Happy Birthday CASEY!!!

And Kate? I love the crown rings. Beautiful.

A late chicken, this past week has been busy, so I’ll make it quick:
Hard:
- Having to spend a day with my gentleman friend’s family. Always hard. Even harder when we get together to meet the newest member of the family, and I don’t even feel welcome to *ask* if I can hold him. Ugh.
- Not getting much time for myself, and thus not getting any to work on my thing at all.

Good:
- Spending time with my favorite kids in the world (my nephews and niece on my side of the family and, most importantly, the ones I am allowed to hold in my arms, play with, and generally have all kinds of fun with) *twice* in the last two days! Teaching my nephews how to knit was a whole lot of fun!
- Being invited for dinner by new friends. Lively conversation meant it was really noisy at times, I came back very tired, but it was a great evening!
- Having my gentleman friend ask a few times this week that we’d do Dance of Shiva together. Love!
.-= Josiane´s last post … Noticing – the dragonfly edition =-.

The hard:
- evaluation time at work

The supposed to be good turned bad:
- missing the air plane to London due to bad train services, which means I won’t get to see one of my dearest friends, the very needed weekend away from my life doesn’t happen and now I don’t know how to get the refueling time / distraction I needed oh so very much.

The hard:
*Holy up-and-down, batman! I am not yet used to this reality where I am a seriously emotional person.
*Unpacking: still feeling hard!
*Being out of a major relationship: ditto.
*Giving in to struggling about money
*Finding it hard to think ahead; finding that frustrating

The good:
*Doing well at remembering to give myself permission to feel what I’m feeling
*In fact, doing a pretty excellent job with self-care: checking in with my body about food, doing my 15-minute yoga thing, taking walks, responding with kindness to myself
*low-key week at work
*made awesome art for Seekrit Art Project! love!

But the Chicken! How I love the Chicken. And giving myself permission to do the Chicken when I can, which is not Fridays, apparently, when I’m working. So here goes:

The hard:
– rode the bus one day last week and the jerking back and forth in an SRO bus took my rib-healing back a few days. ow ow ow.
– the work project is nearing completion which means the programmers are getting all touchy and snippy and as the QA gal, I have to be extra careful with my notes on their bugs. And I’m working this weekend, which is both bad (tired!) and good (overtime!)
– a really nice guy I’ve worked with a few times unexpectedly left the company I’m working for because of budges issues – I miss seeing his friendly face in the office.

The good:
+ Birthday! With many well-wishes and a lovely dinner with the hippie husband
+ Healing: being able to do more things, like sneezing, laughing, coughing, and stretching without pain *good sigh* – lovely
+ the hippie husband decided to be a house-husband for a couple of days and did all the dishes and laundry. We joke that having all clean clothes and dishes might be a sign of the impending apocalypse. :)
+ Big project nearing completion and the awesome that comes with finally being able to show people what I’ve been working on
+ Birthday tattoo – today!

And – yay – more good stuff than hard. That rocks. Thank you everyone for sharing here and Havi and Selma for giving us the place to do it.
.-= Casey´s last post … Dave’s Top Ten Rules of Business =-.

This time in five years you will be wearing it proudly and visibly. You’ll like your crown. They’re terribly comfortable.
.-= Carol Logan Newbill´s last post … Two Great Ways to Send Your Readers Fleeing into the Night =-.

Today I just want to mention a book I recently read called The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney. It’s full of some of the GOOD things about being an introvert in an extroverted world. Also coping tips.

Happy weekend!

(also, didn’t he used to play with Gopped Up On Hoofers?)

Yay! Chicken!

“Looking younger than you are: Ha. Both of you. Just wait. One day it will catch up to you and you will suddenly realize you look like someone your mother’s age and dashing young men are calling you “Ma’am” instead of “Hon.””

I got ‘maam’ed in a roleplaying shop last year. Now, I used to be an obsessive roleplayer. Until a few years ago, I was right at the heart of my local rp community. So to have a fellow gamer geek call me ‘maam’ was quite a shock to the system. I wanted to say, ‘Dude, I’m one of you!’ I mean sure, I’m wearing jeans instead of combats now, but I’m still one of you!

It feels so weird when you find that something which is so much a part of your identity is invisible to strangers. I guess this is why people work so hard to dress like the subculture they identify with. I don’t do that, and so they don’t recognise me. :(

“However, at this point the crown is no longer invisible even when you aren’t wearing it. Being wrapped in authority (without effort) is a good thing.”

Oh, I so want this.

But I’m not sure it’s going to come to me with age. I’m so baby-faced that I may never look like a dignified older woman, I may just look like a wrinkly baby!

So I guess I have to find a way to project it from within.

I knew a girl at uni who had that knack. She was tiny – less than 5 foot, incredibly petite – she really did look like a child. But her manner was such that you had absolutely no doubt of her self-possession. You could definitely feel her invisible crown. She had enormous inner dignity. I tend to only manifest my inner dignity when I feel comfortable and confident, and sadly someone calling me ‘love’ is enough to make me feel uncomfortable and awkward. Because I then have a certain image (which may be entirely wrong) of the way they see me, and that becomes louder in my ears (oh, look at me mix those metaphors) than my own knowledge of who I am. I assume their response (the nature of which I’m already assuming) is about me, rather than appreciating it’s about them.