#blogcember

[quickwitter]

SST: A Sexy Memory

I was engaged in high school, and remained so when I moved 350 miles away to go to college. My finaceé moved to Chicago and with him went the chaste fumbling years of waiting until marriage. My next boyfriend had a cool exterior, was deeply feral and sexual. I had been good for a long time, now I was curious about my options.

I don’t remember any of the specifics - what I remember was this. He showed up one afternoon with a bottle of wine he’d stolen from somewhere, and we were lying around chatting while drinking the wine, then not talking and disrobing one another slowly while exploring with hands and tongues and drinking the wine out of the hollows of each others bodies. With him, sex felt like a discovery, an adventure, there was no shame and on this bacchanal day all about touch and taste and play. A lovely writhing entwining. 

[happykaiju]

10. How has where you’ve lived shaped you?

So, I'm in Portland, Oregon. And this is the 21st city I've lived in. I feel like I need to be more brief than covering each place individually.

How would you think that moving around that much shapes someone? I've learned to be adaptable. I'm a cultural and social chameleon. It's made it easy to do my job. Actually, it's made me good at lots of jobs.

It's made me strong. It's showed me to bloom where I'm planted, to seek out community with everyone. It's given me perspective on all walks of humanity and all aspects of life and death.

I'm not saying it hasn't sometimes been a load of horseshit. It absolutely has. Many of the people who will see this know all about it.

But I think the main takeaways from how the places I've lived have shaped me are these:

Lots of places think they have they best BBQ sauce and are usually ready to argue about it, and,

it's not a "Rolling stone gathers no moss" kind of thing. It's more of a "rolling snowball collecting everything it's path" kind of thing.

I can only strive to be collection of traits I find to be most important. Connected, empathetic, and inclusive. I feel like that’s the whole thing.

And I’m an promiscuous BBQ sauce fan. Sorry, Georgia, Texas, South Carolina and Kansas.  You just can’t all be right.

[lifeinkinder]

December 1, 2018

Endings

District level administration has changed - firing and/or encouraged resignation of the top three admins in my school district hopefully brings to an end a lot of the unrest that has been going on for the last several years. But definitely, this year when I’m aware of it because I work in the district. Even when I lived here, I didn’t care because I have no kids in the schools so it didn’t matter to me. 

The first semester in my new district is ending. Just 15 more days and I’ll have survived the first half of the school year. I’m hopeful that, even with the revelation that I was likely one of the people who benefited from improper hiring practices (hello being hired because I’m black), I’ll get to continue working in this building, in this district. 

The end of my 30th year came just a few days ago. It wasn’t a spectacular ending or anything. But I laughed and spent time with friends and that’s the best way for any ending to happen, right?

To be entirely honest, I’ve dealt with a lot of endings that hurt a hell of a lot more than the endings as of late. I’ve dealt with endings that have been caused by death, by the deterioration of friendships because of my own shitty behavior, because of their shitty behavior, because of distance. I’ve dealt with unexpected endings of friends just dropping off the face of the Earth and that shit hurts. But lately? The endings have felt like part of growing up. Nothing lately has shaken me to the core like some have. And I hope that trend continues in 2019. 

[quickwitter]

Six Word Short Story

Slowly changing “we” back to “me.”

Chicks within five months, lay eggs.

Distraction. Dinner unattended. Gulp. Bad Dog!

[quickwitter]

SOMEONE YOU’D LIKE TO MEET

Clara, my Dad’s mom. She lived through WWI Her husband was institutionalized for depression during the Depression. She gave birth to 8 kids and raised them without much help She and my grandfather were dirt farmers and never had much money. She was a cook on-site in the fields . She divorced her husband. She died while her country was fighting WW2. She died of breast cancer in 1944. She was nobody’s fool 

[happykaiju]

17. Describe the items in your shower/bath

Um. This feels weird. Shampoo, a razor and shave gel, some body wash, a loofah, and face wash and a round brush to exfoliate. There’s also a bottle of bubble bath just sitting there, reminding me that what I’d really like to do, is take a long bath, instead of always rushing.

I may be forgetting something. I’m glad this isn’t important.

[quickwitter]

FAVORITE COLOR AND WHY

How could you pick just one? Look at all this beautiful color. This is ChiChiCastengo in Guatemala, the Guatemalans know their way around combining colors. These are all raucous combinations of bright colors but they do restrained and muted just as fluidly.

Just a pop of turquoise makes the red sing, the blue recedes to the purple, while the golds jump forward.

We are all surrounded by beautiful combinations of colors and I think that’s such a gift. sometimes you'll see a combination of colors - maybe a dusty olive green juxtaposed by an orange based red and it will just break your heart. Or maybe not - maybe it just breaks mine, and maybe that’s a part of why I’ve been drawn all these years to being a designer.

[happykaiju]

13. Throwback Thursday.

Last Christmas, I found my favorite coffee shop in Portland.

Also, they had this and it reminds me of my awesome Great Aunt Elsie from long ago, for no really specific reason. So it’s a covert double throwback.