Wint-O-Green, or Butter Rum?

Poke a hole in me and figure out my flavor! We saved a life two hours ago and it felt good. It felt like a cord prolapse, actually. That feels bad. But delivering a little screaming baby felt good. I hope I'll come down from the adrenaline rush soon. I need to sleep at some point today...

No Love For The Haters

I heard on the news this morning that the state legislature finally passed a hate-crimes bill. It took them about four years, and the reason it finally passed was because sexual orientation as a qualifying category for a hate crime was taken out. Why do people hate so much? How can people be that cruel? Things like that make me ashamed to be human.

Not Welcome

I have spent the last 7 hours perusing blogs. I had no idea how addictive this is. This is an excerpt from a post on Waiterrant.net. The man speaking is the author's grandfather, this is an address he gave at an antiabortion rally. “Did I ever tell you about the time my godfather spoke at an anti abortion rally?” I ask. “He was a priest wasn’t he?" “Yeah.” “What did he say?” Beth asks. “Well, it was an ecumenical rally and people were really whipped into a fire and brimstone frenzy,” I say, remembering. “You know, these loose women are sinners, they’re going to hell, etcetera.” “Man,” Beth breathes. “So it’s my godfather’s turn to speak…..” …..and shuffling into the pulpit, resplendent in his Byzantine vestments, my godfather looks over the top of his glasses upon the congregation. “I have heard many of you talking today about God’s punishment, His wrath. How you’re good Christians because you hate abortion. But, after listening to the people gathered here, I can’t help but notice that some of you harbor a vituperative attitude towards the very women you want to help.” People start shifting in their seats uncomfortably. “I know many of you, like me, are here because you want to defend the unborn. Some of you are motivated by the deepest conviction.” Another pause. “But some of you are here because you love to hate.” Shocked silence. “Are you here because you really want to help the unborn?” my godfather asks. “Have you taken an unwed mother into your home? Fed her? Cared for her baby? Or are you here because this is where your friends are? Are you here to indulge in a comforting sense of moral superiority? Smug in your certitude you’re not going to hell?” Everyone is listening now. “Let me tell you something about Hell,” my godfather says, “We know there’s a hell because Jesus said there’s one. But we don’t know if anyone’s actually in it.” My godfather lets that thought sink in. “What’s more,” he says, “Jesus never liked hypocrites. He once said, ‘They do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s shoulders, but will they lift a finger to move them? No! Every thing they do is done to attract attention!’” Now some of the congregants look angry. “Let me ask you something. Are you relieving these women of their burdens? Or are you adding to them with your self righteousness? Are you helping or hurting? Because if all of your fervor is directed towards feeling good about yourself, if it’s about getting attention, if its about how you’re better than someone else - YOU ARE WASTING GOD’S TIME!” A couple of people get up to leave. Undaunted my godfather continues. “The Lord has never been welcome in the house of the righteous and the certain. Instead He walks amidst the damaged and the confused. To Him, the one that is lost is a treasure beyond price. Who are we to judge these women? They are precious treasure. Love, not hatred, is what they need.” His words reverberate through the church. People are staring at the floor. Some shake their heads in disagreement. Others look thoughtful. “Remember, the mercy of God is radical and boundless,” my godfather says, “And I thank God everyday that He is more merciful than you or I will ever be.” My Godfather steps down from the pulpit. I don’t think he was invited back the next year... I can think of nothing more true than the statement, "The Lord has never been welcome in the house of the righteous and the certain. Instead He walks amidst the damaged and the confused." When I worked as a psych tech at the Utah State Hospital I worked on the youth unit with the teenage girls. Yeah, yeah, we all know adolescent girls are just plain crazy, anyway. These ones had some diagnoses attached. One of the more acute patients was a very sad little person. She was very psychotic and tried to kill me twice. I am not exaggerating. Once she ripped a picture frame out of it's bolts in the cinderblock and had an eight inch piece of wood from it in her hand before we got her down on the floor. I got up with a long red scrape along my throat and she earned some time in seclusion. About two weeks later, she managed to leave fingermarks on my neck for an hour after trying to prove that she was really truly feeling like choking someone to death and deserved to be punished. Nothing personal, I was just the closest neck. She also used to ask me to sing her Primary songs every night. And "Hero" by Mariah Carey. When she was behaving well I obliged. She liked "A Child's Prayer" a lot. I used to do it as a duet with one of the male techs. Her favorite was "I Heard Him Come". I always thought it was because of the line, "I wondered who would come into this place, where dead men walk, and where the dying talk of life before this curse upon them came." I didn't realize until after I quit that she wasn't LDS, and had only heard of those songs from the other girls and the church volunteers. I'm not really sure why she liked all the songs. I think she just liked to feel comfort after feeling all the horrific things her mind made up. I have a hard time with people hating other people for not being "righteous". I've seen it everywhere I've lived. I think that along with the "Families Are Forever" plaques and temple pictures that grace everyone's living rooms, there ought to be a posting of that quote. It ought to remind us of the true nature of God. It ought to make us find the courage to question things, to no be afraid to doubt and open ourselves up to the vulnerabilities of true faith. To become closer to Christ, we must admit that we are often among the damaged and confused. It seems to me that a lot of people feel that it is shameful to not posess a perfect knowledge of things. If you don't "Just Know", then you are obviously not working hard enough. People become afraid to admit that they don't know it all, and they aren't perfect. Out of that fear comes hate. We are deathly afraid to admit that we might have some of those same feelings as the "Sinners", that all our "knowledge" isn't really helping to change our little black thoughts. We cover up that fear with hatred for Those People. When God is so black and white that we feel we are 100% right all of the time, then we really have made our houses an unwelcome place for the Lord. Why would we need Him if we already know it all? Why would we need anything if we are RIGHT all the time? That patient's family was a little bit anti-Mormon because they felt that because they didn't believe in the Right things, people treated them like they were bad. That's why their kid was in a mental hospital, right? I don't know if anyone ever actually said that to their face, but I have to say that I've heard that sentiment expressed in so many words in my life. Fear is what drives it. It's hard to love other people without any fear, though. It's scary.

Macadoodilockis

That's "Mack-a-dood-il-ock-is" to those who didn't grow up in the Frome household. McDonald's. For some unknown reason, that restaurant was christened "Mackadoodilockis" by the younger Frome Brother, Daniel when he was a wee lad. That's what happens when your kids figure out how to read and have to spend long boring hours in the car running errands. They make up little word games. Or other games, like "Last Lick". McDonald's was always either "too expensive" or "junk food" when I was a kid. We never went. We never really got fast food anyway, but it certainly never was McDonald's. When I reached the ripe old age of about 11, you know, the age where you get your first paying job and have some money of your own, I used to go splurge on junk. I still do that, actually. I would ride my bike or take the bus to the Centerpoint Mall in Oxnard and go to the Smith's. Yeah, our mall's flagship stores were Mervyn's and a Smith's grocery store. I didn't know there weren't supposed to be that many jewelry stores in one mall! They had a PayLess! That was the cool place to buy shoes! They had a Kaybee Toy Store. They had an "It's Greek To Me". A Sav-On! What more could you need in a mall except maybe a few stores to sell frilly first communion dresses? Oh, wait. There were a couple of those, too. Anyhow... I'd go to the mall and spend hours in Sav-On, perusing the Lee Press-On nails and the vast array of quality fragrances. Exclamation!, anyone? I had a bottle of the Beverly Hills 90210 fragrance. I thought it smelled pretty good. I would buy junk food like Ring Pops and those fake plastic-like Fruit Rollups. We had to eat the real fruit leather, no artificial colors for us. There was a McDonald's a few blocks away from the mall, and I would get up early on Saturday mornings and ride my bike down to there and buy the Egg McMuffin meal. I don't know if it was actually a "Meal" back then. I would get the hashbrowns and the OJ and go sit on a bench on the sidewalk and eat it. I remember feeling so good about myself because I wasn't shackled by a lack of funds. If I wanted something special, I could just go out and buy it. Any kind of special treat was always too expensive, according to my mom. Looking back, most of that stuff wasn't that expensive, it was just unhealthy. Money was a convenient excuse sometimes, I think. Anyway... As I grew older, I realized that fast food isn't really all that great if that's all you eat. I don't really like anything at McDonald's except for their breakfasts. I eat Wendy's a lot, but I rarely go to McDonald's except on my way home from work when I've run out of cereal and I'm too tired to go to the store. I've probably been to McDonald's three or four times in the past year when it wasn't for breakfast. I've gone because I'm in the mood for junk, but I want something different. Each time I'm secretly hoping to be really impressed, because it doesn't make sense to me that the most successful fast food chain would have a truly horrible menu. I have been mostly disappointed. I have also come to the conclusion that I ought to go without any particular food item in mind, because inevitably what I drive off with in the bag is not what I ordered. I ended up with a Filet-O-Fish that way, and I was too far away to bother going back when I realized it. I don't like the Filet-O-Fish, I have discovered. Just yesterday I went and ordered a Quarter Pounder with Cheese meal, with Orange Hi-C to drink. I love that drink. I'm not sure if it's because of the oversized straws, or the smooth ice cubes, or the actual drink itself. Sometimes I just crave the artificial aftertaste. So, I waited in the very long and very slow line, got my bag of stuff, got my Brown? drink and headed onto the freeway. The drink I knew was wrong, but I was tired and thought, hey, a new adventure... I wonder what I'm getting this time. A Diet Coke, which was surprisingly NOT disgusting, and a Big-N-Tasty burger meal. The fries were excellent. The best fries I've had in a long time. The Big-N-Tasty was a larger hamburger compared to most McDonald's patties, and it had a lot of pepper. And a lot of mayo and onions, but all McDonald's hamburgers have too many onions. It was tasty, but I could've just put a little bit of pepper on any other hamburger and had the same experience. I think the next time I go to McDonald's I will just tell them to surprise me. I'll pay them around five dollars, and they can put anything they want in that bag and that cup. It's more fun that way.

A Cold Day

It's rather cold outside. Twenty degrees Fahrenheit, to be exact. I saw on the news that Russia is having one of it's coldest winters on record, though. It is about 20 below there, and isn't expected to get any warmer for about a month. Morocco is about the same latitude as parts of Texas and Mexico. Hopefully we don't see too many twenty degree nights. It does snow in the mountains, however. I'm reading that I need to take warm layers. I'm getting excited. I'm getting really sad to leave my job, I really have grown a lot in the last two years there. I had a patient the other night that had a lot of complex health problems, and also happened to be pregnant and having issues with that. It was a little scary getting report because I hadn't ever taken care of a patient with all the lines and IV fluids that she had. Not since school, and I didn't know anything about it then. I made it through the shift, and I felt good because I was scared and I took on the challenge. It made me a better nurse. There was also a little bit of office politics going on that night that I was a part of, but I feel like I did the right thing. I did the professional thing, and the right thing, and it was the same thing. I think there were ruffled feathers, but I still feel like the outcome was good. The patients got good care, and I stuck up for the right thing. I'm going to miss the feeling of accomplishment I get every shift. I'm going to miss the sight of newly born babies nursing for the first time. I'm going to miss the excitement in the voices of the first time moms who hear that, yes, this IS the real thing. Labor has arrived, and it's time to have that baby. I'm going to miss the kind words from the mom's who've done this a time or two, but still feel like this one was really special because they had a great nurse. I'm going to miss the intensity of the unmedicated ones. I'm going to miss the crazy nights where we are all running around like chickens with our heads cut off. I'm going to miss talking to the students. I'm going to miss the doctors. I'm sure they won't miss me calling them at three am. I'm going to miss the adrenaline rush of a crash c-section. I will even miss the tense moments waiting to see if the babies will respond to the resuscitation when they come out limp and blue. I will miss the four am games of Who, What, Where, Why. Twisty-Cone Fantasy.... hee hee.... I suppose I'm just going to have to find new friends to play games with. There will be other rushes of adrenaline. There will be other people to help. There will be other students to teach. Time to go start studying my Arabic.

Feeling Brave....

If it appears that I do not have any hair in this picture, you are not smoking crack. Unless, of course, you are smoking crack. In that case, you probably ought to get some help instead of reading my blog. I have chopped all my hair off. I have wondered for years about how I'd look with short hair. I wear it up so often that I figured it was sort of a waste not using it. The next time I mention feeling this brave again, please direct me to this website. I have passed through the shock phase. Now, I am in mourning. I hope to move to the acceptance phase of this haircut. I feel like Sampson, post-Delilah. I feel castrated. I do feel that my new hairdo is cute, I have a face that can pull it off well. I just feel a loss because I always had the power to pull it all out in one dramatic head toss and let it cascade around my shoulders in a gorgeous waterfall of brown. Now, I actually have to DO something to it to make it look nice. I've never had to DO anything to my hair to make it look presentable. Whatever I did was just icing on the cake. Now, it looks pretty gross if I just wash it and go. Granted, it doesn't take long to put some crud in it and pin it up with some Very Tiny barrettes, but my pride is hurt that I no longer can pull off the Effortless Beauty look. Now, I have to put myself in with the ranks of the everyday woman who must do something to the mop she is utterly ashamed of residing on her scalp. Perhaps it never looked very good the way I had it, but in my MIND it looked good in a simple, elegant way. I remember the first time I put my hair up into a messy knot with a scruchie, (SEVENTH grade, people...) and I asked a guy I had a crush on what he thought. He said it looked like I'd just woken up. I don't think it was a compliment. I didn't care, I just thought he was stupid. He didn't want to be my boyfriend, anyway, so what did he know? I was set up on a blind date last year, and I wore my hair up. I made a point to take it out a few times over the course of the evening, so as to give the guy a little hint of what he'd get if he was second date material. The friend who set us up said that he told her I was nice, etc., but then when I took my hair out he realized I was actually pretty cute, too. I didn't want a second date. My rule was, this is me, take it or leave it. If you can appreciate the low maintenance exterior, you'll get rewarded later on. If you can prove to me that I am good enough just the way I am, then I'll pull out the big guns. I have provided a few incarnations of the New Hair. At the top is just the hair, with nothing but the grease from my scalp in it. Next, a sample of what I feel inside sometimes when I happen to catch a glimpse of my reflection. Directly to the left is a faux-hawk. It's a little long in front to really stand up. Here we have some gunk and a few barrettes. The lady who did it said that I should have most of it pushed forward in the front, to look "more feminine". I hate it like that. This is the look that I prefer the most. Old habits die hard. Even when it is only about four inches long, it still drives me crazy when it hangs in my face. Maybe I should've just shaved it all off. Please, never let me do that. ever ever ever. My hope is that this will have grown back to a decent length by the time I'm done with the Peace Corps. Hopefully by then I'll have all this adventuring out of my system, and I'll have my luxurious brown security blanket back. My hair was my lovey blankie. This was one of the incarnations I made, and it made me look like Hitler. I think that's a bad sign when you can style your hair like Hitler. And you're a girlI hope I get to the acceptance phase soon. Or at least to the phase where I can pull a handful into a ponytail of sorts. At least I didn't shave it.

Too Many Words!!!

I've been blog surfing for the past few hours, along with listening to Dwight Yoakam, and reading a couple of different books. Yeah, I'm doing this all at once. It's like I'm channel surfing with words. Then, I feel inspired to sit and blog about it. aaahhhh!! There are just too many good blogs to read out there. I still have two garbage girl magazines I need to get to.

Dwight Yoakam

One of my favorite Dwight Yoakam songs is "Guitars, Cadillacs". There's a line in it that says, "Girl, you taught me how to hurt real bad, and cry myself to sleep". I've learned that from certain fellows in my life. I wonder how many I've taught that to. I hope only the one who deserved it. I wonder why it is that we are taught that by relationships. Why is it that one cold look can knock us down? How can we unlearn how to cry ourselves to sleep? Is it just because I've been dating the wrong guys, or does everyone have those tiny scars that you can't see from relationships? Is it possible to listen to too much Dwight Yoakam? Can anyone articulate heartache better than him? Does love have to drive us to the brink of insanity? Why does it all have to hurt so much? I suppose there's a reason we have to express our feelings about love with words like pain, weakness, insanity, and scars. I just wonder if it is possible to get the love we all blindly thrash around for without all the pain. Maybe we aren't supposed to get it from someone else. Maybe that is all a lie. Maybe it comes from inside of us. Maybe it's from God. He's got a funny way of showing it for a lot of us. Maybe there is no such thing as true love, maybe all we can hope for is a close friend to share the rest of our lives with. Perhaps to survive in a relationship we have to accept that the other person will have the power to crush us with their rejection, and just live on the hope that they never will. Or maybe we are supposed to get to a point in our lives where there is no more fear of rejection, and then we'll be ready to do whatever it is that people do in a healthy relationship. That is a personal goal of mine. I'd like to reach a point with myself that I don't feel like I'm looking for something from someone else to make me feel good. I want to feel good about me by just being with me. Then I'll be at a point where I'm not choosing some jerk who ends up making me feel like crap. And, hopefully good guy who doesn't make me feel like crap all the time won't dump me a month later. Ok, wait. That already happened. I hope to strengthen that place where I feel good about me, and then when I get dumped after a month it won't ruin all the progress I've made. Maybe there isn't anything wrong with me. Maybe everyone just wants to be with someone who likes them for who they are, and isn't going to reject them for being completely NOT PERFECT. That's what I am. Completely not perfect. Most of the time, that's the way I like me. It's funny, though. Every guy I've ever dumped, it's been because he just wasn't perfect for me. ouch. I suppose there's a difference between perfect and perfect for me, though. Perfect is definitely not perfect for me. I don't think there is such a thing as perfect, anyway. The going definition of "perfect" in my neck of the woods generally makes me want to run screaming. Sorry, boys. Dwight, how did you know how to get it so right?

Go ahead, try to pigeonhole me.

I was reading a PCV's blog and there was a post about how sad she was that Stanley "Tookie" Williams was executed. She expressed her sadness, and had a few quotes about the whole "eye for an eye...whole world blind". I suppose it was just anti death penalty sentiment. Whatever. I do support the death penalty, especially when it involves one of the FOUNDERS of one of the most powerful gangs in the country. Have you ever had to live with gang violence up close and personal? It sucks. I hate all gangs. White, black, hispanic, polynesian. If you've ever walked down the hall in school and been AFRAID to look someone you didn't know in the eye, you won't have sympathy for "Tookie". If you've ever been beaten up for wearing the wrong color of wetsuit to the beach, you won't have sympathy for "Tookie". If you've ever seen some jerk's pathetic gang moniker spraypainted on a wall about forty thousand times in a two block radius, you won't have sympathy for "Tookie". If you've ever been ridiculed in elementary school because you wore a red shirt with red pants and a red belt because it matched, you won't have sympathy for "Tookie". If you've ever just looked the other way while the kid at the locker next to you sold someone drugs because you were too afraid of what they'd do if they saw you, you won't have sympathy for "Tookie". If you've ever had the video production class at your school stationed up on the roof at lunch to videotape the gang fights for prosecution, you won't have sympathy for "Tookie". If the girls you used to have slumber parties with in elementary school all got to high school and joined the gang and jumped another girl and bit off her ear, you wouldn't have sympathy for "Tookie". If your best friend in sixth grade showed you her mom and her cousin's fight rings- the ones with the stones removed so that the prongs stick out and hurt more when you punch, you won't have sympathy for "Tookie". If that same best friend gets initiated into the gang a few years later by being gang raped by the leader and the rest of the gang, you won't have sympathy for "Tookie". A thug is not respectable. A gangsta is a criminal, and no, a criminal isn't cool, either. Tattoos with Old English writing are not a fashion statement. Tookie Williams deserved to die. I don't care how he said he mentored kids. Kids, come see me in jail. I was a big man in a gang, and now I've got cool rappers staging protest rallies for me because I was in a gang. He deserves to rot in prison, and if he earned the death penalty, he should get it. I think it is justice. I think they might kick me out of the Peace Corps for that one...

SNOW....Snow...snow....snooooooww!

There isn't any snow outside my window. I'm a little disappointed in the weather people. I trust the things that television brings me!! All this talk about a winter storm today, and so I go to bed with the hopes that I'd wake to that familiar cold brightness coming from the window. The evening light as it reflects off of white clouds of sugary snow all over the ground, calling my gaze to the mountains looming just blocks away. NO. Just cold, dank Provo out my window. Just the hot tub at my apartment complex, filled with giggling BYU folk. Maybe if I left the apartment and went driving around, I'd see the leftovers from when it did fall. Maybe it did snow during the day, but disappeared. Maybe the new Storm Tracker Real Radar on Channel 2 SUCKS and they lied. Or, perhaps I just slept through it all. That is the most likely scenario. I did see on the news a study about sleep inertia. There is a period of time between when someone wakes up and when their brain is able to function on it's normal cognitive levels. Some people are functioning immediately, some people's brains need about two hours. That is me. That's why I never had any eight or nine o'clock classes when I could help it. I would not want to get up, and in the fog of wakefulness I'd just decide to skip class. Who cares if there's a paper due, who cares if I'd missed the last few weeks?! There is always a way to justify it in my brain at that time. That's because my brain WASN'T THINKING CLEARLY. I've stayed a little too late at some boyfriend's houses because I had fallen asleep next to them, woken up, and, "Hey, I can't see any good reason for NOT kissing them some more, instead of going home right now!". It's that prolonged sleep inertia's fault. That's why I have to set my alarm a full hour before I actually need to think about getting out of bed. It takes that long to decide I'd be better off going to work than sleeping through it. Every single time. Hopefully I won't have to think too hard when I'm a mom someday. My kids will be doomed. Here, honey. Go set the kitchen on fire. Yeah, I'm sure it'll be fine. It will keep me warm while I go back to sleep....

The Next Time...

The next time I have someone ask me how I can stay so skinny when I do whatever it is I've done to somehow make them notice I'm skinny, I'm going to say, "Probably because Heavenly Father loves me more than you." That ought to shut them up. I don't understand why everyone thinks its a compliment to say how much they hate me for being skinny. I don't particularly like the fact that through no effort of my own women look at me with hate in their eyes and men refuse to see me as a whole person. I'd rather not have to deal with that every day. I'd rather everyone just not comment about my body, the same way I never comment about theirs. I know that the hate in those women's eyes is truly for themselves, but it still hurts when they project it onto me.

Brokeback Mountain

I saw Brokeback Mountain tonight. I was a bit disappointed that it evidently WOULDN'T be coming to a theater near me, more specifically ANY major chain of theaters with nice surround sound and comfortable seats in the state of Utah. (I was not that surprised, but sadly disappointed indeed.) I am a bit spoiled with regards to my movie viewing environment. It was at the Broadway Centre Cinemas in Salt Lake, and there are quite a few showing times available, nine to be exact. All the other movies were only shown five times a day. So there. Anyhow. It was a wonderful film. I was a bit nervous that I'd get uncomfortable with the physical parts of this love story. For some reason there are no "Guys Gone Wild" infomercials on TV. I've seen a lot more girl-on-girl action (the appeal of which still mystifies me) than guy-on-guy, and I didn't know if I would be able understand it and relate to the intensity of their feelings. I decided that I'd better read the story by Annie Proulx first to figure out what this was all about. Most of the time the book is better than the movie, anyway. I LOVED the short story. It was very romantic and sad. Surprisingly enough, I found it quite erotic as well. As a female who is not so visually stimulated as my male counterparts are, I found the book much more stimulating than the movie. It was hard to really get into watching it when I couldn't figure out where, in my Fantasy Brain, I was supposed to put myself in the love scenes. That part was a little confusing for my Fantasy Brain. She doesn't really get a lot out of watching things, anyway. I will say that it was nice to see both Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in tight jeans and at a few points buck nekked. Not bad. That Jack Twist has a great smile, he does. But, I digress... I loved this movie for the realness of the love story. It was so raw and heartbreaking. I think it is hard to appreciate a story like that unless you have lived through that kind of tragic, painful love. I went for the love story that I enjoyed in the book, but I also wanted to see if I could gain a better understanding of a homosexual relationship. No one's (healthy) relationship is solely based on sex, but that is the main context in which I've thought about gay relationships. That might sound stupid, but I don't really know that many gay people. The few gay relationships I've seen have seemed very loving and committed. The only difference between me and a lesbian, in my mind, has been that she is interested in other women sexually instead of other men. I realize this thinking is about as stupid as the idea that the only reason I am interested in men is for the sex. There is so much more to it than that. However, I have often wondered about the inner workings of a gay relationship, and why it has to be that way for gays. Why do gay people feel they can only find satisfaction with the same sex? I suppose I should ask myself why it has to be a man for me. I don't really know, but I do know that I've seen that concept explored time and again in film, whereas this is the first movie about homosexual relationships I've seen that was just about love. No one died of AIDS, no one pretended to be a boy to kiss the girl, no one got into hilarious comic situations by being flamboyant. It was just two guys who really loved each other, and all the rest of life that happens to all of us. Except that I'm not at risk for dying in a brutal beating because a bunch of angry lesbians took a tire iron to my face. I enjoyed Brokeback Mountain because it provided me with a better understanding of a world I don't really know and have a hard time understanding. If more people were able to see into this world and explore it, then I think there would be less dead people in ditches. I think I'll go see it again. Before the movie started, there was a man up in the front of the theater thanking everyone for coming and making an announcement about some local Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual organization. He was giving away tickets to some film festival and he said he'd give them to the first person who could bring up a safety pin. After a minute, someone did. Then, he had a book of some local writer's newspaper columns to give out and he said he'd give them to the first person who could show him a set of keys to a Dodge Neon. No one stood up, and he joked, "I know there are some gay men in the audience, there HAS to be a set of keys to a Neon out there somewhere." Then, he said that a set of truck keys would suffice, as well. Keys for a Toyota Pick-up, to be more precise. This way, he said, the lesbians wouldn't feel left out. HA! I didn't know I drove a lesbian car. I went up and got my free book. As I pulled onto the freeway heading home, I switched to the classic country music station. The song was "He Stopped Loving Her Today", by George Jones. A superb example of the beauty of country music. No one can sing about heartache like George Jones. I cried a little in the theater, but I really got choked up listening to that song. "He said, 'I'll love you till I die..'"

4:30 am pain

I tried some Veet hair removing mousse on my legs tonight. I am on call and bored. My legs hurt now. It didn't really work, either. I should've just shaved, but after I rinsed it all off, my legs were too sore to put a razor to. Now, they just feel itchy and raw. Some parts are smooth, but mostly there is really fine stubble that catches on my pants and garments. It's really uncomfortable. I've been telling everyone at work about joining the Peace Corps. Everyone is really excited for me. Most people say either that they wish they had the freedom to do it, or that they could never imagine themselves doing it, but I would be perfect for it. I am really relieved. I was really worried people wouldn't understand and they'd yell at me for leaving. I'm really going to miss work, but I am NOT going to miss staying up all night. I definitely won't miss being on call. I get so nervous that I'm missing my phone going off. I get obsessive about looking at it and making sure there aren't any missed calls. It will be nice to be away from that kind of pressure.