Thursday, January 11, 2007

Why some people need labels

The world is full of labels.  Are you gay or straight? American or Arab? Black or white? People have this overpowering need to categorize you into something they can wrap their brain around. Thing is, why is that necessary? Why not just get to know me and then make your judgements about who I am?

Since birth I have defied labels. I am of mixed heritage (half Chinese and half caucasian) and refuse to put an X next to either category on those government surveys. I pick “Other”, and if they don’t provide me with an Other to pick, I’ll put half an X in one and half in the other, so it looks like  \ Chinese   / Caucasian. Give me an Other or I’ll screw with your suvey dammit!

By refusing to label yourself, you force people to make the effort to find out for themselves who you are. I know my sweety’s family would have immediately rejected me (and her for that matter) had I announced that I was a lesbian upon meeting them. With their strong religious background, it just wouldn’t be acceptable to associate with “people like me”. Because I didn’t give them a label for them to judge me with, they were able to find out that I’m nice, generous, helpful, funny and occasionally moody. They love me now, and although I’m sure they have their suspicions about my “secret identity”, they overlook it to acknowledge the person I really am.

People like labels because it allows for quick judgements. They want to immediately know how to treat you. I just wish everyone would realize that it isn’t necessary. Labels are only on the surface. Underneath all that we are all people. Treat me as a person. Treat me how you would like to be treated. It’s such a simple concept, yet so hard to instill in others. What conflict would there be if we were to shed all labels? We would be equals. Now how divine would that be?

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

The journey of lesbian self discovery

Probably the most important part of a gay person’s life is when you come out to yourself. It doesn’t involve other people. Even if you use friends or family as a sounding board, it’s an epiphany that you yourself have to realize and come to terms with. Why does it take some (like myself) so much longer than others? It didn’t really click for me until after I graduated from college!

Looking back at my tomboyish childhood, most people would think it was pretty obvious that I was a lesbian. I preferred GI Joe toys to the girly dolls, hated to wear skirts and dresses, and had no interest in makeup or boys. What took me so long to figure it out? I dunno, I guess I had nothing to compare myself to. To me, “gay” meant happy. I once wrote a poem in 4th grade that rhymed and had the word “gay” in it—it was about being happy, or something. I can’t remember exactly what it was about, but I do remember the other kids snickering when I read it aloud. How is it that they knew about gay (not in the happy sense) people and I didn’t?

I think it’s a combination of what we’re exposed to, and our awareness level. Considering the title of this blog, you know my level of awareness rivals that of a fence post. Combine that with the fact that there were no movies or TV shows with lesbians in it, and lesbian literature wasn’t mainstream enough for the public library to even carry them (not that I was looking for them at the time). My parents were the only other source for information, but they were no help at all. They voted for Republicans and were generally conservative across the board. The only time I ever heard gayness mentioned in the household at all was when there was a news report of a gay rally somewhere in the city. My mom said something like, “Why do those gays have to flaunt it in front of everybody?”

I recall at the time thinking, “What’s wrong with that? Aren’t they allowed to be different and express their views?” I didn’t say anything (I was still fairly young and household debate just wasn’t something we did) but I remember disagreeing in my mind. How could she, a minority woman who still speaks with a Chinese accent, condemn these people for being different? What exactly are they “flaunting” that is so wrong?

Some people, the lucky ones, have friends to talk things over with. Maybe this is how some of them discover themselves earlier. I was an asocial loner who prefered to escape into books and movies, and later video games. It wasn’t until the Internet was big that I finally had resources to explore.

Information. It really is power. The coming out process was delayed for me because I had no information. I had few social clues, and no definitions or labels. How could I consider myself gay or lesbian when they weren’t even factors to be considered at the time? I was surrounded by role models repeating the story that women fall in love with men and marry them. Humans didn’t dream about traveling in space when they weren’t even aware that there was anything beyond the clouds.

With all these things considered, it makes perfect sense that I took this long to figure out that very important part of me. I don’t see it happening any other way, not without swapping parents or changing my personality anyway. Everyone’s journey is different. I don’t envy others for knowing themselves much sooner.  The journey is part of what makes you you.

Edit: It looks like my honey made a “Part 2" to this post. She’s such a sweetheart. Complex, but very sweet!

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

More thoughts on the medieval door

Two posts ago I was talking about how cool it would be to have a medieval-looking door with all the rivets and iron on the wood. Another thing it would have to have is one of those little tiny doors in lieu of a peephole. You know what I’m talking about, right? You see ‘em in movies where the frumpy innkeeper shuffles over, opens the little door, peers at you and grunts, “We’re closed!” with their ear-grating voice before slamming it shut.

What do you call that anyway? It’s no longer a peephole, what is it, a face-hole? A peep-door? Face-hole doesn’t sound right, it’s kinda like pie-hole. So we’ll call it a peep-door.

So it would have to have a little peep-door, with fancy iron bars on it of course. Can’t have anyone reaching in and choking me y’know. I think speaking to someone through a peep-door sends a different message to those uninvited visitors. Opening a door when someone knocks implies, “May I help you?” But opening the peep-hole to talk is more like, “Whaddaya want??” I’m all about passively telling people to buzz off.

Does that mean I’m anti-social?

Monday, January 08, 2007

Oops 1 + Oops 2 = One Big Honkin' Oops

You know how two wrongs don’t make a right? Well here’s a fine example of how two boo-boos, independent of themselves, wouldn’t have caused much damage. But combined, turned into something we’ll be slapping ourselves in the forehead over for some time.

Remember in a previous post when I mentioned that our automatic sprinkler system had gone south? Well we found out why this weekend.  Last week I attempted to troubleshoot the system. I even tried to manually turn the sprinklers on and off, thinking maybe they somehow got shut off or something. That did nothing. Stymied, I broke down and watered the lawn with a hose. (One of the most boring tasks in the world.)

Fast forward to this past weekend.  We’re about to head off to my sweety’s sister’s house when she decides to fiddle with something by the main water shutoff valve. When she finally got into the car I asked her what she did, and she replied that awhile back she had tried to shut off the water to the house, and turned the wrong valve.

“Oh,” I replied. “Was this right around when the sprinklers stopped working?”
“I think so.”
“I wonder if that was it? It’ll be nice to have them working again.”
“Yeah.”

By the end of that conversation we were already on the main road, and we thought nothing more of it. Now fast forward to 11pm when we finally return to the house.  I’m setting my stuff down when I hear the familiar yet weird vibrating noise of the water pipes under the house. “Hey, the sprinklers to the back yard are on!” I immediately thought, “Cool! They’re working again! Yay!”

That thought was immediately followed by, “Wait a minute… I set the timer for 8pm. Why are they still on??” I ran to the back yard and, holy shit, can somebody build an ark please? We’ve managed to flood the entire yard. I couldn’t believe it. Water everywhere. It was then I’d realized what we’d done. When I’d fiddled with turning the sprinklers on and off individually, I’d forgotten to turn one off. It turned out the valve my sweety had accidentally turned off some time ago was the main shutoff valve for the sprinkler system. When she turned it back on that morning, the back yard sprinklers started going. All. Day. Long.

So much for saving water this month. *another slap on the forehead*

Friday, January 05, 2007

Medieval thoughts

I think it would be fun, if I were to ever be rolling in excess money, to build a house that would match this door. Maybe not this specific door, but something like it. It would have to be wider of course, but I love the look of wood and iron and rivets. It’s all medieval and cool and stuff. Then inside we could have swords and suits of armor and dragons and other things to make it look like I own the Medieval Times chain or the Excalibur casino. Except not so cheesy.

However, unlike a medieval castle, it would be warm and cushy inside, with insulated soundproof walls, and blankets and pillows everywhere. And instead of jesters there would be home theaters and video games. Who needs a jester anyway when you have me?

Those were my thoughts this morning as I was driving in to work. How random.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Picking a competent realtor

Now that the holidays are over, it’s time to get serious about selling this money pit house. We’ve spoken to three real estate agents so far in an effort to get the best one.

Agent #1: Claims the title of actual REALTOR^®. Go to any REALTOR^®‘s website and they are quick to remind you that they are the only board-certified whatevers, licensed by the whatchamahoozit, and therefore better than all the others who are merely real estate agents. I found her online while trying to search for top-selling agents.  I read in several places that 80% of all successful home sales are done by only 15% of the pool of agentsI don’t recall the exact percentages I read, but you get the idea. Anyway, she seemed well prepared and knowledgeable about our area. Since meeting with her last week she’s been pestering us about meeting with us again, obviously afraid we’re going to go with someone else.

Agent #2: This was actually a husband/wife team of agents, recommended to me by a coworker of mine. They were very friendly, impressively quick to respond to my email inquiries, and seemed genuinely concerned about our situation. He even suggested, more than once, trying to find a refinancing option that would get us out of our bind. They weren’t pushy at all. However I found it strange they were only able to find one comparable home listing in our area when the other two agents found pages of them. I think their areas of expertise were in other neighborhoods, not ours.

Agent #3: This guy was recommended to us by one of my sweety’s coworkers. I wasn’t expecting much from him because we’d already talked to two good ones, and the recommendation came from a person we didn’t really like that much. However he was very well prepared with a neatly bound report of the houses for sale in our area. He also said he would talk to the bank and find out what they were willing to do, get a listing up by the weekend, and was overall very energetic, confident and knowledgeable.

We chose #3 on the spot, for the following reasons:

• He was the only one who volunteered to scan through our encyclopedic volumes of loan documents to find more information about the penalty fees.
• He was the only one who asked questions about the status of our loans payments, and who mentioned calling the bank at all.
• He was the only one who said his commission was negotiable, to help us break even (since there was a good possibility we would be losing money if we sell now).

I think we made the right decision. It feels right. Either that or he’s very, very good at selling himself.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

New Year Firsts

Forget about stupid resolutions, I never bother with those. To commemorate my first post of the new year, I’m going to share a few 2007 firsts.

First Random Pointless Recording of this year. I’m not going to bother with the little player interface anymore. I don’t want to waste any more brain power trying to figure out how to make it not auto-play for you Mac freaks (and I mean that lovingly). Just right-click on the link and select Save Target As…

First thought upon walking outside the house this morning: Damn it’s cold, I’m going back in and getting my scarf.

First thing I forgot: To bring the milk for my cereal with me to work this morning. Dammit. I can get an extra half hour of sleep if I eat breakfast at work instead of at home. I never miss breakfast.

First bill of the year: The water bill. Our automatic sprinkler system has decided to go on vacation, so our next bill should be a lot lower. That and now that the deadbeat renter is gone, there is no more revolving door on her shower stall. Bitch.

First work-related thought upon reaching the office: I wonder if I should look for a new job?

First work-related thought upon booting up the computer and starting up Outlook: Shit, those monthly reports are due. Again. I hate those things. What a waste of time.

First pleasant thought of the first workday of the year: Oh yay I get to put up the new calendar.

First thought after putting up the new calendar: I hope next month’s picture is prettier.

First parting thought of the first post of the year: I’m sleepy.

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