I just got back from doing a morning birth control and safer sex presentation for the clinic at a temporary shelter for teen runaways down in Chinatown. It was all boys, which was unexpected, but I grooved with it and all went well. Still trying to figure out how one of the guys was earnestly convinced that his girlfriend hides needles in her hair in order to puncture his condoms — despite the fact that none of his condoms have ever failed to his knowledge, nor has he ever seen any of these aforementioned needles — and why he felt it was so reasonable to suggest that these are things all women do, but that’s beside the point. I’m exposed to so much paranoia, ignorance and just general weirdness in my line of work that often, what surprises me is the absence of it.

The real hilarity of my morning was that on the bus down there, I was a few rows behind a man who had some mix of OCD and Tourette’s going on. He would count all of us on the bus methodically and with his hands — “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, either, nine…” — getting more vexed the higher he got in his count, and when he got to the end of the list, he’d then shake his hands, and yell with no small measure of frustration, “Sex, sex, SEX!”

It took everything I had not to let him know that I heard him, and I was en route to do the best that I could to handle it, but he was going to have to be a little more patient, for crissakes.

posted in Heather Corinna, activism, seattle, apropos of nothing, travel exhuasts me, workworkwork | permalink | comments (3) »

I had an abortion in my early twenties.

It was not easy to afford. I was working sixty hours a week, in a fledgling business with a lot of overhead expenses. I was fresh out of a college education I had paid for myself, and was also caring for a parent at the time. There were no resources through public health in Chicago I could use to help with the expense. My partner was pitching in for half, but all the same, coming up with four hundred dollars was an additional struggle during an experience which was already challenging without any financial issues at play.

That four hundred dollars seemed like a whole lot then. But when it all comes down to it, it’s very little, and what I had to do to come up with it was so small in comparison to the experiences other women go through to obtain their abortions right now.

I had the luck of knowing almost right away that I had become pregnant. Plenty of women don’t find out before their sixth week, like I did. Given how many have irregular menstrual cycles or skip periods with birth control, don’t experience morning sickness or other early pregnancy symptoms, or are in such poor health already that feeling ill is normal, plenty don’t know until their seventh week, their twelfth week, even their twentieth week. For those women, an abortion isn’t going to cost four hundred dollars, but eight hundred, twelve hundred, even two thousand dollars or more and some only find that out once at the clinic. I had the privilege of being able to not only know I was pregnant very early, but the ability to raise money in a short enough period of time that I could get an early abortion which only cost that much. Some women know as early as I did, but are unable to raise the money for an early procedure. For them, every extra week it takes creates a new hurdle as each extra week also elevates their cost, as well as their distress by pushing them closer and closer to the point at which a termination will no longer be an option.

I had the luxury of having a provider a mere three miles from my apartment. But less than 15% of women in the United States have an abortion provider in their county, let alone a ten-minute bus ride away. Those women also have to factor in the time and cost of travel, lodging and meals into the already costly expense of their procedure.

I was able to have an early, first-trimester abortion so I also only had to be at the clinic for a few hours on one day. I did not have to risk my job by needing to take a week off of work for a procedure I probably couldn’t tell my employer about without risking biased treatment ever after. I did not have to worry about having even less money than usual because I needed a week off without pay. I did not have to push myself to get right back to work when I really should have been resting and risk my health in order to make up for the money I spent on my procedure.

I was a working adult, not a teenager: I had my own source of income to help pay for my abortion. I had working friends who I could ask for funds and support. I didn’t have to consider asking my parents, knowing it could compound my trauma and potentially put me at risk of being held back from getting a termination, nor did I have to face those I asked for help denying me funds because they figured I deserved the “punishment” of a child for having sex, having my birth control method fail, not knowing how to use it, not having one at all, or because I had a partner refuse to use a method or cooperate with mine. Because I was employed, period, I did not have to worry about being able to eat or pay my rent that month due to the cost of the abortion sapping all of my funds.

I had my partner’s support and was financially independent, so I had no reason to be concerned with that partner freezing me out of shared bank accounts to pay for my procedure, or refusing to help me with travel to a provider. I did not have to worry that disclosing to a partner or parent that I was pregnant, and that I needed help financially to obtain an abortion, might put me at a possible or known risk of abuse or assault. Because I was living in a city where my reproductive choices were largely supported, I did not have to try and hide my pregnancy or my abortion, or spend extra money to get a ride from a friend, take a cab a town or two over to use a different pharmacy for my medications.

Coming up with the money I had to was also easier for me because I was childfree, unlike the majority of women who have abortions. I wasn’t having to scrape by to support two or three children at the time while also paying for my procedure. I didn’t have to arrange or pay for child care during and after my abortion.

I had a place to stay after my procedure, and lived with a person who was safe for me, so I did not have to worry about my safety during a time that is critical for self-care to prevent infections and complications, or that my lack of money would prevent me from being able to stay somewhere safe during and after my procedure. I could also afford the medications I needed to manage my cramps and to help prevent infection, and could afford to feed myself the day of and after my procedure.

And because I had the means and the support to budget for and use two sound methods of contraception after my procedure, I did not have to go to sleep at night knowing that it was likely I would have to wind up having another termination to go through and pay for, another unwanted pregnancy, very soon after dealing with the one I’d just gone through. I could afford both getting my methods of birth control and paying for them over time.

Many women do not have these abilities, privileges or luxuries. Many either may not be able to have a wanted or needed abortion at all — they may not earnestly have the real, practical right many of us still do of reproductive choice — or they may risk being unable to have all that is needed to make an abortion truly safe and sound, physically and emotionally. Some will put themselves at tremendous risks to try and raise those funds in ways which are unsafe and emotionally traumatic. Some who cannot afford a wanted abortion will seek to self-abort or otherwise endanger themselves. Some will instead have to continue an unwanted pregnancy and deliver a child who is not wanted and who they cannot afford to sustain or nurture, from pregnancy through the whole of that child’s life.

Any of us who has been pregnant knows that what choice we feel is right for us with a pregnancy is not minor: it is essential. Pregnancy is major, and how it impacts our lives, tremendous. Being unable to make our own right choice, to only reproduce and remain pregnant when it is what we want, right for us and when we feel it is right for any child we might bring into the world is tragic and inhumane. As it is, even when we can manage the cost, we have to face protests and challenges from individuals and governments to our essential rights, judgment everywhere we look about a decision no one but we can determine is appropriate, all while often straining to keep our lunches down and continue, uninterrupted, the hectic pace of our lives.

In an ideal world, every woman’s right to choose would be completely supported, and every woman’s knowledge of what was right for herself and her offspring would be respected. Women would have no trouble at all finding all the financial, practical and emotional support needed to only reproduce when that was exactly what we wanted.

We don’t live in that world. We live in a world where, at best, abortion is merely tolerated, and rights expressly for women and children, which primarily or solely impact women and children when granted, are granted as if a great favor is being given, rather than an equal and inalienable right. The political climate we live in now has been doing more and more to keep the legal right to abortion from being practically useful: our right to abortion is only so meaningful when the barriers to it continue to grow. We live in a world where most women make less on the dollar than most men — and where seeking legal protection against that discrimination is still often viewed as frivolous — despite often having a greater financial burden to begin with. We live in a world where many Medicaid programs and private insurance will cover Viagra (even for sex offenders), but not abortion or birth control. Where many women have little or no consistent access to reliable, affordable and safe methods of birth control and plenty have partners that do not support use of those methods even when those women can afford and access them. We live in a world where those who most often tend to find themselves in the most need of an abortion and with the most limitations on getting one are not only women, but women of color, women in poverty, women who were not born (or are not yet) U.S. citizens, disabled women, women with addictions, women who are legal minors, women who have been or are raped, assaulted or abused: women who are marginalized and who have less privilege beyond simply being women.

I cannot imagine having to sneak across state lines so I can obtain an abortion without my father forcibly dragging me out of a clinic as he did two times before. I cannot imagine how, with three children and a coming eviction, I could possibly save for a procedure. I cannot imagine having to have a three-day termination while my only home was a bench on the street, or at home with a partner or family member I knew would beat me when I returned there. I cannot imagine feeling I had no choice but to remain pregnant and deliver a child I strongly suspected would be born profoundly disabled because of a drug addiction I was trying to break free of. I cannot imagine having just emigrated and finding myself in the position to have to pay for an abortion while working for a wage that is a human rights violation in and of itself. I cannot imagine the two-week waiting period advised to abstain from vaginal sex after an abortion to prevent infection seeming a practical impossibility because without engaging in sex work during that period, a woman cannot support herself or her family. I have met the women who have been in these situations and others like them, and have seen a profound helplessness and desperation that no woman should have to experience during an already difficult time.

But I have also met these women and literally watched some of that helplessness dissipate; seen their worries interrupted by an exhale of relief when I can offer them financial help with their abortions.

Cedar River’s Women in Need fund helps to cover the costs of abortion, lodging, transportation, childcare, meals, pregnancy testing, ultrasound and contraception for women who cannot afford or completely cover any or all of these things, even after exhausting every resource they’ve got. The National Network of Abortion Funds has listings for our fund as well as other funds like it you can either use for yourself, refer other women to, or help with a donation. It doesn’t take much, either. The medications needed after a procedure are often less than $20. Meals for a couple of days, $25. Three months of contraception, $75. Lodging for a night, around $100. Enough to cover the portion of a procedure a woman can’t, that $400 that seemed so tough for me to save up, but which is comparatively miniscule.

Because I work part-time for Cedar River, because we serve women from several states and more than one country and also include terminations beyond the first trimester, because we’re one of the last remaining independent feminist women’s health centers in the states which offers abortions, and because we’re having a benefit for our fund on Monday evening, I’d like to ask you to contribute to ours. I’ve administered some of these funds myself, and have spent time with some of the women who need them: I know, first-hand, how important our fund is, what a difference it can make and how it positively impacts the lives of the women we can help with it. I have watched women who would otherwise have been unable to make the choice they know was right for them, or who could not have had what they needed to assure all aspects of their procedure was safe have that ability due to our WIN fund. I give to it myself via a percentage of my paycheck every two weeks, and while I certainly need the income for myself, giving what I can to that fund is something I feel is very important and a really small sacrifice. Of course, some financial help with an abortion does not usually have the capacity to fix everything wrong in a woman’s life, to wipe away inequities and hardships which are bigger than all of this. In some ways, it’s a band-aid, but it can be one critical in keeping a deep wound from getting even deeper; causing further infection in an already fragile balance of well-being and survival. At the times I administer that fund to a client, it’s amazing to see, directly, how my small contribution can sometimes literally change the landscape of a woman’s life, both through being able to make the choice she knows is right and needed, and through being shown a much-needed kindness, sometimes for the very first time.

If you’re in or near Seattle, our benefit tomorrow night for the WIN fund begins at 5:00 at the Karma Martini Lounge & Bistro (where I also had my book release party last year), on 2318 2nd Avenue in Belltown. You can have a few drinks with us and donate there, and hear a little more about what this fund does. Or, you can donate through our website here. Again, if you’d like to give to an abortion fund but prefer to give to women in your area or some other specific area, or even start a fund in an area where there is not one yet, you can take a look at a listing of funds like ours here through the NNAF.

posted in Heather Corinna, reproductive rights, activism, feminism, seattle, events, abortion | permalink | comments (6) »

Yeah, I’m pissed off. I have had a seriously rotten day. And this entry will likely last a day at most before I make it go poofie, because I know it’s an incoherent, resentful vent. I have had to fight off a handful of people either asking me to expose myself in ways that are more about them and being provocative than about me or actually helping anyone, and then beg others to not freaking use my face without my permission just so they could have a pretty graphic for their own ventures or a poster child just because (or just because they didn’t want to be one). I have had to read — okay, I didn’t have to — comments out and about with some of the most ignorant crap I have seen in a very long time.

Here’s the thing that gets me the most: what the FUCK is it going to take for people to realize that NOTHING is an invitation to rape, and nothing, other than being able to be raped — something which is the case for any one of us — is going to “spur” a rapist on?

The comments about and around which have gotten under my skin most today is that a rape survivor or someone else (though I’m not sure why someone else would wear it) wearing the shirt would be “asking for” or “inviting” predators to do something. What the hell? Wearing a t-shirt which says, and means “I was raped,” is an invitation to rape? Is going to let a rapist know you’re who they should choose to rape? Why?

More to the point, it might be worth asking, for those this clueless, what they could do to NOT fall under the scope of someone predatory. I’ve talked about it before, but I will say it again: my 76-year-old great-grandmother was raped and murdered in her own home when she was just sitting, watching the tube. What the hell did SHE do, besides be home, be female, and be vulnerable? The first time I was assaulted I just went in to get a freaking haircut, feeling — obviously, stupidly — like, at the age of 11, a neighborhood hair salon was a perfectly safe place for me to be alone, and feeling like, when the guy who cut our hair asked me to walk back with him to the shampoo room, there was no reason I couldn’t walk back there with him where we’d been before. In fact, the whole time he had me up against the wall, his hands all over me, even in that very moment I could not, for the life of me, figure out what on earth was going on and what exactly I did — of course, what I did — to incite such a thing. What the hell did I do? If I had walked in there wearing this shirt, would I somehow have been inviting it more? As in “I was raped, so you may as well do it again?”

Perhaps more to the point, how stupid are these people to think that choosing to wear anything at all (or not) makes any damn difference in protecting them or anyone else? One of the reasons it is so damn hard for survivors to heal is that eventually, we have to deal with the knowledge that most of the time, unless we’re on guard 24/7 (and even then, that’s hardly a guarantee of safety) or stay locked in a panic room alone, there isn’t shit we can do to prevent someone from trying to rape us. That it could happen almost anywhere, at anytime, with anyone we know. That everything we thought we knew about how safe we were in the world was wrong. And that even in cultivating that terrible awareness, there will always be loads of people utterly convinced that being raped is something we can somehow control or even prevent with something as flippant as simple as what bloody t-shirt we wear.

Last year, a friend of mine asked me if I thought it was out of order to tell her five-year-old daughter that most people were stupid. I thought about it, and then told her that, actually, it seemed like a good idea. After all, that way her kid would either have her expectations met or be pleasantly surprised.

I really, truly wish that someone had told me that when I was five, too. I might get this angry and be this disappointed a whole lot less often.

posted in Heather Corinna, surviving abuse, seattle, because sometimes I'm an asshole | permalink | comments (4) »

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) »

Mark your calendars, Seattleites!

The S.E.X. Book Release Party
Author reading, live sex and sexuality Q&A and book signing
Tuesday, May 8th: 7:00 - 10:00, all ages/ over 21 after 10:00

Karma Martini Lounge & Bistro, Seattle
2318 2nd. Avenue, Belltown (206) 838-6018

They have great food and munchies (including vegan options, and they’ll be adding a few extra to the menu for this event) & drinks. Their apple martini is the best I’ve ever had — none of that gross neon green pucker stuff: it’s got beautiful, fresh, muddled Washington apples. Yum.

Hope to see plenty of you there! The whole place is ours for the night as we fill it, so feel free to bring a guest or twelve!

P.S. If any readers want a copy of the book for a review anywhere they write freelance, let me know, and I’ll get Avalon to send you a copy.

posted in Heather Corinna, bookish bits, s.e.x., seattle, events | permalink | comments (2) »

Yep, more quickies. I’m right now in the midst of juggling editor emails with massive housecleaning in preparation for the giant, much-belated housewarming party that starts late this afternoon.

But, a shout-out favor for Seattleites: in looking at how I’m going to manage book promotion here, one thing I’d really like to do, rather than plain old readings, is organize promo sessions during which parents and/or teens can come, drop questions in a hat, and we can all gab live answering some of them, exploring topics, what have you, in a fairly comfortable setting.

What’d be really nice, if possible, is to be able to sometimes have someone with me who does (either or both) a) peer-to-peer counseling for high schoolers or college-age kids, that is either sex-ed based, or includes sexuality topics or b) a good teen therapist or family counselor. It’d be good promotion for whomever that person or persons are as well. If anyone knows anyone (or is someone who does either of these things) local, I’d be really grateful for the info. I may additionally get some local Scarleteen users/volunteers for a couple of these, but having an extra “expert” besides myself just seems like it’d round things out nicely. I have to say that ideally, a peer-counselor would win out for me, especially when it comes to making more visible the fact that young adults are totally capable people whose voices need to be heard, which is obviously a key issue with the book.

Thanks!

posted in Heather Corinna, s.e.x., seattle | permalink | comments (3) »

To the asshole in the zippy silver sports car,
That one-block section of Shilshole is not actually MEANT for cars. That is why the asphalt that is part of the bike trail there has those cute little symbols with people on their bikes, and those two paths in either direction take up the whole of the street. Yes, there is some quasi-parking for small businesses around the Marina there, but I think we can safely assume that cars going there are a) not meant to use it as a through-street, and b) meant to treat it as if it were a parking lot, as in, you drive slowly and cautiously.

So, when you fly though there like a bat out of hell right behind a biker, and clearly are not going to slow down, you give the biker two fabulous choices:
1) to be hit by your car, or
2) to swerve into the exposed railroad tracks with the deep grooves in a manner that will absolutely cause the biker to fly off her bike, maybe right into your car, but maybe, if she’s lucky, in the other direction.

I chose Option No. 2: it appeared that that way, I at least had a spitting chance of not being hit, which thankfully is what happened here.

To the lesser asshole in the zippy white sports car,
It’s totally cool that unlike Mr. Silver Zippy-Man, you stopped and asked if I was okay. Thanks. However, when I answered that yes, I was, but that like Mr, Silver Zippy-Man, you too should not have been flying through there EITHER, asking if I was okay again — because surely, I must have hit my head if I had any complaint with you — and then huffing in my general direction was total bullshit.

(I’m fine: road-rashed to hell, for sure, but more pissed off and annoyed than physically harmed. The greater injury was to my fine, day-off mood. There are just as many bikers in Seattle, if not more, as in Minneapolis, but this is now the second incident in a very short time I have had with drivers who for the life of them, cannot share the effing road, or even pay attention to what IS the road. I was really liking Seattle today, because I could take a couple hours and go for a nice not-very-frosty ride in December, and I’m mad at stupid people in their stupid cars for taking me from celebration-to-curse in less than thirty seconds flat.)

posted in Heather Corinna, seattle, rantapalooza | permalink | comments (2) »

Things to do on a snowy night in Seattle (when you’ve got the house to yourself with your sweetheart is stranded at work overnight because Seattle has NO clue how to deal with one whole inch of snow):

• Share your cigarettes with the old, weathered guys hanging out on the corner by the 7-11. It’s cold, they’re jonesing, and you’ve got plenty.

• Go see Edie Carey and Holly Figueroa at the Tractor. Enjoy the fact that it isn’t packed for once (because everyone is afraid to drive anywhere since no one here knows how when it’s icy). Have a big pint of cider. Bliss out listening to modern-day sirens, and per usual, remember how much women your age just plain rock. (I mean, seriously, how cool are we?) Enjoy the biggest hug ever with Holly because you’ve finally managed to meet over two years of hit-and-misses.*

• Tiptoe home, because salting the sidewalks is apparently an undiscovered art, and walking uphill on ice is quite the endeavor. Dig how empty the city streets are: hear how every step you take echoes intensely. Listen to how different the big, cold winds sound up here on the coast: more like the UK than in Chicago or Minneapolis.

• Make a warm, roaring fire. Eat tomato soup and grilled-not-cheese in front of it; finish with a cup of hot, mexican cocoa. Pet the pug on your lap. Love bell hooks to death and thank the universe for having her in it.

• Be glad you cranked the heat in your bedroom before you went to bed, since in a 100-year-old house, insulation is very much not the order of the day. Climb under the warm, flannel sheets with your dog AND your cat (who often has to sleep outside the bedroom due to Mr. Price’s allergies and general disdain of all things feline), and sleep in the middle of the bed, monopolizing it completely just because you can.

* One of the many reasons I love the net is that it makes the formation of mutual admiration societies a million times easier than usual. A couple years back, when I was in the midst of the first big writing of the book, I made a journal post thanking some of the musical artists who were getting me through the process, and Holly was one of them. As it turns out, Holly, unbenownst to me, was also a journal reader of mine, and tossed me an email. Very cool when that stuff happens. She’s local, and I very, very much need to take portraits of her, but we’ve had some bad luck until now hooking up, so it was great to finally meet. Her physical energy is like her music: it just comes off of her in these crazy waves of intensity.

posted in Heather Corinna, home, seattle | permalink | comments (5) »