what's up with women?

bitches be crazy.

that's one of my favorite things to say.  bitches be crazy... and we are.  but sometimes i'm just not sure what women are thinking.

my first example is this anthony weiner thing.  for those of you not in the political loop, google it.  or click here.   his wife, huma abedin, has stood by him since his first.... indiscretion.  but she's still standing beside him.  and it's started some kind of ridiculous discussion in the media and public: is it cute that she's standing by her man, or is it sending a bad message that she's letting herself be treated like this and putting up with it?  just today, i heard one idea that abedin is only staying with him because it furthers her own political career (she was a top advisor to hillary clinton).  so she's either adorable and old-fashioned for staying with him, stupid for staying with him, or self-serving by staying with him.

let's all take a deep breath and step back for a second.

the divorce rate in america is roughly 50%.  half of all marriages end in divorce.  what's up with that?  because every time something goes wrong, people get divorced.  your husband has an online fling?  divorce.  he drinks more than you like?  divorce.  he kisses another woman?  divorce.  he lies to you about spending money?  divorce.  he tweets a few risque pictures to other women but doesn't have physical relationships with him?  divorce him, you idiot!

really?

REALLY?

marriage is hard work, yo.  it's not all bright mornings and shiny appliances and perfection.  it's hard and disgusting and terrifying and never, ever perfect.  i'm not saying that women should always stay married, and i'm all for leaving an abuser at the first instance of abuse.  but marriage takes work - would you spend days writing a paper and then throw it out because one of your sources turned out to be unreliable? NO, you'd work on it.

weiner and abedin also have a child together - that brings another level into it.  of course they'd want to work on their marriage for the baby's sake, right?

marriage takes work.  i'll use my own marriage and my parent's marriage for some examples.  my dad drank a lot.  my mom put up with it for a long time and tried to work with it - going to meetings like alanon, trying marriage counselors, etc.  dad kept drinking and messing around, mom left - after trying. awesome husband @_antgas did a bit of drinking too.  we talked about my concerns, we worked on it together - and we continue to work on it.  neither of us currently drink because it brought nothing positive to our lives.  we worked on it together.

even non-marriage relationships take work.  i was a bad girl when @_antgas and i were dating.  there were numerous indiscretions (let's leave it at that for now).  we talked about them, we worked through them - and i think we're stronger for it.  we've both made mistakes, we've both apologized for things, and we've both worked at our relationship.  and as i write this, we've been together for over sixteen years, celebrating our ninth wedding anniversary in a few months.

why can't we let abedin decide what's best for her own marriage?

and onto my next topic: the robin thicke song 'blurred lines'.  a lot of people are talking about it being pro-rape because the line 'i know you want it' is something rapists say to their victims.

really?  REALLY?

@_antgas has said 'i know you want it' to me when we're talking about ice cream.  it doesn't make me think of rape.

i think it's a sign of our culture that we automatically think this song is like a rape anthem.  read the lyrics.  yes, he says 'i know you want it'.  he also says he feels lucky because she WANTS to hug him.  so this hypothetical woman in this song wants to snuggle with robin thicke (can you blame her?).  there's another verse: 'okay now he was close, tried to domesticate you/but you're an animal, baby it's in your nature'.  so maybe this girl was in a relationship contemplating marriage, but she's not the type to be tied down?  maybe her last partner wanted her to be demure and 'traditionally' feminine, but she was all into whips and chains?  who knows?  but what about the song really says 'hi, i'm going to rape you'??

really?  am i missing something?

women are brought up fearing men.  we're taught to hold our keys in our hands between our fingers to help us defend ourselves if we're attacked walking across a parking lot.  we're taught to look in our backseats before getting in our car and driving away.  we're taught to avoid groups of men while walking on a street.  we're taught to travel in pairs because we're safer (why do you think so many of us go to the bathroom together?  it's just habit).  women are groomed to think that men are out to hurt us and rape us and beat us up and treat us like shit.

so of course we'd think a guy singing 'i know you want it' in a sexual way is about to rape us, right?  why can't this song just be a sexy, liberating song about a woman who wants to get some?  maybe she wants to let her hair down and have robin thicke (or pharrel or TI, whoever) pull it.  why does it have to be like she's about to get thrown on the ground and raped?

because we've brought up women to think that's what is going to happen.

decorating

now that awesome husband @_antgas and i are just about settled in to the new apartment, it's time to decorate.  i let awesome husband have free reign on hanging the pictures on the wall.  he did this staggered thingy and it looks pretty damn good.

nice work, awesome husband.

i had this neat photo of a tiger i took years ago at animal kingdom.  i made it black and white and had it put on canvas (thanks, groupon!)  it's pretty cool having a photo i took looking all professional on the wall.  i also found this cute owl photo at home goods (omg that damn store) that has these different patterns and whatnot that makes me happy.  so i got it (before @_antgas told me that hipsters ruined owls).

damn hipsters ruining cute owls

yay tigers!

when i was little, my mom had these framed crate labels.  crate labels are labels that were put on crates (OMG AMAZING ISN'T IT?).  crate labels came into use in the late 1800s and were stuck on crates filled with fruit and vegetables.  sunkist really started it with crate labels for their citrus fruit.  they ended up being pretty elaborate works of art and, for some reason, my mom liked them.  she collected them and framed them and a bunch hung in our dining room when i was a wee lass.  after we were divorced, the crate labels came from place to place with us, until we moved in with my stepfather who didn't like them i guess, because they were never hung up again.

when we moved my mom to florida, she couldn't find her crate labels.  we never new what happened to them.  when she died, we packed her stuff and moved it to lindenhurst.  and just last month, we went through a bunch of the stuff we had packed to move it again.  and we found her crate labels.  only four have frames.  @_antgas and i chose the others that we liked the most and are planning on having those framed.

crate labels

we still have some stuff to put up, but it feels good to be making this place ours.  even though we hung up pictures and whatnot at the other house, it never felt like we decorated it.  it felt like we were squatting there, just trying to make it comfortable.  this feels more like home.

do photos count as a post?

i post so many pictures to my instagram, but no one gets to see them.  you can see them regularly by clicking over there <~~~~~~ and following me on instagram.  but i wanted to share my photos with more people, and who knows me better than you guys?  so i decided to write a post with some of the stuff i've done recently.  since i stopped blogging and wasn't dying.

i made philly cheese steaks with portobello mushrooms.  yum.

we juice a lot.  this is what i shove in the juicer on a regular basis.

we went to the cemetery to visit my uncle and grandparents.  this was a neat looking stone marker.

 this is awesome husband @_antgas standing on what was left of a huge old tree after superstorm sandy

samantha cat likes to help me with my hair and makeup

awesome husband @_antgas and i had a weekend 'away' a few towns over.  this is after dinner at our fave steakhouse.

these are rhode island red hens pecking at me when we visited a farm out east

there was not a child in this stroller.  but it made me think that the hens like ate the kid or something.  it looked eerie to me.

 i has a hen!

i also have video of this rooster crowing.  they are way louder than i thought they'd be, and they crow at all hours.  not just in the morning.  we went to a chicken lecture and i learned many, many chicken-related things.  and i also learned that awesome husband @_antgas won't let me raise chickens. 

business cat jake.  i have a plan to make him a whole range of handsome ties, but we'll see.

@_antgas and i were on our way somewhere and i was singing along to the rocky horror picture show soundtrack.  and took a photo because why not.

i used diptic to put this together for mother's day.  it was my third mother's day without mom. 

i was feeling pretty hot that day.  then @_antgas made some stupid comment that made me feel bad.  but it still looked good.

memorial day 2013

i found this in my mom's things.  she was in the fife & drum corps .

another thing from mom's fife & drum days

 i found this at home goods.  seriously, how could i not have this?

my beautiful piglet cat.  she has her own vine account.  which has like one video.  but okay.

surprise! i'm not dead yet.

wow.  if you're reading this, i must really give you props.  instead of seeing my crap pop up in your blogroll and saying, 'that lame bitch?  she hasn't said anything to anyone in four months, and then she comes back and wants us to pay attention to her?  fuck that!' and scrolling on, you clicked.

hi.  i'm a lame bitch who hasn't said anything to anyone in four months, and now i expect you to pay attention to me.

so in our last meeting, we discussed how crazy busy my life was: work full time.  school full time.  no time for sleep, cat cuddling, or anything really.  i mean, i had time for things.  just not as much as i wanted.  i like taking time for, you know.  nothing.  video games.  watching a movie by myself because awesome husband @_antgas won't watch 'twilight' movies with me.

since early march (when i last posted) i've had another birthday, finished my monday night class as well as another semester at school, purged a bunch of my mother's stuff that i was holding onto for some reason.... oh, i also moved and quit my job.

wait, what?  i know.

that full time job with the paycheck and the awesome benefits?  yeah, i quit.  i accepted a position with a social program at a behavioral rehab center.  about 15 hours a week and nowhere near what i was making per hour.  it's three evenings a week, and i help make juice and iced tea and dinner for a group of people who are in recovery or live in group homes or whatever.  then i help clean up from dinner and drive a bunch of them home.  there are addicts in recovery, schizophrenics, some guy that i have NO idea what is wrong with him but i've been told never to shake his hand and to wash my hands immediately if i ever do, and people who live in group homes for different reasons.  one woman has a doll that i've seen her spoon feed and talk to.  which i thought was weird at first, but the woman is actually really nice and pretty normal otherwise.

not EXACTLY in the vein of work that i'm training for, but it's in the broad field of 'helping'.  so it counts as 'in my field'.  it's the first job i've ever had that's in 'the field' of social work.  of course, i'm the only person there who's working in the field and not just a client.  but it's definitely eye-opening, as well as good hours and much less stressful.

i'm also helping out my dad one day a week at his place in queens.  it's a family owned business and his secretary administrative assistant up and quit a couple of months ago.  dad's been buried in work since then, so i offered myself up one day a week (for much better pay per hour) to help dig him out.  it's a 3 hour commute round trip, but it's nice to be able to help him out and make a few extra bucks.

and we moved.  if you didn't know, awesome husband and i lived communally in a house with my brother and his fiancee; we shared the kitchen and laundry room.  it was working out well and saving everyone a bit of money, but awesome husband @_antgas and i decided we needed to be on our own.  we were having some issues.

marriage is hard work, y'all.

we decided we needed to be on our own for so many reasons.  but when i started thinking about it, in our eight and a half years of marriage, we've lived alone for 17 months.  when we were first married, we lived with my mom and brother for a couple of years.  it was a mutually beneficial plan because my mom needed our help with crap around the house, and we couldn't afford a decent place to live on our own.  when we moved to florida, my mom was laid off and sold her house, so she came to florida and lived communally with us.  and then when my mom died, we moved back to new york and moved in communally with my brother.  so this is kind of like the first place that's ours.  we're renting a two bedroom apartment in a nice little town on the south shore of long island - not too far south.  not too close to the water - not going through that again.

we spent a few weeks moving and paying double rent.  between painting the new place, moving our crap, and cleaning the old place, it felt like MONTHS between the old and new places.  but i dropped off the old keys on monday and now we just have to see what we get back for our deposit.  we had some carpet damage that i'd like to think is in line with 'normal wear and tear' after living there for two years and being great tenants who never paid late or caused problems.

perhaps one of the most amazing things that happened during the course of the move is that i decided i was not going to cart all of mom's stuff around any more.   we realized that we wouldn't have room for some of our stuff, like my huge china closet... so we wouldn't have room for the mikasa stemware or china that we never use.  i made a list of my stuff that we were going to have to sell or donate, and realized that i had boxes upon boxes upon boxes of my mom's stuff that i didn't even know about.  when she died and we packed up the house in florida, awesome husband @_antgas took some time off work and packed for me while i worked and ignored all of my mom's stuff.  it was just too new for me. so we brought basically all of her stuff up to new york with us without going through it.  we only went through her clothes really because i wasn't about to cart around all of a dead woman's clothes.

we went through everything.  i found three boxes of quimper china that i sold for $100 to a woman who collected it (and i may have contributed to her hoarding.... ergh.)  i found a box of nancy drew books that i decided to hang onto and see what they're worth.  i found a tote full of pots and tupperware.  yes.  i found a box of candelwick that we decided to donate.  we went through it all.  and we pared it down to maybe three boxes of her things that i can't or won't get rid of.  and now i can box them back up and hide them again until i'm ready.

but it was very cathartic.  i got the feeling that it was time to purge and make changes.  and awesome husband @_antgas and i have purged a lot of crap and made a lot of changes.  and it feels pretty good.

now we're in a new apartment, in a new town.  the cats are settling in, we're down to just a couple of boxes of crap to unpack, and it feels like we're setting off on a new adventure, a new chapter of our life together.  it feels pretty good.