Events taken from the last couple of days. I thought it might be... interesting... to list the small, everyday stuff. You know, the thing that many cis people say we make too much of a fuss about.

( Mentions instances of cissexism, misgendering, and passing/not-passing. )

* special edit: this is NOT an implicit inquiry for advice on binding. I did my own research and have sorted things out for the near future.

Thank you so much to ingridmatthews, spectralbovine, tygress girlmostlikely, tartanshell, midnitemaraud_r, devildoll, and also to the anonymice for the snowflake cookies! ♥♥♥♥♥ *twirls you all*

[eta] Thanks also to the folks at crack_impala for the snowflake they sent to unfitforsociety. *g* [/eta]

I have been very meh recently and now I feel all warm and loved.

I've fallen behind completely on answering comments, so I am declaring today comment amnesty day, and getting rid of all the unanswered comments (on anything but fic - those I will try to answer) from before today.

I have three sets of minutes to write now, plus yuletide and broken toys. Yay?

Have a poem:

Rhymes and Songs

It's late now, December, a few trees
continue translating.
A menorah
holds up its little buckets of light.
An old woman with hands to her ears,
two homeless men discussing the nature of evil.
It's a clear morning.
Everyone's carrying luggage. There're gaps
between passersby, larger than usual.
The sun sets silver shields
in a row of window frames, all but one,
where a girl in a fur hat looks out.
Dawn riddled with memories
fading and dispersing among the trees,
fever subsiding —
you think, at last I can do what I want,
but mostly
you're building on the silence,
the solemnity of things left to themselves.
White limousine at the corner: an
intricate, depressed millionaire
trolling for a girl so beautiful
& frightened she might be enticed.
And a new life, arduous
and dire, commences. Years
on a backcountry farm near one of the Great Lakes,
a bent for poetry, little rhymes
& songs
to soothe yourself
and children you've come to know.

~Charlie Smith

~*~

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There have been a lot of issues with notifications with several email providers for the past 2 weeks. Seems that a spammer has been using insanejournal.com as a landing page for their spam. This is causing some email providers to either delay or completely block mail from insanejournal.com.

There isn't anything we can do about this besides continue to be vigilant in suspending these accounts. If you own an account that gets suspended with no notification it is because your account was mistakenly identified as a spam account. Due to the shear volume of accounts being suspended we cannot review each individual account so some mistakes may be made.

Please understand we have been and will continue to do anything we can to stop this spam and therefore restore the ability to send email to a number of providers.

Thank you to deirdre_c, marciaelena, catdancerz and dotfic for the lovely snowflakes in my userinfo! ♥♥♥♥♥

*

LJ, let my comments go!

*shakes tiny ineffectual fist*

*

\o/

Giants beat the Cowboys! That always makes for a great Sunday. And they swept them this year, so I think that means they have the upper hand should it come down to a tiebreaker.

*

After brunch, I went to Supercuts and while she was cutting my hair, the hairdresser quizzed me on 19th c. novels like Wuthering Heights and Pride and Prejudice (well, technically movies adapted from 19th c. novels). I thought she said she'd read Jane Eyre, so I kind of spoiled it for her (crazy wife in the attic omg!) but she didn't seem to care. She said she was going to bump it up on her Netflix list, 'cause she likes the creepy ones.

Generally, I hate having to chat while having my hair done, but this conversation was amusing and also about something I am familiar with, which is not usually the case. Also, she washed my hair with this lavender and mint shampoo that I really liked so I ended up buying it. Obviously, the way to upsell me is with conversation about books and things that smell nice.

*

I have a whopping 71 words on my yuletide story. Wah! Also, I am trying to figure out how I am going to find a beta who knows the source, because I'd like someone who is at least familiar with it to read the thing over when I finally finish it.

When that's done, I can focus on Broken Toys, among other things. I think I know what I'm writing for that, but writing it in my current unable to write state should be interesting.

Stupid writing. Why so hard?

*

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/103705.html. people have commented there.

Two thumbs up for both the flourless chocolate cake, which tastes like a really intense fudge brownie, and the Sicilian cheesecake, which is just yummy, with a hint of orange flavor (I wonder if adding almond extract would work. hmm...).

***

Here is some music I uploaded. The theme was "songs to wake up to" and I did two small sets:

for when you need to ease into the day with some softness:

For No One - Azure Ray
Raining in Athens - Azure Ray
The Shape I Found You In - Girlyman
You Will Rise - Tom McRae
Anna Begins - Counting Crows

for when you need to get the adrenaline going:

Every You Every Me - Placebo
Back in Black - AC/DC
Wherever I May Roam - Metallica
One Girl Revolution (Battle Mix) - Superchick
Slow Down Gandhi - Sage Francis

I uploaded this for angelgazing, because it is THE Remus Lupin theme song (pre-Azkaban, anyway) in my head:
There Is a Boy Who Never Goes Out - the Lucksmiths

And here are some songs I was thinking should be SPN vids:
Rise Up in the Dirt - Voxtrot
Sam and Dean, saving people! hunting things! the family business!

Red Shoes (The Angels Wanna Wear My) - Elvis Costello
Sam and Dean v. angels

(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding - Elvis Costello
Down In It - Nine Inch Nails
Terrible Lie - Nine Inch Nails
Sam wondering how things got all fucked up, and if it's even possible to fix them.

***

Now I have to go get ready to meet fleurdeleo for brunch. And then another day of not-writing my yuletide story! Woo!

***

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(Cross-posted to dingsis_notebook)

Snippet taken from an IJ entry written in November 2008, but never posted.

---

I have the tendency to pile up HUGE stashes of various documents and papers (and photographs and magazines and bills and the stray book and and and). I used to try and sort them all at once during a day reserved for this activity, but only ended up with three smaller piles and the feeling that the task was too daunting. And it was. I made it so.

A few weeks ago, I did a complete relabeling of my binders, structuring them by subject (e.g. work, healthcare) and chronologically. Not using all of them right away, but moving some of the already filed papers if necessary, and creating a system for further use. And I put them in a place where I could easily see and grab them in a moment's notice. Same for the hole puncher, which I placed visibly on the table. And instead of sitting in front of huge piles of documents and feeling intimidated, I started filing them away little by little. One or three or ten a day, or ten a week. Instead of "take a whole day and sort this shit even if it kills you", I now think "if you see a piece of paper lying around, and can assess in which binder it belongs, take a few seconds to file it away".

And it helps. It helps because it's just a few seconds and the task itself isn't daunting anymore. Of course there's still this massive backlog I have to work on, but I know I will have it sorted out in the long run. Which makes me feel better. I also noticed that now I am far more likely to put away new papers immediately.

A few of you might wonder what the big deal is. Understandably so, because I think strategies like these are simply common sense for most people. But not for me. I've always been a very chaotic person, I'm still terrible at household chores, cleaning, dusting off, stuff like that. My room generally looks like a mess most of the time and I get easily distracted (while feeling guilty about not being able to do things better). So, for me, changing my tactics and trying to get things done in a way that relieved my stress, and allowing myself to think that this was okay, is a big step.

(Besides, even though I have no doubt that countless individuals have blogged about this, I had the idea all on my own and without someone from outside telling me to do something about the effing stacks of paper. So I'm a little proud of myself.)

---

Update:

I still use the technique described above, and there are noticeable results: several bags of waste paper thrown away, finding documents I thought to have been lost, and displacing things less often in general. Over the recent months, I started applying it to the kitchen as well, cleaning and re-organizing it little by little. It's starting to show - cooking is more fun now, and even my Mom made a remark today how much better everything looked.

I still struggle with guilt sometimes that things are taking me so long, or that I needed years to acquire basic housekeeping skills that others pick up early or with ease. It makes me feel small, lazy, stupid. I feel like I shouldn't even mention it, as if it was the equivalent of boasting that you can use the potty.

I consciously remind myself:

1. People have different levels of tolerance; some are very orderly and clean their house weekly to feel comfortable while others when faced with the same amount of dirt or clutter wouldn't mind.
2. My depression and anxiety have caused problems before when it comes to my energy level in general, and I had to re-learn caring for myself at all. I'm reluctant to even mention it because so often it's being dismissed as a lazy excuse, but I want to keep in mind that it IS a factor in my life that makes some things harder than they ought to be.
3. For fuck's sake, self: I'M MAKING PROGRESS. Yes, it's a slow process, but it beats doing nothing. Obviously.

I found this information thanks to zarhooie (source), and thought I'd pass it on / write it down so I won't forget.

You need to go to the admin console - usually located at the URL of the journal main site with /admin/console/ added at the end, e.g. http://www.insanejournal.com/admin/console/ or http://www.dreamwidth.org/admin/console/ .

Then type the following:

community name-of-community remove your-username

Example: community i_wanna_leave remove das_dingsi

Hit "execute", and you're done!

Thank you for the snowflake cookie, O anonymous benefactor! ♥ It really perked me up.

Today was the bi-annual semiannual twice-yearly scrubbing of the tub. Oy. Scrubbing the tub is my least favorite chore ever. I will say that Soft Scrub with bleach is amazing - it totally got out a stain I thought would never come out. So now I have a clean tub, with a new bathmat and shower curtain, and the rest of the bathroom is clean as well. Lovely.

Then I ran out to buy a couple of things I needed for today's bake-fest, and now the flourless chocolate cake is in the oven, and I am resting up before I start on the Sicilian cheesecake.

We're having this potluck luncheon thingy at work this week, and I said I'd bring something dessert-ish, but I didn't want to bring something I hadn't tested, and my mother couldn't find her Italian cheesecake recipe, so I am taste testing. Well, I will be giving half of each cake to fleurdeleo when I see her tomorrow (and a bag of frozen blueberry boy bait cupcakes, as well), because too much is too much. And then when I've decided which I like better, I will make it later in the week to bring to work.

The flourless chocolate cake was pretty easy, though I was worried I was going to overcook the chocolate because the butter wasn't melting quickly enough (I did it in a makeshift double-boiler - i.e., smaller pot floating on top of larger pot). And I had an unfortunate experience with having to fish out a bit of eggshell (so really, that should be an unfortunate eggsperience. I'm sorry! I can't help it! Bad puns just happen to me!) from the batter, but overall, it was pretty easy.

It's got about twenty-five minutes to go and it smells divine. If it tastes as good as it smells, I think I know what I'm giving my sister and b-i-l for Christmas. (I am thinking homemade baked goods for all the adults, since I've been doing all this baking. That's good, right? It's fairly cheap, compared to what I normally spend, I enjoy doing it, and it tastes good. I just... I don't know how it will be received.)

Both recipes call for a springform pan, which I did not own, so last night on the way home I stopped off at K-Mart on Astor Place, and got one (and also a bundt pan and a tube pan, and the new shower curtain and new bathmat, plus a new toothbrush holder - it has a pretty purple flower on it, and I liked it, even though my bathroom is all green), and man, let me tell you, that is one depressing department store. It reminded me a little of the ABC on Liberty Avenue back in City Line or the TSS on Metropolitan Avenue (man, that was a long time ago). Okay, maybe with slightly higher quality goods, but not by much. I don't know. Something about it was just depressing.

So I've cleaned, shopped and baked, and talked to my parents on the phone. I ... I suppose I should write something now. I haven't in days. I mean, I have an opening sentence for yuletide, and I like my idea, but I just feel completely useless as a writer right now. I can't seem to write the kinds of stories I keep having ideas for (i.e., stories with casefile-y or caper-y plots) and it just makes me want to give up the whole enterprise. Meh.

At least with baking I get the satisfaction of tasty baked goods at the end of the process. Right now, writing isn't providing much of that.

I should have a baking icon. Hmm...

***

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So it was a year ago today that I was laid off from Big Evol MegaCorp. I kind of can't believe it. I mean, a year. 12 months. 365 days. It's kind of boggling. I look back on it and I'm like, wow, what did I even do for those twelve weeks? If only I'd known things would work out pretty quickly, I would have enjoyed the time off a lot more, I tell you what.

I know I was lucky - I am lucky. One of the VPs I worked for at BEMC is still out of work. It helps that I wasn't tied to the financial industry, and that I actively wanted to get back into the non-profit sector. And that I'm kind of an awesome assistant.

I opened this post at about 1 pm this afternoon at work and never figured out what exactly I wanted to say. That I'm grateful, I suppose, that I was only out of work for three months, that I have a family who could have taken me in if the need arose, that I got a decent severance package that also continued my insurance for those twelve weeks (and would have paid half of it for another twelve if I'd needed to go on COBRA) that I found a job so quickly in a bad economy at a place where I don't feel like I'm selling a little bit of my soul every time it's mentioned on the news. (Er, not that the place I work now is ever mentioned on the news, but you know what I mean.)

Anyway, I never did cry about it, possibly because I was afraid if I started, I would never stop, but it still hits me at odd moments, and it's made me even more anxious than I was before (which is really saying something, because I am like a ball of anxiety slathered in neuroses) about not screwing up at work, about how close I am - how close most of us are - to one or two bad breaks leading to a whole lot of badness, and how there's very little in the way of a safety net for anyone (who doesn't work for Goldman Sachs) anymore.

What I did cry about today - and oh man, did I ever - was this week's Friday Night Lights. How is this show so good? HOW? ( spoilers )

*

I watched this week's Bones earlier, and wow, really unpleasant movie-whoring. Bleh.

And then there was the White Collar fall finale. ( spoilers )

I can't wait for hiatus to be over. I am also kind of geeked by the Burn Notice commercials. And how AWESOME is that Psych commercial? SO AWESOME OMG! GUS & SHAWN! HALL & OATES! *hearts*

TV is so very, very good to me. *happy sigh*

*

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So last night I was still exhausted by, well, everything, so I was in bed by 11:30 and asleep no later than 11:35. And then I was awake at 1:30, and basically up until around 6 am. I did finally fall asleep, but my alarm goes off at 7:25, but I was really in no shape to get out of bed, so I called in to work and stayed home. I eventually went back to sleep again for a few hours, and then wasted my afternoon reviewing yuletide source. I have an opening line now! And I kind of want to talk about the source but I can't. Which sucks.

Anyway. I left the house at 5 to meet up with R. for dinner and a movie. We ate and then walked over to the Ziegfeld to see "The Princess and the Frog," which is doing an exclusive limited run engagement there before it opens.

Except that tickets cost either $30 or $50 (for the full Disney experience), because apparently after the show there was a party with the Disney princesses at Roseland. So that was out. Because we weren't going to pay that for a movie, nor were we going to go to the afterparty.

We decided to head uptown to 66th and Broadway to see what was playing at the gihugic theatre there, so we walked over there - it was a beautiful night for walking - and it turns out that Robert DeNiro's new movie, "Everybody's Fine" was premiering there, and so there were velvet ropes and tents set up and clearly we were not getting into that theatre.

"An Education" was playing at the Lincoln Square, but not until 8 pm and it was only 6:50 so we weren't sure we wanted to wait around. So we grabbed a cab and headed back east to 62nd and 1st and ended up seeing "Precious." (I think R. wanted to see "2012," which was playing nearby, but I really didn't, she didn't want to see "A Serious Man," and neither of us knew what "Pirate Radio" was about [I mean, aside from the obvious].)

I'd read "Push" a long long time ago, so I knew the basic outlines of the story, but man, it is a sad, sad movie. Brilliantly acted, and hopeful, but dear god, it's devastatingly sad.

And then I came home and wrote this entry. My life, so exciting.

Hopefully I will sleep tonight.

***

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From now until January 3rd we are going to be selling Permanently Insane accounts for their regular price of $50. In addition we are selling Permanent Extra Userpics for $25. This will bring the userpic total of your Permanently Insane account to 500 for the life of your account.

Glee

Will Shuester is a douche. <- not a spoiler

( spoilers )

*

In other TV news, am I correct that "White Collar" is moving to Tuesdays at 10 pm when it returns in January? Does this mean that I will have an awesome Tuesday night block of "Leverage" at 9 pm and "White Collar" at 10 pm? (I will have to record "The Good Wife" and watch it at some other time.) And "Psych" is moving to Wednesdays at 10 pm (which makes things difficult for me, because that is when I generally watch "Glee" since I watch "Criminal Minds" at 9 pm)? Will "Burn Notice" be at 10 pm on Thursdays, or are they bringing back "Royal Pains" in that time slot, and BN will be against SPN? I need to get this all figured out.

Isn't USA an NBC property? It amuses me that they are going after Leno at 10 on the weeknights.

*

In other non-TV news, I think I have an idea for my yuletide story. An idea that isn't simply one thousand words of [CENSORED] and [CENSORED] with some [CENSORED] thrown in. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully I can do it. I may have to find someone outside my usual beta circles on this one. That is always nerve-wracking. We'll see, I guess.

*

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/102245.html. people have commented there.

[take the poll on LJ]

( rambling on why I am asking this question )

*

Yesterday went well, but even though I got a full night's sleep, I am still exhausted. I was so tempted to call in sick today and just sleep. SLEEP. Sigh.

I dreamt that the BAU had opened a shoe store down in the Bowling Green subway station, and I bought a pair of very cute slingbacks with kitten heels from Reid. Apparently, all that profiling knowledge is also good for picking out the exact pair of shoes for people, shoes they don't even know they want until they see them!

My brain, you guys. I don't even know.

*

This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/102069.html. people have commented there.

Just got back from first day at work, which consisted of mostly boring theoretical training.

Awesomepoints: only the porter misgendered me, everybody else who adressed me in a gendered fashion today already knew me from last year. My temp ID card was correct, too. These little things mean the world.

I met ex-colleagues in the cafeteria and did social things, like talking to people. Really looking forward to proper work tomorrow (and meeting my two favourite superiors again).

Not-so-awesomepoints: I'm dead tired. Seriously. I'm gonna check my feeds and email, and then I'm off to bed.

PSA: I have the late shift for at least two weeks from now, which suits me just fine. (I liked working nightshifts a lot, as evidenced in this IJ entry from 2008. Also, getting up early would kill me.) However, it has the disadvantage of being online less often, and thus chatting/commenting not as much as I used to. If you don't hear a peep from me for the next days or weeks, it's because of work effing up my sleep schedule / leisure time / energy levels. (Sadface.)

Have a poem:

Tide of Voices

At the hour the streetlights come on, buildings
turn abstract. The Hudson, for a moment, formal.
We drink bourbon on the terrace and you speak
in the evening voice, weighted deep in the throat.

They plan to harvest oysters, you tell me,
from the harbor by Jersey City, how the waters
will be clean again in twenty years. I imagine nets
burdened with rough shells, the meat dun and sexual.

Below, the river and the high rock
where boys each year jump from bravado
or desperation. The day flares, turns into itself.
And innocently, sideways, the way we always fall

into grace or knowledge, we watched the police
drag the river for a suicide, the third this year.
The terrible hook, the boy's frail whiteness.
His face was blank and new as your face

in the morning before the day has worked
its pattern of lines and tensions. A hook
like an iron question and this coming
out of the waters, a flawed pearl —

a memory that wasn't ours to claim.
Perhaps, in a bedroom by lamplight,
a woman waits for this boy. She may riffle drawers
gathering photographs, string, keys to abandoned rooms.

Even now she may be leaving,
closing the door for some silence. I need
to move next to you. Water sluiced
from the boy's hair. I need to watch you

light your cigarette, the flickering
of your face in matchlight, as if underwater,
drifting away. I take your cigarette
and drag from it, touch your hand.

Remember that winter of your long fever,
the winter we understood how fragile
any being together was. The wall sweated
behind the headboard and you said you felt

the rim where dreams crouch
and every room of the past. It must begin in luxury —
do you think — a break and fall into the glamour
attending each kind of surrender. Water must flood

the mind, as in certain diseases, the walls
between the cells of memory dissolve, blur
into a single stream of voices and faces.
I don't know any more about this river or if

it can be cleaned of its tender and broken histories —
a tide of voices. And this is how the dead
rise to us, transformed: wet and singing,
the tide of voices pearling in our hands.

~Lynda Hull

***

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