Meme thing!

bodhifox asked me about three interests and three icons, so here goes:


Mythmaking: I've always been fascinated by mythology since I was a little girl. I used to read all the myth anthologies on which I could get my greedy little hands. I felt a particular resonance with myths that I didn't get from other stories (although I enjoyed them tremendously too, don't get me wrong). When I got older and began telling my own stories, I began to understand that there was something universal about the Story, that no matter how a story was told, no matter what it was about, it always came back to the same sort of thing, and I found that particularly reassuring. The idea that every story we tell is part of a greater whole is very important to me. Everything we do contributes to a greater Story, every tale we create, every tale we relate, is part of building the great myths of our society.

I don't know if I'm explaining this very clearly. I blame the lack of coffee.


Castles in Spain: This one's easy. From my mother I inherited the capacity for infinite daydreaming about the kind of life I'd like to have, some day in the mythical future (there go those pesky myths again). My mother called this kind of future-daydreaming "Building castles in Spain," which I believe is an accepted metaphor, if not a common one. So one of my favourite pastimes is telling stories to myself about how things will be in a year, in five years, in ten years, in forty years. In my mind there are countless castles that have been built and modified over the years, and each one is special to me.

Line dancing: For recent arrivals in my LJ, you probably don't know that for nearly two years I was an avid line dancer. I joined a club here in town where I volunteered my time and spent at least three evenings a week, sometimes four. I love dancing, and I discovered that I love dancing by going to this club on their open house night, and just giving it a try. My current work schedule doesn't allow me to go, and it breaks my heart.




This icon was made by the lovely and talented curtana. It's a text quote from Season 2 of Babylon 5, spoken by Susan Ivanova in the episode "Points of Departure." I use it for days when everything seems to be going wrong, as a tongue-in-cheek thing.




This icon was made by the equally lovely and talented karine, who is the lead singer of my band, Random Colour. I am the drummer in an all-girl rock band. karine made an icon for each member of the band: herself, me, toughlovemuse, ai731 and owldaughter. We rock. :)



This icon is another text quote from Babylon 5, which is repeated often from the start of the show. It's another creation of the lovely and talented curtana. I rather like the quote, as it reminds me that the world is made up of shades of grey, and that sometimes one doesn't have to occupy the spotlight in order to be a vessel for change.

Catching up with life

This has been a busy week. I'm embarking on a couple of new projects, which I shall no doubt discuss in here when they become a little less nebulous in my head.

I got felled by a monster migraine Tuesday night at work. Around 7pm my body very decisively said to me: "You're going home NOW." There's no arguing when my body takes that tone with me. I excused myself to my coworkers, called my supervisor to tell him I had to leave, and left. I medicated myself to the gills and slept for 13 hours, and luckily woke up without a trace of the migraine except the usual residual feeling of being a bit fragile for a few hours.

The moral of the story is that I'm not allowed to do overtime anymore. The last time I had a migraine this bad was the last time I did overtime. I attributed it to the fact that I was doing a double shift overnight and thus messing up my sleep patterns, but that's not the case at all. It appears that my body will. not. tolerate. more than 40 hours a week of work. A few hours of overtime here and there is fine, but not the equivalent of an extra day's work.

I had a lovely luncheon yesterday with silly_imp, whom I have asked to initiate me into the whole being a vegetarian thing. We had a delicious lunch, and a fascinating discussion that ranged from vegetarianism to the kind of professional choices people make and why, all the way to religion (paganism and quakerism, especially). It was really lovely, and I'm looking forward to the next time we can have lunch together again.

Vegetarianism is one of the aforementioned new projects, since I'm getting into it. The way I see it, I am going to be a vegetarian when I cook for myself. I eat relatively little meat anyway, and being a vegetarian at home will be both cheaper for me and allow me to contribute to helping the environment. I don't really know much about where the meat at the supermarket comes from, and I doubt it's very healthy. A lot of it, I suspect, comes from the US, which generally speaking pumps its livestock full of growth hormones and whatnot. Also, locally-produced meat is not necessarily any better, and contributes considerably to the pollution of rivers and groundwater.

I also suspect that being a vegetarian will allow me to be healthier in the long run, and maybe even lose a bit of weight, if combined with exercise and other healthy habits. :)

I had a bit of a chat with my coworker (the one who was so concerned about my eating habits) about vegetarianism last night. She didn't understand why anyone would want to become a vegetarian, since humans are *meant* to be omnivorous (her emphasis, not mine). I explained that while humans *could* be omnivorous, it wasn't necessary, and that many different populations are almost exclusively vegetarian. I went on to outline my reasons for considering vegetarianism (see above), and she appeared quite impressed by my train of thought. It appears the only vegetarians she knows had only one reason, and that was: "OMG it's cruel to kill the baby animals oh noes!" I can understand how that would be annoying and unsatisfying as a response.

As I told her, I have no objection to killing animals, so long as it's done for the right reasons: food, clothing, and the occasional protection of the self. My main problem with supermarket meat, increasingly, is that I have no connection to it: it's packed in plastic and styrofoam and shipped from far away. I cited fearsclave as an example: he goes out, shoots a rabbit, comes home (waves it at his Wuh-Mun) and dumps it in a stew pot. I have no problem with this. It just seems to me that, on the whole, Western civilization has disconnected considerably from their food, its sources and the reasons for which we consume it.

Because my day is never complete without three or four really intense discussions, the same coworker brought up the issue of what it's like being gay. (There was a very amusing incident on Monday night in which one of the supervisors "found out" that I was gay —not that I was hiding it, but he just hadn't known, but essentially now it's public knowledge, as opposed to something I'm just not actively hiding)

So I spent the better part of two hours talking to her and the other guy on my shift about my experiences. They both don't know any gay people their own age, and have only stereotypes or (in the girl's case) older family members to go by. So I fielded the usual questions:

- Did you always know you were gay?
- How did you figure it out?
- Are you completely comfortable with who you are?
- Do your parents know? What do they think of it?
- Is it something you could change if you really wanted to?
- What if you fell in love with a man? Would that change how you identify yourself?
- If you were given the choice, would you *not* be gay?
- Do you want children?

Etc. They were very respectful in their questions, and I think I made some big inroads in dispelling some prejudices they didn't even know they had. The only question that irritated me slightly was: "If you were given a choice, would you *not* be gay?"

That was asked by the male coworker. He didn't mean it badly, but it's an absurd question, and I told him so. I explained it this way to him: You're essentially giving me a choice between having an easy time, and a hard time. The fact that I am sexually attracted to women has little or nothing to do with it. I told him that I was going to spend my. entire. life having *this* conversation with people, that I was going to spend all of my life "coming out" to people who don't know I'm gay, and working to change their perception of what a gay person is or should be.

If I had the choice, I would choose not to have to do that. I am not someone who enjoys the spotlight, and having people grill me with questions about my sexual orientation is not something with which I am especially comfortable. I answer all questions as openly and honestly as I can, because I truly believe it's important for people to understand, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

If being gay and being straight made no difference in terms of how hard my life would be (which is a moot point, because it's not true), then I said that I would flip a coin. If it didn't matter, then, by definition, it wouldn't matter which I chose. Who cares who I choose to sleep with? I am a writer, a musician, a dispatcher, a daughter, a friend, and any number of things, as well as a lesbian. The fact that I sleep with women changes very little about who I am, when seen in that light.

Anyway, I appear to have given them some food for thought, and that can only be a good thing.

Wacky adventures in coming out at the office

So I'm mostly out at the office, as mentioned in a previous post. I have no doubt there are still many people there who don't know/don't especially care about my sexual orientation. I don't exactly come in with rainbow triangles stitched to my clothing, and I don't have a Gay Pride coffee mug or anything, but I don't hide who I am either. I'm just circumspect about my personal life, whether it be who I date or anything else about what I do in my spare time, thank you very much.

Anyway, the night shift girls and I were having a fun chat about Random Colour's upcoming gig on the 19th of May when the tracker's supervisor came in. After blowing his mind with the fact that I was the drummer in a band, and then further blowing his mind with the fact that I was the drummer in an all-girl band, I proceeded to break him completely.

Tracker's Supervisor: "So you're all girls on stage?"

Me: "Yep."

TS: "Do you have, like, band t-shirts or something?"

Me: "No. We wear corsets."

*pause while the four girls try to explain what a corset is to TS*

TS: "You're kidding! I've gotta come see this now!"

Me: "Yeah, well, we're not exactly a big draw for the single male crowd, being four married women and a lesbian."

TS: *pause* "I'll take the lesbian."

*pause as all the girls turn to look at me*

Me: *grinning from ear to ear* Martin, that's me.

*all the girls collapse in giggles*

I haven't laughed that hard in months. I laughed until I cried and my stomach cramped up. The look on the poor guy's face was priceless. I will admit that I shamelessly set him up, once I realized he hadn't figured out I was gay (I honestly thought he knew), and he walked right into it.

It took a good twenty minutes for everyone to stop laughing enough to be able to talk properly again.

Sometimes I love my coworkers. :D

Worm composting update

I know you're all dying to hear about how my worms are doing. I've been keeping an eye on them for a while, since I appear to have overfed them in February. I left them entirely alone for March and April, and only recently began re-introducing food to the bin.

The worms appear happy (as these things go, anyway). There's lots of rich black compost in there, and soon I will have to buy another copy of the "Journal de Montréal" to feed them, unless someone out there is willing to donate a few pages of newspaper to the cause?

The earth is quite moist, although I haven't actually added water since that initial spraying of the newspaper when I set up the composter. I'm glad I never tried to water it, since I'm sure the poor worms would be trying to crawl up the sides of the bin by now. As it is, they appear to be hanging out near the bottom of the bin, and in the corners where I've put food.

I am very impressed by the quality of the soil. I don't know what I was expecting, but somehow it wasn't really rich black stuff. I don't know why it never occurred to me that it would do that, since that's what it says in all the literature. I guess I really had to see it to believe it.