I don’t need an interpretation for this one. There’s only one part I really remember anyway– the rest had to to with travelling and trying to meet someone at a specific site in a foreign city. The dream is about this upcoming visit from my nephew, plus the grieve I’m still holding at bay and don’t want to over-express when Austin is here.
The part I remember was that my sister’s dog (no, not her real one) was a huge, white beast who had “poor impulse control” (i.e., she bit), was lunging at everything including me, and when she bit down on a bear trap that was being repaired by a handyman, it cut her bottom lip (not seriously) and she yelped and got the first look of “consequences for my actions?” in her eyes. Unfortunately, I laughed, which did not endear me to either her or my sister. Which was OK with me, since I was trying to keep the beast from eating my own dog.
Anyway, I woke up this morning by being poked by my kitten, who had dropped his mousie in the bed and it was in the covers and he couldn’t find it and anyway he wanted someone to play with. “Are you awake, Mom? Mom? Are you up? Mom, I think you– Mom, you have my mousie. Mom? Mom!”
I retrieved the mousie and we played fetch while I woke up. V. cute.
1. What gender do you consider yourself?
Female
2. Is this the gender you were assigned at birth?
Female
3. Do you like being your current gender? Why or why not?
Sure. I think this is kind of a weird question. Do I have an option? Do I even know what the alternative is? Nope. I could do without cramps and PMS, and I could really stand to have enough of an attention span that I could finish answering a simple question! [but that's not a gender thing.....]
4. If you could change one thing about how society perceives/constructs your gender, what would it be?
I would like, very much, for society to stop judging women as inferior if they are even on the heavy side of normal weight of if they are on the “heavy” side of time (i.e., over the age of 30). We are not all boy-shaped pencils. We are not all 19 years old. We are, in fact, most of us, curvaceous and gorgeous and were built that way and we are as beautiful when we are 60 years old as we were when we were 17.
5. Everyone gets their ideas of what it means to be “a man” or “a woman” (or “a boi” or whatever) from somewhere (parents, movies, magazines, books). What was the single biggest influence on your gender identity?
I didn’t have a single biggest influence. If anything, a lack of male influences may have defined my gender identity– my parents divorced a month before I hit puberty, and my grandfather died the month after I hit it, so I pretty much had to go through the gender-defining years without a strong, identifiable model for “what is not-female.”
Aug. 8: Austin arrives, visit Berkeley
Aug. 9: Boardwalk/Beach (w/Peaches. A. is 48″ tall, tall enough for most rides), Santa Cruz Night Out
Aug. 10: Aquarium, Monterey Beach (w/Peaches)
Aug. 11: Tech Museum, REI Rock Climbing
Aug. 12: Beach
Aug. 13: Go to SF for the day, spend the night? Make/burn DVD of vacation experiences to take home!
Aug. 14: Austin flies home
Austin doesn’t *need* to sit in a special seat in the car and may ride in front, though the state would prefer otherwise.
