Fan Girl Wannabe

Memory Lane Meme. china_shop gave me 30.

I lived in Greenville, South Carolina, in the second house we ever bought. It was on Batesview Rd.  I turned 30 almost 6 weeks to the day after my son (2nd child) was born.  I was all aglow with stay-at-home mommyhood that year.  The neighborhood had no sidewalks, but was very well maintained with a good mix of ages.  Some people had built their houses, raised their kids there and continued to live there through retirement, with visiting grandkids on holidays.  We had several walking routes, a Jr Olympic-sized pool at the end of the street, and easy access to a lovely city park.  We were also within spitting distance of Bob Jones University, which was an island of strange in a sea of conservatism.

I drove a silver Plymouth Voyager.  It was the classic minivan/mom-mobile.  It's name was Ferdinand the Van. A clunky vehicle needs a clunky name, doncha know. 

I was in a relationship with DH.  At this point we'd been together 6+ years.  It was and is the longest (romantic) relationship of my life.  At this time we were still monogamous, which was a huge 'accomplishment' for me, as it's not really my nature.  But it would be another 2 years before we would even come up for air, we were that smitten.

I feared... becoming a permanent stay-at-home mom? Not being a good parent? Turning into a full-blown southern married woman for sure. I was conflicted.  I loved being with my babies, but I missed my professional life (and the discretionary part of the income). 

I worked - At the end of my maternity leave, I was laid-off and went directly onto unemployment. I had only expected to be home for 12 weeks max.  It was a crappy way to be laid-off, over the phone, by HR, instead of by my own supervisor, but my whole department was gone, and I was pretty thrilled to be staying home longer, with severence pay and then unemployment.  That summer I was the President of our community pool, became a certified pool operator to satisfy new state health laws, and handled all the money, hiring, and payroll duties as well.  Also anything else the rest of the board didn't want to do that we couldn't afford to pay someone else for.  It paid great: I received all kinds of backward compliments, passive aggressive behaviors and downright nasty comments about allowing a daycare that also had 'coloreds' to reserve one of the weekly rental time slots that I'd set up to help earn the pool some desperately-needed revenue.  This was the volunteer job where I learned that no good deed goes unpunished.

I wanted to be well-off enough to decorate my house and keep up with Miss Amy across the street.  Her place was like a House Beautiful spread, but most of the stuff she made herself or got second-hand, and her husband was a hobby woodworker, so he'd do whatever crown and base moldings or whatever else she wanted.  She was my best friend at the time too.  I knew I had to go back to work eventually, but I absolutely wallowed in happiness the 15 months I stayed home. I even ironed DH's dress shirts every week! I hate ironing!


Want to meme? Tell me how old you are, and I'll pick a random age for you to remember.

OK, so I normally don't do the real life stuff in this journal.  Feel free to skip this one.  It's way TMI.

( Whine, bitch, grump. Walk on by, friends, nothing to see here. )
It's also much safer to post it here than my RL journal.

Yesterday a friend posted about getting a costume to wear to a Wild Wild West party.  I immediately pictured some sort of Annie Oakley gear - shirt with fringe, jeans, boots, and a hat.  

Of course, she's going to be wearing something a little racier and girlier.  Probably involving satin and feathers and hose...

Then I started thinking about all the occasions where I've gone out dressed as a guy.  I've been Hawkeye Pierce (M*A*S*H), and a gangster in a pinstripe suit with fedora and penciled-in mustache.  I've been a sailor in authentic navy blues, and a pirate (although I didn't get the memo about the eyeliner).  And of course, in doing my job, I've frequently been the classic construction worker - men's shirt, jeans, steel-toed boots, hard hat, with and without the gloves and safety glasses many many times.  I have also always wanted to wear a tuxedo, but haven't had the right occasion for it (plus, I think I should be much taller and thinner to pull it off).

This is not to say I don't enjoy dressing like a girl, because I really really do love the silky and the slinky and the sexy.  (Hence the angel, fairy, witch,Tinkerbell, and baby doll costumes).  But given the opportunity to wear a costume, I seem to go for the menswear regularly.

And while we're on the subject of genderfuckery, what does it say about all the guys who have picked me up while I was dressed like them? Or, maybe I picked them up - it's hard to say.  (Don't worry, it's only happened once at work - and that was a looong time ago).  I only had one guy come straight out and say he was uncomfortable with me being dressed like a guy.  He's not the one that went home with the gangster that night.

Over the weekend I discovered a couple of CDs that I believe I inherited from nayad. Last year for the holidays, she wrapped up a bunch of interesting stuff – books, magazines, DVDs and CDs that she wasn’t interested in keeping any longer, but were not deserving of the trash heap, and gave out the boxes as surprises. My box yielded some interesting items, and I shared it with roguebitch, who claimed a couple of things too.

So, I rediscovered these two CDs that I had not yet listened to, even though roguebitch said I’d probably like at least one of them, I just can’t remember which one. I figure it won’t kill me to try out new stuff once in awhile, plus, I totally needed new music in my driving lineup because I was getting seriously tired of what I had thanks to 3+ hr drives twice a week for the entire summer. First up was Gilt by Machines of Loving Grace.

( Even vanilla sex is hot if you're doing it right )

I think if I had known a little more about these CDs, I’d have chosen to play Doll’s The King of Monster Island first. But, it worked out okay being second, because it gave me a good long cool down before I had to put my game face on and speak to clients and contractors. At an elementary school, no less! Doll turns out to be fairly lively, a single female voice and some energetic guitar work that put me in mind of the Indigo Girls. I caught a few phrases of the lyrics on this one, and I enjoyed them, and got the feeling that a lot of the message was about empowerment.

I’ll definitely be listening to these both again (and again). In fact, I’m kind of kicking myself right now, because I could have been listening to these all summer long, if we’d only reorganized the CD rack sooner.

*super-cooling occurs when a material gets caught at an energy level not normally associated with a phase change, and kind of sticks there for awhile. It would be like water freezing to a solid before reaching zero degrees C, but is more commonly associated with processes taking place on the sub-atomic level. /geek 

ETA:  roguebitchpoints out I switched the name of the band and the name of the CD, but it's fixed now!