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So the other day I blogged about wearing Loup Garou on Thanksgiving. I had to work a 16 hour shift that evening and when I got home I STILL smelled just as strongly of the fragrance as I did during the day. Maybe it wasn't strong to other people around me. One coworker told me I smelled like laundry... The bra that I had the piece of cotton in still has a heavenly scent, LOL. I usually hand-wash bras and the like, but it may take me a couple of washes to get all the scent out of it. This morning I was going to pour a couple of drops of Envy in the tub. When I first opened it, I caught the lime and a basil-y rosemary-ish whiff, very green and herbacious. Today I got more green and less lime. I accidentally poured the entire imp into the tub and it was a nice soak; I'm sorry I poured out the whole imp. The drop or so remaining in the vial went on pulse points. The Envy doesn't seem to be as long lasting as the Loup Garou was. Maybe it's because I put it straight onto my skin and not on a piece of fabric but I can't smell it at all now, ant it's been about 7 hours. I don't know that I'd order a full bottle again but I will probably order another imp or a decant. I'm glad to be ordering more this weekend and again the following payday. On a personal note: This is the first time in years that I've been able to budget money for indulgences for myself. My son will be 8 years old this coming weekend and two years ago he was hospitalized and diagnosed with ADHD, ODD, PTSD, and possible bi-polar disorder but they assigned Non Specified Mood Disorder to the list of diagnoses. He was sent home every day for the first semester of kindergarten, and even before that was asked to leave two daycare centers and a preschool. He's been hospitalized twice. I've been bitten, kicked, scratched, cussed out, had things thrown at me, and spent hours literally wrestling with a tiny octopus child of prodigious strength. I've had bruises the circumference of an orange from bites and I've had bloody lips as well. He's never been allowed to watch horror movies or anything that wasn't age appropriate in my home. This wasn't a case of bad parenting or negligence or abuse. (I've been accused of all three.) This is just a child whose brain chemicals aren't properly balanced and the areas of his brain that regulate these things aren't necessarily developing the same way as everyone else's are. We are insanely lucky to be in a program right now that offers us housing assistance and access to referrals and case management for 5-10 years so that I can complete my degree and raise my son in the manner I see fit. He is homeschooled, I work 40-50 hours a week, and this week some of my art is hanging in a show in the Design District in Dallas. Someone has already inquired about purchasing a small watercolor and the show doesn't even open until tomorrow! I don't have any outside help with my son. I can't afford the specialized childcare he requires and am very lucky that my aunt is able to take him on the overnight shifts and sometimes my mother can take him on a weekend. If not, he comes to the office with me. No one gives us any financial or cash assistance outside of our subsidized housing. I pay for medical insurance every month, we do not have any sort of food stamp (SNAP) assistance either. He receives Medicaid because he is legally disabled and receives SSI (which I suppose does count as cash assistance :-|) but that money goes to clothe him, feed him, and into savings for his future. His father has never been a part of his life and has no involvement and has never wished to. I've never received child support. I pay my mother's phone bill right now since we're on a family plan and she switched jobs after being with one company for 30 years and filed for bankruptcy. My family isn't close and people aren't really so eager to assist you when you have a 75lb screaming angry ball of rage (only sometimes) stuck to you like glue. Not that my son isn't the most amazing, hilarious, witty, sarcastic, intelligent, eager to learn, and loving small person I've ever met in my entire life, but he has his bad days just like anyone else. His are more along the "Hulk Smash" lines of bad days, though. I know that was very off track but it is such a huge deal for us to be getting on our feet and getting our lives back to what is normal for us. Being able to spend a little bit of money here and there for something for myself when someone else gets everything first automatically is a big thing. I've had to not guilt trip myself when I purchase hair dye or makeup or perfume. Less than a month ago I dyed my hair for the first time in over 3 years and what a difference did THAT make. Wow. So anyway, yeah. Loving being able to collect BPAL. Enjoying learning and being part of a diverse fandom and having one more new thing to obsess over. I've got our hermit crabs and BPAL... when I get older I'll be the smelly crab lady that all the kids are afraid of...bahahaha or maybe like the aunties in Practical Magic...that would be cool.
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I took the bus to work this morning, because my sweetheart is out of town for a while, and I can't drive (for a variety of reasons....it's a long story.) I used to take the bus every day to work, and it was fine, although occassionally a bit scary. And this morning was about textbook, save that the bus was a little less crowded than it can be, and there were no strange encounters of any kind. But they had a TV on the bus. A nice big flatscreen tucked into the corner, playing a highly condensced version of Reuter's headlines. Now I've seen this before — but generally in nicer neighborhoods (I live in the 'hood) and while I must admit that I could see the appeal, it was a bit chilling. That was, as I recall, also my reaction to first seeing telelvision monitors in the check-out lines of supermarkets. Not a sense of "hey, that's cool!" but more of a sense of unease. I can still remember, when, as a teenager, I first realized that society was embracing the cautionary tales of cyberpunk science-fiction with open arms, that there were people who, far from being outraged or repulsed by William Gibson's societies of corporate control and vast inequity, thought that the idea of the continual survellianced society was cool. I've never met one of these people, but they must exist, because I keep seeing their handiwork, like flatscreens on grocery story check-out lines and in cars and on buses. This Max Headroom-esque idea that we should live in a society where it is impossible to escape a television screen — when did that become the rule of the day?
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So someone pointed me towards some LJ forum someone started up for the purpose of allowing people to anonymously vent their true feelings about the LJ Black Phoenix forum (and as it turned out, about bpal.org.) I read for a few entries before I had to stop, feeling absolutely sick to my stomach. Who thought this was a good idea? In my experience, anytime people can hide under a cloak of anonymity, the majority transform almost immediately into assholes. It's like passing notes in the back of the class in 7th grade or whispering to each other about how fat Susie is (and making sure Susie can hear them) — the desire to impress their peers with their capacity for cruel and malicious behavior manifests as the most horrifying vitriol. It all goes straight to "Lord of the Flies" island, because somehow, the people we meet on the internet aren't "real" people and so what we do to them smacks of the hypothetical. We don't have to be there and say these things to them face to face and deal with the chance that we might make them angry or make them cry — that we might actually have to face the consequences of our behavior first hand. It's all Unreal. We're all turned into sociopaths, because our audience comes pre-objectified for our convenience. Are there people on these forums I don't like? Of course there are! There are even people I loathe, and people who are engaged in behaviors which I find self-destructive and/or unethical, and I want to throttle them. But you know what? That's okay. I know I'm not loved by everyone myself. I can be an insufferable know-it-all bitch (hey, even my Chinese horoscope says so) and I'm not always the easiest person to get along with. I know there are people on these forums who do not like me. I'm cool with that. They don't have to like me. And — and I LOVE this — we can continue to be civil with each other, because these forums are an atmosphere where its been made abundantly clear that civil manners and behavior are the rule of the day. As such, I try not call those people names or be nasty to them — one does not DO that in polite society. My reward is that sometimes these people I once disliked become friends I really love and enjoy — because I gave myself the chance to get to know them. Of course, I suppose I could always log on somewhere anonymously and rant and rave and call people names, but honestly, what is to be gained from that?
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Well, no one is ever going to see wank removed entirely, but I hear the anonymeme has been shut down by Live Journal because it overstepped the terms of the Live Journal service agreemeent: turns out that Life Journal WILL remove a site that seems to exist only as a means of harassment. Good for them.
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Sorry, I don't have any insider information to share — just wanted to talk about my recent movie purchases. In a fit of wishful thinking and "isn't Neil Gaiman swell?" euphoria, I went down to my local video store and bought DVDs of the English TV series Neverwhere and last year's movie Mirrormask. I really liked Neverwhere (the book.) It was witty and engaging and a bit weird and very, very...well...very Neil Gaiman. A good strong stock Neil Gaiman-esque protagonist (humble, slightly befuddled, generally unaware of cute he is, thoroughly well-intentioned, and just so damn nice) and enough interesting and different characters and places to really fire the imagination. The TV series though? Oh dear. I kept watching and thinking to myself: "the poor lambs...if only they'd had a real budget this could have been really good." Enough money for sets and props and actors who could act (they weren't all bad, but those who were walked right past "bad" and didn't stop until they'd reached "awful.") It wasn't a terrible show (although I probably gave it considerable lee-way because I was so enchanted with the book) but Lord, it wasn't good either. After 3 shows, I stopped watching and put in Mirrormask instead. Just the thing to cleanse the palate, as it turns out. I think Neil Gaiman is most on top of his game when he throws mythology into the mix. More specifically, I really do think he is the master of the modern fairy tale. "Modern fairy tale." Hmmph. Sounds like something that came out of a marketing brainstorming session on how to sell the latest remake of "Three Little Pigs." What I mean by "modern fairy tale" is that some of Gaiman's work (Mirrormask and the coming-soon-to-a-theatre-near-you Stardust) has the quality of fairy tales that might have been written down by the Brothers Grimm three centuries ago, but weren't. There is that sense of wonder and excitement and internal rules that are not expected to be exactly the same as our rules, although they are damned familiar. Magical lands, and magical figures, and I am not quite doing these stories justice when I say that in Gaiman's hands "magical" is fresh and new, and not a word that's been used to describe so many things, from Pagan to Hogworts, that it has ceased to have much meaning. Anyway, I'm sure I'm not telling you anything you don't already know: Gaiman has a loyal and devoted presence here on the forum, and a lot of people here had the chance to oooh! and aaah! over Mirrormask when it was still in the theatre. But if you haven't had the chance, I highly recommend you pick up the DVD. It's truly a beautiful movie.
