xmas lights

Checking in...

I don't really have anywhere to put this that is safe, so I'll put it here and wave hello.  It's been about a year since a friendship ended in the midst of great despair and tumult, and at a cost far heftier than the friendship was truly worth.  Moving back out to the suburbs, losing the freedom and novelty of the city - well, it's all been hard.  There are innumerable ways in which things have changed for the better and countless friends added to my emotional Rolodex.  So many successes and joys, too.  I'm more careful, cautious and thorough in just about everything I undertake and with everyone I meet.  There are so many people who were once extremely influential parts of my life that I cut out rather intentionally and unceremoniously.  There are also times when I wonder if this was the best choice for me...for any reputation I might have, for any connections I might want to keep in the long run.  I don't have the answer.  In fact, I'm confident that a number of people thought I was completely insane.  I am not, obviously.  Nevertheless, the people I cut out and lost never reached out to me in any way.  Or if they did, I never heard.  Are those folks friends, then? It's hard to say.  I'm glad I shielded myself when I felt unsafe.  It's an instinct worth celebrating.

Since it's been a year, and there are times when I still feel frustratingly confused and full of seething contempt, I wonder when I'll be truly over it.  I think a lot of people misunderstand karma.  It's not reactionary.  There is a reason, some choice (conscious or otherwise) that I made at some point in my life, that brought this experience to me.  And there is some reason I don't understand it.  Two of my most difficult qualities are my need for control and my need to know everything.  I had neither in this experience.  In the end, somehow, it'll all shake out and I'll feel content.

Whew.  You know, I don't write much these days that is inherently personal.  I'm still tending to my blog and I have a few other places where I write and keep engaged with my feelings.  This is good and bad.  Most of all, I'm happy and normal.  And I hope you are too - to the fullest extent possible, anyway. :-)
etsy

Handmade Mart - Sunday 5/31 in Silver Spring!



Produced by the masterminds behind Hello Craft! and Crafty Bastards, the Handmade Mart is poised to be one of the top craft shows along the Eastern seaboard this Spring/early Summer. With over 50 vendors there is seriously nothing better to spend your tax refund on! Tight on funds but still love crafty things? Not to worry! There's going to be food, music and hands-on workshops. Everyone of any age will love this event!

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LOOK AT THAT! Just look at it! How could you possibly resist?

You've got a fever, and the only cure is more HANDMADE. See you there, kids!
junior miss

Hey! Look at me!

I'm posting this here because I'm really proud of myself and I figured it was worthy of a cameo.  *waves*

So just when I thought I had read the entire internets, and also when I thought I knew everything, I get an e-mail from Green of Autostraddle inquiring about the possibility of an interview. Autostraddle? They describe their effort:
Girlier than Queerty and gayer than Jezebel, Autostraddle aims to address all things terrible/AWESOME with a quick, queer and intellectual attitude. We’re particularly passionate about independent movies and music, books, theater, visual art, cyberculture and sex as well as queer theory, social justice, feminism and GLBT rights. We like the macro and the micro, the international and the close-to-home. We take a queer sensibility to everything — ’cause you know, something doesn’t have to be GAY to be, you know – gay.
Not unlike my five year-old self, who wandered around with my father's hand-me-down tape recorder and made multiple tapes of myself talking to myself, I relished in the opportunity to talk more about what makes me tick and what this blog, crafting/DIY, being queer and all the other stuff that I love means to me. Green asked some really fantastic questions and we struck up what I hope will become a lingering e-friendship.

Please head to Autostraddle and read all about me, and please continue to check AS often (or RSS it up, kids!) because there is undoubtedly more to come from this bad ass group of people.


(She's cute, idn't she?!?)
earrings

SHOP CLOSING/HOLIDAY SALE @ Patch Ink!

Head on over to Patch Ink. and save on all remaining designs! Everything is $5 off! Just select your items, head to checkout, and instead of paying wait for a revised invoice from me! Or, if you don't want to wait, I'll refund the amount to your PayPal account as soon as I get your payment. It's that easy! Shop for coworkers, friends, sisters, brothers, moms, nuns and even priests! Any questions? Shoot me an e-mail: oh.meaghan@gmail.com


Etsy
Buy Handmade
patchink
etsy

HEY MAZZIE!


I'm still in the process of transferring things over and making new stuff for my latest crafty endeavor, but I wanted to let all of you know that oh ginger, my new Etsy shop, is open for business!


Please stop over and check things out! Come back here and let me know what you think!

Etsy
Buy Handmade
ohginger
fuckery!

Reposting

http://queeringdomesticity.blogspot.com/2008/10/nervous-breakdown.html

Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness. (Richard Carlson)
  • I discovered that I have a dairy AND almond allergy. After suffering through three months of itchtastic hives and steroids, I find out that I cannot eat two foods that are in most mainstream products. There is ALMOND EXTRACT in many shampoos, for God's sake. So then my allergist, lovely man that he is, puts me on a forcefield blocking amount of antihistamines. I'm on so many antihistamines that I feel like I'm exhausted, and I'm so exhausted that I'm practically an insomniac. And they don't even work all the time. Sometimes, for no reason at all, I get hives! How 'bout them apples?!
  • I moved out of an apartment that was literally leaking into the apartment below me via the shower stall, fought with the landlords in order to get my deposit back, only to move into a new place that I'll have to leave approximately two months after moving in. The reason why gets its own bullet point.
  • Three sinus infections, in quick succession. Two rounds of joint-ache inducing anti-biotics. Headaches. OH, the headaches. And my teeth. I felt like I needed to keep a net covering my face because at any moment my teeth could shoot out of my head in forceful obstinance to the pressure created by my useless sinuses. I had to cancel on my hair stylist twice. She thought "sinus infection" was code for "rehab".
  • A friend of mine, whom I've known for close to four years (according to my calculations), decides that not only is she going to break the lease and move out of the apartment after living there with us for six weeks, but that she's going to give us misinformation as to how the leasing office plans to charge us, LIES to us about the reasons why she's electing to leave, fails to even clue us into her interest in leaving for over THREE weeks and proceeds to cut me out of her life completely. As it turns out, if you live with me I will control your life. Like a mother or like a significant other. In this case, she behaved so badly that I took away her "remote privileges". Are you kidding me?! I would've sold you the television, the remote, the cable box, two DVD players and my first born for less than this lease breaking buyout, you putz. I would've even baked you a pie a week for the next 25 years.
  • Oh, the hives reappeared! Must be the stress. It's always fun to itch the palms of your hands.
  • We packed up our entire apartment last week. Yes, every last thing. We drove out to the truck rental place, picked up our shiny moving truck, headed out and my gut twisted. I called the movers, because I figured that would've been the biggest wrench thrown into the day. HA. I love my gut. The assholes canceled. Family disagreement in a family owned and operated business. NOTE TO Y'ALL: Don't work with your family if you want me to hire you.
  • Endless amounts of anxiety and worry about my parents and the stock market. And just my parents. Because they live mostly across the country and given my luck, the plane I take to fly out there to check on them will land in a cornfield in Nebraska and I'll be abducted by aliens.
  • ETA: Just got my first nosebleed of the season.  Lovely.
I'm 29 years old. I was a blessed child, having everything I needed and more. I didn't really have to worry about anything, save for the standard unexpected things like grandparental deaths, illness, injury and the occasional fight with my parents. In hindsight, I feel like things were pretty much normal. And even as a young adult, skating breezily through my twenties, I feel like things were mostly simple. Yes, there were tedious and emotionally injurious relationships and friendships, financial missteps and massive blunders, and a certain degree of intellectual and emotional aloofness that probably served me best as a defensive mechanism. I worked, I slept, I partied and tried to enjoy life.

At this point, though, I feel more settled down than I have in close to ten years. And naturally, the minute I SETTLE DOWN, all the crap that could stir up, well, stirs up. I feel like over the course of the past six months, there has been a litany of random and completely jarring smack-me-across-the-face nonsense that's happened. And like any person who finds God, Suze Orman, or some sort of secular life coach, you would think that once I calm down and start planning and living a life congruent with my means and my bodily limitations, that life would be just fine too. That the penance of my crappy choices in young adulthood were paid by my body and mind THEN, and there would be no aftershocks resonating into the next stage of my life.

Ha. Ha ha ha. HA HA HA.

I mean, this could all be a matter of perspective. I could just not be seeing, retroactively, how these things could or should benefit me. Or perhaps, I am particularly unskilled at the gentle nudges of life's foreshadowing. I studied that nonsense in high school and college. I know what literary foreshadowing is like nobody's business! But when life hands me a juicer and then a few months later the lemons get pelted at my head, I feel like my cognitive misfirings leave me completely unaware of how to make the freakin' lemonade.


junior miss

Me!

The rules:
Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with your picture.


junior miss

Phasefest 2008 - The East Coast's largest queer music & arts festival

Tomorrow kicks off the weekend-long, 2nd annual, Phasefest 2008! Come on down to Phase 1, the nation's oldest lesbian bar, and celebrate amazing queer art and music with a line up that rivals most big-name concert tours! We've got Alix Olson, Bitch, Boyskout, Each Other's Mothers, Shunda K from Yo! Majesty, Partyline and so much more. Tickets are available online OR stop by the bar and pick up a day pass ($10 for Wed/Thurs/Fri; $15 for Sat) or a weekend pass for $50.

More info at www.phasefest.com and the ( Collapse )