Singing the song of angry men

(yeah, it’s another one of those current events/political ones)

I don’t hide the fact that I’m an atheist. I can be quite militant about it, though I try to keep that in check, as I know plenty of perfectly lovely religious people who are not, in fact, stupid and bigoted. I’ve never seen the point in not being open about it; quite frankly my opinion tends along the lines that those that have a problem with it are just proving my point about the harm done by religion.  What I’m not always so open about is politics. Oh, sure, a five-minute conversation will tell you that I’m pretty liberal, but I tend to hesitate with actual labels. Largely because the actual label tends to cause some pretty negative kneejerk reactions. I am, at heart, a communist.

Yeah, that tends to get people’s attention, and not often the sort of attention you want.

However, I am also a misanthrope. The misanthropy makes me believe that human nature is not yet, perhaps not ever, at a place where communism can work on a large scale. There’s just too much greed and selfishness in humans, and there’s no telling if it’s innate or learned behavior. Both, I suspect. Regardless, while we can find small indigenous populations that do seem to have their communist utopia, it’s yet to work on any sort of large scale. I would argue that is, at least in part, due to the fact we’ve yet to see it evolve naturally. The communism of the Soviet Union was forced. It was a forced revolution by idealists (or they at least started that way) who didn’t think about the consequences of bringing that system to a group of people who weren’t ready for it yet.

But now…

Clearly, the capitalist system we are currently under isn’t working. The rich are getting richer while the poor keep getting poorer and more numerous. And people are starting not only to notice, but also to protest. I look at the Occupy Movements around the country and I have to wonder if we’re not seeing what could be the start of the closest thing to a Communist Revolution as Marx saw it as is possible in a post industrial society. I don’t think it’s going to go all the way to full on communism, and I’m not sure I would want it to (see above and the human nature stuff) but I do think—hope—that we might see an end to the unregulated capitalism. An end to a system where it is legal and ok for companies to lay off employees for economic reasons or to take government handouts but still give their executives huge bonuses. And end to a system where corporate welfare is good, but helping out people is bad because people are just lazy when they need help. 

Then again, it might peter out and die long before then. But I hope not. Things are going to be worse.  With luck and perseverance it’s just getting worse on the way to getting better.  We are already witnessing brutal police attacks on unarmed protestors. So far, no one has died.  I question how much longer we’re going to be able to say that. When it happens (because I do think it is a when, rather than an if) all hell is going to break loose. It’s a terrifying thought to entertain, what might happen from this.

Autumn Musings

I have always considered nature to be a balm for the soul. I suppose that's why I took advantage of my first day off from both school and work in over a month to go out to a local nature preserve. I've seen almost no one else here and on some level I think that's a good thing. Te average person has become completely disconnected from nature, even when they're in someplace like this. They're racing through, talking, yelling even, just wanting to get it over with so that they can say they've done it and move on.

They're too loud to notice the rustling of the snake or the chipmunk in the leaves by their feet. They're moving too quickly to notice the row of mushrooms the size of small boulders.







And they've no time to stop and watch the squirrel eating a nut. They don't know enough to be able to tell at a glance which part of the leaf strewn ground is a part of the trail. No time is taken to just sit and listen to the sound of the wind in the trees and to really just be a part of where you're at.

 

Work, School, and Goals

I must say that I am happier with work now. I no longer have to describe myself as a cashier, but rather as an assistant manager. It helps reconcile the age and level of education with the position.

School is keeping me more than a little busy. My children's lit class (which I do enjoy, but still) has an immense amount of work, and I've got two practicums on top of that. Which means I have to do that whole dressing like a teacher thing almost every day. This is difficult because I don't have a lot of teacher appropriate clothes right now and am not eager to rush out and buy more because....







22.6 lbs down. It's not going as fast as I would like, though hopefully that will make it more sustainable, but it's still progress. And hey, I'm even sharing the real numbers.

I have lost 3 inches of my waist, 3 1/2 off my bust, 4 off each thigh, and have gone from a 38HH to a 36H. My weight goal involves losing 40 more pounds, but more important is keeping it off.

Tiny Visitors

I was on the patio theoretically working on homework, but some visitors dropped by and I had to go grab the camera. All I've done with any of these is crop them. Was fun to have the camera out and get some quality pictures again. It's been too long.

The Girly Girl

                                      VS.









A couple of weeks ago, a blogger over at the HuffPo decided to write a little blog about the loss of feminism that she started with the line "Women are girly. Again.." Great. Yet another writer (and a female one at that) buying into the mindset that being a feminist means trying to be a man. She laments that we bake cupcakes*, garden, and knit because instead we should be ditching all that stupid "girly" stuff and learn to hotwire cars, shoot guns, and manipulate our way into bomb shelters. (She didn't really go into the details on this last one, but I suspect it involves cleavage). She even gives us role models- Jane Austen = bad, Sookie Stackhouse = good.  The more I think on this, the more it bothers me, and not just that she couldn't find any real people (who weren't drug addicts) for role models  on what she thinks women should be. If it's tough girls she wants:

• I have butchered, dressed, and cooked any number of chickens (plucking the feathers is the worst part)
• I have helped deliver a lamb. By which I mean my hand was up there pulling because it was the only one small enough. 
• I have cleaned and replaced a prolapsed uterus on a ewe. 
• I have shot a gun
• I know how to change a tire and change my own oil (though I'll happily pay someone to do the later)
• I have a working knowledge of how to use hand tools (both power and not) to build a basic structure. 
• I enjoy hiking, camping (no trailers for me, please), biking, and boating. 

However, I also

• Spin, crochet, cross-stitch,  and sew
• I enjoy cooking from scratch meals for my family
• I like to garden and look forward to have a proper place to do it
• I am married and took my husband's name, with no real thought of not doing so

So, according to Ms. Aloi, I am a girly girl who forgot all about feminism. Well, that's fine, I don't need her approval. However, more than once in her article she mentioned some crazy apocalypse.  I've got news for her. If that happens, I'll be the one munching on the produce and animals I raised while keeping warm in my handmade garments and she'll be the one hungry and cold with nothing useful to bargain with. I think I'll be sticking with Jane then, and not Sookie.



                                                   

Ok. That aside. The fair was the past two weeks. It appears that none of the pieces I took down placed. It will be interesting to see the judges comments on them; there were several things (even in categories I didn't participate in) that made me seriously question the judges. Dustin will be picking them up tomorrow, as I have class all day.

School starts again tomorrow. Part of me is looking forward to it, but part of me is really not. Between classes and work I'm not really going to have any days off. Which means bossman isn't going to find out about days that school is out unless we really need the money, which we likely won't.

Dustin is going to be starting a new job on Friday. I'm not going to go into a lot of details, but it's a pay increase, has benefits, and isn't likely to have any of the slowdowns that we've been forced to become accustomed to. There might be some travel, but we've dealt with that before. We're working on bringing down our total debt and this is a good step in the right direction. (It's a very scary number that just got larger because of this semester's student loans, but I also know that it's less than some people's debt that's just from those student loans.)



*Interestingly, there is a woman of the same name who does blogging about cupcakes. All evidence points to this being the same person. Existential midlife crisis?

It's been a while. On the crafting front, Quarter 2 has come and gone, and I did manage my goal, which was to enter something in the Indiana State Fair, preferably something new. I'm taking the sweater I made earlier this year, a lace shawl I just finished, a doily (if I get it finished in time), and a photo from our Colorado trip if I can get it printed and matted correctly in time. I don't have any great pictures of the shawl yet; I just wove in the last ends yesterday and it's all cloudy and overcast today (but hotter than hell, we've a 104/40 heat index right now, hate humidity). 

                     The doily is the image from the Ravelry page; I'm doing mine in a similar color and the plan is to frame it once it's back from the fair.















My plan for Quarter 3 is to get that doily finished and then get my sock count up- the Sunday group had made a plan to make 12 pairs this year, which turned into 12 socks. I've got 3 done now. Since I love handmade socks and would love to be able to wear only those, that's what I'm going to focus on- especially since it means I can largely work from stash.

In crafting related news, I realized I never posted a picture of the awesome birthday gift I got this year.  Getting using it down to an art is still a work in progress. Who knows, maybe next year I'll be entering some handspun into the fair as well.

 I've also been working on losing weight and am currently down 15lbs since February which was my highest weight... well, ever, really. Still have 47lbs more to go to get to my eventual goal, but it's coming along nicely enough. I'm not really dieting- I want this to last and therefore I'm making life changes and teaching myself how to eat properly. I come from a family of over eaters and portion control really is my downfall. I've also been better about taking the dogs for daily walks, I've started going for long bike rides on the Monon in Carmel/Westfield on my days off, and (most recently) I've started a running training program. Not exactly C25K but something similar. Never in a million years thought I would say this, but I'm actually enjoying the running parts.

Some of this is vanity, some of it is expenses (for example, it would be nice to consider $60 expensive for a bra rather than cheap), and some of it is health. My family is all overweight, though who knows how much of that is genetics and how much is eating habits, and I have a medical condition that makes me more prone both to be overweight and get diabetes (which is also made worse by the being overweight). Since I've no desire to deal with that, the medical aspects are some of the more important. I also like the fact that I can see the weight coming off (as can others, I've recently gotten some positive random comments) and I can feel myself getting stronger. True, the bad leg is throwing a fit, but not as bad as it used to do and the physical therapist I used to see would say that working it is the only way to have a chance of getting it better without surgery (which it will need eventually anyhow).

Musings

There will be sone crafty stuff soon (I have a new toy!) but for now, just something that's been bothering me today.

When did Memorial Day become the sort of holiday that people stick "happy" in front of, as though it were akin the Thanksgiving? It suggests to me a horrible lack of knowledge about what it's actually for; despite what people here seem to think it's not just a long weekend in honor of some stupid race.

I'm not generally a fan of the flag waving sort of patriotism- far too often it seems to come hand in hand with the sort of "patriotism" that says that questioning the government is treason and the freedoms of speech and religion apply only to their speech and their religion. Still, I was raised by a veteran (who taught me disdain for lipservice patriotism) and I am married to one. Because of this, and because I do know our history, unlike so many "patriots" it bothers me to see a day of mourning and remembrance turned into a celebration of summer. Saying "happy Memorial Day" is flying straight in the face of that history.