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Yesterday's grey skies put me in mind of firming up plans for a rain garden. We finally had enough rainfall for me to see the effects of the new drainage pattern: i'm pleased. So i spent too much time looking at native plants that might happily exist in such a place. I have found a nice selection of blue flowered plants that should presumably keep color from April through October. I'm hoping to have the location picked out and marked by the time we have the folks come to grade the orchard (and get up all the roots). Digging down a foot by hand in this clay for 78 square ft isn't an exiting prospect.
My punishment for distracting myself was that when i took a few moments on the "most important thing" and i tried to steer it in a more expected direction, it looked like i was a major contributor when we met later in the day.
This is like when i would procrastinate in grade school, then rush the project, and get an A at the end. My therapist is encouraging me to see this as my way of being, and well YES it is. Abstractly, it is a optimization for pleasure and efficiency. I manage to leave just enough time to get the thing done; as long as the procrastination time is spent on something productive from some point of view maybe it's good. But from another point of view, it's cheating. Someday i hope to be able to be paid to play with native plants, but that's not what's going on now. And from yet another point of view, part of it is that the project that i had set to work on and was procrastinating on is being mis-led and i'm not entirely sure we're doing what is asked.
Listening to some of the folks dither on in the meeting ... i just dunno that anyone is taking it seriously.
Christine brought home Chinese food for dinner, but did not have time to eat any herself. It was delicious. Hmm, this recipe makes frying the tofu for General Tso's Tofu sound like it's not a deep fryer sort of situation. Hmm.
Then we went off to a screening of Christine's sister's documentary in Chapel Hill. The theater is one of these schmancy better-than-your-living-room, QR code to order and have delivered to your seat sorts of places with assigned seats. Perplexing. Mistaking the orientation of the seating map, my sister and her kids thought she would be seated behind us on the back row, but was instead in the very front on the loungiest seats. During the Q&A i slipped in to sit with them.
Everyone gushes so afterwards, and i just want to curl up in a ball and hide. I think i am rather comfortable being with one or two people, whom perhaps i don't know that well, and being vulnerable. Or typing my vulnerability. But i think i know i would be too honest. Listening to Christine deftly answer folks' questions, i realize i would blurt out things that are not ready. She was asked about her brother, and she was honest that his discomfort with her continued. She did not give the concrete example of the very hurtful way he excluded her from all the scarf Yule gift to the other women of the sibling group, clearly communicating that he doesn't see her as a woman. And when the conversation went to the culture wars and how one feels, Christine could point our her privileged and the vulnerability of so many other transwomen -- instead of sharing how vulnerable it feels to know how easy it is to find our address if someone wants to act out their rhetoric towards her/us.
I know we're not alone in our fear: a local potter commented about her fear of having her shop set on fire if the wrong people learned she was a married lesbian.
Apparently the film will stream on Amazon soon, and it's going to be on UNC TV's North Carolina channel on Feb 7 at 10 pm with repeats the next day. And apparently it will be streaming on the UNC PBS website? I'm fuzzy on that.
People are very sweet to me after, acknowledging my support for Christine. The story told doesn't share how she helped me become a person who could be authentic, who escaped the game playing of her family. Christine held up a mirror to me that gave me an undistorted (at least, less distorted) reflection of myself, correcting the extreme monster-princess view i was given growing up.
My punishment for distracting myself was that when i took a few moments on the "most important thing" and i tried to steer it in a more expected direction, it looked like i was a major contributor when we met later in the day.
This is like when i would procrastinate in grade school, then rush the project, and get an A at the end. My therapist is encouraging me to see this as my way of being, and well YES it is. Abstractly, it is a optimization for pleasure and efficiency. I manage to leave just enough time to get the thing done; as long as the procrastination time is spent on something productive from some point of view maybe it's good. But from another point of view, it's cheating. Someday i hope to be able to be paid to play with native plants, but that's not what's going on now. And from yet another point of view, part of it is that the project that i had set to work on and was procrastinating on is being mis-led and i'm not entirely sure we're doing what is asked.
Listening to some of the folks dither on in the meeting ... i just dunno that anyone is taking it seriously.
Christine brought home Chinese food for dinner, but did not have time to eat any herself. It was delicious. Hmm, this recipe makes frying the tofu for General Tso's Tofu sound like it's not a deep fryer sort of situation. Hmm.
Then we went off to a screening of Christine's sister's documentary in Chapel Hill. The theater is one of these schmancy better-than-your-living-room, QR code to order and have delivered to your seat sorts of places with assigned seats. Perplexing. Mistaking the orientation of the seating map, my sister and her kids thought she would be seated behind us on the back row, but was instead in the very front on the loungiest seats. During the Q&A i slipped in to sit with them.
Everyone gushes so afterwards, and i just want to curl up in a ball and hide. I think i am rather comfortable being with one or two people, whom perhaps i don't know that well, and being vulnerable. Or typing my vulnerability. But i think i know i would be too honest. Listening to Christine deftly answer folks' questions, i realize i would blurt out things that are not ready. She was asked about her brother, and she was honest that his discomfort with her continued. She did not give the concrete example of the very hurtful way he excluded her from all the scarf Yule gift to the other women of the sibling group, clearly communicating that he doesn't see her as a woman. And when the conversation went to the culture wars and how one feels, Christine could point our her privileged and the vulnerability of so many other transwomen -- instead of sharing how vulnerable it feels to know how easy it is to find our address if someone wants to act out their rhetoric towards her/us.
I know we're not alone in our fear: a local potter commented about her fear of having her shop set on fire if the wrong people learned she was a married lesbian.
Apparently the film will stream on Amazon soon, and it's going to be on UNC TV's North Carolina channel on Feb 7 at 10 pm with repeats the next day. And apparently it will be streaming on the UNC PBS website? I'm fuzzy on that.
People are very sweet to me after, acknowledging my support for Christine. The story told doesn't share how she helped me become a person who could be authentic, who escaped the game playing of her family. Christine held up a mirror to me that gave me an undistorted (at least, less distorted) reflection of myself, correcting the extreme monster-princess view i was given growing up.
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