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So, I'm currently unemployed and, a such, am spending my time badgering temp agencies, writing porn, making jewelery, and launching a wordpress blog.

As such, the Links of the Day posts are probably not going to be anywhere near as frequent (in part because I'm also doing a links-post for the wordpress blog which, while somewhat more sporadic, means I'll probably just be linking to stuff on there).

That said, the wordpress blog - Dangerous Women - is fairly themeatic so the more personal or more random things I'd like to link to are still going to end up in LJ (or Dreamwidth, since I'm posting this from there).


That said, let's begin:


From Feministing:
A Barbie that really represents black women -- Loanne Hizo Ostlie re-makes barbie dolls with long, lush dred locks. Gorgeous. Check this out.


From The Avalon Sexual Assault Centre:
What Is Sexual Assault - a definition.


From Carnal Nation:
A Couple Quits Therapy; What Is “Normal” Desire? -- Other than the age difference and the presence of a daughter, this sounds exactly like me and my ex. Eight billion things wrong with our *relationship* and us going "what's wrong with our sex life"? It's pretty sad and terrible, really. :-P


From Dangerous Women[1]
Sexual and Bodily Autonomy Today - A link round-up where you'll find the rest of the Links of the Day.


- TTFN,
- Amazon.


[1] My blog, for-which Hyel has kindly made a dreamwidth feed:

dangerouswomen_feed.dreamwidth.org

Naamah_Darling has a post up that is all links on rape, men's entitlement, and sexual harrassment.

Her Links Include:

Cereta: On Rape and Men
"And I am sure that you, Guy Who Is Reading This, is That Guy. You're the guy who would never rape a girl passed out on your bed (who, for that matter, knows that such an act would be rape), or the woman in the village your battalion/troop/whatever is overrunning. You're the guy who wouldn't do such a thing even when his buddies were heckling him, telling him he's a fag and a pussy if he doesn't. Even more, you're the guy who would stop his frat brother from raping that girl, and get her home. You're the guy who would stop his comrades, or at least report them.

And to lose the sarcasm for a minute, I'm sure some of you are. Lord knows, I believe that of most of the men I am close to. Or at least, I desperately want to.

Now, here's my question: where the fuck are you?"



The Neon Season: Some Things A Lot of Het Men Believe About Rape
"In my experience, about ninety percent of the men with whom I've had those conversations in person believe at least one of the following:

-Once a man is sexually aroused, he's not responsible for his own actions.

-Once a man is sexually aroused, sex is inevitable and something he can't control.

-If a woman goes on a date with a man/gets drunk with a man/goes to a man's apartment/flirts with a man/kisses a man [Amazon Adds: marries a man], she has consented to sex with him and may not revoke her consent.

-Consenting to one sexual act is automatic consent for any further or other sexual acts. (ie, consent to oral sex = consent to vaginal sex.)

-Women falsely accuse men of rape all the time, and all men are terrified of being falsely accused. All conversations about rape must revolve around this, a much bigger problem than the problem of actual rape.

-There is no way for a man to protect himself against accidentally raping a woman whom he thought consented but actually didn't. Verbally asking if a woman wants to have sex with him is impossible. (Yes, I've heard this one repeatedly.)"



Khalinche: On Culturally Systemic Sexual Harrassment
"What I _do_ experience rather often is street harassment and unwanted attention. And every time I tell a straight male friend or partner about it, they are surprised. It seems odd to them that one person should find it normal to shout crude and personal things at another in the street because one of them is male and the other is female. I have yet to tell a woman friend that I was harrassed in the street and see her react with shock. It is an utterly normal part of life for most women, and no less unpleasant for that."


And Many More!


Here is her post. Go forth and read them all!

Oh. ETA: Hands Up If You've Ever Experienced Street Harrassment.



On a more personal note: Those Things Het Men Believe? My ex believed a lot of them. Particularly the bit about false accusations.
He said he didn't know anyone who'd been raped.
He "didn't know anyone" because, when his former fiancee had told him about how she'd been raped before? He didn't believe her.

Real easy to not know anyone when you disbelieve anyone who has the guts to tell you.

Real easy to Not Be That Kind of Guy when your mental definition of sexual assault is A stranger In the Bushes, not Jamming Your Hand Between Your Partner's Legs Even Though She's Told You Repeatedly and In No Uncertain Terms to STOP DOING THAT.

<*angry*>


ANYWAY.


Off to West Fest shortly. Will be taking out the trash on the way, me thinks.


- TTFN,
- Amazon.

My door pass doesn't work.

I am distressed by this, although I suspect the level of distress has significantly more to do with my general lack of sleep (and the fact that I'm playing catch-up on food) over the past couple of days, plus the fact that I had to sprint for a bus that -- apparently -- was being pushed to run early so that the driver could then part in front of Dows Lake Pavillion for ten minutes and have a cigarette.

So, yeah. Slightly rough morning, you could say.


So I have to email the security-pass gal and get her to re-activate this thing.

Oy vey... :-P



Anyway. That's been my morning (presumeably it will get better from here).


Last night, CSI_Tokyo did, indeed, come over. Which was awesome. :-) (Having a massage slave is so wonderful...) My ridiculous bruises are recorded for posterity now. :-) And I hurt slightly less. YAY! :-D

We had lemonade and apricots, and he brought me chocolate. :-) Hurrah!

Also, it was nice to have someone to chat to. I'd spotted my ex-cousin-in-law about fifteen minutes before he arrived, so I was feeling more than a little bit maudlin. (Having most of your former inlaws living in the same city as you is... tough. Sort of. There's always a good chance you'll run into one of them, and then what do you do? I waved at Scott, and he waved at me, and smiled. Which was nice. But I still ended up crying a bit because of it).

Anyway. Time to work.


If anyone needs cardboard boxes, please let me know, 'cause I have a tonne to get rid of. :-)


- TTFN,
- Amazon.

You Know This Girl

too skinny
cropped, red hair
face blotchy, she paces
back and forth and
back and forth in front of
bubblicity on sommerset

the word that rises to mind (unbidden) is
meth

any change? she asks me
any change? a sob from
lips cracked open
frantic
her panic is catching
i am afraid
of her

*~*~*~*~*


In other news: My house is officially SOLD. :-D

So that, at least, is off my plate.

Thank goodness.

I have started packing.

Packed up most of the good china and about half the wine glasses (and a lot of the dining linens, given that I was wrapping the dishes in napkins and towels and, in one instance, a tablecloth).

Now I am out of boxes.

But I will have more shortly. I will visit the chapters on my way home from the library and bring home some book-friendly boxes that will be used to pack books once again. CDs, too, I suspect.

I have people - Arndis, Tchang & CSI_Tokyo, as well as my mother - bringing me more boxes on Saturday. This is a good thing. I'm going to ask my mother to bring her boxes in the morning, if she can, so that I can pack all afternoon. :-)


No work contract yet, but I've been bugging people. (Must e-mail resume to Spherion -- anyone heard anything about them? Are they any good?)
Ran into a gal who I used to 'work with' -- she shopped at Cleo fairly often and is a sweetheart -- yesterday. She works for Hunt Personnel (as in: she finds people jobs!!!) and she gave me her card and said 'send me your resume'.
(She also says she likes my email address. ;-)

So, hopefully, she'll be able to find me something. (Networking... who knew? ;-)

Anyway, we'll see what happens. :-)


So that's my big news.


In smaller, related news: I took down all the wedding pictures last night. I put them all into the wedding album that I've had for two years (and a month) and never used before. It looks pretty good, I think.
(How absurd is this? I want to show it off, show off my handiwork and the few note-cards that I decided to keep -- mainly ones that commented on the beauty of the ceremony, rather than the ones that said things like "You're perfect for each other, best of luck in your long life together", y'know, given the outcome...)
I cried while I was doing it.
Three hours, more or less solid, of crying.
Weep!Weep! says I. :-/

But it's done. And I've got the photo-CDs and the extra photographs, and the extra half-dozen or so note-cards that I wanted to keep anyway, all tied up with ribbons (off of various gifts and cards from the wedding). I kept the card he gave to me with my wedding gift. The card, funnily enough, has outlasted both his gift to me *and* my gift to him. Presumeably because all *it* did was sit in a box for two years. ;-)

This morning I made the shadow-box that holds my wedding jewelery. It's not perfect. I was putting it together with scotch tape, after all. But it's pretty. Cluttered, but pretty.

There are two photos from the wedding (one is of us kissing, and the other is a cropped close-up from that same picture, of our be-ringed hands together) plus the little 2"x3" that I kept in my wallet with my bus pass.

The background is made of unused, royal blue not-cards (overlapped) and the wedding pics are mounted on silver, herringbone-print wrapping paper (from a wedding gift, most likely from my aunt Liz).

The rings are nestled in the bottom, right corner (under/in-front-of the picture of our hands), the locket he gave me for my birthday, our first year together (we'd already decided to get married, we were just working on when) is up by the wallet-pic (which was taken during that first year).

In the lower-left corner are two dried flowers: his corsage and a sprig of yarrow from my garden/bouquet. Down the middle hangs the crow feather I found at the crossroads on my way to our first Real Date date (the one I wore in my hair for the wedding).

Like I said: cluttered. But pretty.


The album includes a copy of my wedding vows. I have to say I'm both pleased and relieved to note that I actually *kept* the promises I made that day. (Well, except for the one about sharing a life and a family with him... I *did* it, just not quite in the sense I meant when I made the promise in the first place). Knowing that actually makes me feel a little bit better, y'know? :-)

It also includes the toast my mom made at the wedding. (It's printed on blue paper and everything). She spoke truer than she knew when she said:
Regardless of the outcome, I know we were all very happy on our wedding day.

And I was. We were. :-)

<*sigh*>


Right. If I go on like that for much longer, I'll be drowing the library keyboard in tears (again). So enough of that.

The Bronson Place appartment has been rented (which, at the very least, solves the conundrum of "Do I take the overpriced, wall-to-walled place just so I know that I've got somewhere, or do I give it a miss and maybe regret it later?")
That said, it leaves me with the inconvenience of having to (continue to) look for a place. :-P Still.

But, hey, I didn't really want to live on the 15th floor, anyway. :-)


Anyway, I gotta go. Please continue to send me good appartment vibes and good job vibes. I continue to need them. :-)


- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)

Eugh.
I feel like I did when I was married.
Sexually, I mean.

( TMI? )

This is... frustrating.

I mean, yes, duh, Amazon has Issues.

<*sigh*>

It's like I said to Ami_B a few weeks ago. Issues are like freaking cockroaches. If you see one, you just *know* there are fifty-thousand of them hiding in the walls.

And I've seen a lot more than one scuttling around *my* head, let me tell you.

<*shudder*>

On a similar note: I feel gross.

There's this icky, cloying, sickly-sweet taste in the back of my mouth (maybe that's from the amaretto cookies, I dunno), and my skin feel grimy.
The kind of icky feeling you get when you've not had enough sleep and/or it's really muggy but still too chilly to strip to your skin.

Eugh.

Also: I want cranberry juice. <*shrug*> Outta luck on that one, I guess. ;-)


You know what's really frustrating?

The fact that I don't know how long I'm going to have to do this for.

How long I'll have to keep my house looking Utterly Spotless, how long I'll have to count pennies if I go to the grocery store, how long I'll have to keep my lights on when I'm not at home, how long, how long, how long.

What's worse - or at least adding to an already sucky situation - is that I don't actually know *how* to do the kind of magic that would bring a buyer in.

I'm a fucking kitchen witch, for goodness sakes.
Everything I do is cooking and sewing, garden and table, threshold, hearth and home.
How the hell am I supposed to do magic that will sever those ties, particularly when those ties are what - in a way - lets me do the magic (in any way successfully) in the first place?

It's very, very frustrating.


This is what I wish for (on the rising moon, on the star-bursts of opeing echanacea flowers, on lightning flashes in 4am thunder storms, on a daily bloody basis):

I wish that someone (most ideally a sweet, girl!couple with a kid on the way - either from Equador or thanks to a donor - who like gardening and live lightly on the land) would come to View my house, would love it immediately, would make me an offer - by the end of this week (oh, wait, that's today!) - for $151K+, and would want to move in on the first of September.

I wish that I would have a month and a half to pack all the rest of my Stuff up, clear out the auction items and the freecycle items, and find that perfect appartment. The one on the second (or third) floor of The Elizabeth, with its all-inclusive utilities, in-building laundry, and in-appartment dishwasher for less than $850/month.

I wish I knew when (soon!!!) I would be moving out, so that I could arrange for the place I'll be moving to, could arrange for people to help me move, could pack up my books, cds, clothes, art, cleaning supplies, and what little else is left, and get ready to Get On With My Life.

Because this waiting is miserable.
This waiting is scary.
This waiting is keeping me on pins and needles, afraid to spend money I *have* (right now) on food, in case I turn out to need a few months from now (if I still haven't sold this place, and it's November, and I really need to turn the heat on quick) to cover the hydro (or whatever). I want to get on with it.
I want to - Wish To - get on with my life. And that means getting this house sold. Right now!



And now for your sporadic dose of Random Poetry:

*~*~*~*~*

Five years
o gods, what years they were
filled with grad school
house hunting and
marriage
all of which ended (too soon)
unfinished
Wish I could lift them
(five whole years)
out of my life
set them, bookended, on a shelf (next to the wedding pictures)
like a scale model of someone else's life,
an adulthood that I didn't want
or wasn't ready for
like they never happened at all,
or happened
to someone else.


*~*~*~*~*

I came out
when I was sixteen.
Made no show of
showing my colours,
more interested in hanging with the shy
bookish, goth girls
(bi girls, every one of them)
than in some biology-based
Community
that I didn't feel I needed,
that I already had somewhere else.

I thought I was done.
That one announcement,
"Actually, I'm bisexual"
would do me for all time,
that any explanation of the necklace
rose quartz
amethyst, and
blue aventurine
would be beside the point,

Figured that if the
het girls don't have to come out
again and again,
why should I?
Why wear freedom rings,
dress like Ani,
march in a parade meant for people who want me to
pick a side

Didn't realize that I'd be looking for that
Community
Hunting up the Bi Women's Discussion Groups,
Aching (and frightened) to go to Dyke March
because - in my failing, hetersexual marriage - it would give me a chance
to be a little more myself
to have an identity (outside of the internet
writing girl/girl porn for the slash fans, and little else)
that allowed for the fact that
I like women
too.


*~*~*~*~*

CSIS -- Commercial Sex Information Service is a Canadian site with oodles of information (including links to a bunch of papers! Whee!)

And, while I'm a few months early:
December 17th is Red Umbrella Day

Hi! :-D

I appear to be riding an upswing.

That's what happens when I spend my free-ish time drawing up house plans.

Oh, yes. I'm still thinking "houses", even though I'll be renting for the next little while.

Still thinking, specifically, of tear-down specials in Hintonburg (specifically that one on Armstrong Street) that can be replaced with Fabulous Eco Dream House(s) featuring rentable secondary suites and *everything*. :-)
(The Dream House now also features comissioned glass art on Elemental themes -- the place is quarter-call oriented, how hard can it be? - by Ami_B... either sun-catchers or actual chunks-o-window, but I'm not sure which yet... Probably sun-catchers as I'd be able to take them with me when I eventually lost my ability to climb the stairs every day).

( The Current Plans )

Anyway. Those are my ideas. :-)


In other news: Someone came to see the house at 2:30 today, and someone else will be showing up at 6:30pm. I'm debating whether to hurry home, grab my brolly and flick on all the lights -- or not. It would be quite a near thing, and I don't think I'd have time to eat, either way...

We'll see how quickly I finish things up here.


In still other news: Got a note from Paul.

He's fiiiiiiiiiiiiine. :-)

So. No further need to worry about him. (Not that this'll necessarily stop me, but at least I know he's not moping around or feeling resentful, so that's good).

With any luck, I'll be non-mopey fairly soon, too. :-)

He sent me Draft One of the Separation Agreement. It looks more-or-less fine to me, so I told him so. :-)


Anyway. It's ten-to-five right now, so I think I'll try the hurry-home method. I may kill some time Emphatically Not Shopping at Chapters while the viewing is going on. :-)


- TTFN,
- Amazon. :-)

Gods, this dry-heaving thing has got to stop.

All I can say is: thank goodness for lack-of-appetite. Otherwise it wouldn't be dry, it'd just be messy and unpleasant. :-P


In other news: Apparently I never bought those 4.5" heels.
Woops.

I mean, in retrospect, this is a good thing - there's not record of purchase on my credit card statements or in my e-mail in-box, or in my online-shopping file.

So apparently it never happened.

Yet I'm sure I hit 'purchase'.


Who knows. :-P


At any rate, this means that there are no Expensive (by current standards) Shoes for me to worry about missing when I move.
So that's a good thing.


Spent yesterday evening working on the garden with my mom. (My mom, it has to be said, did most of the work - and now her back is hurting. Woops). You can now see the patio stones and, y'know, actually *get* to them via the stairs. Wow!


Things to do today:

Phone Dr. Campbell and see if she'll give me a sliding scale.

Check the City of Ottawa website to see when they pick up Yard Waste
Dammit, they only pick this stuff up twice a year here. :-P In *May*. :-P Anyone want free compost?

Get a couple of yard-waste bags from the grocery store for bagging up all the compost, anyway.

Phone MasterCard and see if I can cash out that insurance policy.

Email my aunty Martha about All This Stuff plus that snail table of Gram's.

Eat Ami's yummy ginger salmon that she made me.


Maybe I can weed a few more books, or clean the bathroom or something, while I'm at it all.


Eugh.
I'm going to get through this. I am.
I know it.
It's just hard right now. :-P
At least I have my internet back (*phew*!) as it really is my life-line. (I can talk to people at 6:42am and someone, eventually, will say something in reply). It's very helpful, I have to say.


- TTFN,
- Amazon.

A few months back (maybe three?) some kind soul - probably Commodorified - posted a poem that contained a closing line something like "Must we say it wans't love // Just because it ended?"

I would like a copy of that poem. Very badly.


Unfortunately I don't know the author, and those two lines aren't worded exactly right (I just tried googling the whole thing, and got Nothing).

If someone could post/link/email the poem, I would appreciate it very, very much.



Um.

As to why I want this poem?


Well...


Paul and I decided on Wednesday night, June 4th, that we can't hope to make each other happy - and, in fact, stand a much better chance of making eachother abjectly miserable nigh unto suicide, if we continue to stay together.

So we have decided to end our marriage.


Not without a hell of a lot of sadness and regret (I, for one, have been crying pretty much steadily since Thursday morning, and I know how hard it must be for him), I don't mind telling you, but... it would be so much worse if we kept trying. :-(


Fuck. :-P


So my mother's coming over in an hour and a bit, and we're going to go over my finances and see what can be done, if anything.


<*big sigh*>


So now you know.


Um.


I have to go and clean or something.