Anxiety, the younger demonspawn, is about a month shy of 12. Apparently she felt that was old enough to go traipsing across the freaking city of frelling Portland all by herself, without bothering to inform any adults. So this morning after I left for work, she be-bopped out the door and hiked nearly 6 miles to our old neighborhood to see some of her friends who live out there. Then she decided she was tired, and since she hadn’t thought to take bus money with her, she called home for a ride (since, luckily, she did have the spare cell phone with her). Of course, the car was at work with me, so she was told to walk home – or at least the 2 or 3 miles back toward home, to Robert’s house, where she prevailed upon Jenn’s hospitality until I got off work. She is now grounded. (I asked her how long she thought she deserved to be grounded for, and she solemnly replied, “A month.” I told her she was going to be one hell of a hard-ass if she became a mother, and grounded her for a week.)

I can’t help admiring her initiative and confidence, though – not to mention her directional abilities, since her older sister flatly admitted she probably wouldn’t have been able to navigate that journey herself.

She did get lucky that I wasn’t willing to reschedule my date tonight, so she still got to go play at the Avalon arcade. The demonspawn were, indeed, demons. I swear, they meet a new guy that Mom likes, and they turn into total little shitheads.

I really enjoyed the time spent with Edward. He kicked my ass at air hockey, distracted me with happy back scratches while I was trying to play skee ball, and talked me into trying this utterly maniacal driving game (which repeatedly announced to me that I shouldn’t have a driver’s license…but hey, it’s not like I drive like that in real life!). Edward is very sweet and funny and warm and funny and sensual and funny and oh, did I mention funny? But, despite how often he makes me laugh, I sure as hell didn’t spend 15 solid minutes kissing him goodnight based on his sense of humor! *purr*

Usually people have a particular type of music that they enjoy most, and perhaps a few other genres that are secondary favorites. But once in a while, there will be some other – completely uncharacteristic – music that a person finds appealing.

What song, album, or artist do you enjoy that is radically different from the music you normally listen to?

I’m usually not at all fond of techno-style stuff, but I absolutely love “Blue” by Eiffel 65, and all three of the soundtracks from the movie Hackers.

Friday the 13th. To the average teen, it’s a series of slasher movies. To certain activists, it’s something that should happen every month. To the superstitious, it’s a scary day where bad luck abounds and you have to watch your every step. I always found the day annoying.

When I was a little girl, I collected superstitions the way some kids collected milk bottle caps or comic books. I wished on every white horse, every falling star (even when I suspected it might be a fast-moving small plane), every dandelion puffball, and of course, every time I blew out birthday candles. I never spilt salt without throwing some over my shoulder, I always entered the house with my right foot first, and I avoided white cats (which are bad luck in China, instead of black cats – I liked black cats!). Since I actively sought out superstitions from cultures around the world (did you know twins are bad luck in some parts of Africa?), some of them were bound to conflict – so I just picked whichever one I liked better to practice.

Eventually I outgrew my fondness for superstitions, but Friday the 13th has continued to annoy me – mainly because I was born on a Wednesday the 11th, and it’s aggravating that I could have had a really cool birthday, had I just stayed in the womb for another 40 hours or so. And jeez, “Wednesday the 11th” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I had utterly craptastic days at work. I was perplexed, since the rough days for my department are likeliest to be Mondays and Thursdays (Monday because it seems nobody gets paid on Mondays, and/or people have spent all their money over the weekend, and Thursdays because we can only give people a 7-day grace period to pay their bills & a lot of people don’t seem to have the money to pay until the following Friday). It’s also quite rare for me to have two incredibly craptastic days in the same week.

Then a pal mentioned Mercury is retrograde. “Oh, shit, that explains a LOT!” I thought. I checked my witches’ calendar, and sure enough, Mercury went retrograde at 11:32 pm Pacific Time on Monday night.

I may not be as skeptical of astrology as many people, but it’s oddball “coincidences” like this that keep me agreeing there may just be something to it. Besides, I was born during a Mercury retrograde…and the really nifty Susan Miller has this to say about it:

“…what about people born with Mercury retrograde? The ancients felt that this aspect lends a more philosophical tone to the character. Mercury rules thinking, therefore an individual born with this aspect tends to reflect deeply over events and issues throughout their lifetimes. In this case, having this aspect could be a big plus!”

One of my terrific online friends has written a book on polyamory, Polyamory: Roadmaps for the clueless & hopeful. The previews I browsed online were everything I’ve come to expect from Anthony – comprehensive, sensible, and intruiging. I ordered 2 copies, because I’ve been reading his various stuff online and in emails for years, and I know the book will be worth every penny!

Everyone who is polyamorous, or knows someone who is, should have a copy! Go order one here!

A tightening in your gut, a shiver up your spine, a ghostly caress across your skin, a tingle on the back of your neck, a jolt through your entire being, a sensation of otherworldly eerieness that you just can’t describe…

Some pieces of music have a magical, mystical, mysterious effect – what music takes you to another world for a brief moment, and can almost (or does!) make you believe that magic is real?

When I was a little girl, I was entranced by a song by Crystal Gayle called We Must Believe In Magic. The lyrics aren’t half as interesting as the musical arrangement, I must say. Nowadays, the instrumental music by David & Steve Gordon – a CD called “Sacred Earth Drums” and another called “Sacred Spirit Drums” – can instantly take me to a magical place, as can the filksongs Draw The Circle and Wind’s Four Quarters by Mercedes Lackey.

While I have to dash to work, and therefore don’t have time to ruminate on my recent socializing, oil change, exercise regime, or the homicidal wild plum tree in my front yard, I do have just enough time to refer you to the terrific post over at Frizzen Sparks about women’s purses.

Anyone who’s seen my carryall bag knows that it is, in fact, a TARDIS for tampons.

For years now, I’ve been saying that the key to preventing hangovers is to drink clear alcohol (such as vodka, schnapps, etc.) and the way to cure hangovers is, before going to sleep after drinking alcohol, to take the Four 2’s: two vitamins, two tablets of acetaminophen or naproxen, two glasses of water, and two helpings of carbohydrates (such as a cup of rice, a baked potato, or 2 slices of toast). Every time I’ve followed this “prescription,” I’ve avoided a hangover, no matter how tanked I got the night before.

Jeff Weise, a professor of medicine at Tulane University, has been studying hangovers for years, and has established that congeners (impurities from the fermentation process, which inflame the body’s tissues much like a virus does) are far higher in darker-colored alcohol, such as bourbon, than in clear alcohol, such as vodka. He also recommends a glass of water after each drink of alcohol, plus another glass of water combined with a dose of acetaminophen and a multivitamin with B-6 (which is shown to speed elimination of alcohol from the blood) before going to bed after a night of drinking.

Yup, I really do live up to my vanity license plate. *grin*

Lyse & I had a few chuckles over lunch today. She mentioned seeing a comedy routine where the comic said something like, “The Lifetime cable channel advertises itself as ‘Television for Women’ but what do they show on that channel? Endless movies about women who are stalked, robbed, mugged, beaten, stabbed, abducted, raped, or murdered. What kind of sickness is it that women keep watching this stuff?”

No shit. And it led to Lyse & I ruminating over how people often assume that an injury on a woman is a sign of abuse. We’ve both encountered this. Lyse, when she (honestly!) walked into a doorjamb in her house several years ago, was confronted by several riled-up male co-workers who were being protectively suspicious of her story. After all, doesn’t every battered woman say she walked into a doorjamb? And a few years ago, when I smashed my face into the edge of my nightstand when I was rolling over to shut off my alarm clock one morning, my female boss grilled me at length before she believed that my SO wasn’t beating me.

It got to the point that Lyse, who had an unfortunate series of 3 separate falls down stairs in a 2-year period which resulted in nasty injuries each time, started answering the question, “What happened?!” with creative fibs. She told one co-worker she hurt herself sky-diving, another co-worker was told the injury was from dirt-biking, and she even solemnly answered the question once by saying, “Oh, this? Wrestling an alligator.” She was quite adroitly entertaining herself with these silly stories, until several people all showed up at her desk demanding the real story. (Which, of course, was boring: “I fell down the stairs.” To which they replied, “Again?!”)

I commiserated, saying, “Yeah, you can’t just say you slipped at home. Nobody will believe someone wasn’t smacking you around. To be believed, you have to have lots of details. Instead of saying you ‘slipped on a wet floor,’ you have to say, ‘Well, I was reaching for a pot on the stove when my foot slipped on a wet spot on my kitchen floor that I didn’t realize was there, and my hand barely caught the edge of the kitchen counter as my body started to go forward, and just then the cat ran between my legs & knocked my other foot out from underneath me, and then my other hand flailed around for the other counter, and I barely managed to catch myself but the twisting motion threw me off-balance again and my body did this awful 3/4 turn in the air as I fell diagonally, and then my face smacked the fridge…door. My face smacked against the fridge door.’”

Enough boring details, and they’ll tune you out – and probably not bother you with questions in the future! Or you can just prevent nosy questions with the answer that Geoffrey suggested the last time I scraped myself up by falling. He said I should tell busybodies that, “I forgot my safe-word.”

People snickered at me when they found out I was reading Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy: Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale. Buffy and philosophy? What’s with that?!

Actually the book has some killer (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun) explorations of the Slayer & her ficton in light of the philosophies of Kierkegaard, Plato, Nietzsche, Socrates, and others. Lemme tell ya, I learned more from this book than anything I heard about those guys in school.

Last weekend I bought What Would Buffy Do?: The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide. It’s not as extensive, but it’s still intruiging and a great introduction to comparative theology for anyone who dislikes dry reading but likes Buffy.

Go ahead, snicker. I’ve got my stake. (I call him Mr. Pointy.)

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