news and events
So I moved, thanks to the overwhelmingly generous help of harperjean, sirreal (who did two moves for other people this weekend), and fabulousmisst, as well as my family and my new roommates. my little treehouse space is extremely comforting and warm, I hung up pictures, misst organized all my clothes (promoting housemate A to have such regard for her and how nice she treats me, which she sure does), I set up furniture in a basic kinda way. I had some sex up there, I played some music, I filled the space with healing/love/pleasure vibes the best I could and I think it worked. I'm very charmed, at least for now.
The move was horrible because, well, I moved and that always sucks, but it actually went rather smoothly, I got all that great help, and I'm extremely proud to have shed half of my belongings. this is a monumental accomplishment for me, a bordering-OCD-hoarder and a sentimental packrat. I purged eight bags of clothing (about 2/3 of what I had), some furniture, some random stuff. Most important, I tamed my craft habit from 6 huge rubbermaid bins down to 2, giving 7 boxes of craft supplies and equipment and a trash bag of yarn to this awesome lesbian art therapist and her studio/school (Mary Bridget, DBS, she's running "Center Art" with another former rape crisis employee -- slackjaw played a show there).
Actually, all that stuff is still in my old apartment. tomorrow night I'm going there and people will come to take it away via "Freecycling" -- if you don't know about this you totally need to. It's a local Yahoo group, there are groups in other places, too. I put up a post that said "Offer = furniture and household goods" and about 30 people wrote to me to take items from the list. You can also post and say "Wanted = __________ (fan belt, plant stand, first aid supplies, boy's clothing, whatever). No money can be exchanged, it all must be free. I think this is extremely splendid. it's all stuff that will be great for somebody, but I need to have go away. cool idea. Hard part is that several people wrote sad stories about why they need the stuff, and I hate to choose. I ended up trying to divide it among three families the best I can, I figure at least 1 will show.
Bad thing that happened -- the day after I moved a coalition of neighbors (3 women, one dude) came to the front door and had a loud, aggressive confrontation with housemate L -- they came over to yell at us for being too loud and disturbing the whole neighborhood. I stepped in after feeling paralyzed with confrontation-fear (I struggle with people being mad, even AROUND me, this couldn't have been about me, I just moved in) and diffused the situation -- I think I handled it well. I gave out our phone number so they could let us know they were being disturbed and apologized. On one hand, they had a right to complain, clearly this was building up and even though we really hadn't made that much noise the night before (other house did), they had to be holding resentment from times we WERE too loud. However, they spoke to L in ways that were really insulting -- "How old are you anyway?" "Maybe you all just need to leave" (we'll get you evicted), lots of drinking comments, and the worst: "This is a family neighborhood". We broke it down later -- that speaker (other comments, too) definitely had a "family" prejudice, both that single people are irresponsible, that good women have/want/are focused on kids, and that her family is more worthy of respect than our household. L said later, "This IS my family, this is how we roll!" I agree and wonder if the fact that we're a household of queer witches has as much to do with the blame as the fact that we are younger, drunker renters.
felt bad, though, hard way to move in. we all took it very seriously, and will work hard to manage friendly relations. I hate being the bad neighbors, even though it's NOT ABOUT ME (self-talk, baby steps).
Also so much reading, a paper due tomorrow, my gay boyfriend coming to town (awesome and time eating), Preterm still in abortion-law bullshit limbo, and my work at rape crisis becoming ever more consuming. Yay and yikes!
The move was horrible because, well, I moved and that always sucks, but it actually went rather smoothly, I got all that great help, and I'm extremely proud to have shed half of my belongings. this is a monumental accomplishment for me, a bordering-OCD-hoarder and a sentimental packrat. I purged eight bags of clothing (about 2/3 of what I had), some furniture, some random stuff. Most important, I tamed my craft habit from 6 huge rubbermaid bins down to 2, giving 7 boxes of craft supplies and equipment and a trash bag of yarn to this awesome lesbian art therapist and her studio/school (Mary Bridget, DBS, she's running "Center Art" with another former rape crisis employee -- slackjaw played a show there).
Actually, all that stuff is still in my old apartment. tomorrow night I'm going there and people will come to take it away via "Freecycling" -- if you don't know about this you totally need to. It's a local Yahoo group, there are groups in other places, too. I put up a post that said "Offer = furniture and household goods" and about 30 people wrote to me to take items from the list. You can also post and say "Wanted = __________ (fan belt, plant stand, first aid supplies, boy's clothing, whatever). No money can be exchanged, it all must be free. I think this is extremely splendid. it's all stuff that will be great for somebody, but I need to have go away. cool idea. Hard part is that several people wrote sad stories about why they need the stuff, and I hate to choose. I ended up trying to divide it among three families the best I can, I figure at least 1 will show.
Bad thing that happened -- the day after I moved a coalition of neighbors (3 women, one dude) came to the front door and had a loud, aggressive confrontation with housemate L -- they came over to yell at us for being too loud and disturbing the whole neighborhood. I stepped in after feeling paralyzed with confrontation-fear (I struggle with people being mad, even AROUND me, this couldn't have been about me, I just moved in) and diffused the situation -- I think I handled it well. I gave out our phone number so they could let us know they were being disturbed and apologized. On one hand, they had a right to complain, clearly this was building up and even though we really hadn't made that much noise the night before (other house did), they had to be holding resentment from times we WERE too loud. However, they spoke to L in ways that were really insulting -- "How old are you anyway?" "Maybe you all just need to leave" (we'll get you evicted), lots of drinking comments, and the worst: "This is a family neighborhood". We broke it down later -- that speaker (other comments, too) definitely had a "family" prejudice, both that single people are irresponsible, that good women have/want/are focused on kids, and that her family is more worthy of respect than our household. L said later, "This IS my family, this is how we roll!" I agree and wonder if the fact that we're a household of queer witches has as much to do with the blame as the fact that we are younger, drunker renters.
felt bad, though, hard way to move in. we all took it very seriously, and will work hard to manage friendly relations. I hate being the bad neighbors, even though it's NOT ABOUT ME (self-talk, baby steps).
Also so much reading, a paper due tomorrow, my gay boyfriend coming to town (awesome and time eating), Preterm still in abortion-law bullshit limbo, and my work at rape crisis becoming ever more consuming. Yay and yikes!