Not Exactly a Blog

Not much reading last night, but we did get most of an entire missing section of the Dread Document done. And I had another bizzare dream. This one started out with me and a housepainter chatting as we were painting the outside of a house. I think it was my new house (new in the dream, not the house I'm in now) but I'm not sure. We finished up and I invited him over for a D & D game I was going to run that night after I moved. I told him to bring his friends, too. The next part of the dream had to do with moving out of my old place. My old place turned out to be the one I was painting. I discovered that I had roommates there, too--my friends Rob, Anne, (RPG) Heather, and Doug. (As an aside, those four were roommates after college, but I didn't live with them.) I only had a few things to move to the just-built new house, which was just a few blocks away. Or so I thought. As I started moving things, I discovered that I had more and more stuff. At some point, my friend Rachel showed up to help. We were all lugging bags, boxes, and furniture through a shortcut between two neighbors' yards. The route was such that we had to avoid a swmming pool at one point--not to mention the horde of people at the pool party who were watching us move. Eventually, we got it all to the new house, which turned out to have not been completed on the inside. Some walls weren't painted, some hadn't even been drywalled. The plumbing was incomplete, and some of the fixtures didn't have their final porcelain finish on them. For some reason, whoever had handled the transaction--and I knew it wasn't me--had signed off on the house even though it was so obviously not done, so the contractors weren't obliged to complete it. At that point, Rachel said "I'm sorry, but I can't take this anymore. I'm leaving." And leave she did. I became very, very distressed (maybe because Rachel is in law school, and if she couldn't find a solution, I was really screwed). The rest of us sat around in my incomplete new house and tried to figure out what to do next. At that point, I woke up because I couldn't stand it any more.

Weird, huh?

Originally, I intended to write about some of my favorite Halloweens, before I got into the dream. So, here it is. Halloween's been my favorite holiday ever since I was tiny. My mom used to make the best costumes--she'd sewed costumes for an entire ballet company for several years, so a couple of little kids were no problem. (I hope.) The first one I remember was when I went as Princess Leia, which was actually cool in 1976. I had an off-white hooded caftan, and my hair was so long that I had no problem with the hairdo. When I was in grade school--first grade, I think--she made an amazing Wonder Woman costume for me. Not just the bodysuit, mind you, but the bracelets, the tiara, the boots, and the lasso. She looped up my extremely long hair so that it was shoulder-length, pinned it, and sprayed it black. <i>Nobody</i> at school recognized me, including the teachers, without my light brown, beyond-waist-length braids. At the time, it was about the coolest thing I had ever experienced. Other costumes that I remember were the traffic light (made from a filing-cabinet box and colored cellophane) and the ice-cream sundae (complete with a red ballon on top for a cherry and a four-foot wood and styrofoam spoon).

Another good Halloween was my senior year of college. My roommates and I had a theme costume party--"Come as your favorite god." The atheist wore a T-shirt with a great artist's rendering of the Milky Way Galaxy--after threatening to come as himself. I had a floor-length, split-to-the-waist gold lame skirt as part of my goddess costume (Ishtar, in case you're wondering). I think I still have some photos from that one floating around. Later on, in graduate school, my roommate, Cayte, and I had a great Halloween party. Five of us--me, Cayte, Anne, Mim, and Nate--dressed up as the cast of Heathers; I was the Shannen Doherty character, because I had an appropriate green outfit. Everyone had great costumes that year; there was a lesbian couple who came as Bonnie and Clyde, Fitz came as a young Elvis (and I dohave photographic evidence of that!) because he had his own gold lame jacket, and another friend and her boyfriend came in full medieval garb. He's not much taller than I am, and I don't quite reach five feet tall. His costume was "the shortest knight of the year". That was the same party where, in keeping with the Heatherstheme, Cayte and I concocted a highly alcoholic and tasty punch that was the exact color of drain cleaner. Unfortunately, I think I enjoyed a little too much of it, as the recipe has entirely diappeared from my mind.

The best Halloween was four years ago. Ed and I got married on October 31st of 1998. I remember the ceremony better than the reception--and after a rough year of planning the wedding, I was so tired that I'm glad I remember anything. What I do remember of the reception was that it was a lot of fun. The DJ was forbidden to play any of those stupid songs like the hokey pokey or the chicken dance. I told him that if he got the urge to do so, to play something off a Halloween CD. I have a very vivid memory of my grandmother dancing with Rob to "Werewolves of London." No pictures of it, more's the pity. And when I was out on the dance floor, somebody--I don't know who--tapped my shoulder, and when I turned around the individual in question was wearing the mask and robe from <i>Scream</i>. To this day, I have no idea who it was. (I looked around for the person I thought was the most likely suspect, and I was wrong.)

T. was over last night for her sewing lesson, although we didn't get much done. She was in need of a Halloween costume, and not just any costume, but one in which she would outshine her friends. We started going through my various bits and pieces of costumes, starting in my bedroom closet. What I found amusing was that she started pulling out the clothes that I wear on any given day and exclaiming that they would make <i>fabulous</i> costumes. Granted, a significant percentage of what's in my closet has a "Made in India" label and lots of embroidery...not to mention the clothes I've made myself. Nothing like a fresh perspective on one's wardrobe. Anyway, we got her all set up with a costume that she liked, and by then, we both needed some dinner. Fortunately, it turned out that we're going to need to make another trip to the fabric store anyway, so even if we'd put our minds to it, we wouldn't have accomplished much. And as Sean always says, any project completed in three or fewer trips to the store is a success. (He was talking about rehabbing his house, but I think it applies in this case.)

I finally managed to finish up Thomas Harlan's Oath of Empire, and decided I liked it enough to start the sequel, the name of which escapes me. Over the weekend, I went out to Borders and picked up The Salmon of Doubt, Douglas Adams's last novel. He died on my 30th birthday, which definitely put a dent (no pun intended) in things for me. I also picked up a couple of paperbacks, including Diane Duane's latest, Stealing the Elf King's Roses and a trade paperback anthology of Charles de Lint's stories written under the name of Samuel Key. When I went to put them away, I tripped over yet another bag of library books, and I've got seven more holds in transit. Time to buckle down and start reading. Throw me in the brier patch, while you're at it.

Kalilily has people blogging about their dreams, and as I've had a couple of interesting ones, I'll join in. Last night, I dreamed that I was at an impromptu Black Flag concert on the fourth floor of the parking garage at the state government center (where I'm currently contracted out for my day job). Henry Rollins tripped and fell on me, and we both ended up in a puddle on the cement floor of the grarage. If it has any deep meaning at all, I'd be as surprised as anyone. The other one, night before last, is likewise weird and meaningless. I was performing a 15-minute version of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, sort of like what you'd expect from The Reduced Shakespeare Company, only not funny. In the dream, I kept doing this over and over again, and the production design of the dream was straight out of the movie version that starred Anthony Hopkins. I woke up disturbed that morning!

Ed, who has a psychology degree, believes that dreams are just the brain's way of taking out the trash. More often than not, I'm inclined to agree. Every once in a while, though, I have a dream in which I'm definitely trying to tell myself something. There's one recurring dream I've had so many times--and is so obvious--that I've actually named it. It's my "Quit Your Job" dream. It's always the same, although the details change. In the dream, it's my day off, and I'm at home, in bed, trying to sleep. Except that somehow, the surroundings change, and I am in bed, trying to sleep, at my workplace. On various occasions, this was the public library branch, the used bookstore, and hobby store. Once, when I was doing a lot of remote video production, the dream featured my coworkers trying to set up a remote video shoot in my bedroom, with cables running across the bed. I vividly remember each of the four instances of this dream. Each time, I quit the job as soon as possible, and was much happier for it. What does it prove? Nothing, really, other than I ought not to take customer-service type jobs.

A little drama has been unfolding outside the south window of the building I work in. This morning, there was a vast cloud of white steam pouring out of a utility grating. And I do mean vast; I'm on the fourth floor of the building, and the plume stretched up to at least the fifth floor. After as while, there were some interesting hissing noises. The plume is now gone, but there are five utility-company trucks, a police car, and a backhoe outside. Not to mention a dozen guys in hard hats shaking their heads.

Why, yes, it has been a slow day at the office.

In Asian painting, in music, and in life, the empty spaces between the action are at least as important as the action itself.

At last night's D &D game, I was sitting there at the table, and Doug looked at me and asked if there was any reason that my eyes were so dialated. For once, I didn't have all kinds of pharmaceuticals partying in my bloodstream, so it took me a moment to realize that I had a migraine coming on. I have very dark brown eyes, so the fact that Doug noticed from three feet away probably means that my pupils were huge. It certainly explains the extreme light sensitivity. Thanks to the timely warning, I was able to head off the headache, which was fabulous. My eyes are still sensitive (sunglasses, indoors, on a rainy day, and it may as well be full summer sun) but at least my head's not imploding.

Game WISH asks Today's question is about your heart character. The heart character rests on the idea that over the course of a gaming career, players would revisit certain themes that were important to them for some reason, and that one or two characters in particular would embody those themes or ideas. Whatever it was about the heart character(s) would draw the player back to those themes. Do you have a heart character? More than one? If so, what makes that character a heart character? If you don't have one, do you think there are themes you revisit with your characters? Or do you think this entire theory is full of it, and if you do, why?

I don't know if I have a heart character, but I can certainly see some trends in my characters. I tend to play elves in fantasy games, partly because elves make great bards and rangers, which are two of my favorite character occupations. However, upon considering it, I like playing young elves--sometimes very young--who have the same amount of, or less, life experience than the shorter-lived species. And upon further consideration, I think I can say that generally, I tend to play young characters, perky characters, or naive characters, at least lately (with one notable exception, Janna). I'm not sure why this seems to be happening, although I do know that my characters' personalities do tend to reflect what's going on in my life. (Perhaps it has to do with having been happily settled down for a while now.) And I must admit that it's quite amusing to see a bunch of badasses or head cases try and deal with a nice, happy, perky person. Bronwyn the druid is driving Malvey the necromancer/ranger absolutely around the bend in our Thursday game. He figures that there <i>must</i> be something wrong with anyone who's that nice for no apparent reason. Bronwyn, of course, doesn't get it, and just tries harder to be nice to him. This leads to great character interaction--in the game before last, Malvey looked right at Bronwyn (who was trying to make polite small talk) and said "I'm tired of this conversation. Can we not have it?"

Most of all, I like to play characters with interesting disadvantages. It's a lot of fun for me, as a player, to get a character in way over her head and see if I can get her out again. One of the best examples I can think of was a character who eventually became an exceptionally powerful psionicist. She was a 6" pixie in a combat-heavy campaign. It was something of a running joke among the other characters to see what they could stuff her into--pockets, boxes, beer mugs, mouse-holes, stinky old socks knotted at the top, and so on. (Boys. Ugh!) At one point, our thief had a broken arm and they seriously considered stuffing the pixie into a lock to see if she could open it from the inside. The capmpaign went on long enough for her to pick up some advanced abilities, and weren't they surprised the first time they tried to stuff her in a box and the hand holding her came off the arm? (She did put it back--painlessly, good as new, and free of charge)

Even a good trip to the gynecologist is still a trip to the gynecologist.

My trip was put off by almost nine months, as I had to cancel my original appointment and reschedule it. Then, my rescheduled appointment was canceled by the doctor, and re-rescheduled. Right up to the point that I walked in the door, I wasn't sure if I was actually going to make it. Once I actually got in, though, it went as well as could be expected. Ed refers to my birth-control pills as "DINK (Double Income No Kids) insurance," which the doc found very amusing. I really ought to wait to tell jokes until afterthe actual physical exam is finished.

I finished the big round of corrections on the Dread Document last night. It took me about three and half hours, but I don't have to set foot in the lab again until Monday night. Nor do I intend to. The only thing I have left to do is to call one guy's cell phone around 9:00 tomorrow night with a fabricated emergency to get him out of something at a reasonably early hour.

Here I am, contemplating Dorothea’s peace of mind as well as my own. Our situations are similar; her husband requires a lot of looking after. I find myself looking after Ed a lot, although I don’t think he needsit so much as he’s used to it. And by looking after, I mean everything from managing finances to doing laundry to changing the burnt-out light bulbs. The questions presented to the Internet community at large are:

1. “I want to know how he got like this”
2. “and how come it seems to be men who are like this and women who let them be this way?”
3. “How does he get away with this, and why do I allow it?”
4. “How do you train a person to be aware of another? Especially a person somewhat less than fully aware of himself, accustomed to accepting the benefits of others’ awareness of him?”
5. “Is there anything I can do for you?” in the context of “I have either already taken care of or am ignoring. I don’t leave him anything obvious for his generous impulse to accomplish.”

And, of course, the Really Big (Unspoken) Question, why do I do this?

Heady stuff. Right, wrong, or ridiculous, here’s my best shot.

I want to know how he got like this”

The short answer is that everyone starts out like this. The long answer is…when you’re born, someone takes care of everything for you. Eventually, you start doing things for yourself, such as tying your shoelaces and brushing your teeth. Eventually, some people go on to learn how to do their own laundry, manage a checking account, and get their library books returned (or renewed) on time. Nobody gets everything down perfectly; I often forget to check the mail, Ed needs to be reminded to take the trash out. When you get into a long-term relationship, such as a marriage, at some point you realize that you have effectively divided up the responsibilities. You can do this consciously or unconsciously. Personally, I think it’s best to do this consciously. My friend Anne has a very good way of doing this—whatever you care about most becomes your responsibility. (Ed doesn’t care if the dishes pile up and I do, so I wash the dishes. I don’t care if the lawn gets mowed twice week; he does.) Therefore, it’s really not a question of having gotten one way or another, it’s never having had to be any other way. If you’ve got someone around who’s willing to do your laundry and change your light bulbs, you never have to do it yourself. Eventually, the person who’s always doing those things becomes the only one who notices when they need doing, and therefore, the only one who does them.

“and how come it seems to be men who are like this and women who let them be this way?”

Here’s one for the sociologists out there. I could say that it’s “more acceptable in our society” for men to focus on “big ideas” rather than the irritating minituae of everyday life. As for why it’s men who seem to be like that…personally, I think it has an economic basis, at least in part. Until recently, women who had paying jobs generally got paid less than men who had paying jobs. Vast oceans of ink have been spilled on this subject, so I’ll move on. This fosters an interesting, intertwined pair of perceptions—What Men Do Is Important and Women’s Time Is Worth Less Than Men’s. From a strictly paycheck-oriented point of view, this was very true in the past and is still somewhat true today. (Again, how much is open to debate; for purposes of this discussion, suffice it to say that it has been getting better.) However, like many strictly economic viewpoints, it leaves out a lot. This brings me back to what started Dorothea thinking in the first place. Looking after people—professionally or non—is a vastly undervalued endeavor. Teaching, nursing and home health care, day care, and especially parenting are vitally necessary, pay little or not at all, and generally don’t command a lot of respect. On the other hand, nobody wants to do without any of that. As for why women let them be that way, it follows that if you’re not getting an economic reward, you’re getting some kind of reward. Maybe it’s just that women are more likely to see the inherent value in caregiving because they’re the ones who notice and are doing it. (See above)

“How does he get away with this, and why do I allow it?”

Without being snippy, He gets away with it becauseShe allows it. Why does She allow it? Maybe She buys into gender stereotypes, consciously or unconsciously. Maybe She feels that it gives her some kind of leverage in the relationship. Maybe She trusts her skills and abilities more. Maybe She needs to feel in control or competent. Maybe She is the one who cares, and therefore the one who notices. Maybe She is afraid to give up these responsibilities, for fear that there’s nothing to gain by it, and a lot to lose. Maybe She has a self-esteem problem, and truly doesn't believe that she deserves a little care herself. Maybe all of these; every She is different and all of Her are complex.

"How do you train a person to be aware of another? Especially a person somewhat less than fully aware of himself, accustomed to accepting the benefits of others’ awareness of him?”

The way anyone learns anything, I suppose--gradually. Provide opportunities to learn. Start with small things—rinse the dishes, pick up your socks. Helping someone develop habits and routines is hard, especially adults, but worth it in the long run. If you’re going to make a pass around the house looking for light bulbs that need to be replaced, ask the other person to help (that’s a job that’s much easier with two people anyway, and you can talk while you’re doing it). Write lists and tape them in prominent places—like on the mirror over the bathroom sink, or on top of a lock that requires a key. (If you have to move the note to get at what you’re doing, you’re much less likely to miss it) Set aside time dedicated to whatever task it is, and work on it together. If I may digress momentarily, I was amazed when Ed told me that he didn’t unload the dishwasher because he didn’t know where anything went. I pointed out that when he needed a spoon or a glass, he knew where to look for them.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” in the context of “I have either already taken care of or am ignoring [what I need]. I don’t leave him anything obvious for his generous impulse to accomplish.”

This is a great opportunity for positive reinforcement. Ask for something for yourself, even if it’s only a glass of water. Ask for a hug (in my experience, this has never failed to elicit a positive response). If you’re not up for that, name whatever was next on your to-do list; order a printer cartridge, return the library books, change the washer in the faucet. It doesn’t have to be anything momentous, but think of something. The asker of the question genuinely wants to be helpful; you’ll both feel better if you let him. Maybe not the first time, but eventually, you will get used to thinking of yourself as someone who deserves a little caretaking.

The Really Big Unspoken Question, why do I do this?

I have no idea why you do this. I think I know part of why I do this, although it’s entirely possible that I’m fooling myself. I think I do it for a lot of reasons. I think part of it has to do with being an oldest sibling. A lot of it has to with the fact that my parents not only expected me to be responsible, but actively encouraged it.

Unfortunately, I seem to have lost the end of this entry and some other full entries here. Remember, kids, back up early and often!

10/9/2002

10/6/2002

10/4/2002