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....

I have been reading wednesday is indigo blue (Cytowic, Eagleman 2009.), a book about synesthesia. Synesthesia is a neurological condition (a rather harsh word for such a rich experience) in which people perceive sensory input that most would perceive in a singular (one sense only) way, in a multisensory fashion. For example, a synesthete might read a book and experience flashes of color in their mind as they read the words, or feel/see colors when they hear music, and so on. Synesthesia fascinates me, but I am having a hard time reading this book.

For one thing, I don't think that I am synesthetic, and yet, I sometimes do have a multisensory experience from what should be a single-sense experience. Cotton balls squeak horribly...and pulling wads of spun cotton out of a tight pill bottle is my idea of torment. There is a particular shade of orange that I hate because I feel orange when I have migraines, or a nasty mixture of orange and dirty yellow-green if I have a migraine + nausea. I cannot conceive of time without visualizing it as a circle graph in 3 dimensions, and as a child I could only think of numbers as transparent black figures ascending infinitely into space sort of like stairs. They like to go up, so subtracting them is a lot harder than adding them. To do any mind of math, I have to visualize it, and this is why fractions are easy and borrowing is not. People think I am crazy or attention seeking when I talk about these things, so I generally don't.

The book mentions eidetic memory, commonly (and inaccurately, IMHO) known as photographic memory. A better way to express it: visual memory. They tell about a detailed test to differentiate people with a true eidetic memory from those who are simply experiencing an afterimage. Criteria are as follows: an image must be reported, it must be positively colored (as opposed to the negative image an afterimage would have), must be projected onto an easel rather than contained within one's head, described in present tense, and accompanied by eye movements to demonstrate that the person is "seeing" the image. Until about 5 years ago, when I read Temple Grandin's Thinking in Pictures, I was under the impression that all people thought and remembered things visually. I still cannot conceive of any other way to think/remember. The above test is to remember squares or shapes on a plain background, which seems kind of stupid to me in its limitations, but, whatever.... My questions regarding this are: is a visual memory different from an eidetic memory, and if so, how? Is a true photographic memory different from an eidetic memory or a visual memory?

Next, I read the part of the book which talks about the differences between recollection of color in synesthetes and "normal" people, and this is what disturbed me the most. In a study by Julia Simner where people described shades of color, normal people named 5 shades of green, whereas synesthetes listed 52. Now, I cannot imagine anyone short of a red-green colorblind person being mentally limited to 5 shades of green! This appalls me! Can this possibly be true of the population at large? Is this why people seem so....so....(how to put it)....so dulled to the beauty around them, so unvalueing of it? (yeah, i do know that wasn't a word, but I couldn't think of anything better- sorry). If they were looking at a lot of plants, would they then list more shades of green? The idea that they might not sort of freaks me out. Is this why people don't appreciate art very much?

So I had to stop reading the book for now. I am still sort of upset.

This is my paper from the Women's Conference. The theme was "Walk with me, mentors, elders, and friends". I still think it is sloppy, but apparently a lot of people liked it, which was sort of a surprise to me!
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When I think of a mentor, an elder, my mind immediately turns to a wise old goat I once had. Now, lest you take offense at this analogy, I would like to point out that the scriptures are thickly woven with lessons we can learn from animals, from Baalam’s donkey to the lost lamb. Although we humans with our nimble fingers have our technology, animals have the distinct advantage of not having these advances, of being able to see and tend to what truly matters in life. There is much we can learn
from the natural world, which is probably why it is utilized as a source so often in parables, fables, folklore, etc.

Goats are matriarchal; bucks may have some degree of status within the herd, but there is always a queen doe who keeps order. If she dies, the nest most dominant doe will be queen. Sometimes the new queen will be the next oldest doe, or it may be the old queen’s young daughter, but chaos will reign unless and until the herd has a leader.

Delilah was such a queen. If only the world’s nations could have such wise and thoughtful leaders! When there was danger, the herd huddled in the barn while she stood outside the doorway to assess the threat. She decided when it was time to eat, and even whether certain items were safe to eat. If she turned down a new food, making it-tastes-bad gestures and sounds, the other does would refuse it. If she went somewhere, the rest went too. Sometimes there would be status-related fighting as other does tried to move up the herd’s hierarchy. Delilah would walk over calmly, interject her head between those of the battling does, give them both a stern, motherly eye…and that would be the end of it. She somehow kept peace in the herd with very little effort, because she wasn’t domineering. She was intelligent, quiet, dignified, and kind, and everyone else usually followed her example.

I sometimes think that in our drive for progress, profit and yearning for what we don’t have, we lose this sort of kindly direction as extended families are left behind. Our educational system is such that teachers are hardly known before a new one takes their place. Our society has grown disjointed and then we wonder why there is stress and chaos…like a goat herd whose queen is gone. The yearning for mentors can be seen on the TV talk shows, as people desperately seek advice and guidance, even at the risk of national humiliation. Our meetings can and should fill this void. As for me, if only I could be more like my own goat!!
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Goats are so cool. I really miss them. :-/

This house (I have just moved to it) has bad energy. Usually, when people talk about bad energy and good energy, I roll my eyes and think sarcastic things because it is generally very feely, emotional crap in my opinion. So, when I walked in here and felt overwhelmed with anxiety and "bad energy", I wrote it off as stress and imagination. But I still had trouble relaxing in the place.

And then I found out that the people who lived here before had 5 kids that were being abused, neglected, and deprived of food. We found a dresser on whose side was scrawled "help me" in a childish hand. The fridge has the remains of a child proof lock on it. The kids went to foster care because conditions were so bad.

So, despite my disbelief in good/bad energy, "vibes", etc, I am now thinking about how to make this place feel calmer and happier...

Impressions and random observations about the PNW Quaker Women's conference (both the conference itself and the surroundings):

• Ugly, morose, sad dark little fish on the dock. It looked like it was shocked and horrified to see the light of day before it died. It looked ancient, as though from another time period. I was charmed by that homely, gaping face...
  
• The air was good. Fresh sea air, moist and full and soul-nourishing. Yeah, I know...that makes no sense. Still, every breath was like a tonic.
  
• The people, generally speaking, were extremely nice. Unfortunately, by the time the shyness and social anxiety wore off, I was sort of peopled out and had to take a lot of solitude in order to function well, just when I was starting to really, really like the other women.
  
• Rules re: no food in rooms (pest control). Discovered that I still have a food deprivation anxiety issue. Embarrassing, inconvenient, something that will have to be dealt with eventually.
  
• Not ony do Quakers allow women to be pastors, there are a LOT of female Quaker pastors/ministers. Amazing, pleasing! Finally, a group that isn't entrenched in the dark ages!
  
• Even better: at least some of the meetings/churches are welcoming to GLBT people as well as married same sex couples. It's sad that this should be shocking in today's so-called modern age, but frankly, I would not join a group unless it were inclusive (as opposed to "tolerant").
  
• Lots of vegetation I didn't recognize, including a massive tree that I climbed. Had Abies-like needles, cedar-like bark. Scent of needles: fresh, citrusy, pleasant. Climbing that baby was a blast!
  
• Forgot socks, underwear, *and* pajamas! Ugh!!! I somehow forgot the interesting little detail that two other roommates would be inhabiting the room, making these niceties fairly necessary. Sleeping dressed is a drag... Next time: bring boxer shorts (double duty)...
  
• Quaker women are really intelligent, talented, and interesting, unlike mainstream women. Also, virtually no makeup, so they all looked real.
  
• Found and orchid in the woods. Species? Genus? Heck, I don't know... Definitely not a Goodyera or Cymbidium, other than that, who knows?
  
• Note to self: pack Hitchcock's Flora of the Pacific Northwest next time, along with those boxer shorts....
  
• I have got to come to this conference every single year from now on.

I am still processing, and will have a tighter, more structured post on the subject later.

Well, here I am, on the WA coast. I wish I could say that I'm right off the open ocean, but it appears that the water is a part of the Puget Sound. Still, it is fantastic to be here. I am deeply in love with the sea, the fog, the overcast skies and diffuse light....

The reason I have the opportunity of being in this lovely place is that I am attending a Quaker Women's Theology Conference. This is a bit of a surprise even to myself. I don't particularly consider myself a Christian, which is what's great about the PNW quakers. Traditional doctrine does not apply here, and we are all allowed to (even encouraged!) to perceive the divine however we want to. In my case, I guess I would have to say that to me, the divine, or what people call "G-d" is nature/science/the processes and balancing of nature and science and evolution. I have yet to see anything in nature that I could call truly ugly or evil...if I look at it long enough, deep enough.
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Otherwise.....I took a hiatus from blogging due to the custody battle, which I lost, based partly on the fact that I have Asperger's, and that I blogged so openly and pretty much said whatever I wanted to. I thought that shutting the blog down would be a protective measure, but in fact, people called as witnesses can lie under oath with impunity as long as there is no solid way to prove they're lying...which is harder than one might think. Silly me!

Also, I have changed my major. I still and always will love plants and sustainable agriculture, but I just do not have the endurance for the higher math and 3 solid years of hard chemistry. Art has always been my first love, and I'm sick of listening to people who say that you can't make a living at art. They're wrong. Besides, boatny jobs are even harder to find than jobs in the fine arts.....and I am actually *good* at art, whereas the Chem classes were horrible.....

Life is certainly fraught with change and surprises!

About this business of having a body.....

I have a hard time integrating my self awareness with a physical body at times. On an intellectual level, I know that I have a body, but I don't always feel especially...ummm.....as though I identify with it, if you know what I mean. I try to make it mine, but it and my brain are not always in sync.

Tai Chi, for example. I am taking this class in an effort to increase bodily awareness, and also because I am horribly awkward and graceless. It isn't that I'm clumsy really..I can be very coordinated at certain physical activities...but my body often moves like an android or robot, jerkily, or not smoothly enough. I know because I have seen videos of myself (aughhh, the pain, the pain!!!). If I were male, this would be OK, but females are supposed to be graceful, and this body is female, so I feel beholden to try to move gracefully, so as not to attract undue negative attention.

Even when I simply stand, my muscles are held very tensely, contained. I don't just stand, I actively withdraw and contract while standing. I know this because we have to stand in front of a mirror while we do Tai Chi. I try really hard not to watch myself, but I occasionally see a glimpse of a very stiff, tension filled body.

Also, it's trying to get fat now that I got a hysterectomy. I have tried to analyze why this bothers me, because there are lots of lovely people I know who do not have socially ideal bodies, and I love them exactly as they are. Their shape doesn't matter an iota to me. The reasons I have come up with are:

• Gaining weight means change. I would have to wear different clothes and discard the ones I like. I might not be able to afford or find clothes that I like.
  
  
• Health: my family has an alarming rate of high blood pressure and heart disease. It behooves me to remain lean if I want to live.
  
  
• I am a hider. I like to fit in small places, to press myself into corners and nooks and such. Also, I like to fold my body up. The idea of being too big for that....ugh.
  
  
• My dad would be even more disgusted with me if I gained weight. Other people would treat me worse, too.
  
  
• It would be a lot harder to maintain a sense of bodily privacy when in the company of others. For example, I could not slide easily though a group of people without touching anyone, or walk down an aisle of chairs without contacting each and every person in that aisle.

Maybe these are silly reasons, but along with simple vanity, they are the sort of things I worry about.

My name is Jennifer Leaf, and I am an addict. Try as I might, I just cannot control my penchant for....for plants...especially plants that bear fruit...especially weird, uncommon, or hard to find fruit. Day after day, I am confronted on a daily basis with temptations I cannot ignore. Like those acorns under the oak tree in the park. Or the winged seeds of Japanese maples. Today, I succumbed again. This time, I really went over the top. I bought 4 kinds of apples I didn't have seeds for, and a bunch of persimmons. I even justified by latter because they were on sale. And of course, I couldn't stop with eating the apples....I saved each and every viable seed from the Pippins (the viability rate on these was alarmingly low, only 3-4 seeds per apple!) and planted them. The only reason I haven't planted the others is that I feel nauseous and so haven't eaten them yet. Also, I have two Hachiya persimmon seeds that I am hoarding under my laptop, and two different kinds of stone pine (monophylla and edulis) in the bottom drawer of the fridge. And the worst part is, I'm never done looking. I can't stop looking for new kinds of apples, different fruits that might have seeds. Because then, I can plant them.

LOL....

Currently listening to: "Hey there Delilah" (Plain White T's) and "Breathe" (Anna Nalick).

And my mood is: slightly melancholy without really being able to put a finger on why. Well, maybe that's silly of me; there's enough going on to be able to have a mildly low mood for no single reason.

Only, in addition to all that, I have this vague but persistent sensation of a gap, a space, where something ought to be. The only thing I can compare it to is having an empty glass in your hand and realizing you've been holding this glass for awhile and that at some point, you meant to fill it with some beverage, but forgot what. Or going through half of your morning and sort of remembering something, then realizing that you had an interesting dream that morning, but the details are fuzzy.

I am trying to do my homework, and there is so much ruckus going on (not constantly, just sporadically and enough to be disruptive) that I can't focus enough to compose the thoughts into well crafted sentences that flow nicely. Oh sure, I could scrawl something down, but if it were only quiet, it would all come easily and more or less right the first time with a fraction of the agony and effort....
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OK, it's quiet now. And, my eldest son gave me a bag of Jelly Belly beans as a belated B-day present, and I've eaten almost all of them (not so keen on the buttered popcorn flavor). I was 114# this morning, want to bet I've gained two back by morning?? Aw, I'm not complaining. In fact, I can't believe he gave these to me. Yeah, the health-foodie treehugger succumbs to junk food on occasion....

What a loser:

Rammel jokes about presidential death threats.

"Rex Rammell, the East Idaho veterinarian who would like to be a Senator or governor or something, has criticized Gov. Otter for not buying the first wolf tag and, according to the Times-News, indicated he'd buy an "Obama tag" if offered....(snipped for brevity, see the link for full text)...After an audience member shouted a question about "Obama tags" during a discussion on wolves, Rammell responded, "The Obama tags? We'd buy some of those.".........(more trimming)

"Rammell also said Otter should have been first in line or ordered Fish and Game to save him the first tag and told Times-News reporter Jared Hopkins that the governor should have prioritized buying the tag over attending a former lawmaker's funeral.

He said "there's nothing wrong with going to a funeral" but promises as both a governor and a candidate should be followed through on. He questioned whether environmental groups pressured Otter to back off.


"He could've had someone go get it for him," he said. "Hell, he's the governor. He could've ordered the Fish and Game to give him the first tag."
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First of all, the FBI should be knocking on this guy's door, yesterday. Secondly, his fellow Republitards should be shunning him as though he has the plague, or the bird flu. Thirdly, I really, really hope this jerk doesn't get elected, but I have no real reason to suspect that he won't. After all, this is Idaho. Fourth, he is zealous to the point of fanaticism on the topic of hunting wolves, an animal the vast majority of Idahoans have never gotten to see or hear because there are so few of them, even though our tax dollars paid dearly to restablish them here in their natural habitat. And now we are hunting them? There aren't enough to ensure the genetic diversity of the population if half of them are killed, which is exactly what the Idaho Fish and Game intends to do, issue tags until half of them have been killed off. Lastly, this man is wholly unfit for any government office. He seriously believes that holding an office is all about procuring perks and enforcing one's whims on others. Any person with that mentality is not a public servant, and lest we forget, our office holders are placed in their positions to serve us, not to gratify their own egos and whims. The man is a disgrace to this beautiful state and emblematic of what needs to change, right now, about Idaho.

Maybe it's just finals week, but I'm getting really burned out on people. People are disgusting. Oh, that's too harsh. Rather, they do disgusting things, such as:

• 
  Picking nose or teeth in public and then scrutinizing the results.
  
• Adopting that phoney nicey-nice tone of voice. It is SO false! Who the hell do they think they're fooling? By the way, this is generally confined to female persons. Men pretend to be kindly.
  
• Wearing clothes which are way, way too tight. I don't care how hot you are, there is a limit on how tight clothes can be without looking well, bad.
  
• Driving aggressively only because they have a big truck. Hey, have a little regard for other people. Drving like you have every intention of running everyone else off the road isn't macho, it's small dick syndrome.
  
• Wearing lots of perfume. The goal with perfume is to enhance your natural scent, not deluge everyone around you in an olfactory flood. The most attractive smelling people around wear little to no scent. I notice these things.
  
• Mouthy/oral behavior. I don't want to see your tongue piercing, watch you lick or suck on your pencil or pen, or run your lips all over your water or pop bottle. We aren't toddlers anymore. Adults are expected to confine their oral fixations to private or socially acceptable settings.
  
• Groping oneself, itching their hind end, massaging inner thighs...again, ick!! I do NOT want to see or think about this. ick, ick, ick.
  
• The "I like this for personal reasons, therefore it is right, safe, ethical, etc", mentality. Fine, you like it. Like it for your own reasons and leave it at that. There is no reason on earth why we have to agree with you, or why we should be harrassed for having different preferences.
  
• Tanned, oiled cellulite bulging out of clothes. Look, I understand cellulite. Most of us have it. But it's dimpled and ripply, and tanning and oiling it doesn't help at all.
  
• Macho bragging. Shut UP already.
  
• Collaborative bitching (females, usually). Been there, done that. Commiserating on the source of one's misery and then bitching some more does nothing to actually solve the problem. Oh, wait, you don't care, because bitching is *fun*. What are you going to do when the object of your gripes happens to hear you?
  
• Hating others for being successful. Frankly, makes a person look even more like a loser.
  
• Bitching about others when you have a lot of your own issues to work on. Oh wait. That resembles someone. Ummm. Yeah. OK, I'll stop now.

Bleh. Summer. It drags on endlessly, wilting my spirit.