Made summer rolls for the first time. They were surprisingly easy to make, very filling, and are at least 80% fresh vegetables, and probably fat free. I am converted!

And, the anxiety is still trying to grab me by the neck. I feel so......friendless sometimes.

I think the deal is that I don't know how to measure myself out like other people seem to. I either trust people or I don't. Or, OK, maybe there is some intermediate position, but still. It leaves me feeling either far more vulnerable than I would like to be, or totally estranged from humanity and longing to be able to be vulnerable. Arrgh........

Truck is running again! Yeah! And I didn't have to hitchhike this time!

OK, back to your regularly scheduled program of weird thoughts, overprocessed introspection, and pottery ideas......lol....

Truck broke down and I haven't been able to fix it. Exhausted and burned out. :-/

Sex, Trauma, and Violence
Why is there such an obvious parallel between the vagina and a wound both in terms of shape and in the fact that they both bleed and both can be associated with pain? Why is there also an association between the penis and objects of violence such as knives, spears, etc? There are certain artists who have recognized and exploited the disturbing aspects of these associations.....but what I want to know is why these parallels exist in the first place.

Love and other Gooey, Icky Things
It's like trying to fly. And even birds with broken, poorly healed wings still try to fly, because that's what birds do and that's what wings are for. I get really tired of crash landing and ending up as a mangled mess on the pavement though......

Answers to Questions Not Asked

• 
  Why I was willing to marry Tim even though I clearly wasn't passionately in love with him: Aside from the obvious (we were good friends, did everything together anyway, and had a child to consider), he was safe. I didn't have to worry about getting all broken up and hurt. At least, that's what I thought, which is also why I was so thoroughly pissed off when he dumped me for another woman. I was tired of loving people who couldn't love me back, tired of looking, tired of hoping and being disillusioned, tired of thinking I could meet a magical someone, tired of the risks. Tim was an easy out of the emotional challenges of life, an easy way to settle down and opt out of the risks and the unlikely rewards.
  
• Why I like you: Because there's no veneer. Most people have a veneer, and a lot of men have full blown iron walls of machismo. It's off putting and down right scary to me, because first of all, it's false, and secondly, who knows what sort of person is hiding behind all that armor? When I look at you, there's no wall, just you, and there is something extremely endearing and irresistible about that.

Drove all the way to Coeur d'Alene this morning, in such a hurry that I did not even get my coffee......only to discover that it was Advising Day. In other words, no class at all! :-P See what happens when I don't drink my coffee?! Lol

Actually, my instructor would have reminded me if I had been there on Thursday, but I was home at the mercy of my stomach, which was tying and untying itself. I couldn't even think to the end of the day, so next week just did not occur to me.

So since I was there anyway, I spent more lovely therapeutic time in the pottery studio. :-) I made several weird looking things, and only one or two "normal" looking things. I guess I just don't have a lot of use for "normal". I can almost feel myself healing when I am with the clay. Mental hot tub....lmao.....

My ceramics class just got our second glaze firing out of the kiln. The last time, my favorite piece went into the college display case. This time, I got it back again, and two new pieces were ensconced in the case in its place. :-)

Now, here is what's funny about this. These two pieces (deformed bowls???) were mistakes. They were miserable failures at throwing bowls on a wheel. The clay was soft, I was inept, and the rims collapsed and deformed. Usually I squash them and use the clay for scrap, but I got disgusted at having nothing to show for several hours of attempting to throw a single bowl on the wheel. So for these two bowls (and one other), I just let the rims sag and flop. I bent and curled and twisted the rest of the rim as well, to make them look, uh, interesting (lol). When these things came out of the bisque firing (no glaze, think of it as a pre-bake), I was tempted once more to toss them into the trash. But, it is free to glaze and fire them, and testing new glaze combinations is fun, and I already had them bisqued, so why the hell not? So I slapped some glaze onto them and put them on the glazed wares shelf and promptly forgot they even existed, until today.

They aren't fantastic. I haven't held them yet to see if I even like them. But they do look a lot better than I ever thought they would. Good enough that if a pot deforms on me again, I might let it live through the bisque stage at least.

The ceramics class is extremely fulfilling and satisfying. Besides, where else do your worst mistakes end up on display?? (Will have to post pictures)....

Huh. Went back several years and reread some of my blog. It's pretty embarrassing. I spent a lot of time bitching about "normal" people and categorizing all of humanity into "normal" and "spectrum". Also, had a lot more coping difficulties back then. The degree to which I idealized spectrumites is....uh....well.....unreal. I guess we all change with time.

Now I spend a lot of time wondering and rethinking the whole diagnostic process. One of the things that really turned me off about psychology as a major was how subjective it can be, in relation to hard sciences. Who gets to say what is normal and what isn't? If 95% of the people engage in a particular behavior, is it normal? If the species has been altered, either naturally or not, so that a behavior becomes very common, does that behavior then become normal?

For another example, one psychologist says that I have PTSD, anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. Now, tell me please: is it not possible that I have just one of these? How on earth do they determine whether a person has all three of these things? How far do these three overlap, in terms of symptoms? I mean, I certainly have anxiety issues, but it does seem that if I had all three, I'd be kind of a mess. Uh....well, ok. So maybe I am a mess??

Well, I think the deal is that anxiety, panic, trauma issues, can't be neatly categorized like that. And that people who are already prediposed towards being anxious are probably a lot more likely to experience problems in the aftermath of traumatic events than a person who is not anxiety prone. And try as I might, I still have never figured out the difference between a panic attack and an anxiety attack. As far as I'm concerned, they're pretty much the same thing, and whatever it's called sucks!

And frankly, I am beginning to feel the same way about the autism spectrum stuff. The thing is, you cannot get help for people unless they have a label. Labels are useful in that way....even if they are limiting and unrealistically neat and tidy.

Nothing deep or angst ridden to say (yet), so.....how about some lists....because lists are mentally organizing and all that.

Things I'd like to do

• Get that free mountain bike my firends are offering me and find local bike paths or trails, etc to ride it on. I don't particularly want to ride it along the highway. There appears to be a neat trail that parallels HWY 95. OK, so it is all groomed and well trodden and all that.....but it couldn't hurt to ride it once or twice anyway.
  
  
• Hit the Finch arboretum before winter and collect leaves, samaras, seeds, and overall good vibes from the trees there. :)
  
  
• While in Spokane, go to the Oriental food stores and get weird produce and soem umeboshi plums. None of the health food stores here have them, only the vinegar.
  
  
• Go to that Sandpoint Alliance for the Arts place. Yeah, even though everyone else's art is probably a whole lot better than mine.
  
  
• Hike. At this point, I am honestly not even caring where anymore, although large boulders to scamper about on are always a nice touch. Hmmmm....take dogs or not? Maybe...not.
  
  
• Go somewhere wild with a sketchbook and just sketch stuff. Sketches that are free, like they'll never be looked at by anyone, so they don't have to be perfect.
  
  
• Pick wild strawberry leaves for winter tea, and possibly rose hips. These have more vitamin C than oranges or other various well publicized Vitamin C sources. Also need mullein.
  
  
• Find a hot tub. Ok, that is so shallow and silly!! :-P
  
  
• Get a truckload of manure for the garden. Oh, and plant the garlic.
  
  
• How about something outlandish and unlikely, since this list is just for fun anyway.....go to the coast and play in the fog and beachcomb and look for whales and sketch and then go to a nice warm room (as opposed to a damp, clammy tent) and sink into a hot tub. lmao.......I just had to stick another hot tub in there somewhere.

Those were totally selfish things to want to do, because I did not include my kids in any of those fantasies...sooooo......

Things I'd like to do with my kids,

• Make hand felted wool balls.
  
• Take them to a zoo. They have never been to a zoo. Ever. Unless you count the Cat Tales place on the way to Spokane, and frankly, having seen real zoos, I don't count that as one.
  
• Take the whole lot of them camping. Well, maybe not all at the same time.....
  
• Have each kid who is old enough come up with a dinner plan that is healthy, make a shopping list, shop for the stuff and make it. Sounds boring maybe.....believe it or not, my kids like that kind of thing.
  
• Go tubing or canoeing or something when the weather is nice again.
  
• See if they'd like to have pen pals. Do people still do the pen pal thing, or is snail mail completely outdated now?
  
• Take them back east to meet their family. Unfortunately, I'm not sure this would mean much to my family, since it is such a large clan.
  
• Celebrate Thanksgiving or some other holiday with my sister and her family (Moscow, ID).
  
• Volunteer at a soup kitchen. Maybe for Thanksgiving? My kids think we are poor. I don't think they realize how much worse it could really be. Besides, the idea of stuffing oneself on Turkey Day is kind of disgusting.
  
• Organize the several boxes of loose photos into a single album.
  
• Play more board games, do more puzzles, read more books together, watch a few more movies and discuss them.....just family stuff.

The lives of my kids are so different from what I had that it's hard to wrap my head around the realization that most of them don't know their grandparents or cousins, haven't been to a good museum, haven't sampled numerous cuisines at nice restaurants, haven't heard my dad play the piano or pipe organ, let alone gone to a concert. On the other hand, there are a lot of crappy experiences they've skipped, too, and they've gotten to experience things that would have meant the world to me. I guess the reality is that you simply cannot give your kids everything. Life doesn't allow enough time for that.

The other thing is that I have erred on the side of caution in certain areas. I haven't forced my kids to take up musical instruments. Somehow they've all wound up tone deaf, because I didn't teach them to sing, either. I'm not strict enough in some areas, because....well, because. I have this idea that kids are *people*, not talking objects that I own. I remember being a kid, and I try to keep that in mind when I relate to them. Maybe too much.

Bleah.......babbling on (embarrassed).......

Am feeling better now. Fragile, but better.

And I am thoroughly enjoying the ceramics class. By ceramics, I mean pottery, not those tacky slip cast things that get painted in gaudy colors and fired. I've been making a lot of neat things, getting spattered with clay and slip and never having enough time to implemment all the ideas I want to try. Creative happiness. :) I am loving it so well that I think I could spend every day of my life with my hands in clay and not get tired of it. The question is whether one could actually make a living that way? When I am with the clay I feel deeply content, calm, and mentally engaged. It is so right.

I am beginning to realize that I would much rather be alone than to go through more pain....



And yet....should the fear of failure rule my life?




What do I do with that crippling feeling, the one that makes me freeze up with terror the instant feelings start stirring around in me?



Why do I tell myself that it's OK for other people to be expressive, to cry, to laugh, but I have to be stone-faced? When did I start believing this? That if I didn't cry I wouldn't hurt as much, that I'd be stronger than other women?





I'm so scared sometimes.

Sometimes it seems that life is nothing but one continuous saga of humiliation. And really, what can one do but to hold your head up high, act like you don't notice that everyone is laughing at you inside themselves, act like you don't know and don't care, and keep a stiff upper lip?

We adopted a cat from the animal shelter a month or so ago. She is eleven years ago and has the dry form of the corona virus, which has caused her to go blind. Uno is the sweetest, most unobnoxious cat you could ever want. She spent at least half of her life at the shelter, being passed by while hundred and hundreds of others were chosen. Her mother died there.

I tell myself that we adopted Uno because I fell in love with her and couldn't forget her or get her out of my mind, but occasionally I realize that maybe it was because I know what she felt like. She must have become resigned to dying at that place before we found her. I don't want to reach that point....

Haven't posted in a while. Life has been kind of traumatic the past few weeks. That's what happens when you take people at face value, even people you thought you knew. At some point, I'll learn... At any rate, I don't want to get into the details right now.

I do find it amazing though, that I can cease to believe in the concept of a personal god, and somehow still manage to cherish this flickering flame of a hope that someday, if I wait long enough, if I do the right things, I might find the right person. That it could be someone I've known and somehow overlooked all along, or who knows, someone I'll meet next week or next year.

I have no actual basis for thinking that this could really occur. I mean, I've believed it ever since I could remember, sheltering that idea in my small child's chest and throughout the years of subsequent pain and disillusionment. What on earth gives me the idea that this could really happen? Everything I've experienced seems to point to the contrary, and yet this belief persists.

I suppose it could be that the alternative is too awful to consider?

It isn't about codependency like so many people seem to think, either. Solitude is not all that bad; in fact, I sort of crave it at times. I think it is just that I would like for there to be one, just one, person that I can really count on and share my soul with and trust, one person that I can relate to deeply instead of this shallow, superficial crap everyone else seems to spew.

Out of the billions of people out there, there has got to be one person like this that I can find. There has to be.

On the other hand, it might take a really long time to find them, so in the meantime, it behooves me to do whatever else makes life worthwhile and meaningful. Just in case....