I went to three different “high schools” during 9th-12th grade. My first year, I was in the Los Angeles school district, which counted 9th grade as a part of middle school (then called junior high school). Then I switched from living with my mother and stepfather to living with my father and stepmother—shortly after that, […]
Strange Times
I can relate to more of this article, originally a study about the underlying history of obese people, than I can easily express. I don’t have a typical build. This has been annoying for most of my life in some weird ways, especially in interactions with men and doctors. For example, being told, within the […]
Wendig’s Right Re Spanking
Chuck Wendig has an excellent post titled “Spanking Your Children Is Hitting Your Children.” This. So much this. I was assaulted by family members until I was nineteen. I don’t mean in a small way. I mean my stepmother actually used a cast iron skillet. She was not the only one. And yes, I limp. […]
On Privilege and Normalcy
(Repost of something I wrote on LiveJournal in 2010) A while ago, Jay Lake talked about his privilege in his cancer treatment, and it got me to thinking about my privilege in a number of contexts. I’m white, and that comes with power in our culture, but it’s not that that makes my own set […]
It Wasn’t Always This Red
Because reasons, I started turning grey at age 16. Yes, in high school. Early on in my software engineering career, this helped me because it made me look more experienced than I actually was. A few years into my career, I was seriously dating a younger man, and it made him insecure because of my […]
Kitty and Her Momo
Tanner is a rescue cat gotten when we had an elderly alpha cat and needed a beta. She’s always been skittish and prefers to spend most of her time outdoors. Every November, she starts coming inside when it’s wet out, but she’s always avoided any of “my” spaces. She generally has 2-3 spots in the […]
Annual Period of Mourning
Every year, my body lets me know that it’s the annual period of mourning, aka the anniversary of my first husband’s death. (Which was Friday, fwiw.) You know, you’d think that being happily remarried for several times as long as I knew my first husband would make the grief go away. Weirdly, it doesn’t. The […]
Pounding Abalone
When I was in college, I took a memoir writing class, and one of the in-class writing exercises we were to do was to write about “our mother’s cooking.” Or, if not our mother, who did the substantive cooking (which turned out to be a non-mother for a couple of people in the class). There […]
Worst Day Ever: More Perspective Than You Wanted, Guaranteed
I occasionally hear people saying things like: I had the Worst. Day. Ever. It’s not for me to judge how good or bad your days are, truly it’s not. But sometimes I think that people have no perspective on how bad a worst day ever can possibly be. So, for the record, here’s mine, as […]
Trip Report: San Francisco to Mammoth
Mammoth Trip Report My dad recently turned 80, so his friends wanted to throw him a party. Due to a history of altitude sickness and a dislike of mountain driving, I really don’t visit Mammoth frequently, but I was particularly motivated for this trip. Dad recently mentioned that United had seasonal flights from San Francisco […]