I want to make a post

as a sort of PSA about Things I Can Hear versus Things I Can’t, but that requires me to know what I can hear and why. Oops.

I’ve come up with a few things, though, about focus/attention and also about white noise, which is really a fascinating thing.

Today Sparkly and I went to the DMV equivalent government office that’s actually called something else, why is this not standardized across different states? and all I have to say about that is ARGH, but I did renew my driver’s license and register to vote.

Life update

Today I ran some important errands– getting together all the documents I need to renew my driver’s license– and some more everyday errands too. There was a lot of walking involved and also some doing of New Things (figuring out how to use the computers and print things out at a new library) and also some weird unexpected things (the pull cord on the bus wasn’t working? Or something? IDK). So long story short I’m very tired. Sparkly also got things done today, ey sent two important emails and I’m very proud of em.

Some reasons why I didn’t wear skirts

(another quick thing about femininity and fashion)

  • Maxi skirts weren’t really a thing when I was younger? from what I remember? So to wear a skirt either it had to be a Fancy Dress or you had to show your legs.
  • I did not want to show my legs.
    • I have bumpy keratosis pilaris-ish skin with lots of ingrown hairs.
    • Shaving takes time, especially when you have neither the eyesight nor the coordination to do it in the shower, and I was struggling to find the time to shower in the first place.
    • I get the impression that this is less of a Thing now, but when I was a teenager, tanning was a big thing. Girls were embarrassed to show their legs if they were “too pale”. And I was not tan, but I was also not about to go to a tanning salon, buy tanning lotion, or go outside wearing shorts, so there was kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy thing.
    • I have very dark body hair to go with my pale skin, so you can basically see every hair follicle even when I’ve just shaved.
  • I didn’t like the feeling of nylons either, not they really covered anything up anyway.
  • The stylish skirts at that time weren’t just not-maxi-skirts, they were really short and tight.
    • Do you have any idea how hard it is to shave the back of your thighs without missing a spot?
    • Constantly adjusting your skirt to make sure you aren’t showing your underwear is really uncomfortable and distracting.
    • Even apart from physical discomfort, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of dressing to be Sexy or to get any kind of attention, really, and that’s what I associated that style with.

Some reasons why I do wear skirts now:

  • I give less of a fuck about how my skin looks
  • I have more free time in which to shave my legs
  • loose-fitting swooshy comfortable skirts are a thing
  • maxi skirts that completely cover my legs are a thing
  • basically now I have skirts taht are sensory heaven instead of sensory hell and are also adult-looking and not Sexy™

Note to self

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this before, so:

I usually say that I didn’t have a speech delay as a child, because I’ve never been told that I did, and certainly when I started school I had fairly average speaking abilities for my age.

But. The story my parents have always told me about my “first word” is about something cute that happened when I was a newborn, not my actual first spoken word, and I have no idea when my first real word was. Or why they wouldn’t know/tell me when it was.

So maybe I did have a speech delay. I don’t know.

A quick thing about fashion and femininity

because I’m too tired to add more to it tonight.

 

I only switched from wearing loose-fitting jeans with cargo pockets to tight-fitting low-rise flare jeans because I couldn’t fit into girls’ sizes anymore and the “juniors” (teen girls) department didn’t have straight-leg jeans. It was partly about discomfort with the idea of looking sexy (or calling attention to myself in general), but also partly about trouble adjusting to new things & not enjoying having the fit of my jeans suddenly radically change. When I finally found a store that had juniors’ jeans options beyond “low” and “super low”, I tried the least-low option by reflex but I’d gotten used to the whole low-rise thing by then and the higher-waisted jeans felt wrong.

I couldn’t/didn’t wear the main style of top that was in style while I was a teenager, because it required a bunch of layers and I didn’t like the feeling of having lots of layers of clothing shifting over each other.

Unsympathetic

I’m thinking about portrayals of trauma and phobias in fiction. (Well, because I was recently reading one specific one, but the details aren’t really relevant.) The thing is, I found myself feeling really unsympathetic towards this one character, even as I recognized her reaction (to something that reminded her of a near-death experience) as both a Serious Trauma Thing and similar to how I sometimes react to things related to my phobia.

So I was wondering about why I felt that way, and I came up with a couple of things.

1. She doesn’t describe what happened in detail

2. She doesn’t describe how she felt/feels about it in detail

3. She reacts in an avoiding/shutting-down sort of way rather than a straightforwardly fearful or hurt or sad way

And like. Those are all things I do, but apparently they still strike me as unsympathetic and overreacting when someone else does them, so that’s educational I guess.

I’m back

Other Person’s Vacation was exhausting but I got to see a lot of cool touristy stuff.

Other good things:

I fixed my nice sandals (the buckle had fallen off) which I’ve been meaning to do for a while.

I cleaned out the tub drain, which was an adventure because the little screw-on cap on top of the push-pull plug thing was screwed on very tightly. In related news, we own a set of channel-lock pliers now.

I’m nearly finished dealing with some insurance related paperwork. I would be Actually Finished but the website is down for maintenance (?) this evening and it just booted me out a few minutes ago.

I had Curry Of Joy for dinner and I have leftovers to eat tomorrow!