Ok, my finals are over so now i can actually write down some of the things i've been thinking of over the last couple weeks. Phew! Yawn. But mostly just Phew!

( overdue ramblings about pattern drafting, margot, surprises, and new orleans in the 1970's )

My birthday proper was at times really sweet and also just kind of unmonumental. The fact that i am prepared to enjoy a pretty fucking unmonumental day on my birthday is, i suppose, a sign of something positive.

Mercury was the first person to wish me happy birthday in real time. She walked into my room alone, left and came back and handed me a folded over piece of paper decorated with some non-objective art and no words. She walked out again, then walked partway back and yelled "that's for your birthday". Her face was sweet for a minute; i asked if she wanted to give me a hug, then she was kind of surly again and walked away.

Then i was assaulted with a whole slew of birthday greetings. Facebook does something really weird to birthdays -- suddenly all these people remember your birthday who normally wouldn't. You have this moment where you get this huge long string of recognition which feels sort of amazing and then it kind of slips through your fingers. And later in the day you are kicking around by yourself trying to use the bathroom at the used bookstore so you can concentrate long enough to look for a copy of that crazy pattern book you've been promising yourself since the summer but they've installed a new "employees only" sign on the bathroom and the clerk is kind of hardass about it so you just have to call it a day and go home so you can pee. At that point it is sort of irrelevant that 15 people wished you happy birthday over facebook that very same day. But then you realize how desperately you need a nap so maybe it's best you are going home a little early.

I hadn't slept well because i have been feeling buzzed this week (gearing up for art, good crush mail, mind racing about things i enjoy thinking about, i'm not complaining). I was happy that my sleep deficiency didn't really matter, that i didn't have to go to work even though it was sunday. I ate a delicious brunch at a place which is not close to my house but which has one of the best bike routes to get to it. Streets that look like they are going to dead end at the railroad tracks but then they turn at the last minute. Really really empty-for-sunday industrial corridors. I saw Tricia standing at the bus stop on my ride home and stopped and we talked until the 66 bus came for her. She told me that 'R', the prickly matriarch who owns the bar where all the troba musicians play, had asked after me more than once, had even asked in english. Whatever i did to get on her radar, it's hard to say, but i felt inordinately flattered, since i've always had an awkward and completely impractical crush on her. Tricia and i made a tentative date to go to Decima together, maybe R will be in one of her effusive drunk moods when we go.

( a bit more still )

My sister had been nursing this sickly white cat back to life. There was a series of dreams in which i awoke with her cat in my bed and would get up to go find her with the cat, which would turn out to be a white rat, and there would be bloody dead grey cats under the chair in the living room where i found my sister. The last one of these scenarios took place in a very small apartment with the smallest kitchen i'd ever seen. Julia had come barging into the living room, but the color of her skin was this wierd dark metallic bronze and she had pale circles around her eyes. I looked at her, looked at the dead cats under the chair, remembered i had seen those same cats in several other places recently, questioned how wierd my fake sister looked, and suddenly it occurred to me i was probably dreaming. I quickly picked up an open book to see if i could read it and the swimming pulsating unreadable letters on the page confirmed that i was, in fact, dreaming. I looked at my fake sister and said, "i'm dreaming" and beelined for the window, because i love jumping out windows when i know i'm dreaming. I hesitated for a minute thinking maybe i should double check an make sure i wasn't awake. I thought, "fuck it" and pushed the window open and jumped out in one fluid motion which took about 45 seconds. But there was no freefall; instead i went "thud" on a very close rooftop crevasse. "Damn I thought" for a hot minute, and then realized it was ok, i would do other things with my lucidity.

"i'll find my way back into that dream and figure out what is up with those cats." I figured since i was dreaming i could talk to the cats and solve the mystery. Then, suddenly, my desire to face the dead cats and work out what was happening was so much stronger than any interest in flying or free falling. I got back into the dreams and crawled around on the floors at little parties full of chatting friends poking my head under the sofas and chairs where i asked lots of cats what was going on in their world. They didn't tell me much, but i had a feeling of making progress.

I went to a compound full of manufactured homes and looked at the huge quantity of cluttery artifacts pasted to all the walls in the houses. While in the houses i recalled a waking conversation i recently had in which i was told that dreams were actually a result of all the miscellaneous unimportant thoughts of the day all laid out in one place trying to pass as a coherent story. I looked at a couple pictures on the walls and thought "oh yeah, that was from an advertisement in my waking life yesterday". Then i looked into a ridiculously messy room and said, laughing, "and that's my bedroom floor from when i was in highschool".

Outside of the manufactured homes an unmarked car pulled up and 4 or 5 large white guys jumped out and started wailing on a woman who was standing there. I tried to make myself invisible and started to slink off. Then i thought, "oh my god, i'm dreaming so they can't hurt me if i fight them. And, furthermore, if i remember to do it when i'm dreaming maybe i'll be in the habit and have the guts to do it when i'm awake". By the time i'd thought it all out, one of the guys had the woman in the car, so i banged on it and pushed the window open, and yelled at him, and punched at him in the car.

I woke up not having successfully saved the woman from the men; but still feeling a little triumphant for remembering to fight.

I thought about this dream all day the next day. 6 or 7 years ago i was in a really carefree amazing positive period of my life and i had lots of lucid dreams in which i tried to teach myself to fly and realized all i had to do was throw myself out of windows and freefall. Or sometimes i did fly, or other times i slammed on the accelerator pedal of a car in the pitch black, high from the speed of it, knowing i wouldn't die.

I entered a really hard chapter of my life after that and all but completely stopped having any lucind dreams at all. And now i can't really freefall, but it's not like i don't have the power to do it, it's more like i just know it's not what i'm supposed to do with my power. I'm not afraid of freefall; i've no business wasting my lucid dream time on it. There is some fucked up shit going on, dead cats everywhere, people getting beat up by undercover cops and klansmen. It is every bit as compelling to use my power to face that shit the best i know how. That metaphor translates really well into my waking life right now. I feel like i've had my power back, more or less, for a little while, but i'm not floating. I'm not this crazy obvious super fun drag queen who just radiates satisfaction and hedonism. But i have all this shit i really want to get done, and it's awesome, and there's no guarantee i can pull it off, but maybe i'm ready to actually try. Time to have some hard conversations with some dead cats, eh? (deep breath)

This morning at about 7:00 am my housemate, mike, started off on an inspired monologue about how he was thinking about baby dolls and wondering what percent of dolls were female and he had this idea that we should make a stop motion animation movie about a world of all dolls and the implications of a society that was gendered according to the toy manufacturer dictated statistics regarding gender break down of dolls. It was all happening very fast, but by the time mike had gotten to the part about how we would work out the detail of everyone in our sci fi new world of dolls being awkwardly different sizes ("or maybe the different size would also have some socio political ramblings," he thought out loud) both Anne and I had our hands on our hips and said, in unison, "oh my god, who are you?". You see, mike is the most linear non-creatively inclined close friend i have. He's an accountant and a historian, and admits to not having a creative bone in his body, and here he is conceptualizing cinematography masterpieces a la Todd Haynes. I stated my wondrous suprise, while anne continued to interrupt him with her ribbing about his new creative streak. I told her to shut up and let him roll with it already. He got in a few more words about how we could set up the stop motion animation process starting with Mercury's existing collection of dolls.

By 7:15 Anne was flipping through pictures of Mercury from her preschool halloween party. "Oh my god, Mat, did you see this!!!!???" she said, so i dragged my oolong tea over and witnessed pictures of 12 boys in random dark colored superhero etc. costumes, 10 girls in shiny pink dresses, 1 girl in a shiny light blue dress, and Mercury in a brown bat costume with a massive frown on her face. Anne was pissed "the teacher told all the kids to dress up as a character from a book, so Mercury went dressed as Stella Luna, a bat, a girl bat, but every single other girl went as a princess or a fairy. So Mercury felt really bad and left out." Our house resounded with adult cries of "oh my god, NOT ONE OTHER PARENT managed to conceive of SOMETHING OTHER than PINK/FRILLS even when the ASSIGNMENT encouraged thinking OUTSIDE THE BOX???!!!" Then we had the conversation we frequently have about how much more gendered kids stuff seems now than it has at any time in our lifetimes (a short time, granted, but, damn, we slid a lot since the seventies. Creepy).

It's not a new topic for me for sure, but there's another tangible layer on it. We are probably never going to get Mercury into another bat (or lizard or dinosaur or superhero) costume again at least until she is 16. And that makes me sad, just on a personal level. Because, really, before she went to school, she was pretty excited about the bat.

Right before i slipped out the door for school, at about 7:30 Jupiter sauntered his little two year old grinning self through the kitchen, pointing and smiling at his head and asking me what i think about his pink barrette. I quietly hid the cringing i felt at the thought of what a few more years of gendered peer pressure would do to his excitement about the pink barrettes.

Put on the Free to Be You and Me Album one more time before i go hang myself with a trademarked my little princess glitter jumprope from toys r us. Or better yet, give me and mike that video camera. Maybe we'll make a stop motion doll feature to usher in the next level of Free to Be You and Me. Do you think Todd would be willing to consult?

Last night i dreamt about Ida. I had been on the land, setting up stuff for the fruit jam. There were a handful of us there, we were setting up a second kitchen by the back barn, thinking we could feed an extra 200 people there which would take some strain off the kitchen. I went to bed on a floor full of mattresses, something felt odd about that setup and decided i should probably set up a tent in the morning. I woke up the next day and looked out the window to see hundreds and hundreds of people already there, a random mix, nobody i really knew. I found some old friends and we had a moment of feeling shocked about the numbers "where are these people coming from"? we said "and how is ida going to keep supporting this festival?" May and I had an argument about whether changing the main acts from the end of the week to the beginning of the week would curb the crowd. I was convinced that would just make it worse.


Hmm, not a really original dream, barely fiction at all really.

Then again, Simon and I had a really long conversation about Ida last night. I guess it's always close to my brain, even more than 5 years after i left. I have things i need to say about it. I constantly worry that it will shrivel up and that little validation of my existence will no longer be there. It's good to talk with someone who lived there, who really gets the depth of the weirdness of some of the dynamics, the reasons why there is so much resistance to certain things.

Simon had just gone to visit and it made me sad to realized it's been a few years since i've been able to go while there was not a festival going on. There were two years there when my work didn't approve a single vacation day, and i got in the habit of not just going down there to say "hey", and now i don't really even know who lives there anymore. I don't know much about the place anymore, from a day to day kind of perspective.

But i still dream about it. hmmm. pervasive, isn't it?

Truth is, i'm thinking about dropping chemistry. I don't have any terrible grades yet, but it seems inevitable. On every quiz, i catch one stupid wrong calculation which messes up my entire answer before i turn it in, and there's always one problem i get completely wrong because of a stupid wrong calculation i didn't have time to catch before i turned it in. More importantly, i'm noticing that this chemistry class is really really bad for my nerves.

I took the 100 level chemistry course so i would be prepared for this course, but i'm not. There are such massive gaps in my understanding of calculations, and every time i sit down with homework i stare at all the rules i was given and, i swear to god, none of those rules have anything AT ALL to do with what i'm supposed to figure out. You know, they give you rules in which you base everything on it's relationship to Hydrogen and Oxygen and then they give you a problem in which there is so Hydrogen and Oxygen to compare your element to. And you look and look and look and there are no fucking rules anywhere for sulfur or lead.

It makes me feel like someone tore pages out of my book and didn't tell me. It makes me feel like certain types of sciences are these really exclusive clubs and either you are hardwired to just know, magically and intuitively, what will happen to the goddamned Sulfur, or you're not. Damned if anyone can explain it to you.

And then, i think, i could spend 40 hours straight researching and mastering these rules and then, proud and pleased with myself, sitting there on top of the glow of understanding, pencil in hand with a correctly figured reaction . . . i would proceed to fuck up the final equation because i punched a .06 into the calculator instead of a .09 during one of the 16 steps of converting from grams to molar mass to molecules to atoms to electrons etc. etc. etc. Do you all know how many hours upon hours it takes to go back and diagnose and then undo those kinds of errors when you are predisposed to making them at least every other problem? And don't give me smug tips about how to avoid errors -- i wrote about this in previous posts. I have been tangling with this issue my whole life. I spend more time checking and double checking than anyone i know. I don't remember numbers, they are basically pretty meaningless to me as entities. You are going to be about as successful yelling into the ear of a dislexic to just "STOP SWITCHING YOUR LETTERS AROUND. ITS REALLY SIMPLE!" My inherent distrust of my own ability to ever get any equation correct is nervewracking enough in every day life -- buying groceries, administering medications, cooking rice. Mostly i had conquered all that. I figured out that with a few precautions i could trust myself not to make fatal errors, (and i've learned to be frugal enough that i stay out of debt even though i don't even attempt to balance acheckbook)

But, when you add chemistry to it, the anxiety resurfaces. And grows massive fangs. This is not me practicing fractions in my head while i swim so that i'll be less likely to put too much flour in the cake. This is me feeling completely doomed.

I know i should stick it out, and i guess i'm still planning on trying. But i hate how frustrated it makes me feel. I hate to think how many things i will NOT be doing this fall in place of banging my head against a wall of trying to understand something i really don't know if i will understand when it is all over. That's a lot of time to dedicate to something, particularly something which is essentially a hoop people have to jump to prove they want to be nurses badly enough.

I think to myself "i'm to old for shit like this", then i realize that by writing about it, i've calmed my nerves enough to actually think about going back to look at those equations again.

hmmm. wish me luck.

Is it morally reprehensible to make a web based social networking page (lj,fb, god forbid myspace) for a fictional character who does not have any experience at all with computers or the internet? I mean, i kind of want to have reminders of Margot in different spaces to keep me thinking about and working on my story. But they barely have written word much less digital media in her time and city. So is it wrong to break her up in pixels and put her out into computer land?

The bad thing is, i mean the good thing is, that after 3 years of not drawing a single comic strip i'm in a crazy whirlwind of wanting to draw. All the images are coming to me. When i need to take a break from my long piece, all i want to do in pick away at fun short pieces or figure out how to turn a couple completed strips into a mini comic, or, or, or. I'm scheming more comic artist "retreats" for myself. I got in a really long conversation with the guy at Utrecht about pens and comic and/or illustration style and the importance of meeting up with other folks regularly to maintain inspiration. I'm taking names from friends of folks they know who draw comics, i pushed myself as quickly as possible through my homework today so i'd have enough time to go to the coffee shop and sit and draw. My roomate asked me if i could do an illustration to show a point to her 4th 5th and 6th graders and i completed it immediately and enjoyed the funny little challenge of it. That and i'm writing letters and postcards and making mail art again. All that stuff that makes me feel engaged and inspired in a reasonably steady way which i can depend on.

The problem, of course, is that i just started Chemistry AND Physiology classes. Gawd, it hangs over me, the awareness that my sudden surge of motivation to draw is likely to get crushed under a hundred tons of lab reports. Really, i know, it's alright. I have some things started, maybe i'll still pick away. I don't feel like i'm about to enter another 3 year dry spell. I'm just forseeing a few evenings of me crawling into my textbooks and wondering with unnerving seriousness if i shouldn't drop out of my nursing tract and take a bunch of art classes or go in for my MFA after all.

Ok, to bed early so i'm ready for my Conversions quiz at 0830 tomorrow. There's always margin doodles to look forward to, right?

My chemistry 201 professor is going to kick my ass, i can already tell. I'm not saying i'm not up for the challenge, it's just that i finally got bitten by the cartooning bug hard and it's sad to think that my sudden run of drawing inspiration is about to get nipped in the bud by really hard math problems masquerading as science. I feel a little like i am racing against the clock to pencil as many pages of the Margot story as possible before formulas for chemical reactions invade my brain for once and for all.

Some of my favorite fellow students are in a different section of A&P II this semester, but at least two member of my tight little study group are in my class, so that is really exciting. It was nice to walk through the halls of Truman and run into folks and say hello again. I really did miss some of those folks over the summer and i'm glad to be immersed back in the culture that is Harry S. Truman City College of Chicago.

Speaking of which, on my first day back to school there were a handful of Larouche people standing out in front of the college with huge posters of Obama with a little hitler moustache. So weird. I mean, in Uptown, Chicago, really people, how well do you think that's going to go over? I sat and ate my paleta and watched person after person walk by cursing under their breaths. Then, one of the young men sitting near me finally got up and grabbed the biggest of the posters and threw it on the ground and stomped on it. The larouche guy picked up the offending poster and tenderly smoothed out Obama's hitlerized face, while the young man came back and a small handful of us discussed exactly why the campaign was a fucked up way to express criticisms about the healthcare policy. When i got out of my last class a couple hours later, the larouche people and their posters were nowhere to be seen.

Oh, and man am i addicted to the Jordan Almonds they sell in 1 pound containers at Salaam Sweets. So good.

Ok, now i gotta get offa here and draw some overwrought futuristic cities. see ya.

In mercury's life one of the primary pillars of gender normativity is her paternal grandmother, who sends her pink things and mermaids like they are going out of style. Her parents (my roomies) and i chuckle at it all and share long winded rants about how much worse gender pigeonholing has gotten among makers of items for children. (mind you, we all like grandma very well). Needless to say, we stood with baited breath when Mercury began opening the large pink sparkly package grandma had sent her for her fourth birthday.

The small package was a playmobil figure set with a flannel clad female figure and a baby with a carrier. My instant reaction was "oh my god, of course she caters to the whole little girl mama baby play". The big package contained an entire playmobil camper set complete with tons of snap apart and snap back together detailed plastic pieces. At first there was no time to think; it was a race against time snapping all the pieces together while making Mercury feel involved before Jupiter managed to shove all the diabolical air-way obstructible items down his tiny yet massive cakehole. Once the tiny silver-ish plastic forks and knives were safely in their compartments i surveyed the significance of the gift. A camper set, not too bad, it had bicycles and folding chairs and kitchen implements too. It contained a four person nuclear style family, but even the "female" characters were wearing practical camping clothes and all figures were equally able to fit in the driver seat of the camper. Then I thought about it for a minute. Why had grandma sent the additional figure set? Possibly it was so there would be a little baby and bassinet set for Mercury to get excited about. But also, it meant that the formerly nuclear camper family now contained an extra adult female figure. Now it's possible that's on purpose too -- Papa's family has known of my existence for 15 years and they are pretty aware of my current arrangement with their grandkids. Certainly we have had amicable meetings when they've come through town, and some members of that extended family have more or less thanked me for my involvement. The fantastic thing about kids that age is that whatever image the adults want to uphold, the kids are gonna be straightforward. The Mat, while certainly secondary, is sometimes gonna show up in the pictures with the house and Mommy and the Papi and the babydolls. When the preschool teachers, grandparents and biological uncles ask "who's that fifth person in the picture?" they are gonna say "it's Mat" in the tone of "you dumbass, everyone has a Mat in their house, don't you know anything?"

So, yeah, thanks to semi-traditional catholic grandmother, Mercury's camper sent includes a "Mat". I'm not gonna be too alarmed that the mat comes in the same box with a baby and carrier. Hmm, yeah, come to think about it, i'm not gonna get into those dreams i've been having about little newborn babies in my arms turning into cats. That will be another post entitled "mat's medium aged spinster anxiety" or some other such thing.

Instead I will leave you with a photo of the plastic version of my happy summer vacationing family:



(When i went to take the picture, one of the kids from the nuclear family set was missing. Will have to check Jupiter's cakehole later).

Three weeks ago i received my prized set of wisconsin bike maps in the mail. They are four maps showing eight sections of the state with all the county roads and secondary highways color coded according to bike safety.

Two weeks ago i packed up my panniers with a new tiny 1 person tent, lots of dried fruits and nuts, a change of spandex and, of course, the map showing the southeasternmost regions of Wisconsin. Deloria (my bicycle) and i jumped on the metra out to Harvard and got off at the end of the line. I biked approximately 50 miles to the Southern Unit of the Kettle Moraine state forest and camped. The second day i biked up to the Northern Unit of the Kettle Moraine, which i thought was going to be 55 miles but turned out i rode almost 70 miles that day. I rode back to the Southern unit and then a friend met me and we canoed and drove home the following day. Perhaps a cheat, but it was nice to do something other than bike on that fourth day. When i mapped out my exact route on google pedometer, i was told the entire route was 186 miles. Follows are some highlights of the trip( words and pictures behind the cut )

In no particular order

#1 Upside down dancing with Mercury to Team Dresch. I asked if she wanted to have a dance party. she said yes. I asked what she wanted to dance to, she vacillated a few times then pointed to the Team Dresch "Personal Best" album and stuck to her decision. By the time the record got to the song "Freewheel" we had played the 'hang Mercury upside down' trick, she had laughed at my Riot Grrrl dance, and we were sitting upside down in chairs dancing.

#2 I'm now a member of a gym. It's pretty cheap, is open 24 hours, and i like to swim and like the idea of being able to do so at odd times. I went today and decided to try out the crazy machines after my swim. As i moved my legs back and forth on the elliptical and surveyed the scene around me, i realized it was all a narrow precursor to Matrix. All of us on our perpetual motion machines (so many of them!) plugged into individual TV's and MP3 players, trying to ignore the hordes around us. It was kind of scary, but also i secretly kind of dig those science fiction moments of the every day. As i was ellipsing i had a very meta moment in which Olivia Newton John's video "let's get physical" comes on (though without audio, instead i'm watching the video to a Fastbacks song or something). I really kind of like that video, i decided. It starts of with this funny role reversal in which Olivia is relatively well dressed and there are all these shots of super stacked guys with tiny bikinis on. Then there are a bunch of plump guys too. At the end two of the stacked guys walk towards the locker room with their arms around eachother. And Olivia walks off making eyes with one of the portly guys. I know i saw that video a bunch of times when i was in my pre-teens, but, you know, i don't remember any of that subtext. crazy.

#3 My science fiction character got a letter from another science fiction character in another time, place, context. I can't even tell you how excited i am about being the medium for this correspondence.

#4 My first pair of Summer pants of the season are almost finished. Even though i decided to go a little overboard with the extra touches.

#5 My housemate (papa) told me that when he did little piggies with Mercury the other day she insisted he not forget to include me "Don't Forget Mat!" is what she apparently said. :)

This years pride is the 20th anniversary of my coming out as queer. Maybe it's not as monumental as it sounds. ( how it all began )

The first thing i did yesterday was to spend 3 hours looking for my keys, to no avail. I completely pulled apart my room and put it back together, one thing at a time. I canceled a much-looked-forward to hang out date with a good friend. I was foul and, later, at the brink of tears. They my roommate brought his keys to me on his lunch break and i relaxed for a minute.

Then the auto shop called me and told me that my car needed a $650 repair, minimum. The blue book value, upon looking on line, was around $200. Mind you i was planning to drive the car down to Tennessee on Monday. Oh, Reaver Ellison, i thought to myself, and cried a little. The shop informed me i had to take the car away that day. It was 3:00. I was planning to pick up the kids at 4:00, but i could push it until 6:00. I made a furious rash of calls, found a place that would give me $150. I told them i'd want to pull the battery since i'd just replaced it the day before. I jumped on my bike, and headed towards my auto shop. 15 minutes into it, it occurred to me that i had failed to bring the title. I biked home and back again. 30 minutes more off the ticking clock. The guy at the shop was actually super sweet and empathetic and didn't flinch when he saw me stuffing my bike into the car. He made sure i had enough brake fluid so that my ridiculously leaky brake lines wouldn't drain and cause me to die on my way to the salvage yard. On the way there i was cussing at traffic on western, by now it was pushing 5 pm and i knew i had a 50 block ride ahead of me.

But, by the time i got to the yard, my total annoyance at what a fucked up day it had been started to break. I clearly restated my caveat about the battery to everyone i encountered at the yard. Nobody gave me a problem. I pulled the car up behind piles of wreckage. I pulled the vice grips off the stub of the driver side window crank, the ones i've been using as a window handle for years, and used it to take out the battery. The old guy on the yard was amused by my strapping the battery to the back of my bicycle with bungee cords. I found an extra bungee in the car, which was helpful. I packed the pannier with maps, my housemates old mix tapes, the bag full of quarters, some mints, a crusty pair of sunglasses i found on the floor of the car, and the vice grips. The guys in the office cheered me on, expressed concern about my riding up Central Park ave. in particular, and made jokes about how i'd have to find a passenger to offset the weight of the battery. They gave me the full $150 bucks with no shenanigans, and i rode north to the children, occasionally feeling the weight of the battery try to pull me into a fishtail. I felt sweaty, and like i was only two steps ahead of a headache, and overwhelmed about what i was going to do about getting to tennessee, and tired, and worried about getting to the kids on time. I felt annoyed that the long afternoon of riding in the Burley and/or playing in the park with the kids was lost. But i felt triumphant. I'd gotten through a supremely frustrating day with my humor intact. And i'd had a genuine adventure. I regretted that i didn't have time to stop at the cathedral cafe on the way home, or that i hadn't taken any photos of the battery-less Reaver Ellison next to Deloria P. with the battery strapped to her back rack.

The kids weren't too cranky and forgave me for picking them up at 6:10 (as did the daycare owner- i'd had my roommates call ahead). I made pancakes and we went in the backyard for a while. Then the parentals came home. That was when i found out that my keys were in my roommate's purse (at her job) all day. I was annoyed, but also relieved to get them back. Plus my roommate felt pretty bad.

Then friends Mopey and Messy picked me up and took me to dinner before the usual thursday night dancing rituals. Which were exactly what i needed.

Yesterday was one of the most insane workdays i've had in quite a long time. Three falls in the first twenty minutes of the shift insane. But it was okay in the end, i managed not to get stressed. I sort of laughed my way through it, along with one or two of my coworkers.

Today before work i got the song "perfect day" stuck in my head (thanks to sadie_sabot). It's secretly a sardonic little ditty, but fools you into believing the chorus whole heartedly.

I looked at school websites and realized i'd been mistaken about how many semesters of chemistry i'd need, not only for the UIC program but also possibly the RUSH accelerated MSN program, the one i was sure i had 1,000 prerequisites left before i could even think about it. So, there are at least 3 or more programs i could easily be ready to apply for in 2010 than i'd thought! This makes my series of choices make a lot more sense than i thought it did, and i'm really excited about that.

I took a nice nap before work.

Then I rode half the way to work with all of my housemates (the small ones in the burly behind one of the big ones). And it was a beautiful day. And the desk clerk on the first floor of my building sang hello to me as i got on the elevator, like she sometimes does.

We had exactly the same patients at work tonight, but nobody fell, and the staff was awesome. I got a short break but enjoyed my book nonetheless. And they served a new kind of pizza for supper which all the patients liked. My patients were pretty difficult but not mean, the kind who are impulsive and want to fall but also hug you and kiss your forehead and tell you they love you. It's a lot of running around, but it's easy on the ego. And my coworker printed out tons of coloring pages (meerkats!) which the patients were really getting into. And the box of crayons has these really awesome metallic colors with built in 'tarnish' layers. And i finished work on time tonight.

So there i was riding home just before midnight on a sunday night, the streets sort of quiet and beautiful, my jacket just the right weight for the weather. I took a route i don't usually take and found out the kinda fancy but not that expensive pizza by the slice place with the outdoor seating was still open. After midnight on a Sunday! So i got a delicious slice of margharita pizza and sat at one of those little metal outdoor tables and read a whole chapter of my book. It was perfect.

The rest of the ride home i kept noticing the way the light hit the little fluffy things in the air.

And i plowed through the western avenue light just exactly fast enough to make the armitage avenue light without having to wait. And without running any red lights. Not really, anyway.

So i sang, in my lowest voice, which isn't very good, but which i like nonetheless, "it's such a perfect day, i'm glad i spent it with you, oh what a perfect day, you just keep me hanging on . . ."

I've had a lot of long conversations about gay marriage lately. I told a friend that the thing that frustrates me about all the prop 8 stuff is that it has pushed me further towards offering more support towards the gay marriage efforts than i would naturally be inclined. My friend said "why?", and suddenly for the first time in a really long time i felt like i had permission to join someone in a whole hearted rant about the whole gay marriage thing. It's complicated, because i can't really say it in front of most straight company, because my voice would be too easily co-opted by pro prop-8 types. I think Proposition-8 type proposals are even more stupid than gay marriage. Way more stupid. And, yeah, i cried when i saw pictures of older lesbians finally being able to get married (before the proposition was passed). And, no, i don't want to fight other people's fighting for that right if that's what's really important to them. But then i feel like all of those disclaimers come in the way of me expressing my fears about the current focus on marriage and my desires in regards to gay rights. So here, emboldened by my friend, i am going to present some of my specific fears and objections to the present state of the gay rights marriage focus and some larger thoughts about other aspects of our queer history and what we have to learn from that. Also, i'd like to present the general outline of some ideas i've developed with other folks about what i think would be a viable alternative to the current marriage rights track. ( not-so-modest proposal behind the cut )

My thighs have that beautiful ache to them that you get after riding at least 30 miles 3 days out of the last week. I bought new biking shoes, the kind that clip onto the pedals. I have to get the kinks out of using them, but i'm excited by my new willingness to try out nerdy bike gear. There is something to the whole "attached to your bike" thing, as it turns out. In any case, I am raring to go and summer is the beautiful girl i'm determined to woo this year. Harsh chicago winters aren't good for all that much, except for building up that much extra momentum. When the pendulum swings back millions of chicagoans rush down their front steps screaming "you better watch out world!", and i really do love that feeling. This feeling, because i'm knee deep in it.

Today i met up with a small band of stone soupers and friends and we rode up to the botanical gardens. There was about a 30 minute stretch of cold, light rain which coincided with us all hitting low blood sugar and getting a little stymied in our efforts to find a suitable meal. But the minor tension passed quickly, and, let me tell you, tex mex food in a gaudy atmosphere tastes really fucking good after 20 miles on not quite enough water. And the margaritas. And we had to wait for the next Metra train home which gave us almost two hours to kill. Which was awesome, because we were laughing and talking about interesting stuff and there was no pressure to go home and finish projects because, well, because the train was gonna leave when the train was gonna leave. And we didn't have to pay for the Metra. But we talked about midnight rides and day rides over the summer.

Last week i rode down to rainbow beach, which was truly lovely. And i did part of the north shore trail by my lonesome last thursday, stopping at the vegan korean restaurant for a bowl of noodles-of-awesomeness and probably the tastiest smoothie/juice drink i've ever had.

I wanna throw my bike on the metra with a sleeping bag and tent, go to the end of the line, and ride for four days before hopping the train back home. I wanna go to every beach in chicago on my bike, do the north shore trail every other week, ride out to the des plaines river trail and see how far i can go. I wanna take my bike to ida and do lake-trip-biathalons in which we ride the 8 miles to the lake then swim out as far as we can go and come home.

Then i have some sewing and writing to do in between bike rides.

I'm ready to go.

I like this condom ad posted by my friend laura. So i'm sharing it.

goddammit. ( queers growing old and dying before they really grow old and other delightful anecdotes under the cut )

We recently covered the integumentary system (skin) in both my classes (Microbiology AND Anatomy Physiology). Now, you may already know that the entire outer layer of the skin as well as the nails and the hair are all dead cells, quite a few layers of dead cells. They are keratinized, more invulnerable, more waterproof, help protect us from pathogens, etc etc. But, the upshot is that the majority of what you ever see of a person is the dead part of them.

I was thinking about this further and realized that it is also true for touch. Mostly what we touch of people is dead cells. Except Kissing. And some kinds of fucking (a lot of fucking is dead cells against living cells). Of course that really made me think. Is that the underlying subconscious reason why deep tongue kissing and certain types of fucking comprise such a deep draw/longing? Because it's the only time we get to touch parts of eachother that are alive? I know someone's written a dissertation on this exact subject. $10 and/or a deep tongue kiss to the person who can point me to it.