Cole Porter

I am a huge Cole Porter fan. I less than three Cole Porter. Completely. Listening to Cole Porter songs is a guaranteed mood elevator for me. It's not just the lyrics, it's the music and lyrics working together so perfectly. Whenever I listen to Cole Porter music (as sung by pretty much anyone, but particularly if sung by him) I feel this odd...connection. His lyrics and music just have a direct line to my heart and make it sigh with relief and relaxation.
Hmm...Maybe I should make a Cole Porter song my next project. I mean, it's going to take awhile to learn Korean and write a song ;). I like teaching myself songs, because singing makes me happy. I don't need someone to hear me, in fact it tends to make me self-conscious. I just love the sensation of singing. It's like...hmmm...Well, when I describe how speaking Russian in class was for me, I liken it to cotton candy. It's fun to roll through my mouth and dissipates off my tongue leaving a pleasant sensation. Singing is like hot chocolate, it warms the cockles of me heart ;).
Hmm...perhaps I should embarass myself. Why not?

This is the song I know best in the world :). My grandpa used to sing it to me when I was a kid, well, he sang it to all of us and I think every one of the grandkids can probably still sing it from memory. I recorded this...I'm not sure, maybe a year ago? something like that. And for no particular reason. Cuz that's how I roll ;)

Again

Head. Desk. Head. Desk. Head. Desk.
Dear God why am I still awake?! I really am honestly tired. Really I am. Body, you've been telling me for hours before bedtime that you wanted to sleep, but *now* you decide you don't want to...while still complaining that you're tired? Brain...did you and Body have another fight? Because I've gotta say, I really don't like being put in the middle when you do. I really don't feel I can give you guys balanced mediation when you fuck me over like this. Seriously. You guys need to work through your problems, and leave me out of it. Saaaay...what if, and this is just a crazy idea I had, what if you guys let me sleep then hashed things out? It would be win-win! ...No? Fuck you.

Fantasy World

Yeah, I live in a fantasy world sometimes, but at least I'm not lost in one :). I understand that it is fantasy and that it won't ever happen. I really do. But when I'm faced with the idea of going on disability, and the realization that I may never be able to do what I want  to do...Fantasy land is my lifesaver. It helps me hold on to my dreams when I feel myself fragmenting. If I couldn't lose myself in fantasy land I don't know what I'd do. Probably give up entirely. So I keep my fantasy world healthy and thriving. :)
My fantasy world varies a lot. Sometimes it's me traveling the world as a nomadic scholar. It's been as simple as being essentially the governess for a well-off family in Korea (or Japan or ...). Whatever it is, even in my fantasy world I may not have conquered all my problems, but I've figured out how to work around them. In my fantasy world I can go out dancing with my friends and not have to worry about a panic attack. Rarely am I in the Puget Sound in my fantasy world, but sometimes I am. Usually I've found a place to belong. The most plausible has me in Arizona with Tom & Wendy.
Currently I've fallen back on an old one. See, I like Kdramas. A lot. From when I used to call them "Korean soaps" and watched them in utter ignorance of the language I've like them. And of the creators, the Hong Sisters have become my favourites. They're quirky and tell a good story. So in my fantasy world I'm living in a Hong Sisters drama. Not an existing one, one in my own mind. And I am *NOT* the lead, thankyouverymuch. I am the plucky, kickass sidekick! ;) I don't mean I daydream about being a famous actor in Korea (kind of impossible considering their exacting beauty ideals!), my daydream is the drama itself. The unfolding story and my part in it. It's definitely not a real life story, considering it involves an accidental gay marriage! But it's fun and it comforts my spirit.
I have set myself a funny little goal, and while it sounds like fantasy world fodder, it is a real goal. Truly. I want to learn Korean well enough to write a song I have in my head. I'll have to gain some real music knowledge as well (I don't know the keys or how to read music, my dad just used to teach me songs by ear) in order to make it happen. I'm lucky enough that I have friends who can help me, both in willingness and ability. So, as they say, Fighting! I may have a lot more in my fantasy world(s) than in real life, but this little thing, this I'm claiming. This is going to happen in my real life and when it does I'm going to post it on youtube. No matter how horrendous my accent is, or how hokey the song might end up, I'm going to post it for the world to see. Because while I can be courageous in many ways, I need to learn how to open myself up more to the world at large. Yeah, I do come up with weird ways to do so, but the point is that I am *always* striving. I will continue to strive, and that is one of the things that makes me ME and extraordinary :).
I'm gonna do Auntie Mame proud ;).

Day 30

Last day of the photo challenge :). Day 30 is a picture that makes you smile.

That's me, I'm not sure how old I was. Somewhere around four would be my guess. When I'm feeling down I can look at that picture and remember who I am. Even though I have multiple disorders, it doesn't matter. This picture is who I am. I delight in the trivial because that's where joy is found. I am happy in this picture and that makes me smile. Because even though I may have depression, it does not define who I am. Even if I have anxiety, phobias and maybe a touch of agoraphobia, that does not limit me. I am more than than the sum of my parts. I am unique, beautiful, courageous, articulate, silly, joyous, strong and completely imperfect. Why shouldn't I take joy in that? My shoes may come untied, I may be absentminded, I may be irritatingly hyper at times, but I am perfect in my imperfections. And you know what else? If you're lucky enough to be someone who can accept the whole messed up package, I am the best friend you will ever have. I will laugh, cry, fight, dance or even die for you, if you're willing to love and accept me for who and what I really am.
Trust me, I'm worth it.

Day 29

Day 29 is a picture of someone you miss. This was an easy one for me.

These are my friends Tom and Wendy and I miss them so much! Tom was stationed in Arizona so they had to move away. They actually wanted/want me to move there with them, but, well, things didn't work out that way. When I met them at a friend's movie night it was like...meeting the dearest of friends after a long time apart. We just clicked, and now it's hard to imagine my life without them in it :). I'm usually an out of sight, out of mind kind of girl. But Tom and Wendy are always in my heart even though we're far apart :). I miss them SOOOO much :(.

Klein Sexual Orientation Grid

Friend posted her results, so I decided to take it. I understand why they don't have any options for no sexual feelings and such, but I think it skews my results a bit.

Klein Sexual Orientation Grid

I scored an average of 3.71

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

Heterosexual

Bisexual

Homosexual

Meaning

This result can also be related to the Kinsey Scale:


0 = exclusively heterosexual
1 = predominantly heterosexual, incidentally homosexual
2 = predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual
3 = equally heterosexual and homosexual
4 = predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
5 = predominantly homosexual, incidentally heterosexual
6 = exclusively homosexual

Summary

The idea of this exercise is to understand exactly how dynamic a person's sexual orientation can be, as well as how fluid it can be over a person's lifespan. While a person's number of actual homo/heterosexual encounters may be easy to categorise, their actual orientation may be completely different. Simple labels like "homosexual", "heterosexual", and "bisexual" need not be the only three options available to us.

Take the quiz on Young Southampton

Day 28

Day 28 is a picture of you with a family member

That's me and my grandma :). Yes, the mean but funny one.

Day 27

Day 27 is a picture with your best friends...umm...this is difficult. Because we're all adults and live in different places, so...lessee...

I'm not friends with everybody in this picture, but two of my best friends *are* in this picture with me and I made a lot of good friends at the ren faire this was taken at. This was the year I was the "fairy princess" aka Amoret from Spenser's Faerie Queene. If I were to take pictures with my best friends I'd have to gather people from around the country with conflicting schedules!! So, this is the best thing I could come up with, sorry!

Day 26

Day 26 is something you wish you could change

 

I wish I could sleep! /whimper I'm always having trouble sleeping, but then I have trouble sleeping in to make up for it. Yes, that clock says AM, my hands just shake sometimes, so it was hard to take the picture one handed. I am amused at how much like a bullfrog I look in this picture. Heh. Seriously though, my internal clock seems to think four hours is enough sleep, however my body would beg to differ! SLEEP. If I could change anything it would be my inability to SLEEP. /whine /whimper /moan /complain /repeat

Day 25

Day 25 is a picture of you in your school uniform, but...umm...I've never gone to a school that had a uniform. So instead!

This is me at my high school grad. we were all wearing the same robes, so that's like a uniform, right?

Day 24

Day 24 is a picture of something you're afraid of

/shudder

Day 23

Day 23 is somewhere you'd love to travel

I cannot choose. I would just love to travel the world, see what there is to see and meet new people. Seriously, to me that just seems like it would be the coolest thing I could do.

Day 22

Day 22 is a picture of your laptop/computer desktop

since I reused my other pic i will also add my current desktop background to this post...

Pondering

This is a thunking day. That's like thinking only more so! Thunking isn't a real word (and perhaps more suited to dropping things, since "thunk" is generally used as the sound of something settling heavily on another surface), but I use it a lot. Thunking is when my brain goes 'round and 'round and 'round, pondering and pontificating. Today has been that kind of day. All sorts of subjects. The one I was just thinking about is what got me logging back in.
Ethnicity. I like to find people to talk to internationally and one of those is the person I shared my gramma's story with. It made me start to thunk. My dad always wanted us to have the immigrant spirit and drive, to want to be more than what we were, rather than settling complacently or worse, feel entitled. I definitely learned the work ethic from him, and I think he kind of encouraged us to admire immigrants more than "native sons". When given the opportunity, I still tend in that direction. The people I want to like me tend to be first generation immigrants. So, if I'm going to stereotype (which is what the last bit of thunking has been on) I tend to want to be friends with Filipino, East Indian and Korean folks more than any others. Yes, that *is* the primary immigrant makeup of the area I lived in for the last four years! Living where I am now is just *weird*. White people *everywhere*!
I also wonder why it is that the entrepreneurial sorts tend to be Korean or East Indian, whereas most Chinese folks I know tends towards "the professions" (i.e. doctors, accountants, etc.). Is it a cultural thing? Or is it just coincidentally the type of person I tend to meet? But if that's so, then why is there the entertainment stereotype of the Korean or East Indian shopowner?
I do know one thing, and that's why I tend to instinctively trust middle-aged folks with a Filipino accent. My Uncle Teodoro was Filipino. Haven't seen him in close to two decades, but that memory remains :). He was a divinity student who lived with my parents when I was a kid. He was an awesome uncle *sigh*. I wish I could find him again, but my google-fu does not seem to extend to finding people. In any case, I still have this thing about trust of that accent in the right age bracket. The person *has* to be older than me for it to kick in, but if they are and they have a Filipino accent I will trust them and act something like a puppy dog /sheepish.
I miss my Korean ladies *sigh*. Particularly Jen. She was much older than me (a lady never asks another lady her age), but we got along really well. She cried my last day on the job and gave me my lucky bamboo (which is thriving, even though I don't think most people keep theirs as leafy as I like mine). When cash flow ensues at whatever point, I'm going to make a point of trying to swing by her store to see her. I love Kdramas (even when I called them Korean soaps and had no English subtitles!), but the reason I would love to visit Korea is because of the fantastic first generation Korean immigrants I have met and hit it off with. There have been very few I have not hit it off with, but they *have* been primarily women. /ponders.
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. My brain goes around in circles and comes back on itself. I would love to travel the world just to meet the people! I've said often that I'm a social butterfly trapped in a socialphobe's body, but recently I have consciously decided to stop saying that. As a friend pointed out, I *am* a social butterfly. There's no denying that. I'm just currently in my cocoon!

My Grandma

I wrote an essay about my late paternal grandmother for english awhile back. Managed to dig up a copy to share with someone and am posting it here so I don't misplace it again
English 098
June 2010
Agnes
Vincent Van Gogh once said “One must work and dare if one really wants to live.” I have to wonder if my grandmother read that at some point, because that is certainly how she lived her life. Oh, how she lived her life! She lived the fullest of lives and everything I do in my life is prefaced with the thoughts “Would Grandma be proud? Would she have taken this opportunity?” It has proven to be an excellent benchmark.
She was born Agnes Marguerite Latremouille on April 1, 1918. She started out life with a story. The way it is told, her uncle (a notorious prankster) ran to the general store to tell the news. Everyone thought the baby girl was an April Fools gag. It set the tone for her life, which she always met with a wink and a chuckle.
In spite of being the only one of her siblings not allowed to go to high school, Agnes ended up taking over her brother’s fishing camp when he went off to war. She proceeded to teach herself touch-typing and bookkeeping. She kept the books for the camp; she did the hiring, firing and most of the advertising. People from all over the world came to her camp for the fishing, and for the conversations with her at night. There were international financiers, high-powered doctors and lawyers.
Agnes had throat surgery in 1963, which was irritated by the pine pollen in the mountains so badly she couldn’t breathe. She lived liked that for 6 years until she finally gave in and moved to Okanogan. She had always wanted to be a gardener, but spending summers at 4000 feet in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies didn't allow for any crops, just a few flowers. In Okanogan she finally fulfilled her dream. She got organic gardening magazines, read up on the latest techniques, and she and my father built up her soil by hand. A lot of sand was hauled from the hill across the street, and she composted and used worms. She did all this and more until she had the huge garden that I will always remember.
Everything she did she was successful at, because she never quit trying until she succeeded. When my dad was in high school she started a business, selling worms to fisherman. She had famous night crawlers and her method for getting them kept us, her grandchildren, entertained for years. She had two metal rods that she inserted into the ground. They were connected to a battery, so when she threw the switch it would send currents through the ground. This caused worms to frantically squirm to the surface where she, or her loyal minions/grandchildren, would scoop them up. She kept this successful business up until the fishing season before her death at the age of 90.
This self-proclaimed “ignorant peasant Frenchwoman” would raise many children in her lifetime, not all of them her own. Her three birth children would all go on to higher education. Her stepson was in tears at her 90th birthday party, talking about how she’d influenced him, the successful businessman. The neighbor kids talked about how she was their other mother or grandmother, and how she always expected the best from them. Even now, a year and a half after her death, her daring inspires me. Her work ethic is still alive and well in her grandchildren. To me this just proves Van Gogh’s statement, daring and hard work make a life that is both worth living and worth emulating.

Day 21

Day 21 is something you wish you were better at

This is pretty much the extent of my artistic abilities.

Dancing in Crazytown

Whenever I say the word "crazytown" the strains of "Funkytown" play in my head. Which is why I use the word. Anything to lighten things up. Horrible nightmares last night. I can never explain *why* they're so horrible to people, because the content of the dream is not what's terrifying. The content of the dream only matters incidentally. The visceral fear is what gets me, what wakes me up with my heart pounding, frozen in bad while my terrified mind tries to figure out if I'm *actually* awake or if it's a false awakening. False awakenings are the worst, because they give you this moment of relief before pounding you with more fear. False awakenings give me the worst kind of anxiety attack. I feel like my heart's going to jump out of my chest and it's hard to breathe. Even without the false awakenings it's bad enough. It's hard to breathe because my brain is not convinced that the terror is just in my dream and is trying to keep me from moving at all. I'll just freeze in my bed, trying to make not the slightest of motions. That's why I'm awake right now. Because I don't want more nightmares. They've been happening a lot lately, and so far last night was the worst. I'm hoping I can exhaust myself enough to fall into a deep sleep and skip the bone chilling nightmares. I'm a wreck, and it's hard not to be hysterical. It's illogical and impossible to explain. So I reach out desperately, loopily, frenetically and giddily chat online with anyone who will talk to me. It doesn't have to be about anything. Just happy noise to pretend I'm fooling my brain. I hate losing my grip, I refuse to lose my grip, but I can't help but lose my grip. I can't talk to my mother about it, because however well-meaning she is, she's still one of *those* Christians. The ones who think that if I just *believe* more, read the bible *more* I'll be *poof* mentally well! I said I thought I needed to go into counseling because of a traumatic event (that I don't wish to talk about here and have only told two other people at this point), and she said I just need to read the word more. Right. Because, y'know, I never crack the Bible. Ever. Nope. Not me. I'm a regular old heathen. When my faith in God is the only thing (barely) holding me together I really Really REALLY resent that attitude. This seems like a huge block of text, but it's really nothing compared to what I'm feeling, screaming inside. I will get better. I WILL get better. I just have to remind myself that it always gets better. Sure doesn't help when it's happening though.

Day 20

Day 20 is something you wish to forget. You'll never guess! /sarcasm

I wish that I could forget that I have bad judgement and decision making skills. I wish I could forget that I let myself be bulldozed into marriage. I really, really wish I could forget all the times I compromised my conscience by staying with someone I knew to be a liar, cheat and thief. I wish I could forget all the advice I *didn't* take.

Day 19

Day 19 is a picture of something with Black and White

Fake ~ Kyoto Bijutsu Jiken Emaki

I just finished watching this and I want more episodes!! The last fansub came out today and I was happyhappy. To my mind it's kind of like a combination of Murder She Wrote and Bones and I thoroughly enjoyed all 6 episodes. For why did you not make me more, Powers that Be? For why?! Six episodes was not enough. All I can hope is that they make more, or maybe a tv movie or something.

Day 18

Day 18 is a picture of random things in your room

I'm living in my brother's room and, well, I don't have a desk /sheepish. That's part of my excuse, the other part is that I'm just messy. *However* If I had taken a picture of the whole room you would see that my mess is primarily contained to the nightstand and dresser. I don't count the books scattered on the bed, that's just because I can never make up my mind what I want to read ;).

Day 17

Day 17 is a picture of your favourite place in your city

Yes, it's the library ;).

Day 16

Day 16 is your biggest insecurity.

I'm not insecure about my intelligence, but I have a mental illness and that I am very insecure about. I am insecure and doubtful of my ability to have a so-called "normal" life with all the entails. I'm insecure about how it makes me different even from the different people. I'm insecure about my place in society because of it. Everything I am insecure about can be boiled down to the misfiring of neurons or chemical imbalance in my brain.

Day 15

Day 15 is a picture that makes you laugh.

Day 14

something pink

Day 13

Day 13 is someone you can't imagine your life without

that's my stepdad, the best bad influence in my life ;).

Day 12

Day 12 is a picture of your favourite artist.

This is Pia Ravenari and she is my favourite artist. She's Australian and I wish I had money, because I would love to own some of her work! http://ravenari.deviantart.com/gallery/  If I can ever get some cash flow going I'm totally treating myself to a print...or two...maybe three ;). I may be understanding the question wrong, but when I'm asked that question this is the first person who springs to mind.

Day 11

Day 11 is supposed to be a picture of what I wore today, but I was sick and miserable and didn't want my picture taken. However, at first I thought *yesterday* was the what I wore day so you can have a picture of that.

My legs are not malformed, my pants are just too big ;).

Day 10

Day 10 is something you love

I'm not a bibliophile, I'm a biblioADDICT. I should have put my ereader into the shot as well, because my elibrary is ginormous. Most of my books tends toward the scifi/fantasy side of things, but you can't see the stack of louis l'amour books behind the scifi books. i also have a weakness for old school mystery and Grace Livingston Hill.

Day 9

Day 9 is a picture of something you hate.

Blecch. Not the worst chore ever, but it ranks. Since I can't really post a picture of concepts like racism, sexism, gender politics and the utter asshattedness of humankind towards one another.

Day 8

Day 8 is a picture of your favourite food

Plain Greek style yoghurt with frozen blueberries. mmmmmm....People look at me strange, but I tell you this is the yummiest thing ever! The trick is to stir the blueberries in quickly so that the yoghurt freezes around them. It's even better if you can let it sit for a very short time so that the blueberries thaw just a little inside the now frozen yoghurt. Bliss!