I slept like SHIT last night, so I skipped the 7:30 a.m. story sharing with Women's Storytelling. Sigh. Like "went to bed at 9 p.m., woke up 2.5 hours later, god only knows if/when I actually lost consciousness again" level of sleep. Bleah. I HATE WASTING A WEEKEND'S SLEEP ON JUST NOT SLEEPING. I'd be concerned, but literally everybody I know seems to be doing it these days.

Continuing the recapping from Saturday night: Robin Bady: a combination of a story about a seamstress who's extremely attached to a garment she made, and her mother's dying. Whee, dying parent stories and the triggers with me....

Vijai Nathan: "So my one respite from my crapass job as a receptionist was shopping during my lunch hour." She wants to try on a dress that's too small and buys it for $100+, then gets Spanx. She gets trapped in the Spanx--which apparently should NOT be pulled over the head--and has to be pulled out.

Kim Weitcamp's talking about her weight, aging and menopause, which makes mse depressed. "I have a glorious ass. It is HUGE." Then she talks about how this is an advantage in kayaking. "I'll take friends any way I can get 'em." She was always getting in trouble as a kid ("now they have names for this") for being too talkative. And then her fifth grade teacher was all "You have the gift of gab and you could rule the world." (I remember this from when she was at Sierra.) "Kimberly is a pure delight." Mom's reaction: "What are you drinking?!"

Sunday morning for me, afternoon for them: Kim Weitcamp: I just finished watching her and here she is again! Kim is in a situation that's giving her the wiggins and she sees an angry guy....and then the psychic voice in her head keeps saying TALK TO HIM. "We make deals with the universe, right? I'll talk to him if he's there when I get back." She asks how he's doing, he's fine, she's all "hey, I talked to him" and keeps going AND THEN THE VOICE SAYS "IT'LL PASS." She turns around and says this to him. "I feel like I'm supposed to tell you that." AND THEN she feels like she has to give him her business card. She leaves it on his car and then she finally feels done. Dude calls a few weeks later. His name is "Quest. I couldn't write that in there, I tell you what." He'd found out that morning that his wife was cheating on him and his kid probably isn't his and he wanted to die and he was trying to figure out how. "God, if you're real, and you want me to stick around through this, YOU NEED TO TELL ME," he thought. And then Kim came. "Is that it? Is that YOU talking?" So he called his pastor, cried, and then handled it. They later meet for coffee next time she's in town. The son is his, he got custody. Kim says she didn't want to talk to him. "I am a reluctant human who almost walked away from you." "It's okay," he said, "I can understand that." "I was scared of you. You were intense. I was afraid you were going to hurt me." "I was scared of you too. Have you seen yourself in your hat?"

Laura Deal: "Has anyone ever asked you to prostitute yourself? I mean actual prostitution." DAMN THERE'S A START FOR YA. "I'll give you $9,000 to be your stoned sex slave for a week." She might have been interested if he'd used a different line at a party, but she's assuming he's a drug dealer, and "the creep-o-meter is up to 11." Might I point out how many stories during a women's festival involve women being attacked, menaced, or just plain scared by random dudes? How often this happens to us. She says "no thanks!" with a smile because maybe he's also got a gun and she just wants this whole thing to be done. He drives off "taking my economic fantasy with him." She now sees it as a gift "to the storyteller I would become."

Arthuretta Holmes-Martin: talked about her voice teacher and then a story about a mixed-race lass, the product of "her master's desire and her mother's inability to say no." Oy. Poor Alma's got guys interested...uh-oh. Her mother would rather she NOT, but then she gets interested in one.... and then of course, Alma gets murdered, because women (sigh....not enjoying this at all). She is now "packaging this song for young ladies of this time." And of course, sings it.

Anne, doing her "alter ego" Clementine Rider again: "Bigfoot was gone." (Well, isn't he always?) Anyway, she and her cohort Bob were on the trail of someone so stinky that I'm not going to repeat the description of it. She finally spots him while she's berry picking--but he doesn't reek. After her sighting, two Bigfoot hunters come by, and Clementine keeps her mouth shut. These guys plan to stuff and mount him, but then Bigfoot himself attacks, with a bunch of smelly "skunk branches" (whatever that is?). Clementine points them in the wrong direction, of course, and Bob leads them in the wrong direction. Bigfoot later leaves her a bunch of berries. She then finished off with a song about a man-eating shark that will eat neither woman nor child.

Sheila Arnold: https://www.learnreligions.com/abigail-and-david-116669 Bible story? "She was not a quiet woman who let disaster happen." Abigail decided she wanted Nabal, married him, he turned out to be abusive. So now she's on David's side, baby! Happily for her, her husband drops dead and David proposes. I liked that one!

Laura Packer: tries being "Nature Girl" in the country, starts getting attracted to a homeless guy because he's the only warmth in her life, decides to go back to the city.

Lyn Ford: talking about a 5 year old cute slave called Lilybelle. And ugh....well, guess what the master did, and... ugh.... her son keeps trying to run away and of course that doesn't go well either.... She prays to God asking why he didn't change her son's heart to get him to calm down and wait. Then there's a happy ending: she beats down the master's son with her spinning wheel. Well, if my life wasn't over before, it is now. But she manages to get away by riding on a cow.

Mo Reynolds went back and forth between fairy tale-ing and real life again: Tonight's fairy tale: why don't we just dump old people on the mountain to die? It frees up our money and time! (Ewwwww.)
In her life, her dad bailed on her at 19, married a much younger woman, they were estranged. The second one divorced him and took his stuff/money and he was going senile. They had to bring him to her place. That was hard going. Happier ending but hard going.

Jennifer Munro: Hey, king, if you're an asshole and you hate all of your sensitive kids and drive them off, then you end up with no heirs! How about that? No offense meant to Jennifer, but I'm sick of hearing of dickhead asshole kings screaming at their wives that they own nothing. She wants to leave, so she literally strips naked to walk out...and then he drops dead of a heart attack. WELL, THAT HAD A HAPPY ENDING TOO. One of the servants hands her some money, someone brings her an old horse, the soothsayer donates his cloak. "If she did not live happily ever after, at least she lived."

Lyn Ford: A lizard keeps insulting a frog. She ignores him and does quite well on her own, thanks.

Priscilla Howe: "My neighbor decided to do some chain sawing! Woo hoo! I'm going to go ask him to stop!"

Bonnie Gardner: her first time doing this show, just started her career in January 2020. She adopted a kind of another race (Vietnamese) and someone dumped a "Ban Them All" sign on her lawn. After calling the police and putting it on social media, a mom organizes kids to put nice signs on the lawn. "I'll never know anything," she says, even after trying to be woke and taking classes and educating herself and trying to be an ally.

Priscilla again: "You will only marry a never born maiden!" He didn't know what that meant." NEITHER DO I. "My mother turned you into a needle and stuck you in the back of the door," and that means respect. HUH? Go open up an apple, and you'll get a never-born maiden! (See, weird shit like this is what I hate in folk tales.) This one gets even more fucked up: prince takes 3 apples, basically kills 2 of them by not feeding them, the third one gets murdered and some other lady just REPLACES her and marries the guy, somehow the never-born resurrects herself somehow... The Fuck?

Vijai Nathan: "My parents didn't believe in freedom. My father was the dictator." He gave each daughter a complex. Like "Socially you are a moron. I guess not every genius can have charm." Also "totally inept, I wouldn't trust you to boil an egg." Vijai is dubbed "totally dumb." "My sisters and I were like Charlie's Angels with really low self-esteem." They took long hair VERY SERIOUSLY. Then they all go off to get their heads shaved. Her mom lets her only pluck one hair from her hair that day. "Your hair is so long I bet it falls into the toilet when you poop. And then my new nickname was Pocahontas Poophead." Later, her hair gets sucked into a wheel at Chuck E Cheese. "I'm being punished. I should have shaved my head. I should not have tried to be something that I wasn't--American." But a Jesus-y hairdresser fixes her up nice with layers.

Robin Bady: she never wanted to teach (that's what her dad wanted her to do instead of acting), but here she is, teaching kids woodworking. But she just "kicked tush" on telling the kids a story.

I have one more video to go, but I have to go back to real shitty life now.

I watched the second half of "Solve It Squad: Back in Biz" (watching it later).
Transcripts here. "Cashes Out:"
* The company is famous for their hoverboard coffee makers.
* Esther pees in a can in front of everybody. Then poops. I can't even, Esther.
* "Keith's Imagination: Day"
* Nobody cares about Keith getting screwed over on some Kickstarter or other?
* "Tucker dictates to his flying drones."
* Keith is "tired of being diddled."
* Esther easily hacks into the system by asking Tucker his personal info, LOL.
* "Jinkles?" "It's a copyright thing!"
* "I am a chode who lives in his van, but at least I have friends."
* Catherine Zeta Drone.

"Just Says No To Drugs." This show is doing this?!
* "Welcome to Esther's Nervous Breakdown."
* "I was doing MBMA trials for an infused vibrator...."
* "My friends are idiots."
* "The only thing I'm feeling is like I'm on a Joss Whedon set."
* Pants shitting is a sexual experience?!
* "She has CLEARLY never smoked weed."
* "If you wanna cover up your ties to a Russian drug cartel, you gotta do it yourself."
* "If I'm forced to do another fundraiser for my kids, I'm going to kill everyone in this room and then myself."
* "A mother's place is always where she's wanted least."
* "The Venn diagram of MLM's and drug cartels are basically a circle."
* "I could pay my way out of raising them! Like an American!"
* "Of course I killed people, you dum-dums!"
* "It's been nice knowing you all! Tip your captors!"
* "We agreed my new name was Comrade COCKubine."
* "This has been a record fucked up day for us."

Today's Collage Club:
* Doreen has found a house with flamingos in front of it. I need to go look for it next time I leave the house.
* Sarah Brown and Meg have the same card deck and drew cards for people: "I release all criticism" was mine and Meg's.
* We have decided to do Transformation Game next week.
* Jade told last week's Book of Fate story to Doreen since she leaves early, including "This book fell off the shelf and hit me on the head." Doreen's reactions: "Oh, for god's sakes" and "Holy merde double.") Jade: "It couldn't have been any more random."
* Everyone else asked of the Napoleon's Book of Fate, "Shall I have success in all of my endeavors?" Meg and Doreen both got "great hinderance to your success at present" and both agreed that sounded right--Meg is having kiln issues, Doreen's house hunting and well, Covid. Sarah got "You will succeed as you desire" for hers. I said I'll ask that next week re: the audition.
* Told them about the audition and Jade said that "32 bars doesn't mean a minute, it MEANS 32 bars" and I was all "I don't have sheet music for this, nor do I want to get sheet music for this, not like I can use it," and she said "I don't know how to read music either, I just know that translates into one line equals four bars." She said to send her the karaoke video and song lyrics and she'd figure out how much I can do in an audition. We agreed to meet up Friday afternoon/night since I'm off to work on this. Anyway, now I am feeling much more nervous about that shit.
* We found out that Jade's mom is listed in her phone as "ICE Mummikins."
* Sarah and Meg continue to have different housekeeping styles. Sarah: "Piles and I are not friends." Meg: "Well, don't come visit for awhile, then."

I need to come up with a focus question for next week's game. I'd like to ask the same one I did the last time I played the game about developing a relationship, but I've given up on that. He has to want to and at least right now I don't think he wants to or is capable or whatever it is. It may not be worth trying right now. Maybe in another year or two, I don't know, but right now, I just feel bad trying if he's not into it or scared or whatever. And I know how hideous it is to be ah, cared about by someone you don't like at all. It's not flattering. It's a demand you can't meet. I don't want to do that to him. I don't want to be hurting him by caring about him too much.

Meg pointed out that he's not sure what he wants to do and my wanting is uncomfortable...I agree, so I should dial it back, to say the least.

While looking around for stuff on the Game on the Internet, I found one website that talked about drawing 2 Insight cards, 1 Life Setback and an angel card for an issue. So I tried this:
* "You welcome the sun into your heart and let its warmth and love shine out to everyone."
* "An opportunity to give truthful feedback now to one other player."
* "Afraid, through lack of faith, to let go and lose control?"
* Resilience.
Sounds about right.

Then we had an awkward conversation about well, Jade really thinks that what you say comes true, and I frankly, do not think this is true. (I have lots of examples of that.) Also, I did point out that just because my job makes me wish for death so I could get out of it easily (rather than banging my head against a wall for years job hunting), it doesn't mean I am actually going to try to kill myself. It's a devil's bargain: I'm not doing what I want, but I'm not safe or secure if I did what I wanted to do, I literally can't execute it (i.e. "start my own business!") even if I had the talent, which I don't. And I've decided that it's better for me to stay in a secure, not expendable job and hide from the overall public so as to not piss them off.

Yes, I'd rather focus on a dude than my "career" (that's a joke anyway) at this point. That's still far more entertaining and less depressing than "What do I want to do with my life?" (NOT THIS) vs. "What can you reasonably do with it that others want?" (NOT MUCH). Sadly, incessant knitting and video watching doesn't quite occupy the brain/soul/whatever enough.

Also, obviously I should be focusing on myself instead of a guy and look for an "interim person." Which I agree with, I'm just so sick of trying to solve the job problem and putting energy into what isn't working, and I'm beyond tired of "focus on me." And if there was some way to find an interim person that didn't involve online dating, hell, I think I'd do it.

They are all, if you create the space within yourself, things will come to you. If you believe positively, blah blah blah. Expect that something is going to happen and the universe will make it happen. And...honestly, I just can't do that. I feel like I jinx myself and make it NOT happen if I genuinely do believe in positive things and hope without at least a healthy dollop of doubt being thrown in to prevent my ego and hubris and jinxing from happening. And I feel like I'm more likely to get what I want if I at least somewhat realize and consider that I might not.

So okay, my focus question is going to be, "How can I break the block of if I am optimistic, I jinx myself?"

Meg finished out the call with "You need more compliance from the universe." Amen to that.

previous entry - next entry
archives - current entry