"Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming 'Wow! What a Ride!'

~~Hunter S. Thompson

In January-February I was apparently having a bout of depression. Sometimes it takes me a while to notice that I'm not acting right, and for whatever reason my family wasn't calling me on it like they normally do. (thanks, guys! not.)

I don't get all morose and "life isn't worth living, it's all hopeless, it's all pointless" when I"m depressed. It's a brain chemical thing, and my symptoms are mostly physical. No energy. Lots of body pain, weakness, no stamina. IF there are any bugs going around, I'll catch them when I'm depressed because my defenses are down. I don't want to talk to people. The very idea of calling someone on the phone, or having people over for dinner, or writing a blog update or whatever, just overwhelms me and I feel like I need a nap.

If I have made new friends in a given year, my regularly-scheduled depressions serve as the litmus test for whether or not they are going to work out. The friends who can get through me holing up and not talking for weeks at a time and don't resent me for it, those are the ones who are going to last long-term. As you can imagine, that's the minority of people. It used to make me really sad. But I am who I am, and this is the only brain I've got and I'm stuck with it. I've learned to accept it and make the best of it.

The only real exception to the above is my mother-in-law.

MrX and I have been together for almost 15 years now. And I get these bouts twice a year, like clockwork in the late winter and late summer. And every single time, when I have to inform my mother-in-law why I'm not returning her emails promptly, she still doesn't "get it". "Oh dear, what are you depressed about?"

She can only understand situational depression, I guess. I rarely have a reason. And I'm not feeling *sad*. I'm just brain chemical fucked up, is all. I need to take my Wellbutrin for a few weeks, set myself a date on the calendar for doing the Bootstrap thing, and give those close to me a heads-up so they don't think it's something actually wrong.

I should probably just find a good informational website on depression, print off the FAQ and make copies. Then when this hits and I have to re-explain it to her, I can just give her another copy of the FAQ.

Anyway, I'm out of it now. Feeling good, if anything I am a little on the upswing into hyper.

I don't see myself ever being super-active here in DA land. For one thing, I just have too many things I'm juggling and eventually I get tired and pare down, at least temporarily. For another, I don't really consider myself an "artist" so much as an "artisan". So I kind of feel a little poseur-ish here, you know?

Anyway. I'm going to put up a few new Soap Pr0n pictures and such, although they aren't great because it was a gray, rainy day when I took them. Hopefully as the weather brightens, I can picture some new stuff I have.

Mess Test:

Smear peanut butter on the sofa and curtains. Place a fish stick behind the couch and leave it there all summer.

Toy Test:

Obtain a 55-gallon box of Legos. (If Legos are not available, you maysubstitute roofing tacks) Have a friend spread them all over the house. Put on a blindfold. Try to walk to the bathroom or kitchen. Do not scream. (This could wake a child at night.)

Grocery Store Test:

Borrow one or two small animals (goats are best) and take them with you as you shop at the grocery store. Always keep them in sight and pay for anything they eat or damage.

Dressing Test:

Obtain one large, unhappy, live octopus. Stuff into a small net bag, making sure that all arms stay inside.

Feeding Test:

Obtain a large plastic milk jug. Fill halfway with water. Suspend from the ceiling with a stout cord. Start the jug swinging. Try to insert spoonfuls of soggy cereal (such as Fruit Loops or Cheerios) into the mouth of the jug, while pretending to be an airplane. Now dump the contents of the jug on the floor.

Night Test:

Prepare by obtaining a small cloth bag and fill it with 8 - 12 pounds of sand. Soak it thoroughly in water. At 8:00 PM, begin to waltz and hum with the bag until 9:00 PM. Lay down your bag and set your alarm for 10: 00PM.Get up, pick up your bag, and sing every song you have ever heard. Make up about a dozen more and sing these too until 4:00 AM. Set alarm for 5:00 AM. Get up and make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

Physical Test (Women):

Obtain a large beanbag chair and attach it to the front of your clothes. Leave it there for 9 months. Now remove 10 of the beans.

Physical Test (Men):

Go to the nearest drug store. Set your wallet on the counter. Ask the clerk to help himself. Now proceed to the nearest food store. Go to the head office and arrange for your paycheck to be directly deposited to the store. Purchase a newspaper. Go home and read it quietly for the last time.

Final Assignment:

Find a couple who already has a small child. Lecture them on how they can improve their discipline, patience, tolerance, toilet training, and child’s table manners. Suggest many ways they can improve. Emphasize to them that they should never allow their children to run riot. Enjoy this experience. It will be the last time you will have all the answers. ”

I've missed it terribly. In the chaos following the Lake Eden Arts Festival, I misplaced my camera and my packing tape dispenser. I really missed them both. It seems silly to be attached to a tape dispenser, but this is a heavy-duty table model welded for me by one of the vocational students at the Job Corps center where I worked for ten years before opening up my store. It's got sentimental as well as practical value.

One thing I learned from working at Job Corps is that you can't count anyone out. Some of our worst, most hopeless students, the ones who had severe drug addictions and terrible emotional issues from years of abuse at the hands of dysfunctional families, would drop out of Job Corps only to eventually straighten themselves out and become quite successful. Some of our best "star pupils" would leave and immediately go back to their families, only to get dragged down into the very same garbage we were trying to get them out of.

DeShawn was a troublemaker. So many times, he was on the verge of being kicked out of the program. A smart kid, he was hyper, outspoken and had a very short attention span. If he wasn't skipping Academic classes he was sneaking out of his dorm at night. He had no ability to resist his impulses, it seemed, but he really wanted to be ok. We had high hopes for him. I had made several behavioral contracts with him while he was there, and I was able to prevent him from being kicked out on four occasions. He always honored my behavioral contracts to the letter. He never disobeyed me, for whatever reason. He called me "Momma T", and I let him. I was one of his references when he graduated the program and went off to work on the oil rigs in Gulfport. I've known many of the rig captains for years and I was frank with them about his ways, because they could handle it. He was fine for a few months, but then he didn't show up for an offshore run. Three days later he was found in the trunk of an abandoned car with a bullet in his head. He was 19 years old. He welded the tape dispenser out of recycled parts and gave it to me when he left. That thing has torn more skin off of my hands and arms than all the knives I have ever owned. But it's heavy and it stays put, and I can get a piece of packing tape with one hand while the other is busy holding a box together. It's been incredibly useful to me since I've been in business for myself.

Also missing are my glasses. I don't absolutely need them, they just make reading a bit easier. At the Leaf festival, I dropped them in the dark the first night. They got stepped on, but they got turned in and I got them back. I dropped them again the next day, still at the festival, and this time I stepped on them myself. Managed to wrangle them into shape and they were still usable, though. But now I can't find them at all. They're probably hiding from me in sheer terror.

(this is all brought about by death threats my daughter received at the bus stop...she was threatened, that if she doesn't start dating boys, she will have her brains bashed out. you better believe that Science Hill High School will be seeing me first thing in the morning, and Johnson City Transit will be seeing me right afterwards.)

So...here is how I "suffer" through the "tragedy" of having a daughter who is queer.

I'm seriously having one of those weeks where I just want to pack up my kids and leave this place. I have one child who is queer, the other is straight. Nothing wrong with either. But my queer child takes endless amounts of crap...from children, who are mostly just ape-ing and parroting their parents, and also from adults, who damned sure ought to know better.

I'm proud of my QUEER daughter for being brave enough and genuine enough to TELL THE TRUTH about who she is and how she feels, even though the consequences can sometimes be horribly unfair.

I don't want my STRAIGHT child growing up in an environment where ostensible authority figures, not to mention children, seem to think it's perfectly okay to hate on people for things they don't understand. And trust me, they DON'T understand. They think they do, but the ignorance they spout as justification for hazing and harassment just proves otherwise.

Here's some of the ignorant, shortsighted garbage I've gotten from people who actually *meant well*. I'm not even going to bother with the stuff that wasn't from well-meaning people, because it's not worthy of seeing the light of day.

Q: Aren't you sad to know you'll never see your daughter get married someday?

A: Who says she won't? First of all, I don't think the government has any business approving or disapproving of *anyone's* personal relationships or chosen family. It's none of their business. Religious marriage is a religious matter and not the business of the government. Civil Unions are a government matter, but if the government is going to be in the business of approving or disapproving such things, it has no right discriminating about it. What the government has to say about someone's relationships, and whether that relationship comes with an officially-stamped paper from the State or not, makes absolutely no difference in my eyes as far as the validity of the union.

Second, maybe she'll get married (for some value of "married") someday, maybe she won't. THERE ARE MORE WAYS TO LIVE A MEANINGFUL, HAPPY LIFE THAN JUST TO GROW UP, GET YOUR GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED PAPERS, SQUIRT OUT A FEW CHILDREN AND SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE MAKING CASSEROLES. IF that makes you happy, go for it. But how offensive to assume that this is the only kind of life that is meaningful. Whether or not she permanently pairs up in a romantic alliance with someone is irrelevant to whether or not she has a happy life. That's it.

Q: Aren't you sad that you'll never have grandbabies to spoil?

A: My children's wombs are not my property. Whether or not they choose to use them is their business, not mine. If I am pining so hard for babies, I can have my own, or adopt, or babysit. And who says they won't have babies someday just because they don't partner up? Last I checked, eggs and sperm don't ask to see a marriage certificate before uniting. And there's always adoption, which most of the less hysterical states in the country are increasingly ok with regardless of what sort of sex you might be having in the privacy of your bedroom.

Q: Doesn't it freak you out, seeing your daughter with a GIRL?!

A: No. At first, I thought it might be weird, something to get used to. But as it turns out, no, it's not. Love and happiness are what I see in their eyes, and that does not gross me out. I remember how beautiful young love is. I am extremely happy to see my daughter experiencing that. The rest is just details, and not important.

Q: Do you think this is because her biological father isn't in her life?

A: Jesus H. Jehosephat on a pogo stick. Her DAD has been in her life since she was first able to focus on objects. She's always had a father figure. It has nothing to do with masculine and feminine influences. GENDER identity and SEXUAL ORIENTATION are two entirely different issues. Entirely different. Not the same. Not even close. Apples and Oranges.

If this had anything to do with anything, then gay children would not be born to hetero couples. And gay couples would never end up with straight children. It's absolutely stupid. There is no rationality to that strange line of reasoning.

Q: Is there some hereditary reason why she's like that?

A: No. There just isn't. There is absolutely no genetic component to sexual orientation. None. Just because your preacher says it loudly, often, and with much feeling, that doesn't mean there's a shred of evidence to support it.

Q: Maybe she's just confused. She didn't always say she was gay, after all.

A: Starting in Kindergarten, my girls both started showing signs of being 'indoctrinated' with their teachers' attitudes about what was expected of them separately as boys and girls. They started coming home with weird ideas about "boy colors" and "girl colors", what music types were ok to listen to as a girl, and of course, the attitude that they were supposed to grow up, get married, and squirt out some babies. When it's being hammered into your head by everyone around you since birth, it can take a while to realize that it's just a reflex, not what you really want. About the time my daughter started showing signs of having her own personality and opinions on things, signs that she wasn't strictly straight were there.

Q: I'm sorry this is happening to you and I feel so sorry for her.

A: I am GLAD that my daughter isn't going to waste the first half (or both halves) of her life looking for happiness in all the wrong places, and wondering what is wrong with her that the things that work for other people just aren't working for her. I'm extremely glad that she's not going through that. Thank goodness she is able to face the truth about herself and start making her life right for her, right now! I'm really glad for her. It's the other people I would be sad for, except that they are being so hateful. It's hard to feel bad for them when they're being asses and when they are trying to hurt my girl for having more COJONES than they will ever have.

Q: Why do you call your daughter QUEER instead of GAY?

A: Because she's QUEER, not GAY. Gay would mean that she is exclusively interested in other girls romantically. She's not. She develops feelings for other PEOPLE not based on their plumbing. It's the human being, and the rest is secondary. We have discussed it in depth (because she will talk to me about these things, thank goodness!) and she may actually be gay, once she's ready to start having sex. But at this point, she's not interested in sex. It still freaks her out, the sex thing. So she doesn't know for sure, and since she's not interested in the plumbing at all at this point, her romantic interests aren't related to what's in the underwear. Although I have a hunch that she's going to turn out to eventually lean more towards totally gay, because the whole idea of male plumbing seems to gross her out totally. Even when she was dating a boy, she was BLEAH! about that whole concept. With girls, she's just a little freaked, not totally grossed out.

Q: What do your PARENTS say about this?

A: Luckily for all of the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, everyone accepts my daughter for who she is and all they want for her is for her to be happy - in whatever way that means.

I say luckily for them, because when it comes right down to it, I'm a much bigger believer in Chosen Family than I am in Blood. You don't get to choose what group of people you are born into, and they might not be people you would choose to have in your life. They may not really have your best interests at heart, they may not actually LIKE you as it turns out, or respect you, or be good for you in any number of ways. And when it comes down to it, I don't care who someone is - if they are not good for my daughters to be around, they are not going to be a part of our life. If the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins had any problems, they would be dis-invited right on out of our lives without hesitation. Sadness, perhaps. But no hesitation. So, yes. Luckily for them, they are all decent and supportive about it and therefore they get to still talk to us.

So, there it is. Because she's not ashamed, and I'm not ashamed, and I don't think there is anything to be ashamed about. She is who she is and I love exactly who she is without reservations. And to see her love and be loved, what else could I want for her? That isn't actually all about me, that is. Because for me to only be happy for her when she's doing it the way I think she ought to be doing it, that's not about her happiness, it's about my comfort. And if I ever get like that, I depend upon my family and friends to bitchslap me into some sense, please.

Anybody else have any of these things to throw at me? Because I'm seriously up-to-here with it all. I'm ready to move somewhere more tolerant before my kids end up neurotic and emotionally damaged from all of this.