The Boyfriend and I bought the URL a couple of months ago, but then he got distracted by school and I got distracted by my complete technological ineptitude and nothing came of it.  With me going freelance soon, though, it doesn’t make any sense to just let it sit there, eating all the food in the fridge, not picking up after itself, and refusing to pay rent.  So the Boyfriend graciously set things up, and I’ve begun blogging over there.  It’s pretty much exactly the same as it is over here, except now I have a “Professional Services” page and I FINALLY REVEAL MY REAL NAME.

I know you’re excited.

Yes, there will be ads on the new site.  I hope that doesn’t bother anyone unduly and I will strive to make them as not-tacky as possible, but let’s face it:  it would be silly for me to pass up the opportunity for a source of income when I’m about to quit my job.  I’m also toying with the idea of becoming an Amazon Associate (meaning that if you click on a link to Amazon from my site and then go on to purchase that item, I get a veeeeeeeeeery small cut), but I haven’t decided.  If a not-balls company has a similar deal going on, I’d love to hear about it.

When you make it over to the new site, you’ll notice that it’s painfully empty because, ahem, all the archives are still here.  Hopefully at some point we’ll be able to shift all of the content from this blog over to the new website, but the Boyfriend is having some problems with that and since I pay him in nothing but love and affection, I can’t exactly demand that he do it RIGHT NOW…or even next month.  I mean, you guys have been reading me for awhile–you know I don’t have much love and affection to offer.  It’s going to take me a long, looooong time to build up credit with him, especially after last night’s picture-editing fiasco…

Last bit of housekeeping:  if you follow me on twitter, this should be the last post from this location that shows up.  I’ll be changing the twitterfeed TOMORROW.

So, um, please update your links, please keep reading, and I love you all.  Even those of you with creepy earwax stories.  Okay, ESPECIALLY those of you with creepy earwax stories.

xoxo,

Talulah

I know most of you are like, “Talulah, I don’t want to see more pictures of your fucking cat in the fucking snow, okay?”  But frankly, I don’t care.  I AM OWED, GUYS.

My mother tells this story about how when I was a toddler, my entire immediate family went down to Virginia Beach for the day and she tossed me in the ocean to be raised by squids.  Okay, not that last part.  She put me in the ocean and we were playing and then all of a sudden, this black gunk started dripping out of my ears.  She and my dad fah-reaked, because they thought it was blood and that their precious, most perfect and wonderful youngest child was hemorrhaging out her ears.

It was earwax, y’all.  Although on a related note, a couple of years later momma was using a Q-tip a little too vigorously and it slipped and she stabbed me, possibly in the brain.  I bled out of my ear a WHOLE LOT.  And now I get to hold that over her for the REST OF OUR LIVES.

Isn’t parenthood awesome?  Don’t you want to go have a kid RIGHT NOW?

So this relates to my cat in that, like his beloved human mother, he’s all ear-waxy.  This is not terribly surprising, since he’s got giant, tufted ears—and also, he doesn’t really clean himself unless I initiate things with industrial-strength sprays and the furminator.  And then he only cleans himself enough so that he smells like his own ass instead of waterless pet shampoo.  Because, you know, smelling like shampoo would just be GROSS.

What I’m saying is that I love him, but he’s disgusting, and the vet told me that I have to clean his ears for him at least once a week or else she will judge me harshly.  And I just can’t stand that judgment, so I’ve taken over all of his grooming needs, up to and including removing his eye-crusties.  God forbid he have crusty eyes.

I’ve been pretty good about everything, except that I forgot to clean his ears for a few weeks and so when I did them last night  it took six cottonballs and there was dried black wax EVERYWHERE and then he shook his head and got ear cleaner and ear WAX all over me and then I thought about feeding him to the dog next door.   You know, the one who always looks so hungry.  It would be charity.

Anyway, have some pictures of my cat!  Enjoying the snow!  Keep in mind that the entire time I was taking these, I was telling him to come back inside before I froze my tits off.  Because knowing that makes everything so much more heartwarming.

I released him into the wild and he immediately made for the treeline.

Presenting me with this awesome view of his ass.  Thanks, cat.  You’re welcome, internet.

He’s apparently really interested in something…let’s see if we can get a better look at it.

He’s making little baby totally manly attack sounds at something–let’s see if MS Paint can help us isolate it.

Why, it’s a robin!  But it doesn’t stay on that branch for long (smart robin).

Oliver slinks after it like a tiny overweight panther.  But then mommy’s whining about her tits, they are freezing off, finally penetrates his thick skull!

I know he would never hurt me unless there were a laser pointer involved, but dude.  Not an expression I want to see on my cat’s face when he’s running STRAIGHT FOR ME.

Finis

First off, thank you to everyone who’s written in or emailed with suggestions about what to do with my liiiiiiiiiiife.  I haven’t given you guys nearly the attention and credit you deserve, and I’m sorry about that.  I really do appreciate the time, the effort, and the advice—especially the stuff that’s not all, “Rah rah, quit your job!” because I know that wasn’t easy to write.

And now, on to the part where I more fully explain my reasons for quitting said job.

Being bored with my job is not what’s driving me out of it.

Knowing that I need to leave this job if I’m ever going to do what I want with my life?  Also not what’s driving me out of it.

Don’t get me wrong:  those are factors, and they are important to me, but at the end of the day?  My full name is actually Talulah Inertia Mankiller.  I hate change, absolutely hate it, and fear of the unknown has kept me from taking a risk or making a switch that almost certainly would have benefited me more times than I can count.  I.  Don’t.  Like.  Change.

But the truth is, I am mentally ill, and that trumps everything:  my hatred of change, my job security, my desire to succeed as a “normal person,” everything.

For a long time after I began drug therapy, I honestly thought that I was a success story.  In many ways, I was.  For a good nine months or so, the medications I’m currently taking eradicated my symptoms.  I slept fine, my nervous tics toned way down, and my social anxiety was pretty much nil.  I experienced a hiccup in late July, but that eventually calmed down.

And then last month, everything went to shit.

I don’t want to get into the why or how, but yeah:  I was presented with a situation, and my brain overloaded and could not handle it.  Which means that I stopped sleeping unless I took a metric fuckton of Klonopin or busted out one of the Lunesta samples my quack GP gave me a few months ago.  Last Friday, I experienced what I am pretty sure was a wee bit of a panic attack (there was hyperventilating over a cat toy.  A CAT TOY.).  I have been fighting with my insurance company for over a month—I’ve been trying to get a new doctor, they’ve been feeding me misinformation and the occasional outright lie.  You know the deal.  And in all honesty?  This is just not fucking worth it anymore.

I know that there are a lot of people who are sitting there thinking that I’m a weenie, that I should suck it up and deal because so many people are out of jobs right now and I’m damn lucky to have health insurance, even if it’s total shit.  And I largely agree with those people, which is what has made this decision and what is making this process so difficult.  But at the end of the day?  I would rather not drug myself into a stupor to keep a job.  I would rather not live in misery and pain—yes, physical pain, I claw the holy hell out of myself when I’m nervous—because I’m too afraid to take a chance on something that might be more my speed.

If I fail, then I fail.  I’ll find a new job (and no, I don’t expect that to be easy, either), and go back to working 8-5 (because no one works 9-5 anymore, trust).  In the meantime, I’ve got savings and a support network.  I don’t have as much in savings as I’d like and I don’t like asking for help, but life is what it is.  Right now, today, this is a move that I need to make for the sake of my mental health.  And also so that I can spend all day staring into Oliver’s beautiful, terrible eyes.

s

November 21, 2008

So I was reading this blog, and I was really getting into it because it was smart and funny and—as the kids like to say—“hip,” and then I hit a wee bit of a snag.  See, the authoress in question was talking about some issue, and she brought up the “I’m not a feminist, but” line.  Only in this case, it was the bastard child of “I’m not a feminist, but”:  “I have a hard time embracing feminism, because I think women cause more problems for other women than men do.”

Ladies.

Ladies.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  There are plenty of smart women who reject the label “feminist” because they don’t like the baggage that goes with it.  Because they’re tired of putting up with the racist and classist shit that has unfortunately plagued the movement ever since Susan B. Anthony threw black women under the bus in an attempt to woo Southern white women.  Because they’re sick of having to fight to be seen as equals within the very movement that is supposed to be about equality.  I get that.  It saddens me because I feel like feminism is losing out on a lot of cool people that way, but that’s feminism’s own fucking fault, frankly.  That’s a failure within the movement itself, and I can’t say I blame people for rejecting the label “feminist” when they’re expected to do all the same work and get none of the same benefits.  So I can’t say that I’m a “Yes, you are” feminist, because although I get where that author is coming from, I think it’s unfair to insist that every pro-woman progressive identify as a feminist when feminism hasn’t done enough to embrace everyone who has a “right” to wear the label.

All that being said?  Women who rail against women’s inhumanity to women really test my patience.

Women can, of course, do a lot of rotten things to other women.  I don’t believe in universal sisterhood, and anyone who does after having spent some time in a middle school classroom is frankly deluded.  I got teased and hazed the same as everyone else, and I haven’t assumed that all girls are my friends since I was about ten or so.  But that’s not what feminism is about.  Feminism isn’t about thinking that every woman’s got your back, or that women never do wrong to other women.  It is not about the girl who pulled your hair in the second grade or even about the guy who called you cunt in the tenth grade.  It is about the word “cunt,” and the fact that it’s a synonym for “vagina,” and the fact that calling someone a “Cunt” is such a very bad thing.  It’s about the cultural weight we put behind that word, a weight that words like “Dick” and “prick” simply do not have.

Call someone a prick, and they might be mad—or they might laugh.  Call someone a “cunt,” though, and unless you are very close friends, you’d better start running.

Feminism is not about individuals.  It’s not.  Feminism isn’t about individual people who have done other individuals wrong.  Feminism is about systems of power, and guess what?  Those systems of power rarely ultimately benefit women as a group.   Saying that women are cruel to other women is just the tip of the fucking iceberg, people.  It’s like saying that your breast augmentation was “merely” an individual choice.  Sure, it was—but do you really, honestly think that you would have wanted to have bags of silicone inserted into your body if your culture didn’t A.) consider large breasts attractive; and also B.) tell women that if they aren’t attractive, then they aren’t anything?  Somehow, I doubt it.

So yes.  If other ladies are mean to you, then I’m sorry–but I also invite you to ponder the ways in which they are cruel.  Calling you a whore?  Throwing you under the bus if it looks like they have an opportunity for advancement?  Ask yourself why they are doing what they are doing, and if all you can come up with is, “Women are just cruel to other women,” then I can pretty much guarantee that you’re not thinking hard enough, or looking deep enough.  You are seeing the symptoms, not the disease itself.

Um…happy friday?

In all honesty, having wracked your brains for HOURS (or, you know, seconds)–what kind of writing do y’all think I would be good at?  Other than the type that allows me to post pictures of my cats, hobvs.

Sorry for the posts about “What should I do with my LIIIIIIIFE!” but unfortunately, you guys are really smart and insightful and give good advice.  You bring it on yourselves, I swear.