Cured Colored Cuticles
I’ve watched some Tucca & Bertie recently. I like it quite a bit. The world and drawing style are absurdist. The dialog is often explicit subtext and the animation dials up the surreal sometimes to pull that same style into the visual realm, which I think works great. It also tries hard to know what it’s saying about several different types of anxiety. Shanda watches Bertie and feels seen, with the fear of change and the dread of other people’s emotions. I’m more of an Arizona Trash Person than a Tucca, but I like the way people can’t see that she needs attention and reassurance, and that she’s seen as needy when she can’t even get help with survival.
Watched a couple episode of Archer too. They’re back in 1999 for the current season, which should be fun. The Dreamland series was harder for me but I liked the 30s colonialism series a lot, and this one should be good too. I appreciate the way everyone in that show has their own brand of terrible, how they build unstable internal alliance to try to stay on top, and how none of it ever works because they can’t be decent for 4 minutes on a row. It feels like justice to know they will all fail together.
Took off my cured nail polish with little tin foil sponges. Took forever but worked great and was easy. Be sure to align the bottom no lower than your firsr knuckle and to wrap the long way around not over. I’m excited to try new cured paint myself – probably not tonight but definitely this week – I really like the idea of having it be set right away and last for weeks. Maybe I’ll be able to use it to train my tolerance for longer fingernails. As yet I still can’t quite get comfortable with more than 2 or 3 millimeters of detached growth.
Brought C into the discussion of culture and heritage. After some inspiration from @BPS I asked DerbyK about food and culture last week, and you told me a story about family. Which is not what I expected, but is technically what I asked for, and was useful to @BPS when I shared with them. C is also having culture feels, mostly about not feeling sufficiently pureblooded to be entitled to a culture. It’s not a long way off from what @BPS was saying, if in a different context. I’m still on the wrong side of belonging to be able to engage with culture directly, but I’m pretty sure that assigned by birthright is the patriarchy version, not the real one. Someone has to be out there discovering and creating and barrowing and disrupting culture for all the inherentors to have theirs. So I’m pretty sure you get to pick some and act as though it’s yours until it is. Or I sure hope that’s the case, because it’s the only way I can ever have any.
I did some body art yesterday, where I prompted Shanda with colors, she told me about the texture they had in her week, and I painted them on her belly. It was good. You got to have feels and be relaxed and pay attention to me and feel laid attention to. And I got to imagine that it’s possible for me to participate in visual expression or and (albeit removed by a brush) touch that didn’t feel oppressive to me. I have so many issues with touch – even beyond being startled or otherwise unsettled by it happening to me there’s the bit where I can’t do it to anyone else. I know that my body or even hands are too disgusting to get that close, and that I’m too lascivious to be trusted with any sort of physical contact or even proximity. And I know that the only reason someone would ever look past those facts is if they need me to manage their emotions through touch. They would only put up with me if they need me to be silent and invisible and intently monitor their response to my touch so that it can be used as a substitute for their emotional regulation. Which is hard enough even without the sexual abuse it sometimes entailed.
Went to lots of work meetings today. Saw the interns for a second before they leave. I used to be interested in mentoring interns but I have since stopped caring enough about my job for that to be a good idea. The last batch I actual did anything about was the same summer Melissa moved in. That might have something to do with my reluctance too. But I made good progress on my BZ project between meetings and got through a bunch of old contact tasks and officially cleared all my SRs, so it was a good day for day job.
Got to talk to M for a minute on Sunday. Only a minute because life got on the way, but it was still real good. Talked about dogs and jobs and optimism. About art appreciation and the value of working together.
Talked to V for just a second. It’s been a quiet month from you but I’m glad you popped up when I poked. Maybe we could plan a lunch do or some such in the near future, and you can tell me about where you’ve been and where you want to go next.
Shanda and I have been doing parenting feels. Now that I’ve busted through a lot of my repression it’s been easier for me to prompt about, and it feels like things are changing. Certainly there’s more memory of being 10, which is a good start. And there’s less unbearable pain about the concept of parenting. Still lots of free-floating sadness and anger, and probably a lot of resentment and more to come as we get to the grief. As we get to attach some of the feels to the past they came from instead of being stuck in them now. It’s hard, but I’m glad it’s going. Things were worse when it couldn’t go.
We’ve also been doing prep for Shanda’s next date, here at home this time, and for being prepared to know, control, and get what you want. It’s a new concept for you, in certain contexts, wanting things and acting to get them. Bits of your past tell you that wanting is bad and shameful. I know all about that feeling – it happens to be about everything. But dating is a place where wanting and getting are both expected and necessary.
We did a good job balancing time off and getting things done this weekend. Anxiety levels were high which made it complicated but we got lots of things done anyway, and only had a few hours of obsessive and disconnected work. Got ready for your neurology appointment, got meal planning and food orders done, bought some clothes, got rid of a bunch of old ones, and made real plans to advance the plot on getting the rest organized. Made plans for recurring help with Dog care and spent time working on being safe without being in control. Good job us.
I haven’t worked up to an overarching feel in the past few days. It’s easy for me to think that’s because I haven’t been paying attention. But I should read here about how I have been stressed trying to keep the rest of the household in decent shape, and how I did good things to cope even if it meant tiny Screeds and TV time. And I should try not to confuse calm with depression.
ZiB
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Sent from a phone.
