The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Mary Kay Kare:

The truly invisible beings are post-menopausal women. I watched it happen to my mother and now it's happened to me. There are actual physical changes, body weight shifts, skin goes crepey, etc that are probably due to no more estrogen. These changes seem to signal very strongly and very deeply: non-fertile female. Ignore.

Another excellent reason for wearing bright colors.

MKK

I wish:

I didn't express pain as anger (so counter-productive)

I didn't get tooth-grindingly jealous of people for whom family is a source of love, warmth, support.

I knew how to make and keep friends (one of those that seems to have been second nature to my family and they never taught me)

That I could forgive - forgiving feels to me like giving someone permission to hurt me all over again

That I didn't experience compassion as something exquisitely painful

Anybody got clues to hand out?
MKK

Arrrg. That should be serious emotional and *verbal* abuse up there. I proofread the damn thing twice.

MKK

My family was in no wise prepared to cope with me. They come from a culture which discourages intellectual curiosity and they and their friends and their family have none of it. I did. And refused not to. Being punished for spending too much time indoors. Too much time reading. Hearing lip service to the notion that different was ok, but seeing behavior that said different is scary, bad, dangerous. And boy are you different.

I was spanked fairly regularly, usually with a hand or a switch, but that was completely normal in our time and place - I'm older than the general run of you - and I don't consider I was physically abused because of it. On the other hand, I remember with extreme clarity the time my mother slapped me in anger and the time she was so infuriated she used a belt on me that left bruises. If I ever mentioned those things - or other unhappy memories - to her she would look at me blankly and insist those things never happened. Oh, the number of things I remember which I've been told never happened.

My family has no concept of individual boundaries. The don't see themselves individuals, but as part of a family - and the family is far more important than the individual. This makes it ok to say whatever nasty and mean thing you want because later you can apologize and that makes it all right because "we're family". So not real physical abuse, no, but serious emotional and physical abuse. I don't know, though. Does it count as abuse if they don't know any better?

I'm no longer in touch with my mother or sister or any other relatives except my niece. And it's all my fault you know, I'm breaking their hearts. They don't see that they do not treat me with respect, as an adult. If I were to tell them that, they have a backup plan - they've accused me for years of feeling and acting superior to them. I was puzzled for the longest time until I figured out that it's because I know lots of stuff and like to share bright shiny facts with whoever's around. They see that as my acting superior - when I tell them a cool fact the don't think, wow that's cool. They think, she thinks I'm stupid for not knowing this. I didn't figure this out until my 40s and so, see, I have a long established history of acting superior and putting them down. I have explained to them my thought processes a number of time but they insist on viewing the world through their lens and not trying to understand other points of view. They live in a very tiny universe of people all just like them. They think everyone is just like them, or should want to be. (Also, convenient excuse to use to turn away any accusations directed at them; I'm so much worse you see.)

I was also an untreated depressive until I was 39. Well, usefully treated anyway. I had a number of therapists who did me no good at all. One who told me I was choosing to be depressed because it filled a need in my life and we needed to figure out what that was. Thank god for the doctor who, in 1992, first prescribed SSRIs to me. I now take an SSRI/SNRI combination which works pretty well, but you have no idea how untreated depression can warp and twist your personality. I really suck at making friends or being a friend because it's so hard to take the risk of being hurt. Because when you spent the first half of your life with untreated major depressive episodes, everything hurts. And by the time you get help, you can only remember that trusting people hurts. Oh, and of course, I do still get depressed from time to time when the meds need adjusting or something. Depressives are really a pain to be around, you know?

Between not fitting in anywhere at all until I found fandom at 24 and all that untreated depression, I have firmly adopted the role of Outsider and make myself into one even where I don't have to be. It's so safe and familar. And lonely.

I am very lucky though in one respect though. Well, ok, two. I do have a loving husband (who has his own mental/emotional problems, but hey, rocks in my head fit the holes in his) and I don't have to care who sees this or reads this or knows this about me.

MKK

Thanks Xopher. I may have to give up reading LJ and Twitter for the duration -- reading about everyone's good time makes me sulky and envious - not good for the soul. I mean even if I were there, I'm too washed out and sickly to do anything. Not to mention infecting everyone with whatever flu it is I've got. Hmm, there were supposed to call and tell me that today. Guess I'd better call tomorrow morning.
MKK

2. What am I supposed to do with this puppy biscuit? It’s way too big for small Aggie Maggie. Should I forward it to Jordin Kare, or does he already have one

Well, as far as I know, he doesn't have one, but he's already left for Marcon. I *should* have been with him but the doctor's diagnosis on Tuesday was influenza, so not. I've got Tamiflu and it's really helping, but I'm stuck home on Memorial Day weekend all by my lonesome while everyone's out at cons having fun. Sigh.

I do wonder what our 3 Savannahs would make of it though.
MKK

Hmm. As I understand it, the *legal system* must presume Ms Murphy to be innocent. As independent and informed citizens, we may presume whatever we damn well please.

MKK

Kewl. We get 88 out of 100 for walkability. Their what's nearby lists kinda suck though. The only get one of the grocery stores and miss several good restaurants.

We chose this neighborhood because of the walkability. After all those years in CA suburbs it's such a relief.

Note that sometimes you can buy online and still buy locally. Some local stores have online sites and you can sometimes choose between having it mailed and picking it up at the store.

Question. I can see Amazon's headquarters from where I live -- is it buying locally if I buy from them?

MKK

Jesse Jackson is crying on my tv set. I'm crying too. I can't believe it. I'm so happy.

MKK

I am so proud of my faulty, stumbling, wonderful country.

MKK

Janet @ 19 -- I actually sent Rice a fair whack of money, but I'm afraid he doesn't have much hope. Sigh.

Polls here (Seattle) opened at 7am. I arrived at my polling place at 7:23 and had to stand in line about half an hour. Several precincts vote here and there was a much longer line for one of the other precincts. (Capitol HIll -- it doesn't get more liberal than this.) I left right at about 8am, so 40 minutes in all. It was a fairly long paper ballot. I've never seen that many people there and this is a politically active area.

I think I'll go out and run errands now . Meeting up with the Drinking Liberally Group and some sf fans at 4 pm. We may already know by then... Damn this time thing.

MKK

There's a good post on Hullabaloo which I read with a feeling of revelation. One of the reasons they believe all that garbage is because the Republicans have spent the last 20-30 years delegitimizing formerly trusted sources of information.

MKK

I'm glad you're well enough to go home. And bemused at how much people hate hospitals. I liked mine, 24 hour room service (with pretty good food) and good drugs. I slept most of the time. Until they made me get out of bed and walk on the knee I just had replaced....

MKK

Gosh. Reading all that makes me wonder how I ever survived 30+ years in the southern Great Plains without dying. I mean hellacious heat and if we tried to actually observe those rules about thunderstorms, well, we'd have been indoors with everything disconnected from mid-March-sometime in July. Which we didn't, and yet I never knew anyone hit by lightning. Floods, sure you bet, and tornadoes, but no lightning strikes.

The closest I've come to heatstroke was last August when I got caught in the crowds for the Samba Festival Parade in Tokyo. No, I'm not kidding. The heat and humidity were awful, the people were 18 deep on the sidewalks and I couldn't find a way out. Whichever way I went, there were people and parade. McDonald's saved my life, perhaps literally, by appearing magically before me with cold drinks and air conditioning. I had hit the confused and disoriented stage sometime before that.

MKK--also damn cold in the PNW

I'm with Michael. That guy is serious and scary. He's angry and obsessed -- bad combination.

And yeah, the 2nd link is FUBARed. It's got this site's url appended to the BB url.

MKK

My LJ friends list and email box have been full of tributes to him
as the man who opened up the universe/science/science fiction to the
writer and changed their life forever. He had an enormous impact on the
world and I'm sad. He was the last of the giants my generation grew up
on. Well, there's still Bradbury I guess. But he doesn't seem in the
same league with Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Williamson. And Fred Pohl's in very bad health...

MKK

Kathryn: It says right there on the ballot that we don't accept them by email. There are several reasons for this, one of which is that I expect to get *lots* of ballots in the next 48 hours. When you finish your form and hit send, it does, in fact, send me an email with your nominations. BUT. It sends them with a UNIFORM subject line and a UNIFORM format. I have spent a minimum of 4 hours/day for the last 2 weeks doing tallying. Ghu knows how much time it would take if they weren't in a uniform format and I had to go hunting through my inbox and spam filter to be sure I got them all.

Erik--I learned that trick from Jordin. You do not want to know what kind of fit he can throw when he waits til the last minute to submit his grant proposal and so has everyone else and the servers are overloaded. Also, Murphy rules.

The rest of you: You've got slightly more than 48 hours. Get busy!

MKK
Hugo Administrator
Denvention 3
Lack of prior planning on your part does not constitute and emergency on my part

Imagine me clutching my head and muttering about being rid of this turbulent -- uh -- whatever.

MKK

The demise of the card catalog is *not* sad. The online catalog has many many many benefits for library user and librarian alike.

More than one person can search the same general area -- no waiting until the guy doing a bibliography of books about George Washington finishes with that drawer.

It can be quickly, easily, and cheaply updated to fix mistakes, add new materials, enhance searching.

And about that enhanced searching -- you can have as many entry points to an item as you and your catalogers have the time, energy, and storage for. And storage is waaaaay cheaper than more card catalog cabinets and drawers. Not to mention the cost of the cards themselves.

I can acess the online catalog remotely to determine if the library has the item I need, which branch it's in, and whether it's on the shelf before I leave home.

Terminals take up lots less space than bulky catalogs and can be anywhere in the library.

No looooong waits for filing to get done.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

MKK--former cataloger

I was born in July of 1952. I can remember Sputnik -- I would have been 5. I do have earlier memories--back to about 2 1/2--but that's my first news memory.

Other important early memories were the 1960 election, all the Mercury launches, and Hawaii and Alaska joining the union. And of course, November 22, 1963. (I was in school of course. They didn't send us home early.)

MKK

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