tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-59804936425149745912024-03-18T20:42:46.663-07:00Twelve Dollar SurfboardOne girl's search for her California dreamAngry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-39849714156576804762019-06-23T01:50:00.003-07:002019-06-23T01:50:43.462-07:00Thoughts on being an "Invader"<br />
I'm not a real techie, I am, but I'm not, as my friend Brooks said;<br />
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"She's one of the good ones"<br />
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My brother, he's a real techie, but he lives in the approved techie city of Mountain View. That makes him acceptable. He's not Destroying The City, like me.<br />
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I'm not a real techie because I'm a machinist who makes NOT TECHIE MONEY hourly. I make about 60% what your baseline real techie out of a state school or India does or 50% of what a Carnegie Mellon or Stanford Techie makes. <br />
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Although I do have stock options, which makes me a techie, they are worth a decent amount in real world dollars, but I am still pretty poor in Silicon Valley Dollars in spite of Winning The Start Up Lottery.<br />
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Anyway, I'm Destroying The City with my very presence, or so I'm told. Daily.<br />
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I shouldn't take it so personally, especially since I'm Not A Real Techie.<br />
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But I'm Not A Real San Franciscan, as well.<br />
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Real San Franciscans HATE that Tech Is Destroying The City.<br />
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Even though half of them work in Tech as well. Probably more than half.<br />
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They think new skyscrapers and condos are "Tragic" that the abundance of high paying jobs is a plague.<br />
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Really, motherfuckers?<br />
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I'm from Detroit.<br />
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OK, just like not being a Real Techie, or a Real San Franciscan, I'm not Really From Detroit, either.<br />
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No one is really from Detroit. If you are from Detroit, you are from either the Greater Metro Area, which I AM from, sort of, or if you're from Detroit Proper you say your neighborhood. No one is from "Detroit" That's why Eminem says he's from 8 Mile, and Kid Rock isn't really lying when he says "Detroit" because he doesn't want to admit to being from Romeo. I wouldn't either, which is why I also say "Detroit"<br />
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The truth is that I'm not even from Metro Detroit unless I stretch the truth a bit, which I do, because the truth is that I am from Breckenridge, and not the good one in Colorado. I'm from the flat one with the wind farm, but when I was little, it was just a grain silo.<br />
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I only lived there until I was 7. Then I moved Somewhere Even Worse.<br />
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Now when I say I lived in a shitty small town, I am not talking about the cosmopolitan metropolis that is Howell, Michigan, where I went to high school, nor am I talking about the ironically named Breckenridge, I am talking about the truly hellish and truly remote Hale, Michigan. Had you ever been when it wasn't the height of summer, or Deer Season, you would understand why I prefer to say I am from Detroit, and you certainly wouldn't hold it against me, because you Real San Franciscans would probably go crazy if you had to spend one day in Hale. You Real San Franciscans think small towns are places like Half Moon Bay, or Guernville or Davenport, pretty places, nice places, not places like Hale. I don't think You Real San Franciscans actually know that place like Hale exist or have real people in them, because why would you? The City is Important. Hale isn't even somewhere deserving of our pity like Flint. I've seen how you look down on Fresno. Hale would kill you.<br />
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Places like Hale kill lots of people who Belong In San Francisco, if you get my drift, but maybe you Real San Franciscans forgot that not everywhere has problems like the Pride Parade "getting too commercial" now. It Gets Better, but usually only after you leave.<br />
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In fact, it wasn't even a town, legally, I think it was a "village" but Breckenridge was a "village" and was a booming metropolis compared to Hale.<br />
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"But where will The Next Allen Ginsburg come from if it's too expensive for artists to live here?"<br />
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Someone said that, wrote it down somewhere, somewhere that I read it. Probably more than one someone and probably not on paper.<br />
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"New York, like the last one?" I thought.<br />
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I didn't dare say that though. I've been called out on line for Not Being A Real San Franciscan. How dare I have anything to say about the city that has been my home for 20 years! After all, I'm From Michigan. I have no right to an opinion on The City! I have no right to Be Here! People Like Me have Destroyed The City! It was a welcoming, open place for Free Spirits before People Like Me got here. There was Diversity before People Like Me came and ruined it all!<br />
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The thing is, you dickheads don't know how good you have it, you Real San Franciscans are impossibly spoiled. If you grew up in San Francisco, and you are still here, you never had a reason to leave.<br />
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If you grew up here and were gentrified out, I'm not even sorry for you. You know why? Because you got to grow up Here. You can still come back to your "ruined" city and lament all the changes and how Terrible It Is that The City Has Lost It's Character. You still got to grow up here, so you don't even have a framework of how good you had it. Also, your parents voted for all the restrictive zoning and building laws that caused this mess so you should probably talk to them about THAT.<br />
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You don't know. You really don't know what it's actually like to not be able to go home again, because every place changes, that's how Cities work, that's how they are supposed to work.<br />
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As horrified as you are by The Tech Invasion, what if you came back, instead, to nothing? What if you came back, and instead of the skyline getting bigger and brighter, it got smaller and duller? What if the headlines were not about the outrageous rents or the tech boom, but about "what shall we do with these abandoned buildings?" I'm certain that would never happen to The City, so You will never know, so you will never know how lucky you are, and that makes me angry. I am angry that you equate prosperity with ruin, when I grew up with the opposite. You don't know how lucky you are to have Your Problems.<br />
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Detroit is in a Renaissance, just like they've been promising since the 70s.<br />
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When I did Go Back, I was pleasantly surprised, but it's not the Detroit I Grew Up With.<br />
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It's also not a real city anymore. The skyline of Detroit is just as unrecognizable to me as San Francisco's is to you Real San Franciscans, not by addition, but by subtraction. The Skyline looks like it had it's teeth knocked out, but, unlike yours, never filled back in. Back in the 90's those teeth may have been rotten, but they were still there. Now the Riverfront stares at you with a few golden teeth set in a newly healthy set of gums. It's pretty, but still sad, like when you see an ancient starlet from another era, celebrating a hundreth birthday, frail and aged, and riddled with dementia, and understand why so many celebrities want to die young.<br />
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Just like Tech Ruined San Francisco, but you know, the city is ACTUALLY RUINED instead of just Different Than You Grew Up In. <br />
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If you're a Native San Franciscan, you have never lived in a place without public transit, you have always been able to go to a museum, or a hospital, or a farmers market, or a decent grocery store, or a theatre, your whole damn life. When I lived in Visitacion Valley, the Locals actually complained about it being a "Food Desert" because the nearest Safeway was a WHOLE 15 MINUTE bus ride away! There were not one, but two produce markets right there on Leland Avenue that held wonders that far eclipsed anything I had growing up, but I guess "Mexican Markets" don't count? You're all crazy. This place is magic, stop bitching. I can't believe how spoiled you are!<br />
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You can complain about Muni all you want.<br />
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There's a part of me, a big part of me, that still thinks it's fucking magical that I can take a BUS to a Movie Theatre. Let alone that I have the choice of 7 different ones to take a bus to! I'm not even counting the ones that are hard to get to by bus or just terrible. I actually have a choice of what theatre I want to go to to see a movie in. I didn't even have that choice until I was 16 years old, and even then I certainly couldn't take transit there.<br />
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But No, You Real San Franciscans, you take that for granted.<br />
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I doubt you Real Californians would even believe my tale of how raw cauliflower was a treat when was a kid. Not because my parents were strict vegans or anything, but because it was actually very hard to get raw cauliflower in a small town in Michigan in the 70's and 80's.<br />
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You want to know why People Like Me are Ruining Your City?<br />
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Because it is great. Not "was great" but Is Great.<br />
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<br />Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-80842205220488112602019-06-22T23:02:00.004-07:002019-06-22T23:07:57.690-07:00LarryBack when I was in High School, I was, naturally, enamored by The Beats.<br />
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Now, most of you probably thought we were wanna be hippies, and you would have been right, except you weren't. Black clothes, LSD, and poetry are a bit older than the hippies, and I knew that. </div>
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Truth be told, I had a hard time following Beat Poetry and fiction even with Ritalin. Maya Angelou was my real favorite, and Langston Hughes and William Carlos Williams rounded out my American Masters taste in poetry. It's more that I *wanted* to appreciate The Beats. </div>
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Then I got around to reading it, and well, having been born with lady parts, and growing up in the 80s:</div>
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Damn, these assholes were sexist. </div>
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And, it wasn't even their fault really, I'm sure for the time they were probably pretty enlightened, but you know, I'm of my time and that stuff is pretty hard to read when you watched Sally Ride bouncing around in space and figuring if Geraldine Ferraro could run for Vice President and Mondale only lost because Regan was just so great that...</div>
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Yeah, I somehow thought when I was in first grade if women were astronauts and vice presidential candidates that...</div>
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We'd be a little farther along by now. </div>
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But I'm letting my ADD get me off track here. The point was that somehow Lawrence Ferlinghetti is still alive at the age of 100, and he's friends with my aunt. </div>
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And somehow I am the only person I know who finds this miraculous. I MEAN HE'S LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI. </div>
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When Gail and George sent me gifts from City Lights Books I thought it was because it was a landmark near Gail's House and everyone in my family is a voracious reader and I was into poetry. I didn't realize Gail was buddies with the OWNER OF CITY LIGHTS BOOKS FOR CHRIST SAKE!!</div>
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When I finally did make it out here, and make it into City Lights Books, it IMMEDIATELY triggered my claustrophobia, which is actually a lovely metaphor for both my experience as a San Franciscan and my visceral reaction to the way The Beats wrote about women, but I'm getting ahead of myself.</div>
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I was having brunch with my uncle, his longtime girlfriend, who I grew up knowing as Gail, but now call "Cap" because we're both grown ups, who I refer to as "my pseudo aunt" because she is for all intents an purposes my Aunt as she has been dating my uncle for 40 years, and my brother, when Gail mentions her friend "Larry" who just finished another book and turned 100. How many centenarian authors named Larry are running around North Beach, anyway?</div>
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HOLY SHIT YOU KNOW LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI </div>
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Your buddy was just on NPR! Ok, my buddy was on NPR, too but that's another story, which I will also tell at this brunch...</div>
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BUT THATS NOT ALL</div>
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So we're sitting there talking about "Larry" I'm stunned that my aunt knows someone who I think of as a historical figure, and my brother is likely unimpressed, and my Uncle is saying something along the lines of "He calls it a book, but it's one paragraph! It's a 140 page long paragraph!" </div>
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I point out to my uncle that The Beats were not generally known for their adherence to grammatical conventions.</div>
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That's how short the human life span is, though. That's how fast history moves. I think Lawrence Ferlinghetti is a historical figure, and to my uncle, he's his girlfriend's weird buddy Larry who has no respect for sentence structure. </div>
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That would be a good quip to end on, but unfortunately I have to add the prologue of my going around name dropping that MY AUNT is FRIENDS WITH LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI to everyone I know, and no one knowing who that is. It was very anticlimactic. </div>
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Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-52644606347212342532019-06-22T22:20:00.000-07:002019-06-22T22:20:03.078-07:00I can't go home again, either, PART 2Funny where my mind went last time. I've been a shadow of myself lately, and that concerns me, but I have had this urge to write.<br />
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"The Last Black Man in San Francisco" is sure to fuel even more hate for us "invaders" even though I doubt most of the tech hating isolationists using it as an excuse to hate anything and everything that isn't ensconced in their own gilded memory will actually go out and see it. They just want to talk about how terrible it is that "Those People" have destroyed "their city" and in my experience, people who are xenophobic by nature don't make an effort to actually see movies made by black people while they are still in the original theatrical release. Not that distributors make it easy for anyone to see a movie made by black people even in 2019. It really doesn't seem to matter how many "Moonlight"s get made, you still need to go to Palo Alto to see "The Last Black Man in San Francisco"<br />
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Try being a Huges Brothers fan in Howell, Michigan in the 90's. You notice these things. I'm surprised how little it's changed. It doesn't seem to matter how many hits and Oscar Darlings are made by black folks these days, you still have to have the reflexes of a sniper to actually catch one on the big screen in theatres.<br />
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Yes. I'm a white girl, so I guess I don't have the authority to speak on this. Except for being a Hughes Brothers fan in Howell Michigan in the 90s. You couldn't even see a Spike Lee Joint in Livingston County.<br />
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I've lived in this apartment almost 8 years.<br />
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Jesus, I'm old.<br />
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<br />Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-15134781872357371032019-06-22T21:59:00.001-07:002019-06-22T21:59:08.331-07:00I can't go home again, either. Lately I have been struggling with agoraphobia. I haven't wanted to go anywhere outside my apartment, car, and work. I keep making excuses, but it's getting really, really, bad. I am at the point where just going to the beach, which I used to do daily, seems like an insurmountable task.<br />
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I used to have nightmares about having agoraphobia. I guess they were premonitions.<br />
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There was a time that I actually longed to travel, and then the fear of traveling set in, and it got worse, and worse, and now, it's reaching it's conclusion. I don't want to leave the house. I don't even want to spend time in the yard.<br />
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I dream of buying a house, but TSLA crashing from $370 to $180 ended that dream.<br />
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I almost bought one last winter in Prunedale. I even started to buy furniture for it, and then I chickened out. It was a long commute, but the house would have been mine. It had wonderful vintage 70's tile. Some flipper is probably going to buy it and tear it all out and replace it with barn wood laminate and quartz.<br />
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If a flipped A frame in Prundale goes up in flames in the next couple of years, they might as well come get me.<br />
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Who am I kidding? I'm not going to drive to Salinas just to commit arson. I can barely leave the house.<br />
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It would have actually been a good decision financially, even if I thought it was a folly at the time. I didn't know my net worth would be halved 4 months later. I should have followed my heart on this one. If I had cashed out and bought that house, I would have had to cash out almost all my TSLA, which was hovering near $400 a share. Now it's around $200, and I still live in a rat infested fire trap.<br />
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I could be living in my OWN termite infested fire trap instead!<br />
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<br />Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-44580519789988154352019-06-22T21:39:00.004-07:002019-06-22T21:39:58.900-07:00Rush Hour FairyA tiny green woman with huge bug eyes was buzzing around my car with her little dragonfly wings as I blasted the 80's nostalgia station in rush hour traffic on 280 North from Palo Alto to San Francisco. She doesn't show up unless she has something important to say, and I knew why she was there.<br />
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She plunked herself right down in the middle of the dashboard and had a seat. She usually doesn't sit down, but I guess even mythical beings or creatures from other dimensions or whatever you want to call her get older. I could tell she liked the car. You wouldn't think fairies would be materialistic, but mine has a thing for cars, she always has.<br />
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Luckily she didn't take her full corporial form this time, which was considerate, I'm pretty sure even with traffic going slowly she would be pretty distracting, especially her penchant for wearing transparent dresses. That would keep her out of the G-rated movies that usually portray fairies. She's more of a Pan's Labyrinth type fairy. That movie freaked me out because I always knew she was real, I kept trying to forget she was real. I told myself that the little woman with bug eyes and a woman's body was just a mayfly, that I only thought it was a fairy because I was a little girl.<br />
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Until she showed up again.<br />
<br />Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-58833710926537376722014-02-15T10:13:00.002-08:002014-02-15T10:13:59.041-08:00Dr. Barbie or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Doll #unapologetic #Barbie <div style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">
I wasn't allowed to have a Barbie as a kid. My Mom told me that my Dad thought they were too sexy for little girls to play with. It wasn't a big deal because I never really wanted one. I was more of a stuffed animal kind of girl. My friend Katie had mountains of them, but the thing that was really special about Barbie was getting to play with them with Katie. For my own doll collection, I liked My Little Pony better.</div>
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That I wasn't allowed to have a barbie says a lot about where my life was headed. Girls who have parents that are anti-barbie tend to belong to a special class. If you grew up in a barbie free house, more than likely your parents were both well educated, and your mom worked. Your house was probably gun free as well. You were read to a lot and read a lot. You were a little odd in school. You probably became a punk who spent time on student council. Yes, you know who I mean. Smart, weird, outsider kids. The kind of kid who goes to art school.</div>
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Barbie is not very popular in art School. I've seen women with eating disorders rant about what a bad role model she is. I read weird depressing poems about barbies with melted feet from fire sales in what passed for an English class. I saw a Chicken wire and paper mache' barbie scaled up to human size to show how unrealistic she was. In art school, Barbie was an object to be reviled, an evil pop culture icon made by little girls in the Philippines who couldn't afford one for themselves, a symbol of an unrealistic body image forced on young girls here, a magnifier all things socially, culturally and economically wrong with America. Looking back, I wonder if the anti Barbie bias had anything to do with our proximity to Mattel's smaller arch rival, Hasbro, who recruited on campus.</div>
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My world after graduation was not kind to barbie either. I lived with my then boyfriend in Ithaca, New York. They hated barbie there, too. In Ithaca, parents were liberal and idealistic, children played with non gender specified, educational, sweatshop free, organic toys. The same people never noticed that the "handmade in America" store where I worked didn't pay a living wage or offer me affordable health care.</div>
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I didn't find a lot of friends of barbie in her home state of California either. Artists in general, particularly female ones, tend to not like Barbie. Perhaps its just part of the cannon at this point. Burning Man had something called "Barbie Death Camp," how original, I saw it, it was even more lame than it sounds.</div>
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I'm pretty sure that most of my adult life I've never heard one kind word about Barbie, I began to feel sorry for her. What had she done wrong, really? She couldn't help the way she looked, or where she came from, and she couldn't speak for herself. Of course she has weird proportions, I thought, she's only a doll, its not like raggedy ann looks like a real little girl, either.</div>
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I was nearly thirty before Barbie became relevant to my life. All my life I had been taught that Barbie, was a horrible, superficial sexist toy, but I had no experience with her personally, so I tried to keep an open mind. Until I worked with inner city kids. If this were an essay I had been assigned to read in college, this is the part where I would talk about how wrong it was for little African American girls with kinky hair to have Barbie as a role model, but this is my life, a real life where things are not black and white. They're pink.</div>
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The little girls I worked with don't have ideal lives to say the least. They grew up in a world where shootings are as familiar as Snow Days were to me. These little girls don't really trust outsiders, but for some reason, they trusted me. One of the things that opened them up to me was my long, blond hair. It was a BIG deal. From the beginning the girls I taught asked me if they could touch it, they begged me to let them comb it, they pleaded with me to let them braid it. They would pull back my hair back to show their friends and exclaim with wonder, "see, it's real!" When they were very, very, good and we had time, I did let them "do" my hair, much to the shock and horror of my co workers, who thought I was crazy to trust the little girls with my long hair. My long, blond, hair, Barbie hair. Even with my "realistic proportions" I looked like someone they already knew, someone they trusted, someone they admired, someone with long blond hair and blue eyes. After being told my whole life how terrible Barbie was, I was Barbie. That's how I stopped worrying and learned to love the doll.</div>
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One year for Christmas, my in laws gave me a barbie that they found on clearance for $4 at Big Lots as a gag gift. It's one of those new barbies where her proportions are more "realistic" unlike the top heavy barbies my friends had when I was a kid, shes about a b cup and has wide hips, and dare I say it, a big butt. It's calld "Street Styles Barbie" and has streaks of darker blond hair. She is wearing a miniskirt, chunky platform heels and a striped belly shirt. I have the same outfit, but my shoes are black. It really looks eerily like me.</div>
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Now I wonder how being told my whole life that a blue eyed, blond haired, doll that looked a lot like me was wrong had affected me. It seemed backwards of all the barbie criticism. Had I inadvertently developed a poor self image from all the well meaning people trying to save me? What else do I have in common with her? Maybe the people who scale her up to 6 feet are wrong, maybe she's only 5'3" and the heels help her feel confident, and reach the top shelf. Maybe she has the great body from riding her bike instead of taking the car. Maybe she looks that way because she realized she needed to take better care of her body since she's a role model. People say she's too thin, people say her boobs are too big. Maybe she works out because it helps her deal with the stress in her life. Maybe she got the boobs from her dad's mom, who used to take her shopping all the time when she was little. Maybe she got the blond hair from her other grandmother. Did she become a model after her mom sent her to modeling school because she thought she had low self esteem and bad posture? Maybe she always feels just a little out of place, a little misunderstood because of the way she looks, or how she talks, or how she moves. Maybe she doesn't feel graceful with those stiff legs and arms. Why has she had so many careers? She has a lot of clothes, and she loves to shop, maybe she finds them on clearance like I do. Maybe she goes shopping to clear her head, not buying much, walking around looking at pretty things, thinking about how they are made, getting ideas for something creative later on. Maybe she has a lot of clothes she made herself. Maybe she has so many clothes because that's how she expresses herself, or maybe she cant decide what to wear because after all that criticism she's uncomfortable with her body. Maybe people underestimate her. Maybe she's just as self conscious as the rest of us.</div>
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Barbie has good reason to concerned, she's getting older. Newer, younger, hipper dolls are on the scene now. After all her changing with the times, she can't keep up anymore. Some big headed, weird looking, ethnically ambiguous dolls called "Bratz" are taking her place. Barbie is becoming kitsch. Kitsch isn't a bad thing really, but its not what little girls want. I wonder if in 10 years someone at RISD will build a life size "bratz" doll, proclaiming no woman could stand up with a head that big. The first little girls who thought I was barbie are older now. I still get compared to her, but the last girls who did it thought it was funny. Blond Hair and blue eyes aren't cool anymore, they are goofy. Now it's all about hip hop and spinners and platinum. But that too will pass. When you are little time goes by so slowly, but watching from the other side it goes by so fast. There will always be little girls and there will always be dolls, and they will always outgrow them one day. Someone is always going to feel weird and good intentions will always have unintended consequences. What is beautiful to one person will be always be odd to someone else. And as we grow up, we realize that things aren't black and white, and they aren't even shades of gray, nothing is ever as simple as it seems and nothing is ever as bad as it seems. No one is ever exactly who they seem because they are always growing and always changing. No one is ever a completely new person either, but we can change our clothes and change our hair and try new things we grow and hopefully keep getting better. When we grow up, we don't need the dolls because we can do all the things we once imagined the dolls could do. So why not be idealized? Why not have fun? Why not play? Love the doll, be the doll. Not the inanimate object, but who she was in your imagination.</div>
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Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-35541014454135553722012-10-06T21:24:00.000-07:002012-10-07T10:32:41.248-07:00Tesla DissI don't usually write about my work on my blog, but in this case it links into my activism, which was inevitable, my work has also cut into my activism substantially just due to time constraints. I figure that's OK since, you know, I build electric cars. <br />
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The disclaimer is that while I am an employee of Tesla Motors, but I am not in any way part of the media team and therefore must state that <strong>I am not</strong> speaking as a representative of Tesla Motors. This blog is my personal blog and my personal opinion and does not necessarily represent that of my employer.<br />
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The Major Party Candidate *Tesla Diss* made me do some web surfing that landed me on a terrible Detroit News article I am NOT going to link to, however, interestingly enough, the top commenters were Film Maker Chris Paine and activist Dave Rauschkolb, founder of Hands Across the Sand. I started reading Dave Rauschkolb's comment before I realized who he was, and he talked about being one of the S reservation holders, then when I realized who he was, I started to tear up. I get that emotional about the cars, but when I know the cars are going to be driven by someone I admire? <br />
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This is something I think about a lot making these cars, part is just a way to mentally pass time doing a repetitive but exacting and very mentally and physically taxing task. Who will this one go to? Since Dave Raushkolb said he was expecting delivery this month, the odds are just over 99% that one of the major engine* components was built by yours truly.<br />
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OH. MY. GOD.<br />
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*it's not an engine, it's a linear induction motor, but everyone keeps calling it an engine because it's in a car.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-35020301383247794972012-09-22T22:49:00.001-07:002012-09-22T22:51:25.343-07:00No harm in asking...It's amazing how many little changes you can make just by saying something like "does this come in something other than plastic?" or can I get this made in the USA? I bought some lip balm today, and even though it did come in plastic, but just by asking the sales girl, she asked me why I was asking, and I told her about My Plastic Free life and my Keeper. Yep, told a total stranger about my Keeper. Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0Stonestown Galleria Center: Schulz John W DDS, 595 Buckingham Way, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA37.7302947 -122.476252337.717736200000004 -122.4959933 37.7428532 -122.4565113tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-4243615682707748492012-08-19T17:25:00.001-07:002012-08-19T17:26:04.679-07:00Sometimes Parents are WrongOk, you know something that I wish my parents did differently? I wanted to play the viloin. So they made me learn piano, becuase it's supposed to be easier, and told me if I learned piano I could learn violin. The problem is I don't like the *sound* of a piano. I never have, especally when I was a little kid. It was hard to make myself practice an insturment I didn't like the sound of. I would do it even though it was torture. The fact that I stuck with it for as long as I did was a testament to how much I actually did want to play the violin, but of course I was no good at it, becuase no matter what, the piano would never sound good to me. It wouldn't matter if I could play piano like billy joel, I still don't like the sound of a piano. <br />
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So in my little kid mind it planted the seed that I just wasn't musical, becuase I had such a hard time learning piano, and I *had* to learn piano to get to play the instument I really wanted to play. Now that I'm a full grown adult with a fully developed ego and the ability to make my own choices I realize I had a hard time learning piano becuase I had no desire to play piano. I don't even like listening to piano when it's played by someone who is good at it. It's hard enough for kids to stick with practicing an insturment, and sure, the odds are that I would have given up the violin, too. However, I was never going to get good at piano. Making me learn an instument that I was never going to like was a terrible idea. It set me up for certain failue instead of likely failure.<br />
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The thing is, I realize with how much I've stuck to surfing, even though I am very bad at it, I probably would have stuck with the violin. I had the patience to go two years, surfing at least 3 times a week, in horrible conditions before I could even accomplish a simple pop up. That is not the work of a quitter. The difference is desire. Just because you may have zero natural ability to do something doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. <br />
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Then it happend again. In sixth grade I wanted to be in band. I wanted to play the flute, but since it was a very small school and they needed someone to play every insturment, I was chosen to play trumpet becuase they wanted to save the woodwinds for the kids who had to wear braces, and supposedly I had the correct shape of mouth or something for a brass instument. The problem was again, I hate the sound of trumpets. I've always had terribly sensitive hearing and it actually caused me physical pain to practice the trumpet. I did it because it's what the adults told me to do.<br />
I didn't know until a few years ago that hypertussis is a real condition and I was not imagining the pain in my ears. Every time I would practice piano or trumpet, I would feel pain in my ears and jaw. The piano was percussive, like someone hitting the inside of my ear with different levels of force with each note. Middle C felt like a small brass ball peen hammer, high f felt like someone poking a ball point pen in my ear, E felt like a darning needle, D felt like when someone flicks you hard with a finger, other notes felt as if I was being pinched. Trumpet was a burning sensation, similar to an electric shock, with the pain varying by note. I got branded as "lazy" and "not musical" all because I wasn't allowed to play the instuments I wanted to play. In fact, adults chose for me two instuments I hate the sound of.<br />
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My ex husband's parents on the other hand, kept encouraging him try new insurments until he found one he would stick with. He still plays in a band to this day. Music is a huge part of his life. <br />
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I look at people who stuck with music, and I wish I'd been allowed to try what I wanted to try, and that my parents hadn't given up on me just because I didn't learn the insurments I hated. And I still want to learn violin.<br />
<br />Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-14791914977562989312012-01-31T20:17:00.000-08:002012-01-31T20:21:21.326-08:00Stoke StuckPardon me sir, do you happen to have any extra stoke?<br />I see I haven't posted in months. Well, I'm having a problem here, and I think it's been going on for about a year now and I just don't seem to have enough stoke.<br /><br />I'm frustrated. Frustrated beyond comprehension. I'm just tired of not getting any better. I know the answer is to just MAKE myself go out and surf more, but I'm at the end of my rope.<br /><br />Help?Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-54878863789385671592011-06-28T18:13:00.000-07:002011-06-28T18:23:05.301-07:00A month after "Unlimited"I haven't posted an entry in a while, and its funny that the last entry was about my ultimately prophetic dream. A month and a day after I wrote it, I started what was quite literally my dream job:<br /><br />I'm now a machinist at Tesla Automotive!<br /><br />First, I got laid off, then, I realized how in demand I was, then after a brief trip to a place I like to call "Machinist Purgatory" I was offered a great job, which I ultimately turned down to work at Tesla. Not that working at Tesla isn't great, it's amazing. I'm just thrilled that I was in a position where I actually had to <span style="font-style: italic;">turn down</span> a great job offer.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-30109323106907523062011-03-15T20:28:00.000-07:002011-03-15T20:49:49.808-07:00UnlimitedI had a weird little emotional trip on my drive home today, and I for some reason feel very grateful for all the people in my life and all my experiences.<br /><br />I had a dream the other night that sounds like it would be a bad dream, but I woke up feeling very good and very positive and I've been puzzling over why a dream that could have (should have) been a nightmare made me feel so good. On my drive home I had a chance to think about it and I've come up with an answer. I'm unlimited.<br /><br />I dreamed I was in the summer after my senior year in high school, and in the dream I had decided, as I often wished I had decided, that I didn't want to be an artist after all, that I wanted to go to a regular school and become an engineer, or maybe something else. Where the dream normally would have turned into the typical nightmare "I'm not going to the college I got accepted to, what am I going to do with my life?" instead, with the calm rational mind of an adult, I thought about all the possibilities that were now open to me. I thought about the schools I could attend instead, how much money I would save by not going to such an exclusive school, that I could get a job and go to work, have an apartment, that I didn't need RISD, or any ONE thing or any ONE else. The possibilities were endless, but not frighteningly so, there were two or three things I wanted to do, all I had to do was decide, and I knew that if my first choice didn't work my second or third would be fine, and then I woke up, forgetting the end of the dream or why it made me feel good. But I felt good.<br /><br />I didn't know why this dream had me feeling so good. Thematically, it was one of those "Test I didn't study for" dreams, but emotionally, which is the real key to dream interpretation, the dream was different, it was like a flying dream.<br /><br />I realized that its because I'm leaving high school, where I ate with the same kids at lunch, started out as a little trainee who didn't know anything. I'm going to miss my friends but it was time to grow up now. I remember when Ansgar left PR. I felt like he was graduating, and it was the last day of high school and I was being left behind, and that things would never be the same. A year later, after everything changed anyway, I got booted out of the nest, too.<br /><br />And here I am. It wasn't hard for me to find a new job, a better job, not yet, but at least I'm making more money. I keep thinking that this is my lily pad. I'll learn stuff here, but I need to keep looking. In the mean time, at least my lily pad pays me well. I just need to remember the number one thing I DID learn from RISD:<br /><br />NEVER let your skills get out of date. NEVER.<br /><br />It cost me way too much to learn that. And boy did I ever learn it the hard way. I will not get lazy this time. I must keep looking. If all I do is take classes and stay at this job, then that is what I will do, but I can't be content to stay here no matter how much money they pay, because I MUST keep looking for something better, I MUST keep my skills up to date and I MUST be open to the possibilities that the world gives me. That is the only way to stay out of despair.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-91955353076499491612011-02-21T19:19:00.000-08:002011-02-21T20:14:51.028-08:00What we can learn from Barbie<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh58yzRHfplqgZl-zZ5v1wAfSe2_zbupzjvh9nJItMo3C1LPJF2MNXT6XW6DaEI_twd84FIAtRs8_AjNi8ozjEA3hvI6dyXDEbfXdEmqqpgEN8ToS_J-3E7LZMpQGGek2jKIRrDGVR4jsk/s1600/barbies_dream_house_2011.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh58yzRHfplqgZl-zZ5v1wAfSe2_zbupzjvh9nJItMo3C1LPJF2MNXT6XW6DaEI_twd84FIAtRs8_AjNi8ozjEA3hvI6dyXDEbfXdEmqqpgEN8ToS_J-3E7LZMpQGGek2jKIRrDGVR4jsk/s320/barbies_dream_house_2011.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5576355596010541970" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuuVQKGLLHq6q6w-V6Cg6qOJzgghndU3HsJhXczOtEdAvBn2miLg9CctNCsQYUJ5VSjO2FiKV5jVcmIXp0Z013tm3FnG-xlIt66xAodB7sTBaextzrNZBt7lrNItONp6VkJsOrOe7AJzg/s1600/barbies_dream_house_1962a.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 286px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuuVQKGLLHq6q6w-V6Cg6qOJzgghndU3HsJhXczOtEdAvBn2miLg9CctNCsQYUJ5VSjO2FiKV5jVcmIXp0Z013tm3FnG-xlIt66xAodB7sTBaextzrNZBt7lrNItONp6VkJsOrOe7AJzg/s320/barbies_dream_house_1962a.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5576354777614445746" border="0" /></a><br />It's funny, I didn't play with Barbie much as a kid, but as an adult, I've come to identify with her. I've written about this before, but today I discovered I have even more in common with Barbie from this LA Times article: http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/04/entertainment/la-et-barbie-goes-to-lacma-20110204<br /><br />Beyond the obvious connection of my being a blue eyed, blond haired, hourglass shaped California surfer girl, I discovered that the original "Barbie Dream House" was furnished with simple Scandinavian style furniture. Since 4 of the 8 sticks of furniture I own are mid-century modern and the rest, save for my drafting table were purchased to match them, this piqued my curiosity about the original "Dream House" and it turns out that the dream was a far cry from the pink plastic Mc Mansions Barbie dwells in today. Barbie's original "Dream House" was a simple, modernist shoebox studio, much like my little beachfront apartment.<br /><br />So what happened to us between 1962, when a "Dream House" consisted of a simple one room studio made of cardboard with folded paper furnishings, and now, when a "Dream House" is a pink three story townhouse with over 55 pieces, lights and sounds? Are little girls any less or more happy when they get the massive plastic castle than when they got the compact little shoebox? Do they use their imaginations any more or less? What does it say about us, that something as iconic as a doll's "Dream House" could go from something so simple to something so bloated and complex?<br /><br />I've been feeling somewhat sorry for myself lately. I got laid off from my job after 4 years of faithful service, and I've been working on beautifying my formerly hideous apartment. I was a little melancholy over my birthday this year, I'm not sure why, I usually love birthdays, but a part of me was dwelling on how most women in America my age have houses while I'm grateful to dwell in a two room studio that admittedly is a run down fire trap.<br /><br />But. My backyard is the Pacific Ocean. People say how lucky I am, but luck has nothing to do with it. Living on the beach is something many people dream about their whole lives but never achieve. But the reason that I live on the beach and they don't isn't because I'm lucky, its because I'm willing to pay more than a lot of people's mortgages for rent on a studio in a run down building. Its about choices. Do we choose stuff, or do we choose other stuff, or do we choose Less stuff? My brother says I have a pretty simple dream. I don't want a big house. I just want a little apartment near the beach where I can surf. I don't want a fancy car, just a reliable one with good mileage. Its just that simple. But sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have made different choices. Everyone does.<br /><br />And when I saw Barbie's dream house, I stopped feeling so sorry for myself. I DID have the dream house after all.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-58876131619217323052011-01-17T01:35:00.000-08:002011-01-17T01:36:07.177-08:00Why art is hardMaking art is easy for me. Too easy. I let it be too mush of a part of my identity for too long and too much of my ego was tied up in it. I won national awards, I went to the best schools, my work was even popular, but it didn't make me happy. After deliberately forcing myself to NOT make art for years I think I'm ready again, but I feel like an alcoholic that's been in recovery for years going to a bar. I don't want art to take up the part of my personality it was before. I want to express myself, but not let it become who I am. I realized after talking to a good friend last night that I'm so apprehensive about making art again because of its relationship to my Bi Polar disorder. I'm an amazing artist when I'm manic, of course. Mania is the worst. I'm so afraid of mania that I have put up with low level depression for years to keep it at bay. At first it's great, and then the anger comes. And then the paranoia, and then the depression comes back, worse than before. I just don't want to go there. I'm afraid of there. The thing is that I've got a lot of talent with or without the mental illness, but the mania gives it that extra POP. I'd give it all up. So many people tell me they wish they could draw or paint the way I do. I'd happily give it all up to take away all the pain its put me through. All the things I gave up because my mom pushed me so hard to be an artist. If I could get them back, if I could have run track in high school, taken shop classes, all the things I didn't do, if I could just have a few of them, go to a regular college, have a normal job I gave up so much just because I had talent and I thought it was the ONLY thing of value about myself, I really did. I thought it was the only thing I had to offer the world. I'm so much more than that, I know that now, but it took a long time to learn. I'm so scared.<br /><br />Funny, all I did, or all I intended to do, was make a funny tee shirt for my friends. But it turned out too good. I was wearing the shirt and wishing I'd done it as an art print instead and those things I hate kept not creeping but jumping in, I should sell these, I want to make more, that whole identity thing, I'd rather be doing this than something else (surfing) the problem is that it takes me to a place I don't want to go. A treadmill I don't want to get back on. Other artists just don't understand, maybe I should be hanging out with JD Salinger and Cat Stevens and the pumpkin guy from Faith NO More. I hate the whole art scene, I hate the attitude, I hate selling. I hate what it does to my image and self worth. I hate that it reminds me of my mother and how hard she pushed me.<br /><br />One of my prized posessions is a travel mug I made with A at a paint your own pottery shop on a whim. It was the most fun I'd had making art in as long as I can remember. Because it was just for me, just for fun, no pressure and with a dear friend. Its so hard for me to get that feeling from art. The feeling your supposed to get. I don't know if I can ever be free again.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-26298297821665489932011-01-03T12:40:00.000-08:002011-01-03T12:57:41.355-08:00One More ResolutionI've gone and done it again, I've procrastinated too long and now I don't have time to surf before work. I guess I shouldn't consider it a wasted morning since part of the reason that I don't have time to surf was that I took my dog for an extra-long walk, ironically under the guise of checking the surf on the north end of the beach. Somehow I got home just after noon, and if I don't get in the water by noon I can't really surf for more than half an hour to forty five minutes before I have to get out, and putting on and taking off my gear alone takes at least 20 minutes so it makes is not worth it, unless I'm really jonesing. So my resolution is to be out of bed by 9:30. I got up at 10 today and it was just not early enough to get Dave a nice walk and get a nice surf in without rushing so much as to make it not fun. 9:30 may seem like sleeping in plenty, but with my work schedule I'm usually not in bed till 1:30. I went to bed early last night since I didn't have to work, and it was still hard to get up, even though it was easier than usual.<br /><br />My problem is that I spend too much time on the computer after work. The best thing for me to do would to not even turn on the computer after work and take Dave for a nice walk, and maybe do some yoga or something instead. The tricky part is that if I want to listen to music or anything I need to use my computer, I don't even have a TV.<br /><br />Well, the way I've managed to keep resolutions in the past is that I see a resolution as a goal that I have a year to achieve. From what I understand most people don't keep resolutions because they quit as soon as they've blown it once. So the goal is to get in bed by 1:00 tonight and get up by 9:30.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-72951814159263296412011-01-01T23:07:00.000-08:002011-01-01T23:39:16.919-08:00New Year's ResoloutionsSome people don't like New Year's resolutions and think they don't work, but I've had a pretty good track record of keeping mine. I usually keep at least a couple of them. I read that writing them down and then not looking at them helps, and that's worked for me before. I also tried writing them down where I could see them every day. I also don't count New Year's Day. I see the whole holiday season as a kind of time for being decadent and careless while the days are like 5 minutes long and you aren't going to get anything done anyway. The sun went down at 5:01 today. YUCK! I hate winter.<br /><br />So here goes not in any particular order:<br />1. Learn Surfcam, believe it or not, that's a career thing<br />2. Practice my pop ups every day.<br />3. (I did not keep this one last year, so I'm altering it to be more realistic this year): resume out of water surf training at least 3 times a week. Its funny how it was so much easier to be disciplined about that when I first started surfing than it is now.<br />4. Do Beth Terry's "Show us your Plastic Challenge" one week a month.<br /><br />Instead of the usual "eat healthier-loose weight-save money" trifecta I've come up with a plan. When I lost my ATM card and had to live on only cash I realized what I already knew which was that I spend too much money on snack-fast-junk food, and the way to keep me from doing that is to not have money to waste on it. Since I do the bulk of my grocery shopping at the Farmer's Market on Saturday, most of the food I buy for myself is pretty healthy. If I don't have access to anything else, that's all I will eat. The plan is to give myself a cash allowance each week and keep my debit card out of my wallet so I can't buy junk food without having to pay cash for it. I'm making the allowance bigger than my old "Food Budget" that I kept mentally but didn't actually stick to so that my "Fun Money" and my "Food Money" are now one amount. That way if I want to go to the movies at the end of the week or buy a new outfit, I'll have to stick with beet chips and hummus and celery and peanut butter instead of sneaking out for a burger to temporarily cheer myself up for whatever reason. This totally worked when I lost my debit card but wanted a new dress for my company's holiday party, so I know I can make it work on a regular basis. The trick is that I'm going to do it in one week chunks.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-54533906633058659972010-12-29T22:42:00.000-08:002010-12-29T23:25:19.816-08:00Eco Friendly Wrapping *PaperFor some reason giving up wrapping paper is one of the more painful things for me to sacrifice for the planet. I miss juices, but for some reason wrapping paper in all its frivolousness and being such an obvious and easy thing to give up, is something I miss the most.<br /><br />I always took such pride in my elaborately wrapped gifts. I would search store after store for just the right wrapping paper. I made bows with jingle bells, beads, pop poms, and handmade tags. Sometimes I even made the boxes myself from origami. People would keep my boxes and bows to re use year after year. I loved Mylar wrapping paper most of all. I knew it was wasteful, but it was just so fun and so pretty.<br /><br />The first year I gave up wrapping paper was the easiest. I had just completed huge sewing project for a wedding where I made both the bride's "dress" and the grooms menswear. I had a mountain of beautiful fabric and ribbon scraps too small for another project but too big to throw away just begging to be re used. As per usual, people who got gifts from me (almost all non sewers) kept the fabric. I even saw a friend using the velvet scrap I used as wrapping in his guitar case just last month.<br /><br />Year two I failed. After leaving my husband in August and nearly severing my finger in an industrial accident just before Christmas, my fabric and ribbon scraps had been purged and my creativity tanked, and I gave in and bought wrapping paper at Walgreens at the very last minute and to add insult to injury, quite literally, Even with wrapping paper, it looked like a 5 year old, or at least a mere mortal without my superior wrapping powers had done it. Well, to be honest, it looked exactly like someone who loves to wrap gifts but had recently nearly severed her right index finger had done it.<br /><br />This is year three. My brother Tom is way ahead of me. He uses comic books that have lost their value as wrapping paper. It looks phenomenal. Mine came from a comic that was clearly intended for adults, so it might not work for everyone. I'm not really a comic book kind of person, so I had no comic books, but I did have a calender from last year, or this year, depending on how you look at it. One of the coolest things about using a calender was that you can use the small versions of the pictures that they print on the back as matching tags. Unfortunately, this only covers 6 to 18 gifts depending on the calendar and the size of the gifts. (tee shirts take two months, btw)<br /><br />I tried using a magazine for the larger gifts, unfortunately, the magazine I picked was Entertainment Weekly's 2010's best and worst, and guess what was on the center pages I had planned on using: the celebrity obituaries! Not really the festive feeling I was going for, so I had to toss those pages in favor of some others.<br /><br />Somehow, I know its silly, but I just really miss wrapping paper.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-8402767030223597362010-12-17T01:39:00.001-08:002010-12-17T01:39:21.629-08:00Localvore to freeganIt started with some pots and pans, and a dish drainer. Like I predicted, I broke down and got new pots and pans when I could afford them. Then, some girl who had the same taste in clothes as me left a pile of them on the beach. I don't usually take used clothes, (San Francisco has a bedbug epidemic, this is why I'm saving up for a NEW couch as opposed to a used or free one) but they were all surfer girl clothes, all my favorite brands, stuff I would buy myself. Yes, I'm a materialistic tree hugging freak, so sue me. I even liked the girls perfume, the clothes I found on the street smelled better than mine.<br /><br />But the eggs put me over the top. I came out of my favorite local produce store, delighted that I had purchased the very first slice of pumpkin chocolate chip cake plastic free, before they wrapped up the individual slices, and there they were, piled high peeking out of the dumpster, a stack of dozens of eggs. I was almost out of eggs. I know that eggs last for four weeks past the expiration date, I know how to tell if an egg is good by putting it in water, and I know that some chickens had to lay those eggs. I looked at this stack of free perfectly good eggs, destined for San Francisco's municipal compost, and couldn't resist, I looked to see if anyone was looking, they weren't even all the way in the dumpster, I opened one. It was perfect. Not one broken egg. I put it under my arm. I got greedy, I looked at the next one. Only one broken egg, just barely broken. I grabbed that box too. It was thrilling.<br /><br />Now I knew the schedule. I went back a week later, this time at night, with a flashlight. Bananas. I hadn't eaten bananas in almost a year, since deciding to eat only local produce for environmental reasons. Then peppers, a tomato, it was almost like shopping!<br /><br />I got bananas again tonight. I had my choice of them! I think I lucked out with the eggs, but this is my new habit. My schedule lends itself to dumpster diving. I'm going to shop dumpster first.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-17618876706337957832010-10-31T01:31:00.000-07:002010-10-31T02:15:36.549-07:00my new neighbors!I don't know if I've written much about my new apartment yet. I'm very excited and very broke, and it may be full of mold, like my TWO YEAR OLD TOYOTA, and it would win an ugly contest with the Byrne, and the wallpaper is stained and has more holes in it than Swiss cheese, and the yard floods A LOT when it rains, which being in San Francisco, it rains A LOT. Actually, I could go on, its going to be a great set when Drew Barymore makes a "$12 Surfboard" movie. I've got doors to nowhere, a hole in my sink, weird crystals growing in my cabinets, a cabinet door made of cardboard, not the fake wood cardboard, but the corrugated kind. And there are random bars on the windows, like a demented drug dealer used to live here, from the outside it kind of looks like a Liquor store in Detroit, yet it has a glass front door. I just discovered that the window not just leaks, but funnels rain inside in a waterfall if you don't close it right.<br /><br />BUT ITS AWESOME AND I LOVE IT!<br /><br />I'm a block from the beach. I get to keep my dog. I have a yard with a hose. And best of all:<br />ALMOST ALL MY NEIGHBORS ARE SURFERS!<br /><br />So this morning, in the first time since forever, I got up and got a morning session in on a Saturday. I suppose most people would be mad if their neighbors woke them up on a Saturday morning. But I was quite literally stoked!<br /><br />I was having this awful nightmare, I had accidentally destroyed a weaving and was trying to fix it before the weaver came back, and everything I did made it worse.<br /><br />But then I heard my neighbor Alex saying "Sarah! Sarah are you home?" You see, I live in a building full of surfers, and I am the only one in possession of a yard and a hose. This makes me very popular. Alex was in Costa Rica (more on that later) when I moved in and was storing his wetsuit in my yard, he apologized for it, but I told him he was more than welcome to keep it there. I mean, I have a HOSE (which is actually Alex's but he left it in my yard, and I assumed correctly that he wouldn't mind if I used it) and a YARD. A fenced in yard you can CHANGE in! I would be a very bad person if I would not share this bounty. And, hey, who minds surfer boys changing in the yard? Really? All this for $1100 bucks a month? Who needs real cupboard doors, or doors that go somewhere? Or wallpaper that doesn't make your eyes hurt? And the window totally works if I close it right. I have neighbors that care enough to not let me miss the good surf by sleeping in. I woke up from a nightmare to a happy surfing dream that turned out to be reality. I'm in paradise.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-29492354721663515872010-10-16T02:42:00.000-07:002010-10-16T03:35:54.775-07:00lately, I've been frustrated with my surfing ability its been months since I had a "good" session. I'm tense when I get in the water, and only slightly less when I get out. I've been in tears nearly every session, and it doesn't matter the quality of the wave, it actually gets worse when the surf is good. or the difficulty, it gets worse when I go to an "easy" spot. Either I'm in tears because I can't do it because it's still above my ability after I've been surfing for so long, or I'm in tears and depressed because I can't even seem to be able to do what I could do a year ago. I'm at my wits end. Just last fall I was starting to drop into overhead waves and now I hopelessly pearl at the god damned jetty. I can't remember the last time I caught a wave and enjoyed it, really enjoyed it. Its like I've lost faith, in everything.<br /><br />Its not just surfing that I've been struggling with lately. About two months ago I was promoted to "temporary" shift supervisor. I was so excited and proud of myself. But today I had that taken away. I was close to giving it up anyway. I couldn't concentrate. I was making stupid mistakes. I stopped enjoying myself. The guys I was supervising weren't even difficult to supervise, but I buckled under the pressure anyway. I'm so disappointed in myself. But I was in over my head, and my boss had the good sense to pull me out before I drowned. It's disappointing, sure. I thought I could do it, but it was too much too soon. Now I can concentrate on being an amazing machinist. And that's really what I want.<br /><br />I turned down program director at boys and girls club for a reason. I was a great art teacher, I was one of the best in a city that had the best, in the worst neighborhood in the city. I had some amazing peers, legends in their fields, and I was one of them, to stand with people like Kay and Bill and Mark was an honor, and I knew I was worthy of it. I deserved to be, and I knew it. I would have been at best an average program director, realistically a pretty lousy one, because it wasn't where my heart was. My heart wasn't in supervising. It was in making good parts. And I'm just too dumb or too smart to do both at once.<br /><br />In fact, if I can be as good a machinist as I was an art teacher after 5 years I'll be pretty kick ass.<br /><br />That makes me feel better. There were times early teaching art that I was in tears, I did stupid things. I did stupid things and was in tears a lot near the end, but for different reasons. I did stupid things and was in tears a lot, because I cared. I guess that's happening all over again. Growing is painful.<br /><br />I felt so good after being demoted today. I was sad for about an hour, and then I was so happy that I could go back to just being a machinist again. The two things I was worried about when I took the job were not whether or not I could do it, it was that I would follow the career track of most women in technical fields and wind up managing instead of making, and that I would stop growing as a machinist. I went backwards as a machinist.<br /><br />The way this relates to my surfing block is this: I've been so frustrated lately its almost like I'm setting myself up to fail. And I know I was setting myself up to fail on my $12 surfboard, learning to surf where no one should learn to surf, but by knowingly setting myself up to fail, I was also accepting that I <span style="font-weight: bold;">would</span> fail, and I've lost sight of that. <span style="font-weight: bold;">Failing is part of succeeding.</span> Like they said in "Roll Bounce" "If you don't fall, how will you ever know what it feels like to get up?"<br /><br />One of the first lessons, and probably one of the most important lessons I've learned surfing is that when you wipe out really badly, you don't struggle. The first time I really got tumbled, really held down, I knew this intrinsically after a few seconds. The wave is more powerful than you. You don't know which way is up, so if you struggle, you waste your air and may be holding yourself down for longer, in fact, you usually are. But you are buoyant, your board is buoyant, and waves have a rhythm and cycle and if you just relax, go limp, and give yourself up to the wave it will bring you back up faster than struggling will. But the last two really bad wipe outs I had, I struggled. I even knew better. I made the conscious decision to struggle. I as so angry at myself. I was so angry in general. I wasn't paddling, I was punching the water. I knew at one point I was pushing myself down further. I was so frustrated that I did something I knew was just making the problem worse, and it wasn't working. I had to force myself to give in, and as soon as I did, I recovered. If only life were so simple. I had to give in because I was going to run out of air if I didn't.<br /><br />I remember the joy of my first real wipe out. I'd slipped off my board a few times, but nothing like that. That was the first time I got tumbled, really tumbled. I was down, I didn't know what was up or down. It was scary. I knew from the beginning that it was coming and if I could get through that, I could keep surfing. I knew there was a real possibility that I would get so scared I would quit. Back then, I still could have quit. I was only out 12 bucks. Less than a sandwich, as Charlie said.<br /><br />But I realized when I was down there I knew exactly what to do. Go rag doll limp. And when I made it to the surface, it was even better than finally achieving the coveted pop up two years later. I remember that now. Failing really is the first step to succeeding, and lately I've lost sight of that.<br /><br />Lately I've had the powerful urge to ride the Byrne again. Now I understand. Just like the time I really did drop in on an overhead wave because I knew I could go for it or be pummeled by it. I took it because I was forced to. I didn't even know that the wave was that big until the next day.<br /><br />Lately, I've been desparate to get back to that. I've gotten lazy by trying too hard. I need to fail if I'm ever going to succeed.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-67429137003873418042010-10-04T13:32:00.001-07:002010-10-04T13:32:15.418-07:00The wonder and horror of abundanceThis morning, I wanted to make some boiled eggs for a salad. When I separated from my husband, I took none of the cookware with me, so I had no pots and pans to boil the eggs in. So I took my trusty dog for a walk, looking up and down the streets for a cast off pot. First, all I found was a dish drainer, but I needed one of those as well, so I took it. We turned around after 5 or six blocks and headed up another avenue back home. Sure enough, just two blocks from home, someone had set out boxes with "Free" signs on them and just as I had hoped (and to some degree expected) One was full of just the cookware I needed and more. After I took the dog home I came back and helped myself to a teapot with a broken handle and a missing lid for a pot, two different size frying pans, a crepe pan, three votive holders and two drinking glasses. I left behind four boxes of assorted cookware, children's clothing and other housewares. This morning I basically went shopping on the street, finding everything I was looking for and more, within the space of about an hour and a half.<br /><br />The poor person in me is delighted. I got what I needed for free, easily. The environmentalist is horrified. It was too easy. we covered 10 blocks to find what was essentially waste. If you multiply that by the space of the city, the space of the country, the face of the developed world, and think of how much I left behind, its a terrifying comment on our society. Whats more, the bulk of the cookware was in bad shape, In all honesty, I'll probably put it back on the curb when I can afford better, and then where does it go? In spite of programs like freecycle, and all the second hand stores, even using things again, it all means we have just too much stuff, and it wears out too quickly.<br /><br />Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-56525534167017248772010-10-02T21:09:00.001-07:002010-10-02T22:10:40.213-07:00I'm taking lessonsAfter 3 long years of struggling to learn to surf all by myself, I decided for the sake of my sanity it was finally time to take surf lessons. There were a number of influences that led to this decision:<br /><br />1. A native Hawaiian I met on OB named Jessie had offered lessons I could potentially afford.<br />2. I got a substantial shift bonus at work for switching to nights, so I actually could afford them.<br />3. I got spooked after a friend I hadn't surfed with before tried to get me to paddle out into waves that were way too big for me and I kept getting pounded. When he asked me if I wanted to go back to the Jetty I got so discouraged I actually went there and got even more discouraged. I'm not JETTY BAD!<br />4. After taking this particular friend's advice and going back to what was once my favorite place in the world that I now avoid like the plague, I had the third worst day I EVER had surfing, the second worst being the aforementioned trip to the dreaded Jetty, and the worst ever being the day I decided to separate from my husband.<br /><br />On my last trip to Linda Marr I lost it. After pearling a good seven times in a row, I actually got so pissed off I actually TRIED to break my epoxy funboard in half. I screamed at it for wasting three years of my life. I took off my leash and I threw it in the water, hard, twice, only to have it come back and hit me so hard in the shin it left a scar. I was ready to give it to the next person I saw. I was ready to leave it on the beach. When I came to my senses, sort of, I was ready to take it back to Sonlight, sell it, and my wetsuit, and give up surfing altogether.<br /><br />But then what would I do? I've rearranged my entire life around surfing. I work nights so I can surf. I have a 60 mile round trip commute so I can surf. I had just spent every dime I had so I could get an apartment on the beach so I can surf, and before that, I lived in a creepy garage so I could surf. I no longer had a husband. Art no longer interests me. All I've wanted to do for the past three years is be a machinist and surf. And I'm not great at either...yet.<br /><br />So, I figured, I'd tried everything else, I might as well take a lesson.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-73762076646700099952010-09-19T23:35:00.000-07:002010-09-19T23:50:16.168-07:00I got the "Original" Twelve Dollar Surfboard out of Storage!Its good to have him back. I know as an ocean-going vessel The Byrne should be a "She" but I spend a lot of time riding him and and I don't swing that way, often. My god is that thing lighter than my epoxy boards! I'd like to take him out just for the hell of it, but I'd probably end up sinking pretty fast. I missed him. I've been frustrated with my lack of improvement lately and I thought if I took him out I'd remind me why I started instead of frustrating me like everyone said it would. The fact is, I had FUN on that thing. Yes, I used it as a glorified body board, yes, it may have been the worst board to start with ever, yes, it may be the root cause of every frustration I have with surfing, but its still the thing that made me look at my life and say "(insert higher power of choice) you gave me this, and I'm going to run with it!"<br /><br />In the end it was me, not the board, that has to learn to surf, in the end, its me that has to practice her pop ups and pearl ten thousand times. It was me who had to get a car, leave her husband, have a 60 mile round trip commute, and work nights all to support my surfing habit. UH, habit, may not be strong enough a word here.<br /><br />And now I need to go to bed early, I have a feeling tomorrow might be too big for me here and I'll have to drive south to find something I can surf.Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-57044628671863849682010-09-11T01:42:00.001-07:002010-09-11T01:44:46.140-07:00I love being single! I LOVE IT!!!!I married my third boyfriend. I was almost never "single" my whole adult life and jumped into a very stupid rebound- out of habit. My friends want me to date, telling me to get on OK Stupid or whatever, and its not like I have any trouble getting guys, its not. I even got set up with a very sweet very cute guy and we're dating, but I want to put on my FaceBook under interests "Not Having a Boyfriend" Because not dealing with being in a romantic relationship with another person is the greatest feeling I've ever had in my entire life. Its better than being in love!!! SO MUCH BETTER!!!!! I don't know how single people could possibly want to give this up. Being free is the best feeling in the world.<br /><br />I don't understand why it is that when I say I'm sad about my divorce, they ask if I'm seeing anyone. The answer is yes- well I'm dating someone, but its not serious. I've even thought I should break it off because I don't want him to get too attached, but I guess if he's willing to take it slow, its ok. I'm sad because I'm sad that I'm getting divorced, not because I'm lonely. I'm developing something I needed so badly, a deep personal relationship with myself, and I'm starting to find out that I'm fucking awesome. I should have done this 15 years ago!Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5980493642514974591.post-89267304965473280032010-07-28T11:44:00.001-07:002010-07-28T11:44:44.319-07:00I freak out my housemate!OMG! matter what i do, my housemate freaks out EVERY time he sees me! Hearing somebody squeal "Oh My God you scared me!" when I was making my breakfast, packing my lunch, and then when I went to take out the garbage just wrecked my last nerve. Now I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack. Thanks for sharing, Chaz. as if I weren't under enough stress as it is. I have to remind myself: This is why I'm going on night shift, to move out of this house of horrors!<br />Angry Butterflyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14251944020244934205noreply@blogger.com0