"There's nothing wrong with a baby going to a fashion show, and dogs doing flips is normal nowadays." 

A Classmate Of Mine. This is almost, ALMOST as good as the boy in my Spanish class a million semesters ago who said, serious as a heart attack, "Soccer is a grown man's sport." The next slide in the presentation he was giving was a picture of a bagel. This particular quote I've… uh, quoted, is particularly wonderful because it was posted on a discussion board on the internet. He had time to think this sentence, type it out, maybe re-read it, decide it was a good and relevant addition to the conversation, and publish it. When I write my memoir, a chapter will be entitled: "Community College - Wherein I Spend Half the Time Being Blown Away by Unadulterated, Untapped Genius and the Other Half Pinching the Bridge of My Nose With My Eyes Closed and Cursing the State of Our Public Schools and Feeling Feelings for These People Whose Parents for Whatever Reason Did Not or Could Not Read to Them." 

I am blogging this blog for two reasons:

1) My screenwriting class (don't ask me, I don't know why this is happening) got cancelled but I can't leave because I have another class. The other class is math and please believe I'd like to leave. Please. Believe. So I am here, googling "filming street harassers" because 

2) I AM BEING STREET HARASSED on the regular by the same men. And I am at my wit's end. My. Wit's. End. This morning it was so bad, you guys. Like, the worst it's ever been. Luckily, I am not the sort to fall apart over these types of things, being aware that the fault is theirs and not mine, etcetera. I feel pissed off. That's fucking rude, jerks hanging out in front of a bar in the wee hours of the morning. Who raised you? And don't say wolves, because wolves have MANNERS.

For a full discourse on street harassment, please help yourself to the rest of the internet. There are plenty of women far more eloquent than I offering information on this practice of catcalling. (There are also plenty of women who will tell you to "be grateful for the attention," and I just… I feel sorry for those women, actually. Annoyed that they're contributing to the problem, but mostly I just feel deeply sorry if that's how they truly feel.) It was while clicking through these articles that I learned about a couple of women filming their harassers, which was an idea I had this morning when I was still pissed off. (I'm over the incident(s), now, after the fact, but not the principle. The principle being, I shouldn't have to brace myself to be violated on my fucking walk to work.) Now, under every other circumstance I ignore them, whoever "them" happens to be, and keep walking. It's not worth my energy (although, hey wait, sometimes it takes more energy to keep a straight face and keep walking than it does to react? how many people spend all their energy holding shit in only to explode their shit, or implode their shit, later on? thinking thoughts, it hurts it hurts!) and also, I don't want to escalate the situation and have it become A Situation. I think of it like ignoring a child's temper tantrum, even though in this case the child is a full grown asshole instead of a bundle of id. But this shit, this garbage shit that I am speaking of tonight, is happening to me in my neighborhood that I love on a regular basis on my walk to work. So no, it doesn't feel as random as it usually does. It feels fucking personal, even though I know it really isn't, and I feel violated. AND NOBODY MAKES ME FEEL FEELINGS I DON'T WANT TO FEEL, STRANGE MEN. 

So I thought, I should take their picture. Or film them. I'm not sure which. But when I do, I'm going to upload it to every video uploading platform I can. I'm going to post their faces on local websites and on the website of that fucking bar and on Craigslist and I don't know what good it will do but I don't think I can handle being passive anymore. Because to me, passivity = granting them permission to continue to treat me a certain way. 

Or I won't, and I'll just think about it, because just thinking about it and writing about it made me feel better. And the fact that other women have already done it makes me feel better. And also worse, because why are there so many women for whom this is a thing that happens?

I know who raised him.

stolen gold inside

I went to visit my mom last weekend and she gave me a stack of about fifteen papers stapled together. (My mother loved to organize things BEFORE she quit smoking a few weeks ago, and now that she's channeling all her newfound non-smoking energy into organizing things even more, I'm afraid someone is going to make a television show about her. It'd be like Hoarders, except instead of hoarding and never leaving her house she'd break into other people's houses and organize the crap out of them. So it'd be more like While You Were Out than Hoarders, I guess. Except it could also be While You Were In because my mom also likes to chat with people. Also before when I said she's channeling ALL her newfound energy into organizing, I wasn't telling the whole truth; she's also channeling a good amount of it into repeatedly telling me she's not going to turn into one of those reformed smokers who tries to get everyone around her to quit, and then proceeding to outline the chapters of the quit smoking book she's reading and, you know, trying to get me to quit.) Upon closer examination, the papers were an entire Buzzfeed article that she'd printed out, stapled, and held onto to give to me. It was an article about books. Don't worry, I asked her why she hated trees and didn't she know how to use bookmarks in her browser and I said, "Mom, I know that you know that I know that you work at a computer and you know how to make one go and you know that email is a thing, so why this stack of paper that is half an inch thick?" Honestly I don't remember what she said back to me but I do remember that I got a very dirty look. Which I think was unwarranted, as I was not the one waging a war on our forests. But I thought about it, and what I thought was, that this is a lady who loves print. And this lady taught me to love words on a page, and the fact is that this story is a gift. Someday when I have done something of note, and people ask me to make a speech to some other people, I can work this anecdote in and everybody in the room will laugh and laugh and I will say, "So yes, I will always champion print," or something, maybe something like, "Don't we all hate trees, anyway? They're so smug, really" or maybe just thank you, Mom.

I think that since June a lot of relatively major events have taken place, and I think that I am still processing them. 

They're not all bad, but they're not for the internet, and even in real life I'm finding things difficult to relate. 

For some reason, writing anything at all helps a little, even if it's just to chirp "This semester is going well so far," even if writing the things I'm writing makes me want to throw the computer at the wall because it doesn't mean anything in relation to anything real that is happening and that matters and even if every sentence sometimes seems to shrink my whole life into itself and make it something trite and small.

Even if I write out an entire post, and tell you all about school and work and funny things and obsess about trains some more, just to delete it and post this instead.

I left in the bit about my mom, though, because. Also the picture of the Bloody Mary at the park, so I could say "BM at the park." 

I was going to make it funnier, but I wore myself out today doing all my homework and cleaning all my belongings and then writing the post that was only born to get deleted, and in the manner of a 1950's homemaker I am going to pretty myself up for when the man gets home.

Just kidding, I know that you know that I know that I am going to take a shower, blow-dry only my bangs, and spend the rest of the time staring at Seamless menus until he comes home. Like a lady.