Some pictures and Wallacisms:

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Being cool at the park: “Maamaa.  Don’t hold me!” 

Tearfully, after a long day, to Daddy asking to be cradled: ”I want to be a baaybee!”

“Dad, you need to JUST RELAX”

“I don’t WIKE DAT!”

“Dat would be a nice, good plant”  (nice good plan)

“Dat would be not be a good plant” (not a good plan)

“Mama, awe you fwuastawated?”

“That guy was HUGE!”

To daddy:  “You need to watch yer tone, BUDDY”

“I love you in the whole best world”

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Photoshop Pictures!

Original Slide Photo

Slide photoshopped one time:

Slide Photshopped twice:

Flower offering original:

Flower offering cropped and Photoshopped:

Too small for this bike original:

Too small photoshopped:

Little man original (photographer, TT)

Little man, photoshopped

Yep!  Still fun!

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So, what you’re saying is to uncork the buttocks.

It is not in my nature to do so, I’m a fairly tightly clenched person, but I promise to do my level best to not own any of the group projects this week.

I turned in my bit, and that’s done.

Mercy, it’s possible that they know that they can slack and I will fix it, but they were submitting similarly horrid pieces of dreck in the beginning, long before they’d have known it.  Anyhow they’ve all be put on alert that I’m GONE GONE GONE baby this weekend.   No turning back now, kids!  If you write crap, crap is going to get submitted.

Of course, my improvement in mood may also have something to do with the 80 point optional final exam that I’m going to complete and turn in, which will offset most of the group project this week.  W00T!

Bring it on.

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TT and I are going away this weekend, Peeps.  Nana Poopyhands is going to be in town and take charge of the Bubba, and daddy and mommy are going to drive for the state line.  HAHAHAH just kidding we’re driving over two state lines.

It will be the first overnighter away from our little one.  Most people are pros at this by now, I know, but we don’t live near our family and TT has an annoying habit of working 24/7 in order to feed our family.  So this is kind of a yay and kind of big deal.

Unfortunately, this is the last week of Astronomy class.  Well, fortunately, because this class must be over soon or I swear to god I will break things, but unfortunately because Items are Due.   Group Items.

Some of my Group is turning in some portions of their Items, and it makes me want to vomit.  The bad writing five weeks ago?  That’s before we all became so tired we want to die.  Now what I’m seeing come in would barely pass muster for a fifth grader, and I’m not kidding.  I’ve been going over bits of it and trying to nudge people in the direction of coherance without just telling them to shut up and sit down and doing their portion outright.

This is making my upper lip sweat, because they are making changes and the changes they are making are very nearly as bad as the first draft.

What then, do I do?

Last week I rewrote all of it.  I have no doubt that many people were irritated with me and angry and insulted, but it was all shocking crap, and I didn’t rewrite the week before and we got Cs.  I also have no doubt that we will get an A.  This week I was hoping I could gently nudge in a friendly manner and suggest and that they might come up with decent submissions on their own.  This is not happening.

However, I’m turning all my stuff in for the projects and getting the Hell out of Dodge for most of the weekend.  This means that my position as doer of it all is on hold, from Saturday morning until after the deadline.  This means that someone else has to do the final edit.  Someone else, one of the folks with half a brain cell, must edit, rewrite and submit.

I have withering expectations.

I’m thinking that the only thing to do is emotionally and mentally prep for two more Cs, or worse, but I hate it.  I absolutely hate it.  I hate not being in meatspace with people and not being able to say, “Hey, this is great, but really you need to change XY and Z”.

This is going to suck.  I know that it is going to suck.  There is nothing I can do about it. 

Instant ulcer!

I want to punch this class in the balls.

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I usually love haircut day, but yesterday I had to go to *DUN DUN DUUUUNNN* a random haircut provider.  My usual person is out for two weeks and The Troublemaker and I are getting away for a night this weekend and crappy hair would just not be acceptable. It was a risk.  I had to take it.

It turns out that the risk was totally worth it and the hairdresser may have committed a coup.  I’m more than tempted to go back to him, even though he’s at the same salon as my old hairdresser.

He was quite the character.  A bit of a flamer (in the hair business?  Get OUT!) Liverpudlian who called me “love” a lot, probably to boost his tip.  I live with an Englishman, so you think I’d be immune to these things, but the accent is just as cute now as it was nine years ago, so it pretty much worked.

I sat down and he said, “So what are we doing?”

I said, “Meh.  Graduated bob.”

He said, “With a twist, though, love.”

I said, “Yes, with a twist would be good.”

“What do you want to do with the color?”

“I don’t know.  Do I want highlights or all over color?”

“All over.  With the bob we want it glossy and shiny.”

“Okee dokey”

“How do you feel about the asymetrical?”

“Sure!  Just not all Flock of Seagulls, okay?”

“I used to do their hair, after they lost all their money and were working in clothings stores.  I won’t do that to your hair”

Then, the FoS hairdresser went to work. It was perfunctory.  We didn’t chit-chat much.  He knocked my head with the brush and when he wanted me to tilt he would kind of stab my head in the direction he wanted it to go.  I wound up with hair all down the back of my shirt.

I have never felt more like I was in good hair hands.  He had no time to be gentle or nice, he was an artist at work.

At the end of the day he gave me a gorgeous cut and color.  An asymetrical graduated bob in mahoggany.

I’m sure that it’s haircut 101, but I really like it and I think it looks sharp.  Check it out:

Normal

Back

Side

 80’s Inspired Molly Ringwald Type Version

Last night TT totally didn’t even notice, but complimented me on looking hot.  I think that’s just about the best possible hair result.  It looks totally like me, but hotter.  YAY!

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When I was a freshman in college I was a pretty sad and pathetic little kid.  I was 17 years old and in many, many ways still a child.  I had some fairly deep-running trauma, dissociative disorder and a lot of body dysmorphia.

I didn’t go to regular college, I went to acting college.  While it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life it was significantly different than going to school to be a CPA.  On my freshman requirement list was a yoga mat and a box of Crayola crayons.

The thing about actors is that they love to get nekkid.  Actors love to be all body and touchy-feely.  Schools encourage this because, apparently, it’s “honest” or some shit.  To be quite frank, it should have been screamingly clear to me within the first few months that I didn’t belong there at all, but I’ve never been very socially saavy.  Touching may be necessary, but grinding is not “good school” it’s “public mutual masterbation”. 

One day I performed a scene with a classmate of mine.  This time, rather than big floppy shirts and baggy jeans, I dressed up.  I did my hair, I wore a pretty dress and flattering PJs.  My character in the scene was a rather nervous person, so that channeled my anxiety into the character and away from my body.  I’d imagine that, for the first time that year, I actually briefly looked comfortable and pretty in my own skin.  I got supportive feedback from my classmates and actually felt pretty good about the job I’d done.

The next day one of my classmates, let’s call her Mennifer, cornered me in an empty classroom.  She sat down next to me in a chair and let it all pour out.

Essentially, she told me that I had looked wonderful the day before in the scene and that I had a great body and was a beautiful girl.  That if I didn’t stop acting like I was ugly  immediately then that was IT.  A bunch of my classmates had been talking about this and if I didn’t see what they saw and stopped being pathetic and hiding then IT WAS ALL OVER and they just GIVE UP ON ME.

This was not said with a smile, this was not an exaggeration.  It was agressive and mean.  What I found out was, not only had my classmates apparently had a meeting to discuss my personal level of comfort with my body, but that they had come to a decision and if I didn’t shut up and go with it then I was pretty much guaranteed not to fit in.  Ever.

I remember feeling viciously attacked by that because, no matter what the supposed “cure” it was meant to provide, it was a vicious attack and I remember opening my mouth to try and defend myself.  Mennifer’s face twisted into a sneer and she flounced off, secure in her place as Judge of Me.

Of course, years later I know how rediculousness of that entire scene.  I know that all that was showing was Mennifer’s malice and controlling nature.  I know that I wouldn’t have wanted friends in people like that.  As much as fitting in is really nice, if you fit in with a bunch of fucktards, what does that make you?  I also know that I had very good reasons for my problems, and that nobody in the world had the right to question my coping mechanisms or order me to “get over it”.

At the time, though, I was 17 and devistated.  I did go on to become more comfortable with my body.  I slowly grew up, the way that people do, and I completed the program, mutual public masterbation and all.  But I never did fit in.  I was never as casual with my physical self as other people thought I should be.  That came later, when I was in an environment where people were not standing around judging me.

Now, if I found Mennifer, I’d smack her right across her ass face and ask her “How DARE you?  How dare you judge me, you privledged little shit princess?”

Somewhere else out in the wide internets I’ve been talking to a group of people about my past and how I’m feeling about it.  Last night, under a different name, all in the name of “support”, another Mennifer struck again.  She could see my issues and problems so, so clearly.  I was to, immediately, take her approach and change my coping mechanism to fit what she saw was best.

She was ignorant and rude and self-centered and posted a big huge post tearing me apart in the name of “caring”.

This time I didn’t sit and cry and wonder why my method of dealing with things was wrong.  This time I didn’t care if nobody liked me again.  This time I told her that she was rediculous, ignorant, and a pig.  Thank you very much for your concern, but you’re a fucking idiot.  Stop telling me what to do, how to feel, or how to cope. 

I’m done with the Mennifers.  They are asswipes.  Without being me they feel free to tell me how to live my life.  I cannot stop people from judging, but I can decide what I put up with, and I’m done putting up with that shit.

Dear Mennifers, you don’t care about me, you care about being right.  Go judge in your own cave of self-ritiousness and back the fuck away from my face.  Go to hell.

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Going to school with me is very much like going to school with Hermione Granger.  I suck.  I raise my hand at every question and feverishly read everything I can get my hands on.  I talk down my nose and expect perfection, both of myself and others.  I am, in a word, irritating.

I’m also likely to get an A in this course, despite the group grades we just received.  Dr. Buttmunch had wonderful things to say in my personal response this week for my personal work.  In essence he said I was “awesome” and I got an A PLUS PLUS PLUS PLUS PLUS for my week’s turn-ins.

Would you believe I’m still grumbling?

To be honest, it’s just a matter of control.  I don’t mind working my own ass off, it’s working my ass off and having to combine my work with others who are not bothering to work their asses off.  Or, maybe they are, maybe they just have less ass.

I am so uncomfortable with the idea that, deep down, I’m stupid, that I despise and have a very bad reaction to being glommed in with people who write that way.

At any rate, life will go on.  Most sane people would look at the low A and cheer because all I need is a C to continue onward and upward with my degree, I chew and grumble and get pissy that it’s not the 97 that we all KNOW I DESERVE, THANKYEWVERYMUCH.

Please ignore the wibbling in the corner.  School scares me and I’m still very much secretly afraid that everyone will find out I’m an idiot.

I am also embracing my inner Hermione and am spending the evening tonight essentially rewriting all the answers to the project due at midnight, because these people, they are assless and I ain’t gettin’ no more Cs, y’all.

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In a question paper that is supposed to run about 1,960 words.

The guy makes it impossible to answer in less than that.

But it’s done.  It’s done.

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On the group projects this week.

The professor, Dr. Dickhead Astronomy, thinks he’s holding court over a graduate class.  He also thinks that we should all be penalized because some fuckers can’t write without plagerizing, or in fact write or think at all.

He is very, very lucky this evening, that I don’t know where he lives.  I’m going to go to sleep tonight fantasizing about punching him in his ass face over and over and over again.

I’m also going to try and get used to the idea that I’m going to have to rewrite this week’s turn-ins.  Because, apparently, if you have stupid people on the team with you and they are in charge of some of the paper, you also are stupid.

I’m… I have no words.  I have no words for how angry I am.

I’m suddenly feeling like it’s the acme of foolishness to go to grad school.  I feel like there is no point at all.  If I can’t handle this fucking online fucking nothing fucking community college astronomy course, what the fuck am I doing going for a masters of science?

I really feel totally frozen by this.  I’m suddenly unable to move.  I have, literally, NO MORE TIME OR ENERGY left.  NONE.  NO MORE ROOM AT THE INN.  NO.

Shit.

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I’d like to thank you, Peeps, for being out there.  Thank you for reading.  Thank you for commenting and emailing and reaching out to me.  This blog is a very self-centered thing, and I can’t believe that something so utterly selfish has brought me into contact with you folks, who are some of the most selfless people I know.

Mercy, el-e-e, Mayhem, Baggage, Bella, Lori, Artemesia, Kate, Kristina, Heidi, Beetle, Lizzie, NanaP, Elizabeth B (To whom I owe an enormous thank you email that I swear I will write sometime before I actually die), LIsa, Burgh Baby’s Mom, MoVo, Dawn, Ant, Neils…  All of you.  You all are such amazing people.

Thank you so much.

I got another gift this morning from Jennifer Lane Photography.  First of all, she wrote another incredibly sweet post at her blog about Wallace and me, and honestly who doesn’t feel better after starting the day having people say nice things about them?  Secondly, she posted this picture, which made me stop breathing.

Look at his arms!  In this picture she managed to capture the perfect, exact way that he’s transitioning out of baby and into boy.  Also, she caught me mushing him, and a healthy mushing is one of the rules we live by in our family.

Really, I just about burst into tears.  There was definately snuffling and some dribbling:

I love being a mom, and I love having Wallace.  He’s the light of our lives.  He’s everything we live for.  I love having this picture.

What an amazing gift.

Thank you so much Jennifer.  I don’t know how to thank you enough, really.  Please, please if you’re thinking of professional photos, please check out Jennifer Lane.  She’s worth her weight in gold.

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