*happy sigh*

I spent a good chunk of the evening talking with a friend who I don’t know very well. We must have spent a good hour talking about horses and rodeo and horse magazines and Baxter Black and cowboys and cowboy country. He’s moving to Columbus soon. We’ve already made a vow to make certain evil-ish things happen. I can’t wait.

A lot of people don’t expect me to be as into this stuff as I am. I keep it mostly quiet. I spent a few years running with the International Gay Rodeo Association, specifically with the Bay Area chapter of the Golden State Gay Rodeo Association. Hell, that’s where the ‘cowboy’ part of my online persona comes from.

I remember my first gay rodeo. Kansas City. It’s where I fell in love with my favorite bar in the world (and I know my KC friends are looking at their screens going, ‘WHAT?!’ It’s okay. I’m used to it.). I remember meeting some of the most awesome people in the world. I remember that they double booked the host hotel with the gay rodeo and the National Baptist Convention, and if you want to see some uncomfortable Jeezies, throw ‘em to a pack of homo cowboys. Hilarity ensued, all freakin’ weekend.

Several months after that, I went to the DFW rodeo. Keep in mind that for both of these, I was living in La Crotch Crosse, Wisconsin. We drove to both of them. So much awesome. The Will Rogers Memorial Center introduced me to my first indoor rodeo of any type.

Gods above and below, I miss rodeo.

Four months later, I was in San Jose, and I found the GSGRA and started helping with little things with them. I didn’t do anything major until the following September when I helped with Folsom Street Fair (link toooooootally NSFW). Ever spent 13 hours on your feet in bullhide Justin ropers, drenched to the calves and above in cheap beer, serving it to hot half-naked men? Yeah. I got kissed a LOT that day, especially because it was HOT and I had a bucket of water that was barely above freezing enough to keep it liquid and I’d put my hands on bare flesh and cool them down. Yeah. It was a GOOD day. Could have gone to see Toby Keith (let’s see what his webdevs say about getting THAT link, hey?) on the GSGRA as a thank-you, but had other stuff going on that weekend.

I played cowboy for two more rodeos, even helping in the arena. Let me tell ya, setting up for a rodeo is serious work. Enough so that I ended up drinking beer afterwards, and I don’t drink beer. Hell, it was even *shudder* Budweiser. And it tasted good. Which is odd, because (a) beer, and (b) Budweiser. Not even Bud Light. Full-on Budweiser. Yucky. But when you sweat that much, anything to replenish a few electrolytes. Or as my father, the Poet Laureate of Boscobel, Wisconsin, would say, “Anything to make a turd.” Yeah. Classy, no?

What even fewer people realize is that if boys could have done barrel racing in regular rodeos, I would have been on the rodeo team in my high school, and probably would have gone to college on a rodeo scholarship. Sad, isn’t it, that speed and finesse events are girl events and brute force events are for the boys? I had a horse who was made for speed and finesse, and I couldn’t do it. Such wasted time. Such wasted dreams.

I miss the rodeo. Jesse and I are already plotting a roadtrip to see the gay cowboys. Philadelphia in May is probably out, but Chicago in August might work. Otherwise, we may have to wait until next year. Little Rock in April or St. Louis in May might be plannable. Hell, who knows? We may be able to get more folks to join us.

Mmmmmmm, bullriders…. Cowboy up, y’all.

First, some cranky linkin’: Douchebag.

Then, a minor geek-gasm. I passed that link on to Wil Wheaton, who responded within about an hour. That made me all kinds of giddy, much akin to a teenage Japanese schoolgirl. He passed along this glorious cockpunch.

Moving on.

I fixed my problem with the shawl. I tinked it back to where I needed to be and re-did what needed to be done. Then, about an hour after I fixed it, someone suggested I just go to the next edge stitches, then drop, unravel, and re-pick up the stitches with a tiny crochet hook, much like you would do if you dropped a stitch in the middle of any other project. Yeah. 800 stitches reversed, and I could have done it so much easier. Ah well; live and learn. So I’m back on track now.

I’ve felt a little… off… for the last couple of days (no big shock), and hopefully, I’ll be getting back to who I need to be soon. Because honestly, this is making me crazy, and I know it can’t be any easier on anyone around me. Because lemme tell ya, when I get this raw, my shields crumble and gods help you if you’re any sort of empath. I’m slowly working my way back to where I need to be.

I have a feeling that there’s a reason behind it, though. A couple of months ago, I was talking to my high priestess and we were discussing degrees. I actually said that I’m ready to pursue my Third. Hell, I’ve even got a timeline — 18 months. There are other things going on at the end of those 18 months as well, and things are coming through with an odd sort of synchronicity. Putting that kind of intent out to the Universe tends to make Them come up with one reaction: “O RLY?!” So, things will go the way they go, and we shall see what we see.

I’ve got two packages being delivered tomorrow to my office, both from Amazon. I’m a little like a six-year-old on Christmas right now. I don’t get a lot of packages, and I’m relatively certain that they’re both birthday gifts. I have a love/hate relationship with surprises. I hate them because GODS, I hate waiting, but I love them because it means people love me enough to send me fun stuff that will make me happy. Because I’m nothing if not a materialistic bitch to the consumer machine.

I’m still working my way — slowly — through Inner Temple of Witchcraft. I read through 7 Days of Magic and honestly, if you don’t own it, you need to. It’s such a basic book of things that every Witch should know — correspondences. It’s small, cheap, and very well written. Plus, Ellen’s made of Awesome Fabulosity. Evolutionary Witchcraft is somewhat on a back burner; it’s still on my bedside table, but I’m having a hard time getting into it. I’m still a very dedicated fiction reader, and it’s hard for me to push myself into the realm of non-fiction. I’m still trying, though, and I will get through it.

I’m also really enjoying this whole blogging-every-day thing. I’m having a good time getting my thoughts out, and getting my life out there. I’m not completely out of my comfort zone, but I’m starting to get there. The whole opening-up part of it is a little tough for me to get past, but it calms me and puts me in a much better headspace, allowing me to calm down enough at night to sleep easier, and that’s always a good thing.

Random brain dump, ahoy!

The Battle of the Sexes is such an integral part of our society. Women are the weaker sex. Men are the patriarchal enemy. Women are shrews. Men are pigs. To every stereotype, there is a grain of truth. Are women weaker? Physically, for the most part, yes. Are men patriarchal? By definition, yes. Are women shrews and men pigs? Some are, yes, and far more than either gender would care to claim.

In speaking with my high priestess about the different cycles that we go through in life, it’s very easy to find the main one for women: every 28 days, [insert euphamism or clinical term here] happens. For men, it’s not so definable. Men do, however, have a cycle. It’s much more subtle and gradual. If you’re pagan, though, and/or inclined to follow Nature at all, it should be easier to see, even though it’s not something we think about very often.

Women’s cycles are lunar. There are about 13 moons every year. Every 28-29 days, the moon cycles from new to full and back to new again. It affects the tides, and honestly, with the body being 70%+ water, it makes sense that on Full Moons, people go a little crazy as their inner tides are pulled upon, and that women are much more likely to be more in touch with the lunar cycle and the pull of the tides.

Men’s cycles, though, are solar, and there’s just one of them every year. There’s the pull of the Land for men. Farmers know this one strongly. Tilling the soil, tending the crops, harvesting the fruits and grains of the Land, followed by the meat harvest. Without actually doing any digging into it (because, dear gods, where would I even start to look??), I’m willing to bet that more men than women are affected by Seasonal Affective Disorder, simply because the Land sleeps in Winter and the strength of the Sun wanes, to be taken by longer nights and colder months. Most males, human and otherwise, would tend to get a little randier during the spring months, culminating in Beltane, a festival that celebrates fertility, but more specifically male fertility. Well, depending on your path, but for the most part, that’s what I’ve seen.

Y’know, I said all this, and I really have no way to end it. I’m really hoping that the randomness will stop sometime this year as I work on my writing skills. This is one of the topics to which I’d like to come back and flesh out a little. I think there’s potential for this; I just hope I can figure out how to end it. Thoughts?

Via IM yesterday

Julian: Happy birthday! I got you a Blizzard! Do you like it?

I grew up mostly in the country. My family only spent a couple of years in town, and those towns were all well under 10,000 people — Darlington, Monroe and Belmont, all in Wisconsin. Since moving out of my mom’s house, I’ve spent all of my time in cities over 10,000, most of them well over that — Powell, Wyoming, La Crosse, Wisconsin, Sunnyvale, San Jose, El Cerrito, California, and now, Columbus, Ohio. A good chunk of my winter memories (except for the last 6 winters) include this type of snowfall. It’s usually about this bad at least once.

Most people who live in this type of weather have negative reactions to this kind of white, fluffy dump on the world. I’m learning that there are more things to be upset at than things that you can’t change, short of a life-altering upheaval. It’s been interesting to me to see myself find my inner child again (not that, y’know, it’s been buried all that deeply) and to see others around my finding that. I watched Mat’s reaction yesterday as Leon tried to pelt him with snowballs. Comical, to say the least. We haven’t even dared to take Belle out in this yet. The snow is about three times as deep as she is tall. To say that it would be hysterically funny for all of us except her would be a drastic understatement.

I’ve got all the blinds open in the house, and a pure, almost painful white light is filling the house. The skies are overcast now, but earlier, they were clear, and the brilliant late-Winter sunlight was reflecting off the diamond-white purity of the new, untouched snow. It’s been far too long since I’ve seen that. The neighbor’s houses all have long icicles hanging from the eaves. It’s surprises me how many memories from earlier in my life come flooding back just from small sensory cues. I remember playing in the snow as a young child in Monroe when we lived out of town. That was the winter I also ended up with chicken pox, and my aunt Heidi and brother BJ made a snowman outside my bedroom window so I could enjoy the snow from my bed. I remember snowfalls in the mountains above Wheatland, with the wind softly blowing, just to give the snow a diagonal line to slide down, great huge fat fluffy flakes that dampen all the sound of the world completely and totally, the giant pines softly brushing one another to make a gentle whisper, and the world never looking so asleep and peaceful as it did during those days. Later on, I’d experience the most amazing natural ice sculptures as the snow would melt and the water would run and freeze along the highway going up the Minnesota side of the Mississippi River coming out of La Crosse and heading toward Rochester, Minnesota. Interstate 90 was carved from the hill along the river, and the woods were still mostly complete with huge expanses of limestone exposed during the Spring, Summer and Autumn, but covered in glorious sky blue and butter yellow ice floes in the Winter, as if the next Ice Age were starting in the hills of Minnesota, ready to erase civilization and remake the world.

Spending the last six and a half years in California has made me appreciate the turning of the world and the changing of the seasons. We’re ending up an amazing Winter, after having been through a scorching Summer and a calm though almost non-existent Autumn, and heading into the re-awakening of Spring. It’s something I’ve been looking forward to, but not half as much as I’ve been looking forward to this Winter. I’ve been blessed by memories, both good and bad, re-emerging in my life, all brought forth by the changing of the last year’s seasons. This birthday could have been dreadfully bad for me, what with the snow. I had planned on a bunch of friends getting together for the love and laughter, but the snow has made that impossible for right now. I know that there will be plenty of other times to get together for that, but this is my day, y’know? It’s something that is special to me. The celebration has been scaled way back for now, but will happen at some point.

Happy birthday to me. Blessed be.

Why do I knit? I knit because it relaxes me. It makes me calmer. Anyone who’s met me knows that this is a very good thing. I also like to make pretty things. I like to play with color. And I love to see the look on peoples’ faces when they get a hand-knit item that’s been made especially for them. It’s like a part of me goes into everything I make and that part goes with everyone who gets a gift from me.

Tonight, Leon got me my birthday present. I’ve decided to make the Irish Diamond Shawl from Cheryl Oberle’s Folk Shawls. This will be, by far, the most involved, largest piece I’ve made to date. Well, I made an afghan, but it was all 8″ squares all sewn together. Totally doesn’t count. This, though, is lace. And a TON of knitting. You start by casting on 74 stitches for the neck band, and end, 183 rows later, by casting off 752 stitches, after two different lace panels, two sections of eyelet stitches and twelve rows of garter stitch right there at the end. Yeah. Twelve rows of 752 stitches. By that point, I’ll be lucky if I’m not blind, and I’ll also be lucky to get one row done per night.

Thank the gods for stitch markers and lifelines.

So, for my birthday, Leon got me eleven hanks of Harrisville Designs New England Shetland yarn in the Seagreen colorway. The colorway on the page is SO much brighter than the actual yarn. The true color is more of a heathered version of Crayola‘s Sea Green crayon. I wasn’t convinced at first that this was the color that I wanted, but Leon said it was a good color and that Mom would love it. Mom would love it no matter what color it was, because she’ll get to gloat at work and at church that her son made her this glorious shawl to wear. Because, really, what the heck am I gonna do with a shawl?

The caveat to this is that she doesn’t get it until Christmas. I’ll have it done long before then, because the due date on this is sometime in early July. Why? Because I’m going to enter it in the Ohio State Fair in the knitting competition. And therein lies the biggest part of my fear. What if the judges hate it? Worse yet, what if the judges ignore it?? My biggest dream for this shawl is to come to the fair the day after the judging and see a giant purple ribbon on it. That would be Best of Show. That would make me silly giddy happy.

So far, this is what I have. It’s not much, just the book, yarn and two rows knitted. Only 181 rows to go! Wish me luck.

About three blocks from my office is an Einstein Bros. Bagels shop. About once every other month, I’ll stop in for breakfast. Today was that day. I got turkey sausage and cheddar and eggs on a chopped garlic bagel and a strawberry white chocolate bagel.

The personn who made it for me this morning was a beautiful willowy African-American woman by the name of Chante. She couldn’t have been more than 25, and had fabulous makeup. The reason I know her name is Chante is one of the other women, someone I’ve seen in there before, asked her if she needed help, as it was moderately busy in there this morning. A third woman, a tall thin lipstick lesbian, asked the second woman if she’d said her name. Woman #2 said, “No, I said Chante.” Chante then pipes in, with an extremely over-exagerrated ghetto accent, with, “Well, because I can see how Chante rhymes with Michelle.”

I lost it. It struck me as so funny. My final words to them as I left were, “I’m totally blogging about this.”