Debate...

There were household tensions. How it's shaken out so far:

marxdarx would like everything to go perfectly, and would like his whole household and especially his girlfriend to be there at Thanksgiving with him: Thanksgiving at his grandparents' place has been a family tradition ever since forever. It is important to him. Not upsetting his mother is also important to him, especially as she makes his life miserable if he does.

votania is NOT going to be spending another Thanksgiving at her parents' place, and is torn between the wish to be with her here-family, and the necessity of standing by marxdarx, as this is vitally important. She is unwilling to let anyone she loves be alone at Thanksgiving.

I am unwilling to put myself and my safety, not to mention votania's, Nephew's, and Marx's, in the hands of someone who hates me. (Our ride would be either Marx's mom, or her boyfriend.) I refuse to let myself be caught in a situation where there are enemies of mine with no clear escape route. (Buses don't run on Thanksgiving in anywhere but Phoenix proper.) I am not yet ready to smile at an enemy without attacking simultaneously. I'm not going. I am unhappy about putting votania in the position where she has to choose between members of her true-family; I am less happy about putting Votania in the situation where one of her true-family may be alone for Thanksgiving.


I am horribly unwilling to presume to ask Darkside to include me in his family celebration of Thanksgiving, which Votania thinks sounds like the best option.

I'm selfish enough to want a nice quiet happy Thanksgiving at home with all my family. If the dynamic between Marx and his mother were different, more like Votania and her mom, I would delight in going, and unsettling Marx's mom as subtly and delightfully as I could, if not for the fact that Marx's mom would try and pull something on Marx in the future. As the dynamic there is really bad (she manipulates him, and he hasn't fully come into his own and successfully told her where to shove it), I would be only making a bad situation worse. With Votania, I can make her mother behave and do complete 180^o flips on things. It's like magic, only it's applied psychology. I can do it because I have votania's complete permission.

To make things even more complex, votania's going to not be particularly happy about sitting down with Marx's mother and not bringing up the topic of why she's being such a bitch in my direction, because this is not something that votania is comfortable standing with. I, for that matter, am equally uncomfortable bowing out and letting Marx's mom get away with this.

We'll figure out something, though. We have to.

More blithering

Dawn suggested that Marx get together with all of us and his grandparents and have a before-Thanksgiving dinner thing. Votania liked the idea. I don't think Marx was so taken with it.

Ghaa, I wish I had a logic-tracking argument program to put this all into. The way I'm summing it up, it sounds like it should fit into one...

I really wish that he either got along better with his mother (unlikely, given her nature) or that he would come to the same realization that Votania has about hers. It's all too clear to an outsider that when someone is abusive, even if they make nice in between, that they aren't going to change, that things are always going to be that way, that emotional abuse is just as toxic as physical abuse, only it doesn't leave scars that can be seen with the normal eye, that someone who is only nice when they get their way is not nice at all... but to someone in that situation, it's always more complex.

It hurts me when my friends hurt. It hurts me when I have to make decisions that hurt my friends in the name of self-preservation. It hurts me to realize that when bending over backwards to make others comfortable for so long, I was doing worse damage to myself than I could have done to them by making them uncomfortable.


I cannot yet dine peaceably with an enemy who is also the unacknowledged enemy of a friend.

Safety

Evidently, when Marx's mom is pissed about something, she drives far too fast, and unsafely. If I am in attendance at this function, she is not going to be in a good mood. She would be our ride to and from the function.

Knowing that she dislikes me, I am reluctant to get in a car with her. Knowing that she was adamantly against my attendance, I am unwilling to get in a car with her, or have anyone I care about there either...

Emode thingamadinger: inkblots

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Dreams, gods, and dragons

Had conversations. Must sleep.

Visualize most of my pantheon as female, at least the day-to-day interact-with-me sort: only Raven do I picture, normally, as male.

Interesting, very interesting.

(Well, I see Mercury as male, but he's not part of my day-to-day thing.)

Myth I need to stop believing NOW:

If I show Darkside that he is capable of hurting me, he will withdraw completely from me so as to avoid causing me more pain.

Only if I let him, would he. Only if I don't show him that the joy of his company is far greater than the pain he causes, and is a far greater joy than the pain of being alone is a pain. (And the pain of being alone is pretty damn bad.)

More yay:

Votania found an old backup disk she'd made. It had the .jpg I made back before Votania and Darkside started dating, of the three of us, plus the dragon that liked to hang out in my hair. Not the most advanced artwork (I had trouble with placement of hands, and which hand belonged to whom) but still, it looks quite a bit like most of us, probably like Darkside most and like Votania least.

The blue sparklies above my head are very accurate: at that point, I was broadcasting like hell.

The picture...

...can be found here. I'm the one with the green hair and all the blue sparklies.

Happy Loony.

I have a new userpic.



The quality is completely shit, but I can upgrade it after I get a chance to. It's enough, now, to have that there where I can see it every day...

Mmmmm, Darkside, and Plans.

Called Darkside. Chatted briefly. He let me know that next week, Wednesday and Thursday were his days off, and would be good for a Harry Potter raid. He would be either working or out of town visiting relatives for Thanksgiving. He had lunch to attack.

Called Dawn. Scheduled for next Wednesday.

Called Darkside back. Talked for over a half hour about this and that. It's so hard for us to get off the phone with each other. He tried some silly things with his voice on me: they made me squeak and squirm.

Whee!

I'm now the happy possessor of a copy each of Diane Duane's The Door Into Sunset and Margaret Wander Bonnano's A Certain Slant of Light, the latter of which is going to give me a few issues at reading, given that three of the characters are Brian, Joan, and Eric, all of which names are very familiar and significant to me.

Office Gossip from the Geophysical Institute at UAF, circa 1990

My father used to work with the rocket scientists at the Geophysical Institute in Fairbanks Alaska, studying the Aurora Borealis. He'd bring home office gossip about all the interesting characters. Give me a big name in US aurora research, and I can probably dig up some old office gossip, or at least speak about them in familiar terms.

Today my memory was jogged when crimmycat went off about feminism, and how it's not always a good thing to be associated with some of these people. My father had a co-worker who was, from what sense I made of his stories, a flaming asshole with the belief that women were just as good as, if not better than, men, and everyone should treat women that way, especially when it came to treating her like a queen, somewhere above the rest of the other, lesser, mortals. I think it was from her poor example that my father coined the term "wimminists": female chauvanist pigs, in other words. I can't remember her name (and I wouldn't put it here if I did), but I do remember one of the more amusing stories about her.



Once upon a time at the Geophysical Institute, someone had grown some hot peppers (habanero, I think) in their garden, and brought some in to share with the rest of the staff. "They're really hot," the guy bringing them in warned. My father, being wise in the ways of peppers, accepted a small slice and started taking tiny nibbles from it. It didn't feel so hot at first, but after the first few seconds, WOW, was it hot! He ate with caution, and appreciation, because it had brought a few tears to his eyes.

The wimminist heard this caution, and took it as an insult and a challenge. She grabbed a whole pepper and bit into it. The first few seconds were all right, but when the heat of the pepper hit her, she spat the mouthful into the garbage and retreated in bad order, convinced that the whole encounter was a setup specifically to make her look like a fool.

If I am remembering the story correctly, everyone who was present did laugh immoderately, because she'd pulled a lot of underhanded things on various people, and everyone was royally sick of Her Royal Highness' stunts and tantrums.


I learned a lot of things from FatherSir's stories. The foolhardiness that masquerades as bravery is not a way to win respect.

Further Thanksgiving stuff:

When some people are tired (myself included) stuff gets emotionally overcharged, and sometimes isn't as bad as it might have been thought to be.

I'm still not willing to attend without an escape route, however.

Management

Worked on our group projects today in Systems Analysis. Well, first we listened to the Dave local to the class lecture, with Powerpoint backup. I fell asleep after contributing. Then we worked on our own singular little whatchamacallit analyses, feasability, that's it. Then we spent the next hour going over the shit, and after that, working in groups.

I've noticed, that in any given group where I have no specific relevant skill, and there's no one of stronger personality overriding things, that I wind up leader or co-leader. I've also noticed that when I'm doing so, my ears pull back, stretching the skin across my cheekbones and raising my eyebrows some. It's not an expression that I can hold for long on my own, but when interacting with others in that situation, I pull it out and leave it on for as long as I'm feeling myself to be "sharp". I often only notice it because of what it does to my glasses.