Because it really is personal…

All week I have been looking forward to a certain event today. I was going to watch Gladiator, on the big screen tv with the surround sound up loud, with a bowl of popcorn and a glass of heavily fortified limeade. I was going to follow up said bloodfest with a rare grilled steak salad and another heavily fortified limeade.

Only I can’t find our copy of Gladiator. It’s nowhere. My highly suspicious mind believes someone who doesn’t live here may have borrowed it and forgotten to return it.

Maximus Whatshisnameius!! In leather lorica with a shortsword! He’s nowhere to be seen and now my already questionable mood is turning decidedly foul.

For about 2 years now, since discovering a link to my blog on Belledame’s blog, been following feminism in all it’s creeds, shapes and sizes. I am, after all, female, therefore that which affects females affects me, even if I’m decidedly peripheral. So, I read stuff, and think about it, and frequently I am in awe of the power of the minds out there. These people see so much deeper into things than I do. I’m just happy knowing I can go to the bank or the store, driving my own car and not having to cover up with a tarp. In my very small world, I just don’t see the level of persecution many of these women talk about. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist, only that I’m not living it (to my knowledge).

That doesn’t mean I’m not interested in what’s best for women, because I am. While I recognize the strength of these women’s voices, and the power of their message, for me it’s kind of like listening to a rock star. Interesting, but no real impact on my life.

There are women, however, who have had a huge impact on my life, who’s voices I listen to very carefully, who don’t even know I exist, much like the feminist voices I spoke of above.

My field of interest is science. I love it, how stuff works, why a short peptide chain can bring down a virus, how endorphins work and why norepinephrine can so screw with something as nebulous as mood. That’s the kind of thing that gets my mental juices flowing.

Because of this, since I was a teen I have collected women thinkers, scientists, women who’s thoughts and ideas affect the world in a concrete way. I need concrete. Philosophy is great, but it confuses me and I leave it to the people who can understand it without getting a headache. Give me the scientists, a traditionally male domain, who’s concepts affect aspects of life ranging from the cheese powder in Mac and Cheeze to the latest HIV/AIDS therapy.

Sometimes, after reading what so many women *think*, and how venomous women can be towards each other when their thoughts don’t match, I have to back off and go do something concrete. It makes me wonder if the scientific realm gets as hateful. Probably. I hope not, but humans get nasty, regardless of gender, when they feel threatened.

Don’t get me wrong, many, if not most, of these feminists *do* do. They counsel, they shelve stuff at food banks, they work (I almost said *man*) the phones at the domestic violence shelter. I admire that deeply. I think it takes fierce courage and commitment and I am grateful that they are there on the front lines of feminism. It’s just not me. I don’t get it, and for me to go to a DV shelter and pretend to understand what the women and children are going through would be hypocrisy. Please don’t tell me I should try doing it. I know myself well enough to know it would be an exercise in frustration for everyone involved.

I do understand mood disorders, and how too little of this and too much of that in my brain can cause changes in perception that manifest as inappropriate emotion. We are, after all, physical creatures, and everything we do, how we perceive and respond, is based in our brains and the delicate chemical balance therein. *That* I understand.

So, My feminism, the Rootie Way, looks for women who’s research and understanding is found in the laboratory. My heros are women who’s research have impacted humankind on a physical level, who have improved our understanding of the mind on a physical/chemical level. These are the things I can understand much more than the ideas of empowerment or choice.

I’m not knocking empowerment and choice. Those are good things who’s benefits I enjoy on a daily basis. I’m just saying, I’ll leave those concepts to the people who don’t get a headache thinking about them, and go back to my peptides and endorphins.

The first 3 women on the list below are my real and genuine heros. They’ve all overcome adversity to become international experts in their fields of expertise. I want to be like them when I grow up.

As a neurotransmitter in the catecholamine family, norepinephrine mediates chemical communications in the autonomic nervous system’s sympathetic network. Norepinephrine is released at the synapses (in a manner similar to other neurotransmitters), transmitting neural signals from a nerve to other cells in the body.
(Image from the FSU National High Magnetics Field Laboratory)

You know, there’s all this stuff flying around about feminism and how you can’t be a Real Feminist unless you fit in a certain shaped philosophical box. You’re not supposed to look a certain way or like particular things or whatever…As for me, I call myself a feminist because I want what’s best for women. I want women to be treated with the same respect as men. If a woman wants to be a neurochemist, and she’s good at it, dang straight. And it matters not if she’s ugly or gorgeous. If she’s good at it, then there we are. She can be an engineer, an internationally known behavioral psychiatrist, a gorgeous actress, or someone who looks really hot in black. Maybe *and*, rather than or. Why not?
So, here’s women I think are SPECIAL, because they’re class acts in their field of expertise, and I admire them deeply because each one of them has had some sort of impact on my life.

Dr. Candace Pert has an international reputation in the field of neuropeptide and receptor pharmacology and has also lectured worldwide on these and other subjects, including her theories on emotions and mindbody communication.

Dr. Kay R. Jamison is an international authority and researcher on mood disorders and a recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship. Dr. Jamison has unique insight into the world of mental illness. She has been there herself.

Temple Grandin PhD is inarguably the most accomplished and well-known adult with autism in the world. She presently works as an Associate Professor at Colorado State University but also speaks around the world on both autism and cattle handling.

Dame Judi Dench

And lastly, because even though I don’t know much about her, she strikes me a fierce character. I like fierce, because I am not fierce at all.
Lucy Lawless

My favorite movie characters:

Maximus from Gladiator
Jessica Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Bugs Bunny pre-1950…he’s just So Wrong!
Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice (the Colin Firth one)
Indiana Jones
James Bond as played by Pierce Brosnan
Edna Quoyle from Shipping News
Melanie Hamilton from Gone With The Wind
Hy from Raising Arizona
Penny Wharvey from O Brother Where Art Thou
and others, as I think of them. I might just make me a big bowl of popcorn and watch Gladiator this weekend.

I was feeling so smug about #4’s room that I decided to clean #3’s as well. His penance is the posting of the pictures. Ha! He can’t do nothin’ about it neither.

I like this room the best of all of them, because he and I worked together on the ideas, and because they just *work* in this long narrow room. It was a whole lotta fun painting it, too.

The flames are particularly apropos, because this particular room was the former owner’s Den of Sin and Iniquity, where he housed his (apparently) very extensive pornography collection, and brought in young women for recreational purposes (often women who worked at the mill, and who relied on him for the continuation of their employment, tho I am *sure* that had nothing to do with his after-hours activities). When I was prepping the room for painting, I removed a vent cover and found, stuffed up inside, a pair of women’s panties, a ripped blouse, and a very, very small miniskirt.
We considered calling the local priest over for dinner, and asking him to bless the house and maybe even perform deliverance rites. After all, a teenage boy was going into that room ,and one can’t be too careful.

Before

After

My kids, they’re messy. Sometimes even nasty (not in the emotional way, but in an uncivilised, physical way). Every now and then I get (to quote a certain member of the household)”a bug up my ass” and I have to clean their rooms. I mean, really. I just do. I enjoy it. (I know, how peculiar you are, Rootie) but I get a sense of satisfaction. I mean, I’m not much on sports events, and I’m frequently impatient and inattentive, but by golly, once in a blue moon, I’ll don a hazmat suit, arm myself with bleach and Lysol, and clean their rooms.

Today I only did #4’s room. I may yet do #3’s, but I won’t take pictures of that, him being 15 he’s sensitive to that sort of thing. Even tho his room is very cool with hot rod flames on one wall and his furniture all being galvanized metal Auto-shop stuff. I may yet take a picture of it because I’m proud of it. (It was all mine own idea, the flames and furniture, and I’ve yet to see something like it on HGTV)

Here’s #4’s room BEFORE

And here it is 2-1/2 hours later

Have you ever been doing just fine, be-bopping around tending to business and all’s well in your world when SPLAT like a bag of wet guts, a Bad Mood hits you? Not just a regular “gee I’m not entirely satisfied with my life right now” kind of mood, but a “I hope a jehovah’s witness shows up so I can convince them I am the spawn of satan and make them cry” kind of mood. really foul. Where’s my claymore and who’s head can I lop off with it? Do we have gas for the chainsaw?

I had a fine day, thank you. I got some things accomplished outside, the weather stayed cool, all the stuff I planted yesterday still looks happy. I had yummy food to eat, a pitcher of minty iced tea, and absolutely no reason whatsoever to feel like eating babies.

Yet, by 3 pm, I was in full baby-eating mode, unwilling to be encumbered by any sort of behavioral standards and desirous of (to quote)”a relaxed moral compass” tho not delightfully so.

I am reining it in, as best I can, because my children, they have done nothing to deserve the ripping of a new arsehole. My husband, he is traveling today and will wish to come home to a smiling wife and a glass of scotch. I’m pretty sure he’d rather see a Doris Day kind of smile rather than a Jack Nicholson smile. I’m feeling most Jack Nicholsonish. Think…the poster for The Shining…that kind of smile.

or maybe…the banjo player from Deliverance.

where’s that bowie knife when you want it? hm?

Down girl…get thee a xanax tut suite.

I guess this is what The Good Dr. H. warned me about. A Change when I was in my 40’s. Things rearrange, get scrambled, happen at unexpected times. This is not the time for this sort of attitude. I did this all last week. I should be happy and content and compliant.

Ridiculous. I’m going to Fake It Til I Make It.

In the mean time I shall fantasize about terrorizing children who misbehave, about running over undeserving young women in the Explorer, and hurling molotov cocktails into the dining room windows of the Country Club. Those people that eat there probably need something unexpected to happen to them anyway, so complacent in their lifestyle they are.

I have gas, I have some bottles, and I even have some rags.

If I weren’t so self concious I’d probably walk naked down Main Street right now, just to give pause. But I won’t because SD employs many people in this town and has a certain image to uphold. As his wife I am an extension of that image, and decorum is a must.

Sometimes, tho, I wish for chutzpah. Ren Ev has chutzpah and then some. While I don’t always wish for all that she’s got, sometimes I do wish for some of that nerve.

So, I’ll never really DO all those things I think about, with the claymore and gasoline and all, it is kind of satisfying to think about it, to fantasize about being Xena Warrior Princess

instead of Doris Day.

Once upon a time, oh, 12 or 13 years ago, we lived out in the country. This was not the housetrailer in the country, but our first house, set fairly close to a county road but with lots of land around. It was built in 1945, from scraps left over from another house built down the road. It’s not as bad as it sounds, it was a very solid, sweet little farm house and we loved it.

It came with a 2.5 acre yard, that needed weekly mowing. I took this over as my job, because when I mowed, SD watched the boys (then 5,3,2)and I got something of a break. I couldn’t hear anything over the noise of the mower, so it was a 3 hour treat.

One warm summer day, I was mowing, and SD was stretched out in his hammock, keeping an eye on the boys and working on a beer. Several men he worked with came by on their horses, assessed the situation, and congratulated SD on his fine choice for a wife. He was embarrassed, and I didn’t hear any of it.

About a month later, a hurricane was coming, and the roof of the garage needed some repair. SD spent the morning up there, nailing down shingles and patching with tar. It being late July, it was hot nasty work. So around noon, I bade him come down and gave him a glass of tea. I offered to go up and work while he cooled off, because we really had no time to spare. While I was up there, hammering away…here comes those men, on their horses. SD is standing at the base of the ladder hollering up directions, holding a glass of tea, while I work. The men, they whoop and holler and say “Hey Mistah, she gotta sistah?” He is, of course, mortally embarrassed and I think it’s funny.

So, the hurricane came through, and damaged 2 of our 3 pear trees. He gets out his Big Man’s McCullough chain saw and cuts the trees into chunks. I ask if he could show me how to use it, so he does. While I’m cutting up limbs, he’s standing there with a glass of tea.

(you know what happened next)

And the 4 guys on their horses come riding by. They stop, and stare, and say nothing. They just watch SD point and direct while I cut limbs, sipping on his tea and feeling like a real ass for being caught again. The men, they never say anything more, but SD swears up and down they treated him differently after that.

Really, I just wanted to know how to do stuff. You never know when roofing skills might be handy, or when you need to hide the body and it’s too big to manage whole.

Because people are asking- yes, we live in South Georgia, but no, we are not being threatened by the wildfires. We have quite a bit of smoke but the actual fires are an hour or so south of us, closer to the Florida coast.

Thanks for your concern, tho!

Rootie’s Kitchen

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