do some interfamilial email or phone counseling/mediation before, for a reasonable fee, there’s no way to do emails from minors that way, and I’d feel really weird about it.

The other reason, though, is that it shelters me from some of the truly awful stuff: I have enough of that to deal with in a day, and one person really can only take so much. Often, people (for obvious reasons) do not want to publicly post the worst of the worst — or even what they think is normal, but you feel is nightmare — so even if you say you don’t do email, they’ll try, in the hope that you’ll be sympathetic, which, of course, I often am. But since the redesign where we now have contact forms up, I’ve started to get more and more of those again, despite setting clear limits where I ask people not to email me personally for advice.

Like the woman yesterday who asked me to give her “proof” to give to her boyfriend who left her because she had such terrible bleeding from rough vaginal and anal sex that he’d come to the bizarre conclusion she could only be bleeding like that because she’d been cheating on him. But that’s not it: she also made clear to me that he had masculinity issues which involved him needing to have rough sex to prove something, and to keep him, she needed me to explain all this blood was okay and he could still keep doing that. It didn’t matter to her that she might well be sustaining injuries and seriously opening herself up to infections: the concern was keeping the guy. Then there was the other one, on the boards, a new poster who posted to ask if her boyfriend continuing with anal sex (she was the receptive partner) until he reached orgasm, despite the fact that she told him at the start it was hurting her and asked him to stop throughout. I explained that yes, that was rape, and not only did she tell me she’d thought it was “just” an abuse, but she also was exceptionally confused because “he deserved to feel good,” and doing what he did was “just being a guy,” wasn’t it?

No, I don’t have thimngs like these every single day. But it’s awfully close. The night before last, when I couldn’t sleep, I was up half the night on the boards counseling a 14-year-old incest and physical abuse survivior (from her brother and father, respectively) whose main concern was that she HAD to be on the pill. Why? Because — she wouldn’t give me details, and I didn’t press because I could counsel her without them — the situation she was in (now at least out of that home with the incest, thank christ) was “complicated” and sex was “going to keep happening whether she liked it or not.” I talked to her as best I could, but you know, she hasn’t had any real support or counseling, and it can be mighty hard to get a big sexual abuse survivor to understand that she really does have a right to say no to whomever. And ultimately, you have to just tell her how to get the birth control, knowing that if there isn’t anything you can do to help her to be better cared for (and to better self-care) that’s at least one way you can mitigate the bad outcomes that she’s willing to pursue. But when you go to bed after that, you don’t sleep well.

Tangentially, I was trying to explain to Mark last night that counseling for abuse amoung teens that age can get really tricky — and serious props to those who do nothing BIUT that, full-time for that age group — because they’re not just abuse survivors, they’re also normal 14-year-olds who behave and talk like normal 14-year-olds. I had to ask that one to please stop saying “My mother will KILL me if…” because in context, it was making it nigh unto impossible for me to figure out what her mother would ACTUALLY do, and if there was any abuse there with Mom, too, or not.

I do get things like this almost everyday, and sometimes several times in a day. Every now and then, they’re some creep wanting to just get his rocks off by pretending to be a rape survivor asking for help (and in those cases, whereas most survivors don’t usually want to start a conversation with a straner by detailing every minute of their rapes, with those posts, it is always written in explicit detail, that I get to read, lucky me, from the start). But from what I can tell, that’s the rarity, not the norm. (And every now and then, I have a wonderful, blissful day where absolutely not a single post makes me want to cry at all: they are infrequent, especially during the summer months, but they are WONDERFUL days.)

Needless to say, this stuff is stressful as hell, and not something you can often just call up any old friend and recount: more times than not, on days like these, I’ve started to learn to just talk to no one at all about them. It’s so damn isolating to do this kind of work, and even more so when so much of the world around you is bound and determined to say these things never, ever happen, or only happen very rarely. This stuff isn’t rare: it is, literally, an everyday occurrence. And fuck, does it suck.

What else sucks?

Still no end in sight to my financial nightmares. But I don’t want to talk about that.

Speaking of nightmares, last night, likely as a result of the overwhelming yuck of the last day or so, I had a really awful dream, starring no less that four bloated, drowned corpses being pulled out of the water right in front of my face, and a Montessori classroom that was bigger and messier than I’d ever seen, and which I was responsible for cleaning up — a Sisyphysian task, in part because it was also full of people, and every time I’d go in a different corner, I’d find myself without my clothes. Also in this classroom I found my old bunny is his cage, which I had forgotten to ask anyone to care for over the summer. He should have just been dead, that given, but instead, he had turned into this yellowed, vile and shriveled mass with bright yellow eyes that was still barely alive. Those were the highlights.

Well, I was supposed to go over to Cheryl’s land Saturday, but alas, my dog got sick AGAIN. This is the second time in two months, from a dog who has never gotten sick before, and who is also the baby to both Mark and myself here (in fact, he gets way more freaked than I when she’s not right). He was still out of town, so I didn’t feel okay leaving her scratching herself silly and vomiting and having all kinds of big bowel yuck, so I had to reschedule, even though we both really, really needed that day.

(As of right now, the vet opinion is that the fleas of last time had their revenge: apparently my dog is also massively allergic to fleas — or that’s their best guess now — and apparently when that’s the case, your dog can be not-right for even a month or two after you treat the damn things. Ain’t nothin’ like being a pet owner when you’re broke, as you may know: it never fails that just when you’re scrambling for cash to pay the usual bills, they have to get sick and you have to get stuck with vet bills on top of everything else. Argh! The antihistimanes they gave me for her were supposed to do the trick, but alas, they don’t seem to have, so I’ll likely be back at the vet AGAIN today or tomorrow.)

Know how women who are pregnant get baby weight? I have book-weight. You have to spend nearly a year with insanely long days strapped to your chair writing, under a fierce deadline…well, some things are fairly inevitable. I don’t really care all that much from a body image perspective, but I don’t dig it from the perspective of my body feeling out of whack — I’ve noticed over the years that I seem to be really sensitive about my own equilibrium — and the bigger issue is that I have to go do book promo back home in a couple of weeks and my favorite stuff to do things in and travel in isn’t feeling very comfortable right now, and I’m hardly in a spot to go buy new stuff to tide me over until moving around a lot again sets me back right.

Lastly, it sucks when you have this flood of brilliant ideas right as you’re falling asleep. I had this happen the other night, but as an insomniac, I know better than to get up and jot them down: I may be up a whole night if I do. If I go to bed at all tipsy or the like, I just accept they’re gone, but the other might I went to bed clean as a whistle, so fully expected to remember them all, and lo: not a single one remained in the morning, only the memory of brilliance long lost to me.

One forgets that as the years creep up, even though you’re totally supposed to be too young to be going senile, age itself is then only toxin required to blitz your memory.

* * *

Enough with the bad stuff.

Know what does NOT suck?

What does NOT suck is your partner coming home from a day-job biz trip to Lincoln, Nebraska (I keep telling him I feel like he’s a vacuum cleaner salesman or something, since he gets shipped to the oddest places) and having a perfecty-perfect stay at home date where you walk to the market to get what you want to cook, make a beautiful dinner together, mix up some experimental cocktails (more on that in a minute) and laze about utterly until the wee hours blabbing away. Well, mostly laze about except for the hour you get weird and have to hula-hoop in your dining room to bad 70’s pop just ’cause. But who doesn’t?

It also doesn’t suck to stretch out the anticipation with snuggles-only that night so you can have phenomenal welcome-back sex the next day.

So, here’s my fave cocktail of the evening, which currently remains nameless: icy-cold vodka (about a third of the glass) and a glass chilled after lining it and the rim with fresh orange and orange zest. Then fill with limeade and some lime pulp, and stick a big sprig of peppermint in there, and muddle it the TEENIEST bit. Yum. Free book to anyone who wants to give me the best name for it.

It also doesn’t suck to have a really good book-sales week, and last week was phenomenal. It’s pretty cool when you see your YA sex guide outsell the book that was your own YA sex guide way back when (yes, there was one day in that good last week where my numbers eclipsed Our Bodies, Ourselves: talk about an ego-boost). Rachel: I think I’ve got you to thank for that, gal.

It’s not at all sucky when one of your favoritest friends gets the hang of your “just drop by” mentality and does, and you get to head over to your neighborhood Sunday farmer’s market, and eat peaches so ripe there’s a flood of juice at your feet, and drink lemonade so tart and fresh it makes the sides of your mouth stick together. Actually, over the last couple of weeks nearly all of my fave buds up here have just dropped by, including two women who just dropped by from Tacoma — an hour away.

It’s really not sucky to have one of your favorite feminist orgs who you didn’t even know knew you existed not only interview you — and acknowledge the work you do as feminist work, because it’s about freaking time someone from something cornerstone did — but ask really amazing questions that bust your brain (an extended version — we got pretty deep into it — lives here). And Chris? We don’t even know each other — well, rather, I didn’t know you until now — but finding this this morning seriously made my day: that’s easily one of the nicest things anyone has ever said about me, and you couldn’t have said it at a better time. I may need to steal that first sentence for my press package.

It doesn’t suck that when I go back home to Chicago, I’m definately going to be seeing one old friend I’ve missed, one old friend I have never even met offline, one of my best friends from elementary school who, oddly, found me because she’s gone into YA sex education and nursing herself (was there something in the water?), my two favorite aunts (one of whom is so close in age to me she’s more like a sister: my mother comes from big Irish family, another of whom I really need to tell stories about sometime), my Dad, my Mom, my favorite ex of all time (and his partner, whom I adore), one of my favorite living contemporary artists (who I’ll also get to take to my faveorite art museum anywhere: how cool is that?) and also very probably one of the teachers who saved my life, one of my best friends from high school and another from college. It also looks like (details forthcoming) despite my favorite feminist — really, just my fave bookstore, period — bookstore being in some crisis right now, likely get to do an event there. I even get to catch a Cubs game in bleacher seats, and take my sweetie to Wrigley for his first time.

(I also will likely be going on Fox News while I am there, but that’s more terrifying than it is not-sucking.)

I also pitched a book idea to my editor I really, really, really hope will fly. Not only do I just not want to pitch books to other pubs right now because I so badly want to work with my same editor again, I also really don’t want to do anything super-heavy or as provocative as what I’d usually do or be asked to do just this one time around. It’d be really nice to do work at least once in my life which half the populace or more soesn’t think is shameful and needs to be ferreted away somewhere. And I need a break from the heavy. I lit on something that is far lighter, but also still incredibly important — I don’t do fluff, just not my thing: don’t want to, and I suck at it, besides — and still young adult, which I’d like to stay in for a while. And not primarily about sex, thank freaking christ. Think good thoughts.

And today, I’m not doing any advice, I’m not reading any advice letters, I’m not even looking at the boards. Too. Much. I have other work I need to get caught up on, I have books I need to ship out, I need to do some boxing, some laundry and given last night’s nightmares and endless dog-scratching, I should even try to just take a freaking nap.

P.S. I’ve been noticing that in the last year, when I write here, I’ve been seriously overusing parentheses, and I have absolutely no idea what that is all about (really: none whatsoever).

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (2) »

All I’ve got for you today are some book-related quickies, in passing.

When Mark goes out of town for work, I never can get to sleep until dawn. Being so used to living in apartment buildings, houses feel unsafe to me, especially when I’m the only one in them. In apartments or rowhouses, you’ve got people on every side of you, who you know full well can hear even feet in your place, because they’re probably complained about it at least once. I’m a loud yeller, so if anything ever happened here, I’d probably get heard, but at the same time, this is Seattle, and the passivity of people here hardly inspires confidence.

I’m not afraid of the dark, but for whatever reason, when I’m here on my own I feel far more secure sleeping once the night sky starts flirting with dawn. However, since I’m also someone who naturally wakes when the light completely comes up, this means I get little to no sleep, and thus, am without proper brain function today.

Chicagoans: Still firming up some other dates and times, but on Tuesday, July 31st, at Early to Bed at 7:30 PM (North side: 5232 N. Sheridan Rd., right off Lake Shore Drive at Foster), I’ll be having an informal evening salon all about talking to kids and teens about sex and sexuality. Wine and munchies will be there, as well as the fantastic environ of a very fabulous women’s sex shop. (Thai, Sean and Erica: I’d better see you both there. Or else!) I’d also be up for an evening meet-and-greet somewhere that week if anyone wants to dish about it.

Two new press pieces on the book this week, one at Wiretap (Alternet’s Teen channel — it was also reprinted at The Nation and Alternet — whoohoo!), by the always-wonderful Rachel, and another at the Minnesota Women’s Press, by — which just rocked — a very cool high school intern.

I’m finishing an interview for the Center for New Words today, finally. It’s taken me an age because the questions they asked were so insightful and so huge, it’s earnestly broken my brain. But I was pleased as punch to be asked — it seriously made my month. For the most part, one of the toughest things I’ve dealt with in my writing and arts career is getting the perpetual cold shoulder from most feminist press: it’s taken a long time, for whatever reason, for a lot of feminist orgs to find the feminism in what I do, which has always flummoxed me utterly, since it’s not like you’ve got to dig for it. But, that’s looking up, which makes me very happy.

No joy yet on the financial front per all my work, I’m sorry to say. But I’m still over here trying to do everything I can to get that to turn around. Well, not yesterday. Yesterday the weather was so wonderful that I hooped in the back yard, played with the dog, viciously attacked the weeds that keep trying to take over my garden, made myself a fresh, simple dinner and whacked off before staying up all freaking night.

(I actually think I inadvertently did the equivalent of pissing on another dog’s territory in my masturbatory endeavors. Because I was feeling so ooky about being alone, I felt better masturbating in Mark’s office — which is HIS usual spot for that — than in the bedroom, which is my usual spot, and only occasionally his. I swear, I wasn’t trying to mark territory, but in hindsight I’m feeling a bit like a bad little puppy.)

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, s.e.x., apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (2) »

I’d like to think that when Dorothy was in the middle of that tornado, that if when the wicked witch biked by, her skirt happened to fly up over her head, revealing a bright red baboon butt, she’d have to have laughed, even while her house, her dog and that poor old Auntie Em were floating away and her life hung precariously in the balance.

Because, you know: you just gotta crack up sometimes. Long before any sort of work strife, political struggle, flirtation-with-previous-states-of-poverty, breakup, illness or whatever will do you in, if you stopped being able to laugh and have some joy somewhere in there, you will have gone down way earlier and far more painfully than you would otherwise.

I’ve been the warrior I’m reputed to be this last week, and I have been busting my rump to think even outside of MY box (which usually isn’t much like a box at all: it’s more like one of those inflatable rumpus rooms you rent for some kid’s birthday party or a street fair — and yes, I mean outside that OTHER “my box,” too), and step outside my comfort zones to do my damndest to make this all better in a way where it’s hopefully better from here on out. No progress to speak of in terms of the results of my efforts yet, but it doesn’t matter because I don’t want to talk about that stuff today, anyway.

(And seriously? You can only answer “How are you?” with “I still suck,” so many times before you just want to respond by begging people to just put your mopey ass DOWN, for fuck’s sake, you know?)

Instead, I’d like to have a giggle at that witch of the west with her crimson baboon butt, or, in my case, over the needed eviction of Philip Glass.

* * *
As far as the rest of my life goes, it’s been a pretty okay week. A handful of nights back, for instance, I was workingworkingworkingworking, as I’m prone to do, and Mark kept coming downstairs — with less and less clothing on — trying to get me to go upstairs with him.

You know how it is when you’re depressed: even though you know sex is a nice balm, it does a number on one’s libido. And in my case, that’s usually just about me: in other words, I’m down with getting my other person off, but I know myself well enough to know that when I’m seriously down, orgasms for me just are not going to happen and I don’t want to trouble myself or anyone else with trying. Thankfully, even though my sweetie is a bio-boy, our sexlife is blissfully free of most hetero dynamics. For instance, I’ve never had to let go of the very nice queer thing where you sometimes will have a few sessions where you just take turns getting each other off, at different (and extended) times the same night, or on different nights altogether. In fact, in some of my life when I’ve partnered with men, one of my biggest bitches has been that bizarre heteronormative idea where folks seem to think that people are supposed to come from the same thing — especially when it’s the stuff women don’t usually come from in the first place, and men often don’t even find that interesting — or at the same time, or even on the same night (you have no idea how many times in a day when answering advice questions, for various reasons, I find myself sighing and saying out loud “Oh, poor straight people.” For real, and yes, I know that’s patronizing and I’m terribly sorry). While that’s all groovy when it happens, and plenty of times I do want to get off when my partner has or will, too, there are also plenty of times where I just don’t want to be distracted by my own desires for orgasm (or vice-versa), and I’d rather focus all my attention on my partner or have them focus all of theirs on me.

Plus, being naked is my happy space. In other words, part of the reason I’m so damn naked all the time is because I’m generally feeling pretty groovy so I want to run around without underpants like a hyperactive four-year-old. But when I’m feeling crappy or hyper-vulnerable, clothing is an armour for me, and I like to keep it on.

So, eventually, I headed upstairs, clearly getting the more-than-subtle hint that Mark wanted to get it on, with the hope that he was cool with a for-him-only turn.

Mr. Price is not a light the candles, put out the flowers, cover the bed in rosepetals for sex kind of guy — neither am I. We’re more usually the kick the laundry aside and hope you land somewhere near the bed for sex kind of people. I’d made clear the day before, however, that the bedroom was SUCH a freaking disaster that I couldn’t even think about sex in there: I could only wonder when the hell someone was going to call the health department and hope Sofia didn’t get forever lost in the piles while we were sleeping at night. So, I got led by the hand into his office — we both have our own rooms/offices here: it’s a strong cohabitation rule of mine — and there were blankets and pillows on the floor, a clear space around them, incense burning and lo, little flickering candles.

You know, for whatever reason, if that had been about seducing ME to be the receptive partner it would not have been half as darling and cool (it probably would have felt like guys way too old for you when you were in high school offering you a backrub): but since knowingly or unknowingly, it was about seducing me to seduce HIM, it made it not only really charming and sweet, but also very nicely genderblurry-scrumptious hot. So, by all means, that night was all about him, but there were a few days there where the very pleasant image of my naked boyfriend and his candles and pillows and not-naked me was the gift that kept on giving for this girl. MeOW.

And the wonderful afternoon-that-turned-into-evening picnic my friends Ben and Joriel hosted for a handful of us; vegan lunchies, plenty of hula hoops, sneaky liquor and all yesterday were just completely brilliant. The weather was to die for, and a whole day out in the sun, hooping and hollering with friends was just the thing.

But the best giggle I have had in a while was because I found the notes I took after my dentist’s visit in Minneapolis over my last visit.

Allow me a little backstory and an admission of the type I don’t like to make often, because it always feels like setting myself up for more hell than I have to deal with already in terms of some folks ideas about my suitibility as an educator for young people. But it’s essential to get the beauty of this.

When I was in my teens and early-to-mid-twenties, I very much liked me some hallucinogens. Very. Much. For an ungodly number of times I dropped them, I only had one bad trip, ever, and a WHOLE lot of exceptionally nice ones. (Go on now: tell me how women “aren’t visual,” I dare ya.) There was a while there…well, let’s just say the primary reason that I said toodle-oo to LSD and her chums was because I very easily could have blissfully drifted into a shiny, sparkly acid oblivion quite gladly for the rest of my life. Lucky for me I don’t still do them and haven’t for an absolute age (sigh!) or else I couldn’t really talk about this stuff here at all.

So, you can imagine my surprise and delight when, while in my dentists chair, settling in under the gas mask, it became clear from the taste in my throat, the fog in my head and the auditory and visual hallucinations that my hygenist perhaps took my talk of my high tolerance for chemicals a bit TOO seriously and dosed me GOOD.

Mind you, they’re pretty liberal with the gas over at my dentist’s, to the degree that the first time I visited just to have them look at my teeth, as I set in the chair, I was asked if I wanted gas and replied, “Umm, for a consultation? I mean, sure, but I think I’ll be okay without it, too.” They said they didn’t know I was there for that, butcha know, I don’t believe them. It’s been very apparent that they love their nitrous there to me, every time I’ve gone in. I should also note that before the mask went on, she and I were telling some mighty funny shared stories about my high tolerance in being a McDego compared to hers as a Native American, and determined we wound up with the same blessing and curse: we bonded, man. I also know for a fact that she knew what went down with me with that gas, because the next day, she greeted me the way people greet do when you had a good one-night stand with the night before. When I came in that next day for more work (not with her, alas), she — who I had never met until our lil’ trip together — rubbed my arm, winked and said, “Hey, I know you….”

(I tried not to think about why she was THAT familiar with me, since heaven freaking knows what I might have said or done while under all that gas. But what happens at the dentist stays at the dentist, right? Well, unless you put it on the Internet, that is. Ah, well.)

Once I started to get the feeling that I was somehow (legally!) tripping in my dentists office, I first had a moment where I wasn’t sure if I was hallucinating, or if I was hallucinating that I was hallucinating. When I figured out it was bonafide, I then had a few moments of extreme paranoia realizing I was going to lalaland, but thought it through: in a safe place, with a medical staff, everything is legal, I have a drug buddy sitting right next to me. Okay! Let’s go! So, float away I did, and an hour turned into a couple of days, and I walked out of there feeling as well rested as I would have with a full month of sleep, and as centered as the Dalai Lama.

I left there (gawd bless the rapid come-down powers of nitrous), took a long walk to the cafe where I was meeting a friend for lunch, and immediately 1) Googled the hell out of this to verify that it was even possible (and yes, it is, it’s just pretty uncommon), then 2) typed out copious notes in the hopes of making something profound out of the experience. I pulled up the notes today thinking maybe there would be something inspiring in them to jettison me this week.

And those notes net me something about as profound as the scribbles and cartoons I’d make while dosing in high school, hoping to later express my profundity, did.

(Italics are my additions from today. That’d be why they actualy make some sort of sense.)

* * *
Squares of ceiling, squares of ceiling, dots inside the squares make other squares, make other dots. Mmmm, negative space. Need more negative space.

Did Dr. Tye (my very odd, but very nice Hawaiian dentist for a few years before my teens) use gas on us? Is that why dropping acid felt so homey? Is THAT why he was always playing the Cocteau Twins when no one even knew who they were and most of his clients were little kids — Cocteau Twins are very nice when floaty. Was very nice dentist: maybe he hit the gas, too.

She was saying “close” and “open” but they sounded exactly the same. Why?
(That poor woman trying to clean my teeth and me likely looking at her like she was speaking another language while I drooled all over her. Ugh.)

Paranoia first/inner peace/deep acceptance/sense of balance — teeth in better shape than one thinks, even before work? More important to mental health?
(I sat thinking about that one for a while after making that note before my friend came, convinced that having perfectly clean teeth was this totally undiscovered path to perfect health and happiness. Then I sat thinking that maybe this is why people went into dentistry in the first place, having that insight themselves, and thinking they needed to be some sort of spiritual teeth gatekeepers. Then I had a cup of coffee and found my sanity again.)

SUNNY!

Need to defrag brain or nervous system? (Shit, apparently.)

Nerve endings in teeth and mouth: link to spinal nerves, brain? Changes feeling of temperature? Did not feel warm or cool - like sitting in bathwater where temp. is same as body temp. Limbo-zone between chakras? Why?

Do same things tomorrow: breathe deep, maybe pant, let go earlier, don’t worry (be happy!): find way to say thank you.
(I was SO hoping to be able to have the same sort of experience the next day when I went in for fillings, rather than just a cleaning, but alas, it was pretty obvious once I started the gas that I wasn’t inhaling anything close to the amount I was the day before. On top of that, idiot-me had decided that given how great gas could really be, I’d try and get filled without any novocaine. Not only did that immediately conjure up very vivid memories of having had that done nonelectively when I was little, it also hurt like a MOTHER. So, if I was even going to get a mini-buzz from the gas that second time, I pretty much killed that outright. Bummer.)

* * *

Anyway, ummm…yeah. Some seriously profound stuff in there, as always with post-drug-induced notetaking. Some things never change, including how utterly silly they remain.

posted in Heather Corinna, my fine romance, subconscious life, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (6) »

Sorry, more questions, still no answers!

(I’ll get back to actual entries any time now, really, I promise, including the magic carpet ride my dental hygenist in Minneapolis sent me on. But until then…)

• When I was in Minneapolis, doing my event for the GLBT youth center, I got a handful of questions about sexuality pertaining to infibulated women. This isn’t a shocker: Minneapolis has, for some time, had a substantial Somali and Ethiopian refugee program, resulting in a substantial Somali and Ethipian population there. I did know the basic answers to the questions, but I’d very much like to do an FAQ piece for Scarleteen answering questions not about the issue of FGM, but specifically address practical issues (orgasm and sexual response, healing from genital trauma, ways to respond to long-term health problems, etc.) for women and partners of women who have been genitally mutilated. However, I don’t feel right as a white woman who not only has not survived FGM, but who doesn’t live in/come from a culture or community in which FGM is prevalent. Might any of you know a woman who might be up to collaborating on this with me who does come from one of those perspectives?

• Over the last few years, I’ve noticed at Scarleteen that an awful lot of the worst (as if there were anything less than worst, but you get me) of our incest and friend-of-family rape cases arise from Austrailia and New Zealand. Are any of you better versed than I — and know decent sources I could look at — in terms of incest and friend-of-family rapes in those countries? More specifically, I’d like to have more than the basics I do on the justice system and incest, et al, on how social services generally responds (and what victim rights are), on basic cultural dynamics in terms of social and familial attitudes around incest and rape. (Stephen? Beppie? Kat?)

• Book events! I need to do them! Much to my dismay, I’ve started to discover that Seattleites are big, stuffy prudes, unless you’re approaching sex in a way that’s funny-ha-ha, all about the surfacey bullshit, or are a pro-domme. One big bookstore here even had the stones to tell my publicist that they “didn’t have an area private enough” to do an event with me. Did they think I was going to take my pants off and SHOW everyone sexual anatomy? I mean, I can see that Ann Rule has an event there (who, by the way, I’ve been known to read for a guilty pleasure; I’m a criminiology geek when I have three seconds of free time to read something besides work books, so I’m not dissing Ms. Rule). Is she going to be reading? Does she not need a more private arena to read about serial killing? Aren’t they worried she might give a demonstration? Ugh. So, save one event I got started cultivating yetsterday with a local book store (gods bless Ballard), I’m up empty. Suffice it to say, most of the rest of the world is pretty closed-mouthed, too. We knew full well from the start — it was glaringly obvious during the years of publisher-hunting — that a lot of people would be bloody terrified of this book, but it’s no fun to have it hammered home these days.

I’ll be taking some time over the next week to get this stuff together in a more formalized way, but really, I can be creative about this. For instance, if you’re in WA, Portland, Victoria or Vancouver, it’s easy for me to get to: want to link up a group of parents informally for some gabbing on how to deal with parenting and approaching sexuality with kids and teens? Want to have a sex educator over for a group of teen girls in your community to have an accurate gab-session? Heck, have a table for sex Q&A at your next office party? I’ll do it, man, just give me a shout. Very little is too weird for this gal, as is likely obvious by now.

• I also know I asked this before around a year ago or so, but I only got a response from one person, who never connected with me via email. I really, really, REALLY need to get connected with at least a couple other people who have to rape or abuse counsel, and do the sort of highly emotionally difficult work every day I do — it’s not every single day that things are so loaded, thank christ, but it’s close. And it’s getting more so: Scarleteen and myself have been around solidly long enough, and have established a certain feeling of safety for users long enough, that over the last few years, I wind up dealing with rape and abuse more and more often. Certainly, I’ll do it — I always move first to get survivors to seek out good hotlines and in-person counseling, but they usually stick around for support with me and our volunteers — it’s needed, but it also certainly isn’t what I’d choose to do or what I was prepared to do so much of. Some days, it completely wrecks me emotionally: it’s always particularly tough with hotline or ‘net hotline work because there’s only so much you can do.

(Over the last two months, we’ve also had a couple of abusers post, looking for sympathy. Poor them, they didn’t KNOW their silent, prone, half-asleep girlfriend didn’t want sex or poor them, their girlfriend DESERVES to be hit in the face, so it isn’t really abuse, you see. Don’t even get me started on what it was like to be around me on those days, and how frustrating it is that an IP address and email isn’t enough to file a report on these assholes.)

So, readers: do you do any work like this? Do you know anyone else who does who could also use an extra person to sit and unload it with? I don’t need the connection to be one way, or all about MY stress, I just need some like-minded (or rather, like-worked, if that’s even a real phrase, and I suspect it is not) people to chat with about this stuff.

And those’d be my shout-outs for right now: my apologies for them being so all about me. Also in the all-about-me category, beyond really great reviews in Bust and Bitch, there have been some really nice blog mentions/reviews of the book this week. C.K. made my day, and then a day later, Laurie Toby Edison made it even better, especially since she and Debbie paired my review with a review of one of my best friend’s books — a real perk, since Hanne and I miss working together (though each of us had a lot of back-and-forth while we were each working on these books, and each star in our dedications and acknowledgments), so it’s uber-cool when our stuff gets put in the same pile so we can kinda feel like we are again.

(P.S. thanks to my eBay tutorial volunteers: I’ll be pinging you today.)

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, Scarleteen, activism, surviving abuse, seattle, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (11) »

This is not only not one of the many highly entertaining or enlightening journal entries you, reader, truly deserve, it’s a seriously boring request. My apologies.

But who I’m fishing for is someone well-versed in eBaying, because this girl has got to raise some cash this month, big time, and not coincidentally, has some stuff it’s really time to let go of which is of likely value to others holding the cash I so need. In short, I’m looking for someone available to give me a decent tutorial in relatively short order, and for this, I will gladly exchange either a fair commission or some other gift-in-kind of said person’s choosing.

And yes, I’m aware I’m a smart cookie who could probably figure it out for herself, but I’ve just no room to make some foolish mistake, and really need to hop on this pronto, with — preferably — a minimum of extra stress. I need an eBay Yoda, in a word, I do.

Any volunteers?

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (5) »

You know you’re a workaholic when it’s NOT working that has become an achievement.

But I am still in the midst of taking some real time off. Sure, I haven’t been able to quit working cold turkey. The first few “days off” I basically worked the same number of hours a non-self-employed person does. But for each day after, I’ve done work-work less and less: yesterday I only did about two hours of work, at a maximum, which is no mean feat for me, and today, I fielded just a couple Scarleteen questions and but one press inquiry.

What exciting, exhilirating things have I been doing?

Cleaning my house.

I know, I know, I know: a couple of friends have also mentioned that that doesn’t exactly sound like a luxury vacaction. Thing is, I can’t have a luxury vacation, period. Beyond that, this house has been VILE, victimized by both mark and I myself being riddled with deadlines over the last year, deadlines overlapping deadlines, leaving a wake of dirt, dust, pet hair and piles of paper behind us as we leap from one frenzied project to the next. I couldn’t relax in here lately if I wanted to, and I really, really want to right now.

My father, too, was — well, utterly mortified by the fact that this is what I’m doing with my time off. Now, in part, this is because my slobbery was learned behaviour from that man, a rather schizoid rearing, no less, since my mother — from what I can gather — is largely drawn to work in infectious disease to justify her extreme germophobia, and growing up in her household was like living inside a Q-tip box doused in Lysol (if I never smell amonia again, it’ll be too soon). This confusing polarization may well explain why it is that I cannot manage clutter to save my life (and make more than my share), but will find great delight in scrubbing room from floor to ceiling like a Marine until I can let out a well-deserved and blissful, “So SHINY.”

(There does, however, have to be zero pressure to do so. If I feel pressured to clean, I tend to react defensively — often unaware I’m doing so — by only making a bigger mess. I also grew up having to wipe up more male urine than I should ever have had to, being not-male myself, so when there’s a man in the house, much as I love a shiny bathroom, when I tend to scrub them, I often uncover a world of hidden resentment that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. That’s my latest rationaliztion for avoiding it, anyway, and I think it’s a winner.)

At this point, I’ve tackled both bathrooms, the kitchen, the living room and the dining room. At the moment, I’m procrastinating doing the office because the office is SCARY. Generally, I can deal with clutter, so long as it’s clean underneath it, but the office is both cluttered and completely filthy, to the point that I consider anything closer than twenty feet to it a distance unsafe for anyone.

Once upon a time, I had one of those hyper-realistic dreams, that may well have been more oracle than dream, in which I was a very old woman, living in a dusty house with too many pets, where the entrire floor was covered in books and papers. The piles went to the roof, and I had clearly constructed them around myself, as trails went through them. The only unrealistic part of my subconscious projection involved me racing — dirty bare feet fumbling, skirts flying, pencils stuck in my white hair, but those bits are perfectly realistic — across the house to grab someone a book, and knowing exactly where to find that book amidst all the piles. That doesn’t happen now and I’m quite sure it won’t ever.

But that, dear friends, is the state of my office (and my hair) at the moment — plus piles of laundry, piles of bills, a trail of coffee cups, an unpacked bag from Minneapolis, photo equipment, hula hoops: you name it, it’s in a pile in there. (Have you lost something recently? It’s probably in my office.) And fuck all if I know where a given book is, or even where the books in the office ARE right now.

I need to at least give a try in finding out, though, because I have got to make some headway with this puppy today before I head out to meet Ben, my much-beloved ACLU lawyer, who is in town on business and greatly in need of a Ballard drink-a-thon, which I am more than glad to do my level best to provide. I’m a sweetie like that, enabling alcoholics everywhere, to the point that I’ve moved into what is perhaps one of the booziest neighborhoods in the entire country.

But no more talk of booze until I can at least find the floor to crash on afterwards if need be.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, Ballard, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (7) »

It’s a… well. Hmm.

Not a girl. Not a boy. I guess it’s just a website, even though it feels like I just gave a breech birth to a velociraptor.

But it’s freaking well done.

In case it’s not beyond obvious? Upgrading a site built many years ago, and trafficked by millions of people really kind of sucks. Thank christ that the boards only needed to be spruced, not gone through page by page, redesigned and rebuilt from the backend, like we had to do with the 250+ pages of the main site, because having to do what we did — which has taken months of many no-break, 14 hour + workdays from two of us — with an extra 51,000 pages (no, I’m not kidding, and I’ve read nearly every one of those pages over the years, and answered or contributed to over 25,000 of those questions myself, in case you wonder where all these greys and wrinkles are coming from)?

That would have flat out broken this chick. As it is, I am toast. If I have to do this anytime again within the next five years — especially when I can’t even pause from doing everything else I already do — I will sell my hair, limbs and anything else anyone’ll pay me a dollar for so I can just pay someone else to do all of this, because if I so much have to think about another upgrade of this size, I can guarantee I’ll wind up wearing one of those fancy white garments with the arm restraints for the rest of my natural born life.

(Which — natrual-born — is a phrase I’m not even sure I can validly use, given I was induced so we could get the hell out of dodge before my Dad got sent to jail. Again with the hmm.)

We went live last night pretty much all of five whole minutes before we had to run over to SIFF for Mark’s debut as a director of a festival film (which was all proud-making, and all the better because one of The Brothers Price flew in from Cincy to be here), stayed out late, then I woke up on the early this morning to fix a ton of little buggies. I have been a complete crabass for weeks, I only dimly recall what the outside world even looks like, sex is a dusty — albeit pleasant — memory, and I am beyond burnout.

So, I’m taking a week off from big work. Starting right now, as I lace my coffee with Wild Turkey and try to remember where I left my life last.

posted in Heather Corinna, Scarleteen, Happy!, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (5) »

Back home, at last, and I have been for a handful of days at this point.

First day back was an oh-so fine welcome with an inexplicably super-itchy dog and a double-whammy of menstrual cramps, mind, but it’s still very good to be back, and it’s pretty clear that I’ve now adopted my new locale here as home, because I wanted to be back here, bad, more than once while I was away.

I apologize for the delay of the post-trip storyhour here, but Garrett and I are in the final, final pushes of getting the Scarleteen upgrade finished, and we both need some freaking downtime so badly — and time is of the essence, given we’ve been getting some nice press of late — that I just have to continue to spend every waking minute of the day on this possible.

If we’re lucky, and there’s enough coffee for a small country, we’ll have a finish on Saturday sometime.

And then I’ll be passing out for a full day.

And then I’ll tell stories.

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (3) »

Greetings from sunny Minnesota!

(I’m not being ironic: it’s freaking gorgeous here right now. I heart midwestern summer more than more.)

Just a quick hello, as I’m between gigs, currently hanging out on Becca’s deck, enjoying a beer and a lot of sunshine. I’m off in a little bit to the middle-of-nowhere, to celebrate The Baby Liam’s first birthday party w/Briana’s family, in the land of zero wireless and lots of cheese product on hot dishes.

I saw Liam yesterday, and he isn’t a baby anymore, he’s a very little toddler boy. Full head of hair, moving around, making a ton of noise, and reveling in his own chaos, just as he should be. I confess, I often feel a bit like an alien when I’m around babies and kids, and when I feel giant surges of love for them, I never find myself thinking, “Oh, I wish I had one of my own,” but instead, simply, “I wish I could see that kid more often.” I’m not sure if that’s really unusual — given the former reaction seems to be more common — or just whether the culture of women presented as needing to be maternal (and thus, women learning to present themselves that way) is just so huge that everyone has internalized that message, and thus, can often react differently. Of course, too, I have spent more time in the muck and the mire with other people’s children than most. In any event, I wish I could see that kid more often. We had a fantastic time yesterdat evening, and I expect that we’ll have some more before I leave.

Speaking of kids, my red-eye flight was from hell. It’s not just about getting exactly no sleep, even after taking a sleeping pill. I was seated in one of the most claustropobic seats possible, and in my row and the row behind, was surrounded by Amish family, who I haven’t been that near since I was a kid. The window was to my right, and at left, a 12 or 13-year-old boy. Not only did he snore like a mother (and here I thought, not sleeping at home for once, where Mark and Sofia are a veritable symphony of snores, that I’d get a break from snoring), but anytime I almost fell asleep, or looked asleep, he’d touch me with his fingers on my arm or my face, my guess is, out of simple curiousity. If I shifted in my seat, he’d harumph loudly, despite the fact that because I’m small and he was 12, we had plenty of room between us. The lone time I went to go to the bathroom, he was so freaking beligerent, he wouldn’t even stand up so I could get out, so I nearly had to give the kid a lap dance in having to crawl over him.

Suffice it to say, given it was Amish family, I didn’t exactly fell able to say, “Hey, sod the hell off, kid! While you’re at it, quit with the freaking snoring, wouldya?” Becca’s husband suggested I should have given him a copy of my book to read, since he was clearly so bored. Pity I didn’t think of that myself.

That child made me neither wish to have any myself NOR to be able to see him more often. And I have no doubt that that reaction on my part is exceptionally normal.

So, yesterday, I managed to nab three whole hours of sleep during the day, after which I had to do a Chicago Tribune phone interview, hoping to christ I didn’t sound as incomprehensible as I felt, but did have a fine afternoon and evening with Becca, Briana and lil’ Mr. Liam. I got to see Heather today, and expect Bri and I to make a long hangout of it tomorrow night. Sunday is the book release party, the first of the three events I’m doing while I’m here.

I’ve gotten more and more acclamated to Seattle, but not enough that the first thing I did when I got here was to call my hairstylist and my dentist and make appointments. I intend on going by the eye doctors while I’m here, as well, despite the fact that my cash flow for these things is not exactly generous at the moment. Alas.

Did have another book benchmark for me today, which is finding some libraries that ordered and are carrying the book, which in many ways, is far more important to me and of more value than bookstores carrying it. I was one of those kids for whom the public library was a second home: iwas latchkey, so it was normal for me to spend a lot of time at the library after school. In addition, when the shit really started to get super-bad at my house, one benefit of still managing to be a dedicated student is that when you won’t be allowed out of the house for anything else, you are often still allowed to get out of the house if you’re at the library. I need to make a point while I’m here in Minneapolis of heading to a couple branches with books to donate. I know I sat with my first copies of more than one vital sex book in the stacks, and it pleases me to no ned to think I can be providing the same experience for other young adults.

P.S. Just because it seems it needs to be said lately in more venues than I can shake a stick at: the feminist blogosphere is not feminism. The feminist blogosphere is not the feminist community. The feminist blogosphere is just that: the feminist blogosphere, and supposing it to be, or presenting it as, a good representation of the whole of feminism, the whole of theory, the whole of feminist activism or community is foolish. To be honest, I don’t even involve myself much at all with the feminist blogosphere or all its dramas in large part because it is so incredibly discordant to my experiences with feminism and community amoung women otherwise.

I mean, certainly, still in our culture, women as a class are in very big trouble. And still as ever, feminism is in big trouble. But in my estimation, neither are in the kind of trouble we’d think they were if we presumed the virtual community to be represnentative of the whole. And that’s the case with the blogosphere, period. It has it’s value, for sure, but an accurate representation of life and community as a whole it is not.

So, if you’re a person who feels strongly about feminism, but the blogosphere is bumming you out, I’d really encourage you to turn off the computer and go find some real-life community. Join up with your local NOW chapter, volunteer at a women’s crisis line or shelter or with a more ad-hoc feminist or women’s community, or just make your own. Names that go with faces that go with voices that go with a more visceral connection really do make a world of difference.

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, family, feminism, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (6) »

More on the release party tomorrow — it was awesome, in short, and seriously packed — but for now, I’m pleased as punch to note that it’s just been reported to me that one of my secret goals for the book has already been met.

A parent in Texas who bought two copies — one for her daughter, and another for the school nurse’s office — has just reported that the nurse told her that the book lasted a whole two, madly thumbed-through days in her office before some kid swiped it.

Sure, it seems a bit off to have a benchmark for the book’s success based on theft, but it really does tell me all I need to know.

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (8) »

Random question of the day: when doing book signing events, and you have a disability which results in your hand cramping up into a ball with not-even-extensive bouts of handwriting — and special pens don’t help, it’s the issue of holding a pen or pencil, period — what’s a good solution?

(We’ve already tossed out getting a stamp made with my signature, because that just seemed really tacky.)

P.S. I had the most enjoyable, babbly, sex-geekery coffee with David on Friday. Y’all should read him: good man, that.

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (19) »

Know when you feel seriously stupid?

When you nag the publicity person at your publishing house to get all your books out to this endlessly growing list of reviewers — spacing that like near everything else you do, this isn’t DIY, and she also has her own list, dingbat — and then you get an email from her with this HUGE honking list of places your book has been sent.

And you look at it. As your jaw hits the space bar on your keyboard. You see certain publications, places and names which strike absolute terror into your little heart, and you feel yourself start to hyperventilate as you slowly crawl under your desk, clutching your palm-sweaty pack of smokes as if they were your teddy bear.

Thankfully, you feel LESS stupid than you might because you do NOT send her the email that says nothing but, “Ohmygawd NO: I don’t want all those people seeing the book! I take it back! Go get those books BACK right NOW!”

I swear, it feels infinately less vulnerable to have the whole world see you naked.

Just a few moments of extreme stage fright, brought to you by the dork who writes here.

P.S. To the construction workers on the place behind my house? Entiendo español. I’m usually very rusty in my speaking, but my understanding doesn’t tend to lapse. And just because I can’t think of how to translate, “It is deeply invasive for you to endlessly and loudly yell at me about my tits and my ass, with the charming, accompanying smoochy noises, while I’m trying to find just fifteen minutes of peace by spending time in my garden,” doesn’t mean I don’t understand you.

P.P.S. Longer entries en route, I promise. Been crazy-busy over here lately, and today’s a real doozy.

Mr. Price’s most recent short film just got into SIFF! Whoohoo!

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, s.e.x., apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (7) »

How is it that that scads of people who salivate daily at pieces of gnarled, bloody-but-bleached cow cadaver and think “Mmmm-mmm, tasty!” can look at living, breathing and very-much-alive bodies and genitals and think “Ewwww, gross?”

Just curious. And procrastinating.

posted in Heather Corinna, sexuality, apropos of nothing, body image | permalink | comments (0) »

I always forget that really high fevers seriously fry your brains to shite. The entriety of yesterday is utterly lost to me.

Somehow this weekend — I’m guessing while spending a couple hours sharing steam with a pile of women at the Olympus this weekend in between photo shoots — I picked up one helluva bug, resulting in my spiking a 103 fever yesterday afternoon. As of today, I seem to be getting on the mend, but one shouldn’t expect to be hearing from me for a few days more.

I swear, it’s always something.

posted in Heather Corinna, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (5) »

Ah, redesign.

So, while my father is still sleeping — and why he always insists on sleeping on the couch when I set up a room for him, I will never know — with my pug curled on his legs, I’m sitting in the office here downstrairs working on the redesign for Scarleteen.

Because in a month or so, the site revamp really should be finished so that when the book rolls out, the site looks its best and also has the supports needed to help sell and promote the book.

Umm, eek.

My end of the work isn’t huge, really: the users have always liked our design scheme and vibe, so I’m not making ginormous changes, just some sprucing up, and some work to create a layout that will both work in Drupal and be more useable overall. We also need some text design upgrades. Thank christ the users like the yellow jammie stripes we’ve had for years, because I couldn’t bear to part with them: they’re just so cozy. In fact, without even realizing I was doing it, I like them so much I unconsciously painted the upstairs studio in the exact same stripes.

(My poor AGA blogger and also longtime Scarleteen user who visited me a couple weeks ago had to feel like she was sleeping inside the site. Thankfully, most of our houseguests aren’t Scarleteen users, so they just find the stripes fresh and charming, rather than a little disturbing. Maybe the stripes are the issue with my Dad, though. Hmm.)

Truth be told, I miss design work. Back in the day, when I first started all the sites, I did a lot of freelance web and ad design to keep me afloat, and it was one of those things I rarely got tired of doing. It always feels a bit like rearranging your room, when you’ve got an existing design, with existing limits and contraints, but you get to freshen it up a bit so — ideally — you get that fine combination of the comfort and familiarity of your old room with the feeling that you’ve inherited a new one.

I wish I could donate every minute of the next couple of weeks to doing this, because fiddling with colors and text, moving things around to see how they fit, fashioning patterns and such is just a seriously good time. It’s the kind of work you can very easily lose hours and hours in without knowing they passed, and any work that has that effect is always my favorite.

Of course, we’ll see if I still feel this way about it once I get it done to the point where Garrett and I start trying to fit it into Drupal and make everything work. It’s always the functionality stuff that bursts my happy-play-with-the-pretty-colors bubble.

* * *
While I’m doing this, I’m also talking IM with Becca about Montessori and such for her in-utero kid. It’s awesome to be able to talk to her about this stuff, but it’s also a really big bummer not to be there with her for all of this. Moving here has had a lot of perks, but there have been some very real losses, and not being able to see the closest friend I’ve ever had, especially right now, is absolutely one of them.

Thankfully, she has a visit here scheduled for a few weeks from now, too. Here’s hoping that when she leaves I don’t end up with a reenactment of the night before I moved from Minneapolis, when I had a cry about leaving her and Briana that I — and poor Mark — wasn’t sure would ever end. I’ve had some hard, hard breakups in my life, but it’s been really rare for me to end up upset to that level, where breathing was difficult, where I didn’t think I would ever stop drying, and where your stomach muscles hurt from sobbing so hard. Over the first couple months I lived here, I’d have to make myself just not think about Becca and Bri, because when I did, I’d end up a big, weepy mess all over again.

Anyone who supports the cultural mandate that romantic relationships are by default somehow the most important, more important and bigger than any other, has never had a cry like that over having to part with friends.

And now I’m missing teaching in the classroom, to boot. Best get back to designing to chase the impending blues away, and to, you know, get it done.

posted in Heather Corinna, family, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (3) »

Just back from running a few errands in the drizzle, and within a mere four blocks I enjoyed one very fine sight and one very fine sound.

First, I see a little old woman and her little old dog on a walk. BOTH are wrapped up to the nines in utterly ridiculous sweaters, the likes of which I have not seen since 1985 (actually, I think combined, they both may have been wearing nearly as many sweaters as were made in 1985). BOTH are taking tiny, cautious but very determined steps as they walked. BOTH are literally smiling at each other.

My insulin levels went through the roof. Oh, for technology to advance to the point where there can be a camera simply installed in my head.

Just a few blocks later, I turn unto my street and am BLASTED with loud Mariachi music from one of the building under construction. For starters, anyone who is truly an expert in Heather-trivia knows I am kookoo for Mariachi. So kookoo, that when I had my On Our Backs spread a few years back, when asked the best way to woo me out of my mind, I replied that a full Mariachi band just below my window would easily do the trick. Alas, it has yet to happen. Clearly, no one really loves me.

But here’s the best part — Seattle? Not exactly a diverse city. Growing up in Chicago, especially in Rogers Park off Clark St., I obviously was very spoiled with diversity, so I’ll give you that my standards are high (the notion of which is, of course, ridiculous). But by pretty much any standard, much of Seattle is the Unbearable Whiteness of Being. And a decently sized Chicano population we very much do not have, particularly in Ballard.

So, turning the corner to my place on a grey, rainy day — far, far away from the things that feel most like home to me — and not only hearing the wild violins, trumpets, guitars make sounds that I love and miss hearing all over the place, but hearing them loud as FUCK, as they’re meant to be? Melodioso.

P.S. Because it’s too exciting not to gloat about, Dr. Lynn Ponton (whose work I think it sheer genius, and who I admire like nobody’s business), Lisa Jervis, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards gave us such awesome blurbs for my books this week, it totally spun my head. A happy, happy author I be.

posted in bookish bits, home, Ballard, apropos of nothing | permalink | comments (6) »