Confessions of a High Femme Security Guard

So. I haven’t written in a little over two weeks because we’ve been juggling several large-scale things on the Key Route front. I’ve been prioritizing self-care and sleep over pretty much everything else. I haven’t seen most of my friends in this time…so don’t feel too singled out if I haven’t touched base with you in a while.

****Career****

Over the course of two weeks I applied to three State jobs with state versions of the EPA and other types of policy enforcement agencies. Initially, I took the exam to be an Engineering Geologist (EG) and I was so proud of myself because I passed with 80%. It was 49 multiple-choice questions with multiple-choice on references provided as to who could verify my experiences. This exam was all automated online and scored immediately. Great! There were two positions available for an Engineering Geologist so I started applying  for them.

I communicated with one of the HR people and also found out there was an Environmental Scientist (ES) position. It was a less technical job but also a less intense application. I then did the ES exam and passed with 85%. Then I had to MAIL the application in. Ugh. Whatever.

So I get to work on these Engineering Geologist jobs. Over the course of the week and half I prepare the applications I find out several distressing things.

1)   I did the wrong exam. Not a big deal; except that it turned into a huge deal. Instead of an automatically graded online test, I had to download the document and then mail in the test, with results to be mailed back within 4-6 weeks. I found this out on Monday. The test had to be completed and received before I was eligible to apply for the EG position. The deadline for the EG position was Friday.

2)   The test was 30 pages; every question required a short written answer. 38 questions asking me to detail the level of experience I had with every aspect of the job and in which class had I covered the material.

3)   Once I completed the test (with HUGE credit to my accountabilibuddy who didn’t leave my side until I was done) I had to mail the printed out document to the State capitol. Oh, and I didn’t mention that the radio buttons didn’t work so I had to fill them all in by hand before mailing them.

4)   The job stated that it required all of my official transcripts. Over the course of my college career I attended five colleges. Had to request transcripts from all of them, each request cost money.

5)   Each college transcript required me to FAX in a permission slip saying I really authorized the request.

After each of these requirements were met, I still had to write a two page Statement of Qualifications essay summarizing my education and experience (similar to a Personal Statement) and how I would fit into the position listed. While I love writing about my life, I generally hate writing about my life in a braggadocios manner. It took me 5 months of being unemployed before several friends pointed out that I should mention I graduated with honors when I applied to jobs. I held an assumption throughout college that the expectation was to get 4.0 so anything less than that was unacceptable and shameful. I never gave myself credit for actually living up to that.

Writing those two pages were some of the most excruciating prose I’ve done in a while. I created structure for myself by drawing out all of the verbs from the job listing. I then played that writing game where I included as many of the verbs as I could in the essay. I didn’t say I have excellent communication skills, I just showed it.

Then I also had to write cover letters for each position.

By Friday lunchtime I had completed everything and submitted all transcripts, diplomas, cover letters, statement of qualifications, copied my resume 4 times into different places and hit submit. I have no idea if I even passed the qualifying exam; and if not, the entire application was for naught! Yaaaay. .___.

Friday afternoon I went to a career fair in green tech utilities. Around my birthday someone recommended my getting into utilities as a stable possibility instead of starting my own business. I’m ornery and wrote off the suggestion at the time because I was vetting my business idea and I wanted the company to work. Three months later, I find myself at a utilities job fair.

It was actually a cute little fair with about 20 companies represented, about half of them Solar. Every time a representative from a Solar company talks about “solar systems” I crack up. They were mostly looking for sales agents and photovoltaic (PV) designers or engineers. I did find some interesting people with some really solid advice about how to network in this industry better.

I feel like job fairs can be pretty misleading at times. I went by the utilities representative for Oroenpaz City and the woman was quite cold and told me to take a pre-printed flyer. I offered her my resume and she informed me that all of the job listings were on the website on the pre-printed flier and good day.

I happened to swing by the same booth later and talked with a different representative. This guy seemed to be a middle manager that was certainly much higher up, maybe the other woman's boss? I offered him my resume and he literally said “Wow! This is really impressive!” Now we have a follow up phone screen next Wednesday. Looking forward to seeing if there is anywhere I can fit into their system to contribute my expertise.

****Housing****

 As the complicated application process unfolded, another event transpired on the home front. As aquageddon has transpired, a leak developed over our bathtub. I could see black mold peaking out through the sagging lintel. I report it to our property managers.

The same day (2/8), I find a piece of paper on our front door that informs us the property managers intend to tour the property with the new owners. The entire building has been sold, private sale.

On Friday (2/10) I came home from the career fair and there is a note on my clothes horse from the real estate agent of the new buyer. The note demands we fill out a form of estoppel certificate (I’m not even listed as a tenant) and respond immediately. Here is where the date is important. The letter is dated 2/9 and demands a two day turn around. It’s delivered on 2/10, on a Friday afternoon after the post office is closed. There is literally no way to meet the demands of the letter. To top it off, the letter closes with “Remember, you only get one chance to make a first impression so make sure it’s a good one.”

In addition to trying to manage my own feelings of fear, intimidation and anger I quickly found that my neighbors demand emotional labor to manage their feelings. In addition to the emotional work of assuring them that they are going to be fine, they seem to also be less informed than PartnerPenguin and I when it comes to the legal definitions of rent control. One of the neighbors (who considers himself the on-site manager) is convinced that the new owner will just kick us all out with no compensation and that we will all be homeless. That is so far from what is legally acceptable, even if we didn’t live in a rent-controlled unit. It’s been exhausting to even interface with that viewpoint.

PartnerPenguin and I are working to put together a one-page summary of the pertinent laws regarding tenant rights and post them publicly around our development. Hopefully this will give neighbors actionable information without actually interacting with us. And hopefully I will be able to keep the kitchen door closed so my next door neighbor stops inviting himself in to complain while I prepare my lunch.

In the meantime, we are starting to explore our options around the area. This is a compound stress because if I get the job with the state I will be commuting 90 miles, one direction, unless we move a bit north. This housing search is providing different and interesting challenges compared to previous housing searches. I am acutely feeling the privilege of our situation and appreciating it immensely because, for once, I am not terrified of being outright homeless. Previously it would have taken us 3-6 months to save the necessary first, last and deposit ($4000-5000 with current rent prices) to change homes. PartnerPenguin’s job has allowed for us to save that amount much more easily and therefore we have it at hand, should we need to move out tomorrow. I still hope we don’t need to, but it feels completely different from the last two or three times I moved. To give perspective: moving to The Lab on The Hill left both of us with $17 before my first paycheck hit.

Oh, and another thing with housing. Since aquageddon started we’ve had a new house-guest:

 I found it on my laptop case. I’m 99% certain it’s a termite. We’re keeping it in a glass jar until the property management company is open again after the holiday weekend. But many things are pointing towards GTFO’ing this complex right now.

****Job****

Applying for government jobs creates artificially long timescales so in the interim I decided to connect with a temp agency. I have talked at other points in time about gender presentation in the workplace but I feel like this has dominated my thoughts for the past week.

My most recent adventure into this topic happened at game night about two weeks ago. A friend was wearing a very cute outfit but the shirt cut low to about what I would consider to be about 70% cleavage. She wore an under-shirt but clearly the cleavage was intentional. I was flabbergasted that that level of femme presentation was allowed at work. There were time at TLoTH when I thought I was going to get written up for “inappropriate dress” when I had been showing about 30% cleavage. I had assumed from my lived experience that femme presentation and work were fundamentally incompatible unless you had small enough boobs and knew enough about fashion to utilize it without being sexual.

 Going into the temp agency was a culture shock of an experience. Women dominate this workplace and most of the jobs are gendered. Positions seem to range from secretary to sales with a sprinkling of event staffing. I figured some work is better than nothing so I offered to accept whatever comes across my plate. It helps that I have a very specific financial goal that I’m working towards so I can count how each hour of work helps me achieve my goal. My current financial goal is to do complete my work with Sparkles and achieve a breakthrough with her.

This week I got my first assignment! I worked security for an info security conference. Translation: I was a human door. I “guarded” the Speaker Lounge. Ostensibly my job was to make sure no one but speakers entered the room. I also needed to watch two Macbooks that weren’t locked down because Apple doesn’t believe in creating physical locks for their products? I learned the following about myself at this post.

·      I am absolute rubbish at being intimidating. I tried to kick people out of the room and they took their sweet time and then came back later in the day.

·      There were a few people who were nice and genuinely interesting. Some even gave me excellent advice about networking and different approaches to personal branding. I asked for this advice, they didn’t just flyby dump on me.

·      Many conference attendees do not educate themselves with maps provided before they attend a session. The most common conversation I had was giving directions to either the bathrooms or the other buildings of the conference.

·      Women and people of color were the 80% of the people who said “Thank you” to me for doing my job. However they were <15% of the participants of the event, both demographics combined.

·      I greeted literally everyone who passed me. I found that if I tried to avoid eye contact or just stand there silently the time passed EVEN slower and I felt more isolated by the moment.

·      Not being allowed to use the restroom or drink water gives me a whole new appreciation for white-collar jobs where neither of these things are relevant.

·      In conjunction with not being able to take care of my bodily needs, I also interacted with thousands of people, creating the perfect storm to foment illness.

·      Finally: A lot of people don’t people don’t pay any attention to folks in these positions and literally treat them as objects.

I have worked a lot in my life to prevent myself from total objectification. I, like many people raised as women, were told by figures of authority that if my gender presentation was too showy/risqué it would lead toward my harassment and I would be at fault for inviting it. I, like many women, struggle with how to react to catcallers and other unwanted forms of attention.

By contrast and protest, I have decided to lean into my femme presentation by choosing to wear a distinctly red shade of lipstick while our President is in power. I discussed this last post if you’d like to read more of my motivations. The combination of these decisions brought me to look like this at my security post this week:

I was genuinely surprised how many comments and compliments I got on my hair and makeup while at this post. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been as surprised since I greeted literally everyone. The one comment I really could have gone without was one speaker who left the lounge and said as a means of departing:

“Y’know every time I see those braids I just wanna pull ‘em!”

At that moment I was a bit shocked and didn’t respond. I asked my amazing community via Facebook whether I should report the incident. I got a lot of really emotionally honest responses and was impressed with how civilly my friend group disagreed with each other. (In case you haven’t read this article about Uber, I would recommend reading that right now.) I sent a description of the event to the temp agency without using the words harassment or threat of violence. They responded that it was good to report it and they were sorry it happened.

The conference distinctly lacked a code of conduct and there were so many sub-contractors that there actually wasn’t a clear path of whom I should talk to regarding reporting the incident. One of the non-asshole speakers from the lounge helped me identify a conference organizer with whom I could share my concern. I found her and described the interaction and she made a decidedly disgusted face. She asked who it was, and shared her very different experience with the same person. She believed me though, which was important.

Other women whom I told responded in return that several years ago there were booths at the expo hall that boasted half-naked women to sell their product. It seems this particular conference has a pretty entrenched objectification problem. I guess it makes me feel better that it’s not just me?

****Good newses****

The main pieces of good news are that I have amazing friends whom I’ve continued to see despite all this crazy nonsense. They have done so much for me in so many ways and I continue to be grateful every day.

My people keeper thing has definitely been a major source of brightness and prevention from my falling into the swirling drain of depression that comes with dead end jobs. It is so much less cognitive load to just check my calendar about whom I need to say hi to that day. From there friends can hear about different aspects of my life that I may or may not write about. It’s been working really well.

To close out, I present the only thing that can truly cure you when you’re sick: MOAR COWBELL!!

And to counter a classic, here is a brand new song:

It’s Not Makeup, It’s War Paint

First, I’d like to credit Iliza Schlesigner for the quote I’m using for the title. It feels accurate this week. 

Content warning: brief mention of suicidal ideation.

Anxious Allergies

I have hella food allergies. A lot of people reading this already knew that. I have always had them and spent a lot of time being miserable because they weren’t diagnosed and I didn’t pay attention to them. For example: I am deathly allergic to eggs. When I eat an egg, I pass out within an hour. It’s a weird proportion things and I explain it that I can eat a cookie but not a quiche. When I was younger, growing up in a predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish community, this was a major problem. During Passover in particular I had a really tough time with starving. Passover was the one time during the year where my family was strictly Kosher and because of this we ate a lot more parve (neither dairy nor meat) foods. This included eggs. This made me feel very tired a lot and made it so I didn’t want to eat. By the end of eight days not eating anything but chocolate and matzah I was always happy for it to be over.

I cut eggs out of my diet when I was 21. It was amazing. I started getting more energy in my activities and felt a lot better. I was still experiencing some pretty intense physical issues at the time but cutting eggs did help.

Recently, I have found another food allergy: nightshades. Back in May I did an elimination diet as I suspected that I had an unidentified food allergy. When I reached the point of the diet where I was to reintroduce nightshades, the book warned that each group should be introduced separately as nightshade allergies can be quite severe. Not heeding this warning, PartnerPenguin and I made Ratatouille. I had two servings of this dish over rice and that will probably be the last time I ever eat it. In the next three days I experienced for the first time with incredible precision the effects of a nightshade allergy. Every nerve ending, inside and outside of my body felt like it was slightly on fire.

Perhaps the most important discovery with this allergy was noticing the linkage between my background levels of anxiety and the anxiety provoked by this nervous system inflammation. Specifically: I retroactively observed that several occasions when I experienced suicidal ideation were directly linked to my consumption of nightshades. Well, that’s some bull shit and completely avoidable so I have cut nightshades out of my diet entirely.

It has been a rough journey since May, on cutting these foods out. I can’t eat Mexican, Indian or really anything spicy at all anymore. I’ve recently been trying to eat more vegetarian lately because I noticed that since I can eat meat, I wind up eating a lot of it.

Pizza has been the food I have missed the most, besides Chicken Masala. Being able to just chip in for a giant pie is always so easy to do. This past Sunday we had a lovely evening planned with friends where we got together and watched The Dish. We decided to go in for pizza, but we approached the subject with great caution. We read through all of the ingredients and chose a white pizza with pesto sauce, chicken, garlic and a couple other things that were safe to eat. I ate the pizza with great gusto because I haven’t even tried to eat pizza in 5 months (again it was a white pizza).

Unfortunately by the end of the night I realized something horrible. The chicken (which had been listed as plain chicken) was actually soaked in a tomato sauce. I had eaten three slices. :< I started to feel a little queasy and asked the friends driving us home if we could leave. Everyone was really mad at the pizza company for not listing that the chicken had tomato on it. TTfDU called the store the next day and they said that they get their chicken from a third party and they don’t know what’s in it. At this point, I don’t know which disturbs me more: the fact that the ingredients weren’t accurately portrayed or that a company uses ingredients without checking what’s in them.

All told I ate about 3 tablespoons of tomato paste but that was sufficient to incite a terrible anxious reaction. Monday I canceled my plans (that I’d made weeks ago) because I couldn’t face the transit required to attend them. Mega props to the friend I was going to journey to see for offering to hang out on Skype. Now I have Skype and am starting to understand how much fun Skype dinner dates are.  

Political Thing-a-Week

As I mentioned two weeks ago, I am not interested in sitting idly by while the current President disembowels our democracy. This has been difficult to enact and I have had to remind my friends and myself that there are more than three ways to be an activist.

First, I have started to wear war paint. In my adult life I have never included makeup on a regular basis as part of my wardrobe. Since the inauguration, I found the perfect color and I have been wearing it every day. It is my war paint. It is aggressively femme and aggressively loud. It is my “smash the patriarchy” color and I’m super happy about it.

One way I have practiced activism is being there for friends. Showing up to my friends’ houses and actively listening as they decide whether or not to stay in the country. Calling and texting friends whose absence I have noticed from regular events to make sure they are ok. Adding supportive commentary on Facebook threads to make sure my friends know they are not alone in their views.

Another way I’ve been active is straight up protesting. I’d like to give a window into why that it’s not so simple. Sunday morning, the day after the Cheeto in Chief’s executive order on banning travel I felt too restless to stay inside. I made this sign:

I waited for PartnerPenguin to wake and let him know I planned on protesting. When he did wake me up, he held me closely and expressed his conflicted feelings. On one hand he did not feel like he could or should suggest I not protest. On the other hand, he was very worried about my safety. I have never been arrested. I have never been physically assaulted. We both know I’m rubbish at running. PartnerPenguin had looked into ways to get out of the airport without public transit or cars and there are basically no pedestrian exits.

I appreciated deeply feeling so cared for and knowing I have a home to return to. But on Sunday I just couldn’t stay home. I know too many people with their Green cards. I know quite a few people who have attended school through AB540 funding. I grew up with several Bosnian, Ukrainian and other USSR refugees. Members of my family are naturalized citizens. I just couldn’t sit still.

The protest itself was a lot less White than Women’s March. It was on private property but the airport as a company seemed to be in support of the protesters. They made signs to make sure protesters knew where to go. I held my sign (with its spelling error…that no one noticed) up above my head and sang “Move Trump, get out the way” with a woman whose voice makes mine look like a weak child’s.  It felt very 1920’s suffragette in nature.

 By contrast to the Women’s March, there were riot police at this protest. When they arrived I quietly took my leave and again avoided getting arrested. I felt a bit ashamed that I was there for such a short time and left when I was afraid of things getting messy but at the same time I was prioritizing being ready for the next thing and taking care of myself.

Another way I have acted is cashing in social capital I build at TLoTH. From this work it looks like the National Science Foundation is indeed part of the Executive branch and therefore cannot technically advocate or lobby on behalf of themselves when faced with the threat of defunding. But the person I contacted seemed to really appreciate my reaching out.

Children Are Monsters

Most of my experience with children for the past five years has been The Little Bear and her friends. The Little Bear has good home training, is intellectually curious but also is very cautious and shy in public. Oh Glob am I glad that going forward she may be the main kid I interact with for the next while.

The Shit Job of This Month happened this past week and good Glob was it shitty. As I mentioned last week, this company has been in touch since October and then finally offered 10 hours total. Turns out I really dodged a bullet.

The first day I showed up to a school with no instructions on how to sign in as a visitor or where the class I was to help with would take place. Eventually I showed myself to the office and signed in while I waited for the other teacher. She was about 15 minutes late, but ok. As we’re unloading her car she realizes she forgot some of the supplies. Oh well, these things happen and we could improvise. The classroom was stocked with chairs for pre-schoolers (we were seeing kids K-2) and the tables were too low to sit under. There were no paper towels and the teacher didn’t bring any cleaning supplies, but I figured that wouldn’t be relevant.

It was relevant. The activity we eventually did was measuring out water and rice. There was insufficient physical activity early in the class. By the time we got to the measurements exercise the girls were screeching and delighted to mix, splash and generally wreak havoc on the rice, water and measuring materials. The teacher also brought thumbtacks and pennies to measure? Not really sure what the original thought was there, but I’m glad the girls mostly stayed away from the thumbtacks. One girl grabbed a meter stick and began wielding it like a sword. I tried to ask for the stick back but…let’s say she did not go down without a fight. Other children were pretending to swim on the floor and by the end of class there was a lot of shrieking.

After the children left, I found a small rag that one of the children had started to clean the mess with. I used it to corral as many rice grains as I could find and had to wring it out every minute.

The other classes were not as bad as the first one, thankfully. I wore my hair in Princess Anna braids for several of the classes and I smacked down with children touching my hair without permission. In one case I said “We don’t touch people’s hair without their permission.” She said “May I have permission to touch your hair?” I said “No,” and then walked away. This is not a frequent occurrence for me, though it’s not the first time. I felt like it was a good opportunity to discuss consent and bodily autonomy.

The nice thing was that they have already paid me for my time and now I can move on. I hope your weekend is lovely. Today we’ll close out a song popped up when ParterPenguin typed in “inoffensive music for sick wives”, and YouTube returned the following. 

The First Week of the New Free World

Shout out for Shelter

Before I really dive into my week, I’d like to start this post with a quiet moment of gratitude. Last Friday I wrote my blog, which was exhausting but a productive thing for me to write (at this time the post has a record-breaking 97 reads on Medium!). Usually on Fridays I co-work with a friend and her cats but that didn’t work out. So by about 2 pm I found myself having gone most of the day without talking to anyone. 

I reached out to my friend, the Closeted Philosopher and asked if he might be available for a hug. We were able to meet for all of ten minutes but I wanted to give him a shout out, here and now, because those ten minutes meant so much to me. 8/10 minutes were spent under and umbrella, walking to the train station and that brief moment of shelter from both nature and politics was a gift. Thank you.

Fluid Mechanics of Protests

In the past week and a half I have participated in three events that each had more than a thousand people. Two of these were designated as protests, the other was just a really really big group of people riding bikes together. 

One of the marches was the National Women’s March, which I participated in the Key Route City. When asked why I marched this weekend, this was my response:

I marched this weekend to simply state that I am entitled to equal human rights as any man. I march to protest the appointment of Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, Ben Carson, Mike Pompeo, Betsy DeVos, Rick Perry, Scott Pruitt, and Steven Mnuchin as members of an executive cabinet representing my country and myself as a constituent. I march to protest the defunding of the EPA, the Affordable Care Act and Planned Parenthood as many American casualties will ensue from these cuts. I march to protest the lack of appointment for the seat of NNSA chair, limiting the reasonable checks and balances between President Trump and our national nuclear stockpile.

When I was in high school my mom gave me this pin:

I was so honored that she passed to me a symbol of her own resistance to the patriarchy (though we hardly used that word in conversation). To some extent I cannot believe that I am fighting for the same things as my mother in her youth. 

I have been doing a lot of thinking about protesting, resisting and organizing effect those with disabilities, especially invisible disabilities. In all of the protests there is the activation energy of going on public transit to arrive at the specified location at the time indicated. I tried to lower that activation energy for my friends by instigating a meeting spot at my house before the march. This backfired in some ways that I hope to learn from but overall was quite successful. 

My little pod of people stayed together within the 100,000 other folks on the street. When we finally moved after waiting a while for the route to solidify, there were two flows that developed, parallel to street and curvy-but-ultimately-perpendicular to street. Once the march picked up speed, however, people funneled to all be parallel to the street. The slow-moving nature of Saturday’s march made it easier to not become a pebble but the phenomenon of fluid pressure on a fixed object was definitely felt during the bike group event. 

Overall the march was a little confusing to me. I felt like there were a lot of people marching for a lot of reasons. I wore a pussy hat because a friend made it and donated the proceeds to Planned Parenthood. But I was personally challenged about my wearing of such a hat when a 12 year old asked me why it was a cat hat. I (with permission of her parent) explained that pussy is a derogatory term for women’s genitalia. Besides being embarrassed about answering, it also made me look at myself and question whether by supporting this grassroots effort by my friend to make the statement “pussy grabs back” was being sufficiently inclusive within my own definitions of feminism. Still don’t have an answer on that one.

I feel like I didn’t do enough active questioning or put sufficient effort into inclusivity during this march. There’s a picture of a man holding a sign at a march that says “See you nice white ladies at the next #Black Lives Matter March, right?” I had my “Free Hugs” sign (which now includes #blacklivesmatter on the back) and I offered hugs to police officers with 98% acceptance rate. I wore chem safety goggles, and steel toed shoes and a bandana with extra scarves on my person because I was afraid of things getting violent. They didn’t. Which is great! But it’s also a sign of privilege that 100,000 predominantly white protesters can have 0 arrests but if there are even a tenth of that number and those folks are people of color there are dozens of arrests and possibly tear gas. It’s really difficult to articulate when I’m experiencing White Fragility firsthand. If Brene Brown has taught my anything, it’s that sometimes you have to say “pain” out loud before you can recognize that’s what’s going on for you, then you can experience it and then move on.

Quick note on self-censorship

So, it finally happened this weekend: I unfriended someone on Facebook due to their support of Trump and general alignment with the political group of “alt-right”. I had a lengthy conversation about why I made this choice and it came down to this:

The person I unfriended was not just in a different political affiliation to me. He broke consent boundaries when I interacted with him in person and he continued to pursue a close friend of mine after she told him he wasn’t interested. I think a really big challenge of keeping viewpoints different from your own on your curated personal newsfeeds is the possibility of boundaries and standards of interactions one holds close being broken without warning.  

By contrast, I have several people within my "friend" group who support Trump. However, they respect my personal boundaries and respect me as a full person. So until that changes, I will not change my relationship with them.

Here out, I am trying to make an effort to check multiple news sources regularly so I can see how information is being described. I am checking the Executive Orders themselves in addition to op-eds about them. I am looking into Satyagraha and active non-cooperation with behaviors I don’t agree with, like limiting personal freedoms.

Yet this week has already seen mass censorship, particularly around climate change information. None of my dystopian totalitarianist novels prepared me for Park Rangers to lead the revolution against censorship, but I’m totally OK that they are.

 Becoming a Golden State Scientist

Great news!! After months of unemployment and dead ends I have found a surprising amount of hope applying to work with The Golden State itself. It turns out that I am extremely qualified to become an Engineering Geologist! I was really surprised because I looked through the required areas and immediately thought “Yeah! I have experience in at least 75% of those.” Then I took the test (with a friend sitting next to me for moral support) and I passed it with 80%. Really interesting note on their application process: they offered a box that asked if I would prefer not to take a test on a Saturday due to religious reasons. I checked that box because I actually would prefer not to but have never been given the opportunity to express that. 0__0

So far I have submitted an application to be an Environmental Scientist with the conservation department and next week I will submit the application to be an Engineering Geologist, Professional Geologist track. I am so jazzed that within the year I could be making sure residents have access to safe water and building conditions, even if the larger political climate of the country is not interested in things like potable water and publicly available science.

In the short term, I have been struggling with feeling valued for my time. A company whose mission I admire and support (getting k-5 girls interested in science) has been stringing me along since October. I met the co-founders at a Maker Faire and gave her my resume. I followed through with two interviews, the second of which I made a lesson plan, purchased materials and practiced with my niece The Little Bear. I provided references and they were contacted, despite being difficult to track down and respond. For all of this effort, I was offered 10 hours of employment. Not per week. Total. And this job will pay less than $200 for that time. It makes me feel like my time is not worthwhile if that is the outcome I should expect from such an extensive process.

I told some of my friends how I was feeling strung along and frustrated and they immediately put me in touch with a temp agency. The temp agency has already reached out and lined up jobs for me two weeks out so I can make some income while the state takes their merry time getting back to me on the applications. It will feel really empowering to have an income of my own after a few months without.

Garbage filled sausage exercise

I wanted to talk for a bit about some of the cool self care stuff I’ve been up to. My work with Sparkles helped me solidify a morning routine for myself. My weekly goal has been to bike 25 miles a week (up from 20 when I started) and I have been achieving that by biking to a nearby lake in the mornings. I like seeing the water birds, especially the herons. As of writing this I have biked 30 miles this week. So I’m doing well on setting and achieving my goals!

Since the beginning of the year I’ve been substituting my breakfast with a super green shake. Central ingredients have been kale, chia seeds, cucumber, avocado, coconut water and cooked squash (this week it’s pumpkin). I add protein powder and it’s pretty nifty how filling it all is. And yummy too, since I’m acclimated to it. I know some people who would be pretty grossed out by thinking of eating kale, but I like it.

This past Sunday when I was feeling really un-valued because of the aforementioned non-job the timing worked out that someone invited me salsa dancing! The basic steps are fairly intuitive and there is a lot of interpersonal chemistry and problem solving that I would be really interested in continuing to learn. I really appreciated the friends’ commitment to making me feel included, even though she had been dancing for 15 years she came to the beginner’s class so I wouldn’t have to do it alone. Commitments are so much easier to make when you don’t feel alone in making them.

Finally, PartnerPenguin and I have started a new ritual of doing plank for a minute before we go to bed. This was inspired by Dr. Bow’s blog post about her experiments with doing plank. I don’t think there will ever be a time when I’m as ripped as her, but I am able to hold the pose for the full 60 seconds and I’m getting better each day. 

But PartnerPenguin and I lovingly refer to this minute as our “garbage filled sausage” time. Because that’s how doing plank for a minute makes you feel.

Today I’ll sign off with the only song that seems appropriate for the National Womens’ March. Released 22 years ago and the line “Oh, I'm just a girl, all pretty and petite/So don't let me have any rights/Oh, I've had it up to here!” still rings pretty fucking true today.

Thanks, Obama

I am sad. I am almost done, but not quite done, with mourning. Today I am writing this piece as my own small act of protest. Tomorrow I will act bigger. But this is my act today.

I am new, by comparison, at being an adult. I have lived and voted under one administration. When Obama got elected, I was living in a housing complex where the lease passed from person to person, you never called management, even if someone OD’d and you had to call the cops. My neighbors lent me a bright green mixing bowl to mix scone batter because I couldn't afford luxuries like mixing bowls. But I'd be damned if I didn't make celebratory scones in honor of my first act of democracy, voting in the general election for the first Black president.

Obama has been my president as I struggled through my own health crises and understood better why my parents health crises contributed to their bankruptcy. Obama has been my president while I scoured, interviewed, petitioned in some cases begged to have access to housing after my initial family home was lost to foreclosure. Obama's stimulus package hit about the second year I had a “real” job out of high school and I used the funds to pay for textbooks.

In the past couple years, it has been my friends turns to experience the costs of having to choose between health and housing, financial stability or going to the ER. When their mom (or primary care provider, or spiritual leader) tells them “Oh it's fine sweetie, it's just in your head,” they listen. And it's easier to listen to what they know to be abusive language because it's cheaper in the short term to listen to this advice, keep one's head down and drink some more tea.

Obama’s healthcare reforms have led, in some ways, to this getting better. I am sad and scared and worried that there is a real chance my friends will die without it. Someone related a story to me recently about being in a room with a speaker trying to get the participants to calm down. “Stop ‘freaking out’” the speaker said. “We got through the Reagan administration just fine, we'll get through this.” The person relating the story said, “Not everyone did.” The person relating the story works for the AIDS foundation, who still hold a moment of silence before meetings to remember who they are working for, who is not among them to work.

I didn't live through Reagan. But the ease with which the general populace has forgotten how many gay men died of AIDS due to Reagan’s ignorance touches my life. It touches my faith community.

More than that, one of my grandparents was nearly executed in WWII. Plenty of my community members had grandparents who were sole survivors of the camps in Europe. I visited the mass graves of all the dead from the Budapest ghetto while I was in Europe. 6 weeks, the ghetto lasted. 4000 dead. How how how how HOW are these events so far from the present that we don't collectively remember them? How are there people who don't believe it happened?

We easily and comfortably forget marginalized people’s casualties to the point of allowing them to potentially happen again. But even if registries don't happen, even if camps don't happen, that doesn't mean “we’ve” won. People won't die immediately due to lack of healthcare. People won't die immediately as climate change gets worse. It will mostly happen to the invisibly huddled masses.

The first victims will be the homeless. But who cares, homeless people die every year due to exposure. They the main demographic who does. Yet the homeless demographic is more intricate of a population than “yelling crazies” who were dumped by cuts of the healthcare system. A very large portion of today’s homeless population belong to the LGBT community. The current administration just deleted https://www.whitehouse.gov/lgbt , rendering that community nationally invisible. The current administration advocates for "conversion therapy" creating toxic environments for LGBT youth to even come out. Setting the stage for a new wave of LGBT homeless youth, going into increasingly harsh political and physical climates.

The next set of victims will be Native people in the Northern hemisphere or poorer folks living in rural areas in the Southern hemisphere. America doesn’t really have the best of relationships with the mainland Native tribes, I can’t imagine there will be much in terms of emergency relief acts as more and more Inuit tribal folks are displace. This is just the beginning.

Obama has been my president while my friends and I got married, including my friends with same gender partners. It was only three years ago I celebrated with thousands of people in Oroenpaz City at the repeal of DOMA.

Obama has been my president when I worked at The Lab on The Hill, funding basic science so that American citizens could benefit from things like clean water and air. The engineering team at TLoTH work actively with NASA for space missions and inventing things for space. There, employees were committed to being good stewards of the nuclear stockpile, making sure that no one sent off a nuke just because they were extra grumpy with China that day. All of these people’s jobs now could be in jeopardy.

As Trump gets sworn in today, I acutely feel a chapter of my adult life coming to a close. That chapter where I can be quiet, complicit, or invisible is over. I can’t allow my straight-passing relationship obscure that I’m bisexual. I can’t allow my white skin to suppress the voices of those with brown or black skin. I commit to supporting art made by my friends. I commit to supporting art made by women, transfolx, Native and African-American people.

And, as my grandfather described me in a memo to the college Math department where he teaches: I commit to being a Women in STEM activist.

I commit to saying what needs to be said.

Even if this terrifies me.

I am safe, I am whole, I am home

My biggest accomplishment of this week was completing the following project:

I started this project about a year ago when I was working at TLoTH. I distinctly remember the afternoon because I was hanging out with The Tenor and The Triple Point Dude watching football. I was reading Come As You Are and Dr. Nagoski returns to this phrase as her mantra throughout her book: “I am safe, I am whole, I am home.” This resonated so deeply with me that I decided I needed to see it every day, in my own handwriting. Also football is boring to me and I wanted something else to do. ^___^

I finished the last “I” while I was volunteering  at the library this week. It made me very happy but everyone around me was like…”That’s great…but I need to continue putting these books away…”

I have been working on a lot of projects, mostly related to my New Years Resolutions and my work with Sparkles.

People Keeper Project

A major new years resolution I spoke about last week was gathering about 150 people and being more diligent about staying in touch with them. My internal motivations for this goal stem from examining some of my social patterns, particularly during time of increased depression. I used to carry around a duffel bag with the following quote on it:

“I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, "Hi." They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.” –Augusten Burroughs

It has been a good motto to live by, for much of my life. However it does not adequately address how to maintain relationships (I have very high demands with quotes). A big issue I saw was a pattern within myself when I’m depressed wherein I forget people exist. Usually not the people I see every day, but people who live far away. And it is not that I forget them entirely: I’m readily able to recall important parts of our mutual history when I think of them. But I forget to reach out.

I’ve noticed that in a lot of ways, this creates a huge cognitive burden for me. A burden so large that it overwhelms me when I’m depressed and I can’t surmount it and do one of the things that would help lower depression most: connect with people who care about me. By increasing regularity, I hope to make my life more boring in some ways so that I can concentrate on putting more of my energy into being creative and being more effective with my time. (I stumbled upon a TEDx talk about being boring and I think it’s the cutest thing ever.)

I am designing my “People Keeper” project to help me lower that cognitive load by automation. Thus far in the year I have been keeping very close track of the 150 people I chose to be on my list. I took the most recent date of contact and then did a bit of math on this (comment or ping me directly if you’d like to see my math) to predict when the next time I should reach out to each person. From there, I have spent the time putting each person in my phone with a recurring reminder based on the timeline I made in the spreadsheet. Someone commented, with glee, that he really hoped there was a spreadsheet. Of course there’s a spreadsheet. I’m a scientist.

I feel like this organizational method is already working for me. I acknowledge the immense privilege I have in being able to work on this for many hours during 9-5 period in the past couple weeks. That being said, I really feel like in enacting these guidelines for myself I have already been better at keeping in touch with people. And I’m learning how to just say “Hi” in a new way. I have finished inputting my weekly and bi-weekly folks, now working on monthly, and then quarterly.

I also appreciate that working on this project gives me concrete, achievable goals with the potential reward of having closer friends. ^__^

Accountabilibuddies

One really big difference that I’ve built for myself in the past 4-5 weeks has been creating communities of accountabilibuddies (buddies who help maintain accountability). This generally looks like co-working with 1-2 people for several hour chunks throughout the week. Sometimes it’s in my home, sometimes in other peoples’ homes, sometimes at the coffee shop. But always with other people.

I have been reading The Power of Habit (as recommended by Sparkles) and I like that the thesis is very simple, yet not easy. Habits exist because having to think through every detail would be overwhelming and exhausting. But you are not necessarily conscious of when and how habits form. You can re-write new habits onto old ones, by changing the routine. Routines change providing you use a framework starting with the same trigger and ending with the same (or similar) reward.

But the final ingredient in solidifying habits is to be part of a community who believes that change is possible. Even if that community is only two people; that can be enough.

This week I added a new accountabilibuddy to the roster for writing my novel. I have spent a lot of time in the past week doing research and preparing things. But I really appreciated sitting opposite someone and telling me “at some point you just have to write.”

Another major accomplishment today was helping the KinkyKabuki apply for a tenure track professorship in less than five hours. I swear to Glob, if you’re listening, help get this guy an interview. He’s perfect for the position.

Enjoying life

Having the time and space to work on necessary but not uplifting stuff, I really focused on having fun in the evenings.

I was invited to a burlesque show so I went in style:

By which I mean I was in a weird mood and decided I needed green lipstick. The dancing was fantastic at the show. I really like burlesque because it draws together a sense of theatricality with a sense of shamelessness. There are so many textures and sparkles and glitter and everything is very rich. There was one performer who did a number that was exactly what I had imagined the first time someone explained what burlesque was. She had a very 1920s aesthetic, complete with giant feather fans. It was fantastic.

At this point in our story I need to introduce two new people. At her request, I am going to call this friend The Thunder from Down Under, or TTfDU for short. Wow, that doesn’t make it any better. HAHA! TTfDU also has a Husfriend but he doesn’t become relevant until later.

TTfDU and I have talked, at some length, about the role of stable women’s friendships and how they are often lacking in mainstream media except for Steel Magnolias.  These relationships tend to have few conflicts as compared to romantic relationships. But due to the representation of these types of relationships (and a personal lack of role models) I am often befuddled about how to establish and maintain a stable friendship with women.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago we went to see 20th Century Women for this exact reason. The movie was excellent, but the demographic of the crowd was…well TTfDU and I were about half the age of most of the audience. I declared that we are baby old ladies. Which is great because it means we can grow into our true selves as we age! Later, TTfDU sent me an article that confirms my hypothesis and demonstrated that not only is it a thing, but it’s actually trendy as hell!

This week for #babyoldladymovienight me, PartnerPenguin, TTfDU and her Husfriend all went to see Hidden Figures. IT WAS AMAZEBALLS AND YOU SHOULD ALL GO SEE IT NOW. I brought a box of tissues but then I was the only one to use them. We all had a great time and I got to learn more about TTfDU, Husfriend and three badass women scientists!

Food

To close things out, I wanted to share with you two food things that I found noteworthy this week.

PartnerPenguin and I found the gentrification of pretzel rods! They are “breadsticks” but they are intentionally stale and they are covered in sesame seeds. And the waiters hardcore judged us for eating all the butter.

The other is a dinner I had this week. I was just really proud I put it together because it looks so grown up.

Dumplings from Trader Joes. Rice is that brand that is pink on the outline and is short grained. PartnerPenguin’s relatives gave us a new rice cooker that actually works and now I’m eating all the rice. With fancy rice seasoning. Veg are daikon radish, regular white radish, carrots and shittake mushrooms in a mixture of sesame oil, canola oil, soy sauce, fish sauce and a smidge of rice vinegar.

And to close out today, I’m including a song I found by way of Marvel’s Luke Cage. I really appreciated how that show used song both actively and passively to advance plot action. However, it completely spoiled my expectations of Mahershala Ali which mildly impaired seeing him in Hidden Figures. I was very very very very relieved that Colonel Jim Johnson did not share Cornell Stokes’ disposition.

I dedicate this song to our outgoing President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. Long Live the Chief.