there's a boy in my stocking!

(habits are hard to break.  the title of this post was going to be 'Ding's 1st Christmas - With a BOY.')

Remember all those holidays I spent complaining about LTF's lack of will when it came to spending time with me when I finally had the time? Remember those posts dithering about some vague desire I had to give him a holiday gift? (The most I ever mustered was a Christmas card.)

Well, this time I get to spend a real Christmas with a real dude, and not some frakked up facsimile thereof.

He's spending Christmas Eve with his family; I'm spending it with a friend's family. (Happy Birthday, mom.)
Then we'll be together for Christmas to exchange gifts, watch movies and grab Chinese food.  My perfect holiday.

I used to laugh at my sister every holiday as she'd dump a pile of gift-wrapped boxes at her husband's feet when they were dating in college; I thought she was a tool of the patriarchy.  Now I laugh at myself as I wander Michigan Avenue trying to calculate his shirt size or whether he'll prefer cotton PJs to flannel. The universe played a joke on me and I have to give it props for its timing.

Navigating this new relationship, and the various ripples from it, makes me think about the progress I've made as a result of those two years of coaching and therapy.  I'm so glad I went through that process.  (I really can't recommend it enough.)  I was feeling stuck and was just emerging from the fog of my mother's death.  The progress since then may look tiny, but it's significant to me.  From being blocked, guarded, defensive and numb to where I am now - autonomous, independent again, working to be present, checking in with myself, being more clear-eyed about what it is that I really value and what I need.  Moving past B-/LTF.

Of course, these are 'first-world' problems; who else has such luxury to navel gaze? 

But I'm proud of the internal progress I've made.  Maybe 'Kick Ass' isn't such a bad resolution after all.

Merry Merry to all my 11 readers - thanks for sticking around this long!

unmasking Ding

some things will be changing around here.

if anyone follows me on Twitter (or pays attention here) you'll notice that my pseudonymity is just about to disappear. i've decided that i've been hiding my professional light under a bushel for long enough and if i'm going to start going after what i want, i need to start pushing my 'personal brand.' sigh.

for years, Ding/ChurchGal has been a 'brand' of sorts, but i can't really take advantage of that as 'Ding' forever, you know? it would be like walking around in a cowl and hood.

so...this means that Screed will start migrating some of the personal stuff to another place. (can't really build a reputation on swooning over the boyfriend, you know?)

if you want to follow my Tweets, you can still do so here.

what was my new year's resolution a few years ago? Make An Effort.

this year, i'll add to that: Make An Effort and Be Ambitious.

Or maybe the other way around: Be Ambitious and Make the Effort.

or maybe i'll just condense it: Kick Ass.

sigh: i might as well be killed by a terrorist

Marriage eludes high-achieving black women - msnbc.com

apparently, my 'marriage market' has 'deteriorated' to such an extent i, and sisters like me, are doomed to singleness forever.

we're DOOMED, i tell you.

how come all these articles like this are about black women? how doomed are my high achieving asian girl friends? my over educated latina sisters? huh? why come all this pathologizing of the black women?

hmph.

looks like M- is my ticket out of spinsterhood.

(just kidding, M-! just kidding! kinda.)

since my visit with my family last week, there's been a post floating around my head about the community i come from, the religious community i come from and both those communities' inability to address family abuse (both physical and sexual) - and how that refusal ripples outward, creating more and more shit.

but, of course, i'm a little swamped right now.

and it's frakking 2 degrees in chicago.

brr.

but this one is coming up. soon.

Power to the Sheeple

[in BossLady’s office]

BL: Ding, I got your presentation. I LOVE it! It’s great! It’s well-researched, thought out, love the strategy…

D: Great!

BL: But…it’s too informative.

D: What??

BL: It’s not going to work. It’s…going to scare the crap out of them. You’re going to start a panic.

D: Have they seen the news??

BL: Well…you know that, I know that. But you have to understand… They can’t handle this kind of thing. You want to manage people, don't you?

D: Uh, no. Not if it means catering to idiots who need to be treated like they're brain-damaged.

BL: Well, that's who we have. They think they want to know, but they really don't. Let me just show you what I think needs to be taken out. It's not a lot. [crossing out a few slides about how bad and disastrous our state deficit is]

D: What?! But-but that’s what the presentation is about! You can’t get rid of that! It’s on the news, in the papers, every policy wonk in the state releases a report about our numbers. They can’t handle policy??!

BL: (sigh) These aren’t directors; these are middle managers. They are sheep. They won’t know how to handle this information so we need to manage it for them. [crossing out a slide of message points]

D: Oh, no, I have to TOTALLY disagree with that. If we are supposed to be asking them to help us fight for a better state budget, we need to give them the tools! Otherwise, what’s the point of this presentation? ‘Uh, the state budget is bad but I can’t tell you how bad or how to talk about it.’ What the fuck??

BL: Ok, ok. You have a point. I guess it can stay. But this has to go. [crossing out phrase ‘uninformed public.’] This is them. Can’t say this.

D: But we can call them sheep. Niice. I thought we were about empowering women. How can we empower staff, ask them to perform for us, but not trust them with what we know or trust them to be rational adults? What about giving everyone the benefit of the doubt and treating them like equals?

BL: (wince) Yeah...no. We actually set the bar a little lower than equal.

D: But they’re our Leadership council! Being a leader is about responsibility and trust – but we don’t trust them? What's this group for? And how come I'm not on it?

BL: Senior management realizes now that this was probably a mis-named group.

D: Jesus.

thankful for not having swine flu

basically, i spent the entire thanksgiving holiday knocked out on my ass due to flu. couldn't eat, broke into flop sweats, weak, achey, whiney and congested. lovely. and did i mention broke? yeah, good times.

also had the most alarming dream wherein B-/LTF reappeared, just as crazy and delusional, and basically stalked me thinking we'd pick up where we left off. the dream ended with me screaming at him to get the hell away from me but also panicked that i was missing an important work deadline.

so there you go: i don't have swine flu, B-/LTF still haunts my dreams (and not in a good way) and work is giving me nightmares.

happy holidays.

the most boring couple in the world

a quick M- vignette to tide you over the Thanksgiving hols:

you know you might be in it for the long haul when your guy's head is in your lap while you're watching an old Mexican horror movie and he's letting you pluck his crazy italian stray eyebrow hairs, and you marvel at them together ('wow, that one's huge') before blowing them away.

Worth sharing: an online guide to health care reform news, policy, wonks and wags from Slate's Timothy Noah.

Carry on.

yeah, so. work.

stuff like that.

writing my ass off there so i'm utterly depleted here.

precious wrecked me and i don't even know why

just saw Precious.
wow. this is not going to be an analysis - just my first impression. but still, wow.

the bus was packed with a bunch of african american teenage girls and i just thought it was because school was out and they were going to the mall. nope. they were all going to see Precious. the theater was full of these young girls. and the theater was pin-drop silent.

(movie going with teenagers in the audience? it's never pin-drop silent.)

i wouldn't say the movie craft is *brilliant* but it's still a movie that should be seen - with performances that should be recognized:

Mo'Nique (without a doubt, so far ahead of anything she's done before.)

Gabourey Sidibe (for an unknown to carry this whole thing is amazing - this could *not* have been done by a Hollywood actress. no way. they're too mannered, too practiced, too fake, too stiff, too soap opera-y. it would be the equivalent of watching Holly Hunter play a dysfunctional cop from Oklahoma - sinewy and wrong.

my one quibble: i know most of Precious' subjectivity lives in her head but it would have been great to see more of her inner life, her push, somehow made more visible, other than the fantasy sequences that allow her to disassociate from whatever blow she's just received. This is a point that someone else - PostBourgie? - made somewhere and i agree with it.)

the other girls in the ABC class (don't you recognize each of them?)

after i saw it, i walked around for a few blocks wanting somewhere to sit and cry but that would have just looked crazy. it made me look at my aunts, the girls i knew from my church, the girls i see on the bus - differently.

if you've seen it, or read the book (which i haven't) would love to hear your thoughts.

the world needs meds

what the HELL is going on out there?

if the actual shooting at Fort Hood wasn't bad enough, the growing cacophony of anti-Muslim/Islam hysteria is about to eclipse it. on Twitter someone asked for the over/under for FOX News calling for the immediate segregation of all Muslims by Tuesday. why no link? it's unnecessary; just click on any comments section of *any* online newspaper or blog, liberal or conservative.

(frankly, i think the real story here is about mental health support, or lack of it, in the military but that's just me.)

then there's a second shooting today in Orlando and the difference in coverage is freaking startling (no instant speculation about race, ethnicity or religion - just 'crazy workplace shooter' narrative.)

question: why not treat the Fort Hood shootings like any other workplace violence story? or like a random school shooting?

and then the stupid ish i read in The Root huffing all insulted that the actress from Precious has the *nerve* to be all unashamed of her body?! (she must be mentally ill, The Root says. we're all caving to the PC gods if we don't shame her about her weight, The Root says. i say shut the frak up to The Root.)

makes me wanna holler or at least eat some bicuits and gravy. (i've missed lunch, too.)

it's a humdinger of a friday, folks.

carry on, if you can.

halloween is for *kids*

i'd post a couple of h'ween pics from the party on saturday but, uh, they are not appropriate for public consumption.

note to self: just because the open bar closes in 20 minutes does not mean that BOTH hands must hold pints of Gumball. nor does it mean that, at the next bar, one must switch from beer to jameson.

highlight of the night? overhearing a girlfriend's boyfriend murmur, 'you know, i actually like how i feel wearing a dress' and watching a girlfriend take a photo of M-'s spandex-clad crotch.

sorry the posting has been so undergrad-y, lately. i haven't even read a newspaper in a few weeks; there are elections going on?? some gov't relations hack i am. but work, as usual, is kicking my ass. tomorrow i take the metra out to the end of the Milwaukee West line to pitch a conservative GOP congressman on why he should include my org on his list of appropriations. (yeah, that means pork!) it'll be the third such meeting - which means i'm submitting 3 proposals to 3 different offices for earmarks.

when folks get upset about 'pork' it's really clear they have NO frakking clue what it takes to get it. it's literally a crap shoot - especially if you're not a hostpital, museum, research facility, university or loaded with juiced up Board members and/or lobbyists/consultants. you talk to a staffer, you pitch your org, you gauge their interest and then you fire a short proposal into the air and if it lands, you sometimes don't know.

if you're lucky enough to actually get through the district staffer then you have to get through the DC staffer, who'll be creating the list for the congressman/senator to review and approve. and then, if you make that round, you might not make the final list before they have to submit to the appropriations com'tee. if you make it onto that list you might have a chance of making it to the omnibus, but it all depends on how the budget negotiations proceed. so you could get knocked off.

in other words, when you're not juiced up with a lobbyist or a personal connection to the elected official, a little org like mine getting 'pork' is a frakking miracle. and pure luck.

and once you get it, you don't really 'get' it. the process shifts from being a discretionary one ('hey, they do good work and could use some support.') to a federal grant. have you ever written a grant proposal for a federal agency? they are frakking long, complicated and onerous. most human services orgs don't have the capacity to write one because it takes a team to do one well. there are budgets, narratives, assurances, and metrics that have to be submitted. in other words, they make you work for your pork. they want every dollar accounted for - if you say you're going to spend $87.50 for a brochure, at the end of the award year your expenses better reflect you spent $87.50 for a brochure.

when it comes to pork, you don't just get a fat check in the mail to do with what you will. they either parse it out to you in small chunks per quarter or you incur the initial cost of providing the service and they reimburse you for the expense. there is nothing 'free' about this money.

and don't even get me started on how long it takes this process to roll along. if you're applying for FY11 appropriations year, you don't actually receive your money until 18-24 months later.

and? this is one time money. that's it. one year of funding to pilot or support a program and then - poof! gone. it's a lot of effort for brief relief.

so don't talk to me about how pork is evil.

thus endeth the rant. carry on!

another milestone of the kidney kind

Around the time that M- dropped the L-word for the first time, and I was feeling a little weird about it, someone suggested going through an 'emergency room' scenario, a mental exercise to clarify my own feelings.

We have exchanged L-words (I just can't say it, can I?) but this weekend sort of cemented things. In other words, you know you love someone when you rush from your cozy apt on a cold rainy night to go to the ER all the way on the north side because a nurse called and said 'Your boyfriend needs you.'

He had called from his house earlier:

M-: So babe. What are the symptoms of a kidney stone? (groan)
D : Sharp pain, hurts to pee, and blood in your urine. (my old lady television viewing habits come in handy, sometimes.)
M-: I might have a kidney stone. I have to pee all the time. No blood, though.
D: Wow. Are you sure? Sharp pain in your lower back?
M-: Yeah, but I'm ok. Maybe it'll go away. (groan)
D: Kidney stones don't go away unless they leave your penis. I think you should go to the ER.
M-: Maybe I'll take a tylenol and then come over for our date when the pain passes.
D : Whatever. Our date is off. You need to go to the ER.
M-: (GROAN)
D: You need to be at the doctor; tell me where to meet you.
M-: (GROAN MOAN) Uh, I gotta go, babe. I just tried to pee and almost passed out.

He called from the hospital parking lot (yes, despite fetal position-inducing pain, he *drove* himself): 'I'm about to check in (groan) so I'll call you later. I'm at Swedish Covenant.'

Really trying not to fret I watched tv, looked up kidney stones on the web, ate a sandwich and checked my Blackberry. When an unknown 773 number popped up, I grabbed it.

'Your boyfriend needs you.'
'Tell him I'm coming and I'll be there as soon as I can.'

I texted my friends ('M- is in the ER with kidney stones! I'm out!'), dressed, grabbed keys, blew out candles, flagged a cab, grabbed cash, and rushed to the hospital, where I overtipped the cabbie.

It was a novel feeling to rush in and breathlessly say 'My boyfriend was just admitted and I'm here to see him.' Even more novel was the feeling that I *really* did not want anything to happen to this guy. This was beyond the 'gee, I hope things are ok' feeling; this was 'oh, god, it's only kidney stones but if something happens this will wreck me.'

Weird, huh?

Things fall immediately into place when you face what you really feel. The class bullshit I was still holding onto ('we don't match, he's not like anyone I've gone out with before, I graduated from college and he didn't, I don't know if he fits my circle...'), I dropped.

Priorities realign pretty quickly when you see your guy wearing a sad little hospital gown, hooked up to monitors, drugged out of his head, smiling woozily up at you in front of the nurse, and slurring, 'Gimme some sugar.'

Not once did I think 'Let me examine the gender, class and race implications of my brown self being here while these doctors and nurses look at me hold his lily white hand.'

Maybe that's why I didn't mind spending the whole weekend at his place, getting to recognize what it sounds like when he's feeling a 5 mm stone squeeze its way down his ureter. Or feeling gently sympathetic standing in the 45-min line at the high school haunted house, watching him go to the restroom every 10 min or so. Or watching how his gait changes when he's in pain or listening intently at the bathroom door for a tell-tale thump to make sure he didn't faint.

We hid out, reading comic books, watching classic horror movies, eating ice cream and making jokes about the sexiness of peeing into a filter. Silently, I counted to myself how many glasses of water he drank, if he was taking his pills on time, and in a rare moment of domesticity, I even made breakfast. (Who cares if it took me 2 freaking hours and I made enough pancakes for a whole football team?)

When I got back to my place last night, I even had a little bit of a cry, for some reason.

It's frakking brutal, this falling in love thing.

[And if you need a more timely political frame for this post, because you don't want to read pointless, girly, journal entries from Ding, shouldn't *everyone* have this same right to rush into an ER and say to the admitting nurse 'My partner is in there and I need to see him/her!'? Civil rights for all is really just that simple. How the world works for me, as a member of the dominant group, is how it should work for everyone.]

cinderfella has nothing on me

my to-do list:

1. Prepare for Halloween (buy pumpkin; choose template; get lights and drill; buy little pots of grass and little plastic jack o lanterns; decide on Flapper vs. Every Female Judge on Law & Order for costume party)

2. Buy crack/hole filler to stop millipedes from entering my abode.

3. Pick up myterious gift at dry cleaners. (wha-huh?)

4. Revise resume so I can apply for that statewide organizer thingy.

5. Frolic with M- before I forget how. (it's been two weeks! TWO!)

6. Sympathy card for dead cousin.

7. Buy ticket to LAX while I can still afford it.

8. Clean house.

9. Negotiate contract with bar owner for New Year's Eve party.

10. Buy train ticket to Springfield next week. (grrrrrr)

11. Meet friend's husband for drink while he's in town for a conference.

i think i need a freaking vacation.

a week's worth of posts could be written about Black Dynamite (even though it made me laugh) but i'm having another one of those weeks.
...
on the good news front, my weird allergy is clearing up! yay, antibiotics! (boo, antibiotic-imposed celibacy.)
...
in M- news, he has found my father's website and hasn't run screaming into the night!

carry on.

doubled conversations: or, this is not about hair

i love my Girls. i really do. we are like family.
but sometimes ...we have conversations that misfire.

we're talking about Chris Rock's movie about hair, the anger some older black women had about it making them look bad in front of white people and somehow we're talking about if white people think about black people's hair. my XRoomie said white people don't think about black people's hair at all.

i snorted. 'they may not think about it consciously but they sure do want to touch it a lot.'

XRoomie said 'what are you talking about?'

i said, 'i cannot go a week without someone wanting to touch it, compliment it or comment on it. it's fucking fascinating to them.'

XRoomie said, 'when does that happen?'

our friend T- said, 'when i worked at the Center [on the south side] all the girls wanted to touch my hair.'

i said, 'that's totally different. the context is different.'

XRoomie said, 'i've never seen that happen. i've never heard of that.' and she mentions some women of color she's worked with who never mentioned things like that happening.

'they wore wigs and weaves all the time,' she said. 'they thought it was hilarious watching their senior partners get confused when their hair changed.'

'i'm sure this has happened to them. almost every woman of color i know can tell stories about white people wanting to touch their hair - with or without permission. that's fucking problematic,' i said.

'well,' she said. 'that's your baggage.'

'that's not my baggage, that's our history. and i'm sure that if they weren't talking about how annoying this shit is in front of you, they are talking about it with their black friends.'

we went back and forth about baggage and history for a bit but this is where something interesting happened: XRoomie insisted that the conversations she'd have with these women would be the SAME as the ones they have with their friends of color.

that's when i stopped. i shrugged and said, 'ok.'

leaving unsaid, of course, was the admission that there are conversations i only have with my friends of color that i would never have with my white friends. (or my white boyfriend, for that matter.)

also left on the ground was whether this habit of splitting conversations was particularly fair. fuck it. i'll think about fairness later.

so we went back to watching a show about a white south african family held hostage by a taiwanese rapist.

[noted because of this and this.]

work just about made me pee my pants so there's not much to share today, buttons.

other than M- gave me a key this weekend. not THE key, but A key.

baby steps.

My Random 5

1. So I found 2 lumps under my right armpit. Just TWO frakking weeks after my 40th birthday!! This wouldn't freak me out so much if my 40th hadn't just happened; if my boss wasn't diagnosed with breast cancer in March and is walking all over the office wearing a baseball cap because she's going through chemo; and if a colleague wasn't also diagnosed last year and is about to undergo intense radiation. Signs, you know?

What I really hate? The fact that I'm so vain, all I can think about is losing my boobs. I really really like my boobs. They're two of my favorite features.

(And then all this thinking on how 40 really represents how your body rebels against you is making me wonder if I'm going to go nuts like my mom because she became menopausal in her 40s....the loop of crazy-thinking is endless, I tell you. All because of TWO freaking lumps.)

So, yeah. Get those tests. It's Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

2. One night we're at Nilda's and M- says, 'You know, I'm always talking about my job and my office but I want you to know that I think about your work, too.'
'Really?' No guy has ever indicated that he's ever thought about my work at all. B- thought it was an annoying barrier to his getting it on.
'Yeah. You're meeting all these important people, talking about things that matter to women and you're really doing something important for Chicago.'
'Really??' I couldn't tell if my skepticism was about him telling he thought this or that he actually thought it.
'Yeah. And I haven't said that to you and I wanted to. Your work is important to you and I'm really proud of what you do. I'm proud you're my girlfriend.'

How lame that I actually teared up because my boyfriend said he thinks my work is important and he's proud of me?

Swear to god, if I discover this is all some complicated psycho-mind-job, I will kill him.

3. When my sister was dating her husband in high school, I would make fun of the little bedroom shrine she had created with all of the things he'd given her. There were cards, notes, little toys, figurines, movie tickets, bits of ribbon, a dried flower or two, or random Spanish words that no one else could figure out. (Like, 'verde.' I know it's 'green' but what the hell does that mean??) The other morning, I was getting ready to leave his place and while I was slipping on my shoes, I looked over at the window sill by the couch and saw a card.

It was a card that I’d had for a while (waiting for the right person to give it to, I guess.) It said something snarky on the front like, ‘What if I call you up and ask you out and unleash upon you a volcano of lust?’ or something like that. Seeing it there was kind of a surprise. Because I leave so freaking early while he’s still in bed, I usually leave him a note under his keys or cigarettes. Do guys keep these things in a special box to rummage through later?

4. Yesterday, my CEO ran a resume past me of someone she’d like to recruit to a com’tee we’re putting together. It was an awesome resume – very academic and policy-oriented - and I gave it a hearty thumbs up. Then she BCC’ed me on an email to the owner of this resume inviting her to a coffee, as well as to run a job opportunity past her for external communications and relations. Instantly, my mood changes. My knee-jerk Competitive Queen Bee reaction kicked in. I know it’s totally irrational and petty. But it’s what I felt. I felt that someone was coming onto MY PATCH. This is what I DO. Why do we need her?? And HELL NO will I report to her!! Again, irrational. There’s more than enough work to go around and not enough people to do it.

So, to feel better, I went to get my whole face waxed. Laying there while a tiny lady spread hot wax on my hairy bits and ripped them off was cathartic. With each pinprick of pain, my crabbiness drained from my body and I went to the office feeling loads better.

5. Halloween is coming up and I’m thinking of dressing as Every Black Female Judge on Law & Order. M- might be Green Man. But then he sent me a pic of him last year as a glam rocker – fur coat, tall boots, long wig, spandex pants, belly shirt - and it made me flush with naughtiness.

We might have to save that for a special occasion.

calling all M- fans: ding is clueless

so, i need to plan more, and i'm really bad at planning.

for almost the entirety of our dating history (all whopping 5-6 months), M- has been the main Date Planner. he's way more into logistics than i am and i'm bad at it. (and, frankly, i'm really lazy.)

but i don't want to burn M- out, so give me your date ideas, Fans of M-.
i'm desperate.

taking a break

Warren G. Harding had a black family??

(I was almost going to give this some thought - hey, whose family doesn't have someone in to who 'passed'? - then it just seemd kinda paranoid...)