brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (me)

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

I took a walk today thinking that going out into the fresh air would be much cooler and nicer than staying in the apartment.

I was wrong.

It kind of felt like someone was following me around with a blow dryer or a very large panting dog or something. Hot, humid, blowing on me. Not pleasant.

I walked to the corner store and bought some ice cream sandwiches. Not the rectangular one with the squooshy not-quite-cookie chocolate encasing vanilla ice cream, although those are good. I wasn’t in the mood for squooshy almost-cookie, so I got some straight up cookies with ice cream in the middle.

Or what looked like straight up cookies with ice cream in the middle.

It’s more like sponge cake with ice cream in the middle.

They are all gooey and squishy and stick to my fingers and bluh. When I was a kid, I remember ice cream sandwiches where the cookies were actually cookies, kind of crisp, kind of thick, they were hard to eat because you’d bite down and the cookie pieces were hard to bite through and they’d squish together and the ice cream would ooze out the sides and it was just a mess. Tasted good, though.

I miss those ice cream cookie sandwiches. The ones in the freezer do not measure up.

I asked a friend of mine if she’d eaten those same kind of ice cream cookie sandwiches, and she said no. The only novelty ice cream she ate as a kid was dilly bars from Dairy Queen.

I have not had a dilly bar in at least fifteen years. Possibly twenty.

I don’t have decent ice cream cookie sandwiches and I don’t have a dilly bar. I’m also on my third shirt of the day because I’ve soaked two with sweat already. Life’s sooooo hard right now.

brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

There’s a lot of guys who do this thing, in public, that is really aggressive and potentially threatening and invasive and all around douchey, and I’m pretty sure they’re not aware that’s how their actions are perceived, because if they were aware of that they’d stop doing it. Maybe. There’s a lot of aggressive, entitled, douchey guys out there, though.

Anyway, this is the thing:

When you are a dude in public, especially if you are with other dudes in a group, and you happen upon a lady who is minding her own business reading a book or eating an ice cream cone or working or whatever, and you want to know her name, give her yours first. Don’t just demand her name. Especially don’t follow up with questions about where she lives.

Because that? Is threatening. That’s now two pieces of private information you’ve tried to get out of her, and could easily lead to stalking.

And there is a LOT of pressure on women to play nice and answer the question. Because, you know, he’s just being friendly. They’re just questions. What possible harm could it do?

But it’s one of those things that makes women feel unsafe, especially because if she doesn’t answer these (very personal, private, could endanger her life and security) questions, she doesn’t know if the guy asking them will start screaming at her and calling her an uppity bitch.

Maybe you are thinking to yourself “huh, how could simply knowing a woman’s name and neighborhood make her unsafe?” Here is the thing. It’s really easy to watch women, especially in a big city. It’s easy to narrow down where a person lives, what public transit routes they take, including what block they live on, what apartment they live in. It’s easy to get access to women. It’s especially easy when you know that woman’s name. “Oh, hey, I’m here to see [woman's name] and I think her buzzer is broken? could you let me up?”

I mean, think of how normalized-as-romantic this incredibly scary behavior is, how often it’s portrayed in romantic comedies.

So, you know, your harmless questions can actually be very alarming. Especially when the flow of information is only going one way.

So be mindful of that. If you MUST intrude upon a woman’s personal space (like, maybe she’s the most attractive woman in the known universe, or she has a tattoo with an obscure quote on it you recognize, or she’s reading your absolute favorite book series about soul-bonded dragons, and you know in your heart of hearts that you are soul mates), open with your own name first. Get the flow of information going both ways. Make it a conversation and not just an interrogation. And be mindful also of the fact that women don’t owe you anything. They don’t owe you a smile, or a conversation, or answers to your questions. If they don’t want to engage with you, that doesn’t make them bitches or whores or nasty people out to get you. It makes them human beings who don’t have the time, interest, energy, or whatever to expend upon you. And that’s their right, to not interact with some stranger who is making unreasonable demands on them.

Sometimes when a woman is being interrogated by a stranger (who, when male, usually is taller, stronger, louder, and heavier than her, all of which put her at a physical disadvantage), she might try to turn attention away from herself and ask questions of the stranger.

This does not mean the woman is trying to bone you, is giving you permission to “have sex with” (rape) her, is flirting “aggressively” with you, or is, in fact, interested in you/your dick. It also doesn’t mean you can then suavely segue into demanding to know what female celebrities she wants to have sex with, nor does it mean you can loudly call her a prude when she doesn’t answer you right away. I mean, you know, maybe she’s flirting with you and wants to get all up in your business. Sometimes people connect in the most unlikely ways! But it is not probable. More than likely she is trying to get you to talk about yourself (most peoples’ favorite topic of conversation) so she no longer feels like you are stalking her. She’s trying to redirect the conversation in such a way that she no longer has to actively take part in it. She’s reduced to this strategy because most women are not permitted by strange men they meet in public to opt out of conversations the men initiate.

Think about that for a minute.

If you are male, are you routinely dragged into personal conversations by other people? Do they ask you personal questions over and over again, getting louder and more persistent? Do they insult you if you refuse to talk to them or avoid answering the question? If you are reading a book or listening to music via headphones, do people assume that you owe them attention, that they can monopolize your time, that if you don’t fawn over them you are somehow at fault?

Because that’s pretty standard for women who go out in public.

If you feel the need to apologize several times for you/your group and your “obnoxious” behavior then consider changing your behavior. I mean, if you are acting obnoxiously and then apologize for it and then keep acting that way it pretty much cements that fact that you’re an epic jackass with no regard for the feelings of others, and no care at all for how you’re impinging on their social/physical space.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Nesko went out to get the mail and shoved into our mailbox was a shrink wrapped (with Starbucks price tag still attached) CD of San Patricio.

I have NO EFFING CLUE why this CD is in our mailbox or who put it there. I’ve been listening to The Chieftains since I was a little kid, though, and have done street team work for other Irish and Irish American bands, so is it someone who knows me? Is it completely random? I DO NOT KNOW.

Is it some weird marketing thing?

There is no address label or anything on it. Just a brand new CD nestled in our mailbox among flyers for an End Times Church (five days! five lectures! ancient prophecies tell the future! Last lecture all about the Book of Revelation! Jesus is coming, so look busy!).

I haven’t listened to it yet. It’s got Ry Cooder and Linda Ronstadt, among others, so it should be good I hope.

I will keep you updated.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

It is, for those if you experiencing winter in the midwest, very very dry.

If you are a normal person, you’ve probably had to deal with dry, scaly skin and nose bleeds.

I had my first nose bleed ever yesterday.

Oh, sure, I’ve had blood in my snot a few times, especially when it was super dry and I had a cold. But yesterday? I made up for a life time sans nosebleed. Blood ran in a river for, honest to God, an hour. You know how I usually exaggerate stuff for effect, comedic or otherwise?

I am not exaggerating.

A friend of mine who’s suffered such extensive, frequent nosebleeds that she wound up getting her nasal vessels cauterized, talked me through it– the nose pinching, the head tilt, the waiting. My hand cramped up from holding my nose shut. My eyes watered, and my lips dried out from breathing through my mouth. It was kind of like a nasal period, complete with giant black slug-like blood clots.

Let me tell you, internets, it was awful.

Especially because, once I stopped actual blood streaming, there was still both a faint trickle, a bit of a runny nose, and a gigantic fear of dislodging the blood clot. Yesterday was Christmas according to the Eastern Orthodox calendar, so we went to Nesko’s family’s house for dinner, and I was all paranoid that I’d 1) start bleeding again 2) people would notice I was being nasty by sucking up snots instead of blowing my nose.

We got some cash presents, which we are going to use to get humidifiers, one for each bedroom. I cannot imagine dealing with a nose bleeding baby, and would like to head that trauma off at the pass.

Feel free to tell your blood horror stories, nose blood or otherwise, in the comments.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

If you were going to compile a cook book of very, very basic recipes for people who have never cooked before and grew up in houses where people didn’t cook, what would you put in?

After talking with a lot of intelligent, accomplished people I know who don’t cook, and then talking to my mom, we (my mom and I) have tentative plans to start a cooking blog with photos.

Among other things, I was thinking of doing themes. So, for instance, there’d be a post on how to cook rice without using a rice cooker, then there’d be posts about stuff you can make with rice. (For some reason, I know a lot of people who have no idea how to cook rice, and are also intimidated by it, whereas I just throw some rice and water and bouillon cubes in a pot and wander off for an hour or so and it’s No Big Deal.)

My mom cooked and baked professionally for years, and I was lucky enough to grow up in a home where “from scratch” cooking was normal and accessible. I think that gives me an edge over a lot of my peers, because I have basic skills in the kitchen and am not intimidated by most recipes. Not everyone has that.

What recipes would you be interested in seeing? What sort of topics would you expect to see discussed?

Let me know!

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Do you have plans for tonight/tomorrow? What are you doing for New Year’s Eve and Day?

We were going to go out and see some friends, but decided against it because:

  • If we stay out late, Niko’s schedule gets messed up for days afterwards
  • By the time we got there, we’d only have about an hour before we had to leave
  • Niko has a cold and is very clingy and kind of cranky
  • We are old people who don’t really stay up late or drink anyway
  • New Year’s Eve/Day is prime time for drunk people on the road and we don’t want to deal with that

So we’ll probably do any and all socializing the following weekend. I think I’m going to make pizza and we might get some fizzy cider or something and watch a movie. We might also go to Nesko’s parents’ house, which is five minutes away, and come home around 8:00 so as to get Niko tucked into bed and also avoid all drunken driving.

What are YOUR plans? I can almost guarantee you they’re more exciting and fun than OUR plans.

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WWJD?

Dec. 23rd, 2009 06:57 pm
brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Dear Sir:

I notice that you have “WWJD,” or “What Would Jesus Do” emblazoned in very large font across your back.

Due to the vast span of time between Jesus and ourselves, as well as the corruption in his recorded words and deeds, it is hard to say exactly what Jesus would do, although we can hazard a pretty good guess.

I can say with some certainty, however, that Jesus would probably NOT whip his dick out and urinate in public.

Just a hunch.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

I just tried using IE 7, thinking it might be a workaround for a problem I’m having, and I wanted to tear my hair out.

No matter how I changed the settings, it kept opening links in a new window instead of a new tab. When I told it to accept pop-ups, it refused to open any pop-ups, and I had to tell it to block all pop-ups so it would let pop-ups pop up. Even though I told it to remember log in information, it didn’t. At one point, it was blocking pop-ups even though I had turned off (allegedly) the pop up blocker. Which means I’d click on a link that was supposed to open a pop up window for me to log in to a site, but instead of the pop up popping up there was a “clunk” sound effect and no pop up… and no way to say “Yes, allow this pop up,” because the part of IE that lets you do THAT was turned off.

Also my tool bar was filled with extraneous crap. I don’t use yahoo for ANYTHING, yet there was a giant button right where a back button would have made sense, that I couldn’t easily (in a few seconds) figure out how to get rid of. Urgh.

Firefox is gold compared to that.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

Originally published at brigidkeely.com/wordpress. You can comment here or there.

It’s 3:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep.

It’s more than just insomnia, this time around. It’s pain. Physical pain. I’m so tired I’m dizzy and list to one side when I walk, but I can’t sleep because my tooth hurts too badly. I’ve been eating excedrin like candy, and I’ve taken so much my stomach hurts (also it’s hot, which makes my stomach hurt, and I’m exhausted, which makes my stomach hurt) but I still want to claw my face off. I’m really hoping my mother in law can take Nick today or else I’m basically fucked.

I hurt so badly I want to beat my head against a wall until I’m unconscious.

And I haven’t, you know, I haven’t felt like this in a long time. And the last time I felt like this, the pain was mental and not physical.

Because it’s the tiny hours of the morning, and because if I don’t have something to focus on I will do nothing but rock back and forth while whimpering and sobbing (note: I spent an hour whimpering and sobbing and folding laundry and watching a travel show on Peru, around 1:00am), I’m going to tell you about that trying emotional time.

It was my last year of college. I spent the second to last semester of college holed up in my room, incredibly depressed and overwhelmed, suffering from massive whomping panic attacks every time I left my room. This was a problem as both the bathroom and cafeteria lay outside my room, but I was able to push myself to use both facilities. I was not, however, able to leave the dorm and go to class. I went from all As and Bs to failing. Everything. Note that prior to this I had been in group therapy for a full scholastic year, and had basically given up talking about my depression, suicidal ideation, self harm, and sexual assault because it just seemed to really bring everyone else down.

My last semester got really bad. I was cutting pretty much every day, was obsessed with thinking up ways of killing myself, was hardly sleeping, and was beating my head against the floor. Literally. I was also on academic probation, but still couldn’t bring myself to go to class. I was paralyzed with fear and pain. I eventually got so bad that I scared myself and went back to mental health services and made an appointment to talk to a shrink.

I spent the 45 minute interview talking about my problems: how I was failing school and was going to get kicked out; about how I wasn’t handling my sexual assault (when I was 17) well; how I was overwhelmed and depressed and riddled with anxiety; how I was actively suicidal; how I was actively harming myself; how I was afraid I was going to kill myself; how I was out of control and terrified and a failure and incredibly depressed. I mentioned that I’d been on prescription antidepressants previously, and that they’d done me a world of good. I talked about my abusive past. And the guy I saw folded his arms tighter and tighter across his chest and leaned further and further away from me, his body language growing ever colder and more distant.

And at the end of the interview he told me I was “very self actualized” and that there was nothing he could do for me.

In point of fact, there was a hell of a lot he could have done for me. I probably should have been hospitalized; I definitely should have been medicated. He could have interceded with the school and gotten me on a different form of academic probation which would have allowed me to stay in school and graduate. He could have guided me in healing. But he didn’t. He essentially kicked me out of his office.

I was so angry, so furious (I, uh, also used to have serious rage issues that thankfully have calmed down as I’ve gotten older) that it shook me out of the worst of the suicidal feelings. I packed my shit up, and made arrangements to move off campus with a friend of mine. I think that moving in with her saved my life. At the time, my dad was still unmedicated (and hence irrational and abusive), and if I’d moved back home I probably would have killed myself. I’m not trying to be dramatic; I was in a really bad place.

I never graduated. Because I failed two semesters in a row, my financial aid was canceled. In addition to student loans, I also owe UIC thousands of dollars in tuition and fees. I can’t transfer my transcripts to any other school until that’s paid off. It will be very hard for me to get back into college, because my GPA is ass and even if it wasn’t I owe a lot of money and I don’t know how soon, if ever, I’ll be able to pay it off. And I still grapple with depression and anxiety although it’s never been as bad as those two terrifying semesters.

Usually, when I talk about why I left college without graduating, I’m evasive. I feel like a failure because I flunked out. I feel like a failure because I’m mentally ill. I’m ashamed. If I’d gotten mono and failed two semesters, or been hit by a truck and been unable to go back to school, or something else physical had happened I wouldn’t have anywhere near this sense of shame and failure. But mental illness is so stigmatized, and so associated with weakness, that I do. And carrying around a secret like this is hard.

My dad has a “congratulations, graduate!” card that he keeps in his office to send to me when I “finally” graduate. Why yes, this is manipulative and kind of abusive! Why yes, I’ve essentially lived my entire life unable to live up to his exacting standards! Why yes, he HAS often made me break down crying and wishing I’d never been born! Why yes, he HAS made it clear EXACTLY how disappointed he is in me! And I haven’t told him WHY I left school. I don’t know how, or if I can. I never told my parents I was sexually assaulted by a co-worker when I was 17. I’ve never told my parents that I self harmed from the time I was seven years old until fairly recently. I’ve never told my parents I’ve been suicidal. There’s actually a lot I’ve never told them.

I have a three month old baby, and I’ve been thinking a lot about parenting and my life lately. A lot of really bad shit I thought I’d dealt with apparently wasn’t dealt with very well; a lot of shit I thought I’d buried has been popping up. I don’t know how to deal with all of this. I am so incredibly scared of fucking up as a parent, of hurting my sweet boy. I’m afraid sometimes that I won’t be a good mom; that I can’t be a good mom. That I’m too flawed and broken to give a tiny human being what he needs. I come from a long line of fucked up, abusive people and I don’t know that I can buck that trend.

All I can do is try.

I’m kind of contemplating getting a pair of pliers and pulling this fucking tooth out, though. You know. In the meantime.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

Originally published at brigidkeely.com/wordpress. You can comment here or there.

Hey, does anyone in the Chicago area want/need some office supplies?

I have a shit load of post it notes, steno pads, lined paper, pens, and some other stuff. 3.5 discs, also, if you have a use for them. Let me know if you want this stuff.

I’m going to post a large amount of art supplies soon (probably next week). Paints, sketch pads, prismacolor pencils and markers, canvasses, an easel or two. I’d like a few bucks for that stuff, though.

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brigid: drawing of two women, one whispering to the other (Default)

Originally published at brigidkeely.com/wordpress. You can comment here or there.

Nesko and I own a table that is very very nice. It is some rich dark wood (fruit wood, maybe? not quite the color of cherry, or the texture) and goes from “very very small” to “round and seats four” to “insert two leaves and seat eight.” I’m pretty sure that it originally had at least one more leaf, but we got the table from my mom who got it at an auction and it only came with the two leaves.

We sit at it in folding chairs because we can’t afford real, wooden chairs. We are classy. And yes, I keep looking on Craigslist for decent used chairs, but they’ve already been purchased by the time I email or call. Life is just so hard.

So anyway, we have this really nice table. It’s great for eating breakfast at, or having people over for dinner at, or for playing board games with people at. I usually keep it covered in a table cloth because I don’t want the wood getting scratched, dinged, or sun faded or dried out. So its loveliness is often hidden, which is a shame, but that means it’s lovely for later as well. Sometimes we eat with placemats instead of a table cloth.

My baby’s god daddy was in town visiting us a short while ago, and we played “Cities and Knights of Catan.” I lost, because I always lose. It is my nature. We played on the naked table because a table cloth can make the board (which is made of tiles set close together) lumpy and affect game play. We ate pizza and drank cokes and screwdrivers and had a really good time. And I felt like a rampaging bitch because I kept reminding Mike to use a coaster.

Other people habitually use coasters! We got ours at flippin’ TARGET. It’s a normal thing! But I felt like such a douche reminding him to use one. And I felt really paranoid. We don’t use coasters for ANY other piece of furniture, but then all of our other furniture is crap laminate. I just… really like this table. It’s a “real” table, made of wood and not plastic or veneer, and it makes me feel like an adult. I’ve had dinner parties at this table, complete with multi course meals and wine and pomegranates for dessert. Adult! And I want to keep it nice.

But I feel like a poser, all using coasters and badgering people not to put their coke cans directly on the wood; like I’m faking this whole “adult” thing in a fairly desperate and obvious way.

What’s the nicest thing that YOU own? Are you paranoid about keeping it nice and in good shape? Am I a crazy person? Let me know what you think.

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