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.

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.

a break from our reguarly scheduled melancholy

i was getting ready to write/post part three, which will probably be the most depressing thing yet.  sorry.  but it will be. 

instead, you're getting a treat. 

if you've read my blog for any amount of time, you might be familiar with the fact that i don't want kids.  and neither does awesome husband.  since my mother's death, i think some of us (pointed look towards awesome husband) have thought maybe they'd want to change their mind.  some of us may have been feeling like they need to share some extra love.  some of us might have been feeling like they wanted something of their own to love.

so awesome husband and i were running some errands today.  he wanted to pick up s dumbbell set, i wanted to get chipotle before i start my new stupid fucking diet lifestyle tomorrow.  there's a petco near chipotle, and we needed cat food so i was like 'let's stop there and buy some fucking cat food'.

like most weekends, they had a local rescue operation set up there adopting cats out.  we always stop and look, cooing at the teensy kittens and trying to coax the untrusting adults out of the corners of cages.  we argue about getting an orange cat, or a special needs cat, or a polydactyl cat.  and we walk away to complete our shopping. 

like most weekends, we stopped and looked at the beautiful long haired siblings who were white with black splotches and white with grey splotches.  we poked at the little long haired tabby who was hiding under her mat.  we called to the teenaged orange cat who steadfastly ignored us.

then awesome husband got to the last cage.  he called me over.  there were two tiny tabbys in this cage, one with lighter tan markings and one that almost looked like he was wearing a mask. we looked at them.  we spoke to the foster mom.  awesome husband wanted to hold one.  i liked the lighter colored one, but awesome husband pointed to the one with the mask-like markings.  they put him in my arms and he melted onto my chest.

oh.

then i handed the kitten to awesome husband.  now, he has always loved animals but never had cats growing up.  i tried to turn him into a cat person with my kittehs.  he always said he didn't want another cat, three was enough, hell TWO was enough for him.  but as i handed this kitten to awesome husband, and he looked down at this cat, well...

suddenly, he thought three cats was NOT enough.

our new tiny babeh kitteh



that's awesome husband's hand on the kitteh.  he weighs like four pounds.


i think i may have finally turned him into a cat person.

married.... without children

kids are great. don't get me wrong. i like kids. my friends have this absolutely adorable babeh that i absolutely love visiting with. she's super happy, well behaved, ridiculously cute, and is usually afraid of me for some reason. but she likes awesome husband, even with his terrorist beard.

well, anyway. i like kids. i have twin half sisters that were born when i was 16. my best friend's little brother was born when we were like 14 and i babysat him all. the. time. when i was little i used to help take care of my brother. i'm well versed in changing diapers, burping, dressing, bathing, putting down, playing with, and entertaining small children.

that doesn't mean i want to have any of my own. i have cats. three of them, in fact. and they take up enough of my patience... ergh, time. awesome husband doesn't want any kids. neither of us want to have our own children.

and i cannot tell you how hard it is to get other people to believe that.

it's like the only reason two adults would get married would be to procreate. um, no. there are tax breaks. and also the excuse to have a sweet party AND a vacation. seriously - my wedding day was easily one of the happiest days of my life. i got to share it with all my closest friends and family members, and awesome husband and i were able to publicly proclaim our love for each other and celebrate it with them. i know it's mushy. but it's true - and i would do it again in a heartbeat (if someone else was footing the bill).

and while there are a few reasons we got married, having children was not one. i mean, if we wanted children, there is no reason for us to have gotten married to pop one out. it's not like my uterus was under construction until we signed the marriage certificate. it was working perfectly well for the seven and a half years we dated before we married.

no matter how many times we both say 'we're not having children' to the same family members, they keep asking us about having kids. the day after we announced our engagement, one of his family members asked us when we'd start having kids. we didn't even have a date for the wedding yet! luckily, both my mother and father are fine with the no-kids idea. and i have a pretty small family, and none of them are that interested or involved in my life that they feel the need to constantly ask about my uterus and it's possible future.

but awesome husband comes from a large, over involved, loving italian family. who delight in asking us repeatedly if/when we're having children. they like to tell us about dreams they have where i'm pregnant with twins *shudder* repeatedly. we currently live in florida, and are planning a move back to our home of new york - where all the family still lives. of course, they assumed that we're coming back to new york to procreate.

le sigh.

but you get used to it. you get used to the pointed glances at your stomach during family holiday celebrations, wondering whether you gained a few more pounds or if you might be expecting. you get used to the repeated fights with your husband where you swear the next time someone asks you, you'll run from the room crying and leave him to pick up the pieces (i still have not done this... yet.)

what i can't get used to is how strangers or loose acquaintances feel the urge to not only ask about my child-having plans, but to berate me for them. yes, seriously. i had a devout catholic tell me that awesome husband and i shouldn't have sex since we're not planning on having a child. because sex shouldn't be used for pleasure, or as an act of love, but solely for procreation. so we should only have sex if we are actively trying to get pregnant.

huh.

this is one of the main reasons i don't have any friends on facebook that i don't actually know or work with.

i don't feel that there is anything missing from my life because i'm childless. i have a wonderful family, three ridiculous cats, a loving awesome husband, and friends who are dear to me. i see no reason to have to add a child to the mix to be complete. not to mention, i'm batshit crazy and having kids would probably make me even more crazy.

but anyway, not everyone gets married to have kids. and not everyone who has kids gets married. the two are not really dependent on each other. and if you happen to ask a friend or family member about having kids, and they say they're not planning on it, let it go. don't keep asking. don't say 'that's what so and so said, and now they have two kids'. don't wonder aloud who will take care of them when they're older. don't ask about the gaping hole you assume they have in their heart, or why they don't want to have kids, or if there is a problem with their bits and pieces that prohibits them from having kids.

they may be like me, and just not want kids. they may have fertility or other health issues that mean they cannot have kids. either way, you'll just be bringing up ideas or feelings or whatever that they may not want to deal with at that time.

here's an idea: worry about your own testes and ovaries. and leave ours alone. my uterus is perfectly happy, if not a bit irregular, and while it appreciates your concern, it's completely unwarranted.

flattery or theivery?

okay, so i was reading up on the blogs i follow today and came across some interesting terms and ideas.

first i have to give credit to una over at http://http//volcanicensemble.blogspot.com/ aka 'the sassy curmudgeon. she blogged today about a term she's trying to coin that i just have to get out there:

googlebation: the act of self-googling. when you search yourself on google. love it. she mentioned that she found her old wedding website online when she googlebated today. that got me thinking about three things:

• wonder how long awesome husband and i have been married?
  
• wonder what happens when i googlebate?
  
• wonder why i can't come up with any cute, witty, or inspiring word to coin?

so i googlebated. and it was wonderful. i found out that there are others with my married name who teach pilates and run a convention center. i found that there is a woman whose name is ALMOST the same as my maiden last name (missing one letter) who was very athletic at dakota state uni.

when i put it all together and google my full, hyphenated name... it shows COMMENTS i've left on certain facebook pages. huh.

not like MY page. i don't have it googleable. but like a comment i left on billy joel's fb page. and one from the national gay and lesbian task force's page. oh, and an amazon review i wrote about duralactin l-lysine supplement for felines. o_O

so. not very interesting. but i did learn from my old knot.com webpage that awesome husband and i have been married for 2106 days.

i also was catching up with annah's blog at http://whenredmeansgo.blogspot.com/. i am single handedly blaming her for my new found desire for 'famosity'. (see? even she has her own cute word. damn it.) she was recently BONed (blogger of note) and has about a gazillion followers now. (you should also be one.) today annah posted 'twenty things you probably don't care to know about me but i will tell you anyway because i feel like it'.

i'm not stealing that idea from her, since i would in no way be able to do it as well as she did. but i did think i should share two bitchin' blogs that i've been enjoying recently. i only wish i could draw half as well as annah can. it might liven up this drab, boring, type-y blog.

well, i can't draw, but i have kittehs:

for those of you who don't know, that's samantha, my youngest kitteh and most recent rescue. of course, we've had her four years now. she's all grown up, has little to no sense of smell, and had to have a tooth pulled a couple of years ago. strange, i know. sammy's an oriental shorthair mix, so she's talkative. not as vocal as a siamese, but she talks more than any other non-siamese cat i've met.

she also appears to have either thread or a bogey on her nose. honestly, it could be either. i sew at that table. if you look closely at the chair in front of her face, there's some hot pink thread.

anyway. you should googlebate, and share that word. remember, the only safe google is self google.