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Thadea and I are in too many groups. Some of them will have to drop by the wayside. I hope that is how it happens. Getting purged for inactivity once the curiosity phase
has passed is not so bad. Getting psychoed is far worse. Thadea and I mismatch all over the place.
I mismatch badly at Silver Beaches because I do not use the idealized female form in my graphics. Now sig tag making like site fighting is a classicly female art. I stopped thinking "female" a long time ago and that is a good thing. I am having a hard time figuring out why any woman would want pictures of beautiful costumed or semi-nude (Yes cheese cake!) females on her sig tag. Shouldn't she prefer a handsome well muscled man, a cowboy, a sailor, a body builder etc... or maybe just flowers or something abstract so as to be a bit more conservative. I kind of think I have it figured out. The beautiful woman says I am fun loving and normal. Go figure since this is not a photograph. I love making sig tags but I loathe the cheese cake and I loathe using other people's art. I want to create from the ground up, one piece at a time. I am also a minimalist and size conscious. Are you ready for an aesthetic battle...I'm not.
Angelika's group is more conservative but it has only three members who are active and the leader is a control freak. I can handle the atmosphere, but small groups like this have a high potential of turning psycho. Haldis remembers too well.
Then we have the argument I got in to at Lildog's Place. A woman complained of pain that kept her awake while she refused to follow her doctor's regimen that included a powerful medication for her arthritis. I advised her to take the medication. Pain expletive deleteds, so too does loss of mobility.
Thadea is not having much better of a time. Thadea's first problem is she is better than real. What is the point of having a personna if she is not better. A good friend reminded me that Thadea did not have my diverticulosis or share my job hunt. My replyu was "THANK GOD" One person suffering was enough. My avatar did not have to suffer as I did and that felt great.
Thadea takes a horseback riding lesson once a week, cooks interesting dishes, most of them vegetarian (I supply the cooking knowledge so nothing Thadea does is in any ways undoable), is way too busy on the net and doesn't like to clean so the house she lives in with her husband and two daughters is a pit. She is also religious though she does not proselytize.
The ladies at A Board that Should Be Confidential (It has no formal bond of confidentiality but I am convinced they left it out by accident) spend their days cooking, cleaning, looking after small children and that is it. They live on a meat and potatoes diet and with the exception of one or two who go to community college and one who is trying to start a home business, they have time for play dates and they have no afternoons. Their days end with lunch and naps.
Thadea by contrast is full time employed. In the real world working mothers and SAHMs are NOT good friends. Also Thadea is religious. Discussing religion even in netural terms is a taboo subject on most of Thadea's boards. I am not sure why this is, because there exists neutral language for discussing religion and religious activiies. Jews have this netural language down pat. "We started my daughter, Caltha's, religious education this summer." or "I read an interesting piece on this week's parsha." Christians can use this language too: "My son is singing in choir this year." "I really enjoyed Bible study tonight." "My husband has parking lot ministry at services." etc... My guess is just like eating vegetables or salads, the women at the Board that Should are irreligious or nominally religious.
Thadea pretends to know nothing of the SAHM/working mother debate. So far no one has mistreated her for working. One thing I can not bring her to do, however, is have a diary. I don't want to imitate a typical Board that Should diary for fear of breaking confidentiality but Thadea is just articulate enough to make each day sound exciting. A diary is not just what you do. It's what makes each day special.
For example, Thadea could write: I have decided I am going to make creamy bok-slaw with apples for Shabbos dinner. Last weekend when we braved the rain to go to the big farmers' market in Des Moines, we found that the summer apples are here. I wonder if any one else is making salads and other recipes with this years new apples.
Or Thadea could write: I finally took Typha's pants to the tailor's and the seamstress there admired how pretty they were. [The pants are a lovely shade of moss green with white piping on the side.] Typha will no doubt be glad to get them back and the tailor said she will put some reinforcement in the seat so Typha does not split them again when she does vaults in the gym at the after school program at the Y.
The problem is too much Thadea and the board members will realize how different she is. I don't think they will out her since I will keep her posts innocuous though detailed and rich. They will just realize she is not one of them and having an open group sometimes lets in the wrong person.
As for Thadea's other groups. The MSN ones are too byzantine for words and the Invisionfree board beyond the ice breaker section moves slowly if at all. As I said before, this is too many boards for both of us.
Haldis, by the way, does not have any boards...yet. The problem is her age. Most students her age are on either MySpace which I refuse to use since Haldis has good web space of her own for blogging or FaceBook which Haldis can not use for a whole multitude of reasons. I may try Invisinofree and see if there are any fora for perople Haldis' age. For now though, there is enough going on with the avatars.
I also posted to Play Pretend Unlimited today so my hard core play pretend Brainstorms is in full swing again. This means I will need a new patterage but I want the dust to settle on these boards first. Some of them are just going to go. I guess I can chalk up a real
VENGANCE VICTORY.
Finally, I started working on a play pretend set up that lets me still post to things I am locked out of. It involves some software and a flash drive at this point though that may change. Basicly, you get locked out and then bring up your play pretender in another window and with a click or two can post away as if you were still there. It also has a drawing board for drawing and I may get a hot stove going there to produce random evnents so there is some response besides what I get by writing multiple parts. All this means that I may be able to really start my
play pretend E-zine, but I have to get good at solo play pretend which means all this chasing after boards is in the end not all that productive. Well, as I said before the boards will sort themselves out. What inspired today's little foray in to a good technical play pretend solution was seeing a ton of advertisements filtered by web sense at work. With play pretend, one can still enjoy a filtered web site by pretending an experience there. It just takes nimble fingers and the play pretender doesn't leave any files behind on the hard drive. It also can save role plays and dialog and such. Not bad huh... More news as it develops. Onward and upward. Shout it out loud and proud! Passion and joy are the order of the day, but tranquil placid happiness is for the birds.
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I should be with my groups or making graphics, but here I am blogging. I got one of those chamber of commerce community magazine type things for Decatur and they advertised art lessons for adults. That might be fun, though this blog all ready
has a new design. I still haven't found a midi for it and it needs the link to the site about Christian X and the Danish resistance to the Nazis.
Well as I said to Bert and he would understand, there is nothing like having
the pass key in your own pocket and you know that I feel that self expression trumps community so here I am.
I had an interesting evening. My body is getting used to the medication that I haven't been on in months. Getting up this morning was murder. Most of the world wakes up groggy. I had forgotten that. Being able to bounce out of bed early and being rearing to go was wonderful. On the other hand the clear head and quiet that comes with the anxiety meds feels terrific.I suspect I will get used to the side effects given time....That reminds me. I need to take those stinking meds. I have also forgotten that taking medication three times a day is a drag.
Seeing a psychiatrist in the big city is very different. Actually I could do a whole song and dance on shrinks' offices. Basicly, going to the shrink involves stigma so the offices to varying degrees try to relieve it. Sometimes they have funny pictures and decorations which they had up in Utica where the office looked like a regular doctors' waiting room with a big glass receptionists' booth and Dutch doors leading inside. In Columbus, GA the office looked like something you'd find in a classy office building withe receptionist in a warren of offices way inside and Town and Country on the tables and lots of elegant coffee table books and even fresh flowers on occasion. Here in Decatur, the office has classy art work, light gold walls, and a radio that blasts sappy love songs way too loud.
The current shrink is a bit of a pill pusher and specializes in eating disorders. I saw the scale in his office. He is also a dog person. I have yet to have a shrink who loves cats. I had one shrink, and a good one, who was a Rush Limbaugh fan. The humungeous elephant in the living room with most shrinks is money. Quite simply put both MD shrinks and clinical psychologists are wealthy and often far wealthier than the patients. My shrink in Columbus flaunted his wealth by having objets d'art all over his office. My shrink in Utica had a plainer more professional office. This new shrink took notes on his computer but has never colored the screens. He also printed out very legible prescription scrips. That is a change for the better.
Now if only I can get used to the meds....I am changing my morning routine at work. I ran out of fancy soda and decided I drink too much soda anyway. Familiarity breeds contempt. I decided more solid food was in order so got some filled junk food goodies and packed them with a ration bowl in my backpack. I have peanut butter pretzel sandwiches and cheddar cheese combos. I wanted the pretzel sandwiches filled with jalepino cheese but the only place I've seen them is the Wal Mart in Dunwoody. When I make the next expedition up there, I'll bring the jalepino pretzels back.
I also got more herbal tea tonight at the Publix up in Clarkston and then I came home on the 118 bus. I was just passing the bus stop when it pulled up and I grabbed it and found myself at the Kensington MARTA station. I am not superstitious but the last time I was at that station was when I got off the train for the job interview that got me this job. Atlanta is still very much the city of desire. I did not meet the ghost of myself walking in to the station but it did feel strange. The AvonDale MARTA station is filled with many more memories, memories of all those shopping trips from Columbus.
One last very good thing about the meds is I am nightmare free. I guess I am going to stick with the meds no matter how hellish they make getting up. This is how normal people wake up. I have to learn to be normal.
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