Changes

As if my children have not endured enough changes this past year, I've decided to change my name back. You'd think that wouldn't be a big deal, but I've had quite the task to give them all assurance that regardless of my last name, I will still be their mom. Biology lessons on where babies come from only half appease them. Examples of other divorced moms with maiden names retaken barely phase them. Shakespeare with his "a rose by any other name..." has not impressed them. But I've worked and talked and explained my way into halfhearted permission. Finally!

What's interesting to me is the lengths at which one is required to go to just to have legal permission to reclaim a name. If I had the issue addressed in the divorce decree, it would have been said and done. I wasn't informed very well on that matter and opted to not have it addressed at the time. As my birthday approached (and is quite near) I got the idealistic notion that my gift to myself would be that I would retake my birth name. To accomplish this, I've had to refile a petition with the court; which irritatingly enough was as expensive as filing for divorce, as well as run a four week long advertisement in a local paper that I am filing this petition. For what purpose? For someone to protest? For my ex husband to complain? WT...? I digress....

This past Friday was the end of that four week period. Next I am to show proof of the advertisement's running to the court and wait to be assigned a date before the judge. So that he can finally drop his gavel and grant me permission to become... me. It should seem of no consequence, I suppose; just a legal step but somehow in a metaphysical sense I feel that another layer is peeling back in a very real way in this long journey of reclaiming myself.

I do not wish to live out my days signing my name as someone I am not. Knowing that soon I will hear a legal proclamation and permission to change gives me even more of a feeling of autonomy than the divorce decree itself.

As I continue to nurture, care-take and, yes, FUSS AT my children surely they will have no doubt -- yep, regardless, that's Mom.

spring cleaning

Not really spring, but it still feels like it he thought to himself as he walked up the front steps.

The silence is broken by the sound of rusty hinges. A man enters the dust covered room and peers around. As he steps forward, the air is filled with a crunching sound that breaks into the stillness as well. He looks down and finds pieces of broken glass strewn about the floor and a brick in the center. He bends down to pick up and inspect the brick. On it are stenciled the letters OVOM. That's odd...

After surveying the rest of his dust covered surroundings, he notices a sink full of dishes. I suppose I should get on those...

So he runs some water. First for dishes, then for counters, followed by the mop bucket.

Finally, he runs some water to make coffee. As he sits down with a fresh mug, the smell of it, along with the smell of baking snickerdoodles, fills the air. And as he sat there he wondered whether this was just going to be a time of peaceful solitude, or if something else might find him...

Sigh

I just need to vent. I'm angry and I need input. I can't post this on my blog because it's too public.

It's been almost 6 years since I left my ex-church.  SIX years. You think people would get it by now.

Apparently not.

Some people from my ex-church seem to continue to be concerned for my faith. In the last month I have been invited to BSF by one friend and to a Graham Cooke conference (at my ex-church, no less) by another "friend". These two people are close friends with each other, and I sense a conspiracy. The one who invited me to Graham Cooke I haven't heard from in almost two years. (And if you don't know who Graham Cooke is, he's a prophetic and charismatic speaker.) The other friend is on my relay team, and I thought we were developing a really good friendship, until she invited me to bible study. I guess I'm not clear enough with people about the condition of my faith.

But I sense that there is some conspiracy to try to bring me back.

Why?

Why?

I don't want to be a bitch, but seriously...SHE POSTED IT ON MY WALL ON FACBOOK! How to be gracious and not insult her beliefs, while still getting the message across that I'M NOT INTERESTED.

Not even considering that I have no desire to enter the doors of my ex-church and attend the conference with my ex-friends...I'm not into the whole Graham Cooke thing anymore. Not at all. Years ago I would have jumped at the chance to hear him speak, back when I believed all that hyper-spiritual prophetic nonsense. I suppose this "friend" thinks I haven't changed in six years? And then the whole assumption that I "must have gotten over it by now"...WTF? I'm never going to "get over it". What went down there is forever a part of my being, and she was a big part of the problem.

So here I am angry and bitter all over again, because somehow my spiritual health seems to be other people's business. I don't get it. I mean I do get it, because evangelicals think everyone's spiritual health is their business, but do they not know when to leave well enough alone? I guess not.

It makes me soooo angry.

Thanks for listening.

Peeps?

If I throw a brick through the window in this place...will anyone notice?

A Bum's Dream

I have this dream.  It's a bum's dream.  I read online about a man in Utah in the States who lives in a cave with no money.  Something in me soars at the idea.

Of course it's a utopian dream that the ground which we walk upon and which sustains us could be free, not fenced off into small commodities that people shore up into their bank accounts.

I know that will never happen.  And anyway, the songlines were broken up.  How else would a people live on this land when the songlines were broken up?  But nevertheless, dreaming is still free.

Living in a cave would be a crazy, wild and whacky thing to do, as far removed from my present reality as the thought of not having to pay a thousand bucks' rent a month, of having to do jobs I despise, of being paid to do things I like.  But everything changes, and strange things are realities.  Indeed, one of my best friends lived in a cave in Spain for eight months, hardly spending a cent, doing yoga in the sunrise.

I wonder if you lived in a cave in Buchan, or the Grampians, how long it would take for the authorities weed you out and move you on.  Back in the thirties in the Great Depression, itinerants set up camp in the land at the end of Dudley Street and along the Moonee Ponds Creek, over 60 humpies.  They flew under the radar until World War II because this area was considered a wasteland of sorts,  under nobody's jurisdiction.

What a grace the wastelands are.

The authorities do not like people to clutter up the landscape in this way today.  It gets in the way of tourism.  Cluttering up the landscape with your need is an ill-considered spectacle when there are housing estates that contain like-minded blocks with the same coloured roof tiles, their doors shut tight against each other.

I worked for several years in the CBD of Melbourne, transcribing court cases acted in by lawyers and presided over by strangely attired judges.  There were so many statutes and rules and sections of Acts to follow, handed down over the years, composed into tomes, that the situation right before them needed to conform into.  The most interesting conversations I had on the streets of Melbourne at that time were with a homeless woman with a penchant for philosophising who the cops harassed regularly for cluttering up the outsides of Flagstaff Station.  We sat on the ground together and ruminated on the nature of stuff.  She had irregular dreads, irregular teeth, an irregular psychology that kept her out there.  God, I loved my conversations with her.

She discovered, slowly, she was an artist in her preceding years living in the city.  She sold her art, beautiful, complex geometric patterns on black paper, drawn with gold or silver gel pen, drawn almost in a trance, soothing and smoothing out her soul somehow.

I have an overactive nervous system.  I have gone from one acronym to another, from CFS - chronic fatigue syndrome - to HSP - highly sensitive person.  It's just a label, something for me to discard on a deeper level, something helpful in other ways to understand this body I inhabit.  On a frazzled day, a visit to the shopping centre can send me almost spare, needing a good meditation session and a yoga session to boot, to recover me from the fluorescent lights, the plastic shit, the wafting anxiety of the people walking past to buy plastic shit, intent in the lie that they are different from, separate to, the other that they are hating in front of them, getting in their way.

I feel like I take in so much some days that it thumps my heart, floods my adrenals.  Too much.  I see too much, it revs up the circuitry.  Like a 5/4 rhythm composed upon a jangle of nerves.

That's how it is some days.  I think that's why the cave looks so good sometimes.  Less need for working as long, space to think, to ponder, to piece together, no rent.  Just as long as I had access to a shower, so the library would let me in to use their internet connection :)

The supermarket washing powder aisle was one traversed with bated breath when I was living in the previous acronym, CFS.  What they put in that shit I do not know, but the smell rammed itself in through my eyeballs and fuzzed up into my head.  No one is so dirty that they need to get that clean.  

the tale of Twitardia

as far as i can tell it started with the books or movies or a combination of both.

i can't truly speak to everyone's experience and how they got TO Twitardia. but like i said it seems to have started for everyone with the books and movie. for some reason, for a population of women, Twilight completely smacked them upside the head and completely captured their imagination. captured isn't the right word. more like kidnapped. from what i understand from all of them they didn't see this coming. it came from out of nowhere and completely took their lives and irrevocably changed them forever.

i can't speak for all women, but i know that Erin devoured the books in a week. soon after, in talking with her friend who had originally given her the books, she found out that Stephanie Meyer (the author) had been working on a parallel novel to Twilight called Midnight Sun and was available online to read a portion. Stephaine Meyer however found out that her novel had been leaked online and vowed never to finish it.

that is of little consequence however as the damage had been done. from there many women found what is called "fanfic" which is short for Fan Fiction. fiction written by fans of the series. most of these stories are extremely sexual in nature and most are blatantly pornographic in nature. these stories enlived many women and gave birth to their sexual imaginations. in continually searching for more things of this nature online many women ended up coming across a little blog by the name of Twitarded.



begun Jan. 15th 2009 by two women who go by the names of Jenny Jerkface and Snarkier Than You. i DO know their real names, but since a woman's real name is about the most intimate thing these women can share with one another i will not violate that trust here. this blog is THE Twilight blog for this neighborhood. hence the name "Twitardia" for this grouping of blogs. this blog has over 1500 followers, posts daily, and is a massive, MASSIVE gathering of fun, wit, sarcasm, and smut. it has grown so big, the comments so numerous, and the emails of admiration and fangirlness that it has begun to take over the lives of JJ & STY. so recently they added a 3rd partner named Latchkey Wife (aka LKW).

it is what i have dubbed the Ellis Island of Twitardia. women end up tumbling down the rabbit hole and finding them. they come in search of a new land for this new life they have found for themselves. they are given a new name, become acclimated for a while, and eventually go forth into the new land of promise to stake their own claim.

when i found this group of blogs through Erin, at her behest, they were a group whose postings consisted largely of excitement about upcoming Twilight events (movies, soundtracks, ruminations over the books), varying sexy pics of the male celebrities, sexual stories, comments filled with what they call "smexiness" (smutty sexiness) and lots of game playing. they love to do things as a big group, play games with one another, and Fridays are big days for that. things such as Fact or Crap, Drunk Mad Libs, and the Friday Fun Five (a post in which a guest bogger asks the group 5 questions and everyone answers.)

this is enough for now i think. this is just a little background on the place. i will return however with the introduction and evolution of Mr. Pantz, how i got there, how i got sucked back into the bloggy world, and why i feel like god had the Mad Hatter tumble down a rabbit hole of his own into a world filled with much shaded pain and many troubled marriages...

heeeyyyy, youuuuuu guuuuuuuuyyyyyyyyys!!!!!!!!

Loooong time no talk! probably confused by the profile, but that is my new bloggy name and my new bloggy face in my new bloggy neighborhood. this is jON!!!!!! lots been happening. in fact, my life bears absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to my life the last time we spoke. which is a VERY VERY good thing. i cannot believe or contain all of the blessings that are being poured out on us right now. but i don't have time. busy job, busy family (we just bought a house!!!!!), and the rest is being eaten up by my new bloggy life. i tumbled down the rabbit hole into another neighborhood filled with women who are absolutely addicted to the Twilight books, movies, and actors contained therein. Not my cup of tea, but Erin(my wife) introduced me to them and I got sucked back into (blog). Now, tonight, at midnight American Central Standard time I will be launching my blog The Hubtard live for the first time and wanted to invite you all to drop by and check out the fun. I have been posting little pop culture clips for the past month but tonight is my first real post. It will certainly be something else... compared to something else... but i would love to have you all over again. so, if you've got nothing better to do and poking yourself in the eye with a stick is out, maybe you'll want to pop in and see what's up? LOVE to hear from all of you again!!!!

here's the link: The Hubtard


love you all and hope that life has been just as kind to you and yours as it has to me and mine.