Whoa. This is dirty.

Yeah, well, I suppose it’s one way to market milk. To perverts.

Japan, you weird me out sometimes.

Happy Fucking Holidays!

While my initial hope for the holiday weekend had been to sit at home with Kiba and concretize my plans to die alone at 26, it didn’t quite work out. Friends kept intervening. No, not like an “intervention.” They kept intervening with invitations to dinner parties. Hard to say “no” to that. It would be like turning down family - a proper loving and supportive family that doesn’t even in the slightest begin to describe the mess of a familial unit I was born into. I couldn’t say “no” to my Midwest Family. Besides, I’ve got, like, nine months to make that “dying alone at 26″ thing happen.

I spent Christmas Eve with Masami, her husband Aaron, and their friends Andrea and Nick (and their cute little son, Henry). Aaron had to cut out early (with a migraine) but Nick soldiered on with the roast beef with blue cheese horseradish sauce and, well, I guess you’d call it a more distinguished version of cheesy potatoes. There was wine and champagne and watching Henry open Christmas presents. Henry was totally mesmerized by his new train set. He called it his “choo”. I love it! Then more champagne.

Christmas I spent with the Phe family at a big Cambodian round-up. I headed over with good pal Sovady to hang out at her sister Sophearvy’s place. (So-PHEER-ee is how you pronounce it). Sophie’s hubby Justin was there, along with the three little ones: Tyler (6), Andru (2), and Ani (6 months). Sovady’s brother Stephen showed up a little after her mom and dad (Vanny and Pien) arrived to help make dinner. Things got really nuts when Vanny’s brother showed up with his wife and three kids. (I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t remember any of their names. *sigh*) There was a lot of mayhem. But also a lot of tasty Cambodian food and snacks - most of which I could try to describe, but I don’t know the names for a lot of the ingredients. =^_^=

I’ve got a short work week (2 days!) during which I will do very little, I imagine, and then another 4 days off for the New Year’s holiday.

Fat Friday: Fatshionista!

Masami pointed me towards this blog, Too Fat for Fashion: Fashion Beyond Sample Sizes, and I l.o.v.e it. I could scream and rant till I’m blue in the face about the disastrous state of day-to-day fashion for the fat girl, but this writer is coming from the high design part of the conversation - something I know very little about. And there are lots of pictures!

I can’t say ‘No’ to a little glam with my fat.

The fat and single need not apply.

China will be introducing a new set of adoption regulations in May 2007 in answer to the increasing number of petitions for foreign adoptions. Among those to be cut out of the running are the fat and the single. Oh, and anyone over 50 and anyone “who fail[s] to meet certain benchmarks in financial, physical or psychological health.” What do you want to bet that one of the “benchmarks” for psychological health is homosexuality?

Their feeling is that while singles can be good parents [...] it is better for a child to be raised in a two-parent family, it’s better for a parent to be educated, it’s better for a parent not to be obese because they have a chance of living longer. What C.C.A.A. [China Center of Adoption Affairs] really wanted was the cream of the crop.

The number of applications to China for foreign adoption has begun to exceed the number of available children. Now China wants to reduce the number of applications by using a dubious set of criteria to determine who the best parents will be. Give me a break. And is China going to be involved in continuous updates with the family to ensure that they remain married, healthy, and financially stable? Why drastically reduce the numbers of applications, anyway? Is there some problem with maintaining a waiting list?

I think this is fucked up and heartbreaking the way the C.C.A.A is discriminating against potentially awesome parents-to-be and using the argument of the child’s best interest as a means to defend their hatefulness. Well, this fat single parent thinks that’s bullshit, China!

Such a pretty face.

Every fat girl has fallen victim to this one: “Honey, you have such a pretty face. If you just lost some weight, you could have your pick of men.”

I’ve been getting an entirely different line lately. It snuck right by me the first few times, because there was no direct implication about my weight. I finally caught on a few days ago as my boss was assembling what she called her ‘posse’. We were on our way to the I.T. department to address grievances about some soon-to-be-installed institutional software. As my co-posse was gathering in the hallway discussing strategy, I walked up. They looked at me, smiled, and let me in on my part: I was the intimidation part of the plan. My boss piped up from her office, “Morgan, you scare me. I know you can scare these I.T. guys.”

I was dumbstruck. I was totally struck dumb, as in, the ‘no speaking’ definition of ‘dumb’. I couldn’t believe it. I am the tech go-to girl in my department. I solve 75% of the tech issues people have, thus saving the I.T. department from an overload of useless work orders requesting help with mail merges, mac vs. pc issues, printer trouble shooting, and most recently, how someone managed to inadvertently rotate their desktop display image 90 degrees. I have received the thanks of the I.T. department for keeping these inept questions from their door! I sit on the I.T. liaison committee! My boss knows this, and that is why I should be included in a meeting to discuss the potentially problematic migration of a very large and rather complicated tours database. But the reason that came our of their mouths was how scary I am.

I never hear, “Morgan is generous. Morgan is loyal. Or kind. Or dependable. Or smart.” I don’t even get, “Morgan has such a pretty face.” No, I get: “Morgan is scary. Morgan is intimidating.” Or the classic that my boss said to a co-worker after interviewing me for my current position: “Morgan kind of scares me. I think she could beat me up.” Yeah, yeah, it was meant as a joke. But this week’s incident hit me hard, because where I used to laugh at this (”Go me, the departmental bad-ass”), now it’s not that funny. It’s pretty hurtful, actually.

I’ve long gotten comments like this. And to be honest, if I saw me coming down the street, I might cross the street to the other sidewalk, too. It’s not like I can hide the fact that I’m 6 feet tall with linebacker shoulders. Size is often associated with power and strength, and these are traditionally read as masculine qualities. There’s very little about me that is traditionally feminine. I’m not small and submissive and dependent. I’m big and assertive and independent.

But it freaks me out a little that so many of the traits I value in myself, are also considered to be descriptors of the stereotypical hairy-legged, man-hating lesbian. It pisses me off on the one hand that these myths persist that all strong women must be man-hating Sappho devotees (but that’s not to say I don’t have plenty of feminista love for the self-identified man-hating Sappho devotees that are out in the world - go, sisters!), but I am not among their numbers. On the other hand, it’s alternately scary, depressing, and outrageous that one of the roadblocks to my meeting normal, secure guys is that fact that there’s something vaguely dyke-y about me. I had to ask my queer-friendly pal Amy because I was that irritated about it.

Okay, so I’m dyke-y, but not a dyke. Dilemma. What to do? Walk around in a t-shirt that says: “I prefer cock”? Take aside a nice boy and explain, “Hey, look, I know I seem outspoken and assertive, but that doesn’t equate to ‘agressive’. Really, I’m not trying to emasculate you. I just want to go out with you for a cup of coffee”?

FRUSTRATION!!!

Diversions

Thank the stars for the following diversions:

1. Christina the Self-Righteous Drunk
2. Earthworm Jim for Super Nintendo
3. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Gotta run. Kiba’s playdate with her greyhound buddies is starting soon at the Richfield Petco. Driving my furry child around is what the weekend is all about now.

Later, people.

Back to the mines.

Back to the contemporary-art-beauracracy-never-seemed-so-sweet salt mines.

Kiba is at home with the perma-snooze button on. I’m a little jealous, but very happy to be back at work.

Return from the Pit.

Where to begin? I spent the first part of December in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho enjoying all the hospitality that can be found in a place drowning in flannel and Mormons. Highlights included:

1. Seeing the end result of one woman embracing her victimhood to ridiculously embarrassing lengths. My mother had been telling me for almost a year that her house was in terrible condition - between damage from dogs and a mouse infestation - but when I finally saw it in person, I was in total shock. If it had been any other house, I would have guessed there was a meth lab in the basement. Over the course of two and a half days, I hauled 25 30-gallon trash bags out of that place. Gross.

2. Having been told by my mother that the house is too dirty to stay in, I turned down her offer of a hotel, and instead stayed with my very good friend, Brieanna. Brie and I spent some time hip-deep in nostalgia, being slothful on the couch, and watching the Jerry Springer Show. As soon as I saw the tagline, ‘I Got Pregnant by a Giant Transsexual,’ I knew there was no other place I belonged at that moment.

3. Maple Bars. These tasty doughnuts are called ‘long johns’ in the Midwest, but the perfect sweetness of maple is not in the repertoire of Midwestern doughnut frosting. It’s heartbreaking, really, so I made the maple bar one of my priorities during my visit.

4. Hearing Billy’s numerous tales of disaster in the kitchen; his many adventures as a chef inadvertently setting things on fire. I discovered that Billy’s partner, Michael, is a belligerent drunk, and I spent 10 straight minutes giggling while he ripped on the fact that the Coeur d’Alene Chamber of Commerce office resides in a mini-mall. This coming from a boy that spent his formative years in rural Kentucky. He’s a funny drunk with a cute accent.

5. My last night in town the neighbors across the street blocked my car in with a literal inch to spare on either bumper. The next morning, while preparing to drive out to the airport, I found my car unblocked but the neighbors stole the wiper blades as a parting gift.

6. The plane touching down in Minneapolis, and me taking a deep breath as I realize I have another week off from work to recover from the week spent in Idaho.

All in all, I’ve never experienced such a strong urge to hurl obscenities at my mother, and I’ve never been more thankful for the friends I have in Coeur d’Alene.

Home on the Range

Here I am. In Idaho. Northern Idaho.

Eek!

Familial obligations will have me camping out in the gem state for a few days, and in the meantime I will be posting about the…er…charms and eccentricities of this great state.

Nah. I’ll probably spend the time counting the days until my return to the Twin Cities, leaving behind this land of flannel, Wal-Mart, and roadside espresso stands.