Happy Sunday!

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Hello to new friends dancesthrough and mrfurious!
Happy birthday to nomadmwe and gallowglass!

Again - my kid rocks.
We were going to take her to see Holes today - but the only times are 1 PM, which intereferes with our lunch pland, 4 PM, which interferes with getting our Penguin to the airport, and 7 PM, which, considering it's a 2 1/2-hour movie, is just too damn late. So we asked her if she'd mind seeing it in addition to The Lizzie McGuire Movie next weekend. Fortunately, she thinks that's a great idea. She's such a good sport...

Coffee. I need coffee.

???

Upon seeing gmcaddicted's post stating that she can't manage to apply eyeliner - I commented to let her know that I can't either - penguinboi said, "Well, I can use eyeliner."

My boyfriend is better with cosmetics than I am. How do I keep ending up with these boys that wear eyeliner (my first ex-husband did. Mascara, too.), listen to Erasure and Abba, and yet are not even bi? I mean, if they were bi, atr least I'd get to see hot guy-on-guy action.

He says a friend of his used to say that he was the gayest straight man she knows. I say he needs to make with the hot guy-on-guy action.

Recipe for a wonderful day. Well, except for the bubble tea.

Sleep in! Wake up at 6ish to fool around with the sexy Penguin who's been cuddling you all night - then fall back asleep until 10. Have a leisurely round of breakfast, showers, and catching up on LJ (mostly). Clean kitchen sink and counter and start loads in clothes washer and dishwasher so you feel all productive. Go roam around downtown Decatur with your two favorite men (yendi and penguinboi) and your kickass daughter. Go in two shops - find and purchase perfect birthday and Mother's Day gifts for both of your moms (mostly featuring very fancy soaps and candles; also bejeweled picture frames and mirrors). Have a nice relaxed lunch at Noodle with the aforementioned crew plus tbrents, bheansidhe, blueingenue,and libidoergosum. Help Elayna pick out a piece of pottery to paint for her grandma (a star-shaped dish)... while she works on that, dart over to pick up the last gift component, plan a future business in Decatur town square with penguinboi. Arrive in time to help Elayna paint "Elayna loves Grandma! 2003" on the bottom of her dish. Bring everyone home.Important: Include much cuddling of all parties. Also much humor.

penguinboi ordered Bubble Tea, which was dag nasty. Experiments and stress tests were perpetrated upon the little tapioca bubbles. I theorized that the tapioca gives birth to live young, that dozens of larval tapioca (tapiocas? tapiocae?) were swarming inside the egg sacs in the bubble tea. It was decided that there is something Lovecraftian about these objects, and penguinboi dubbed them "Elder God Caviar".

penguinboi is not reacting well to the bubble tea. Either there was unexpected milk in it, or the tapiocae have hatched in his stomach and are burrowing their way out. Fear the tapiocae.

(no subject)

I pop the trunk, and he gets his bag out. I'm quiet. I'm rarely quiet, but the only words I want to say have been said - there are no *new* words. The words I'm feeling have accrued in layers in my heart, in my mouth, and I'm unable to make small talk when the only words that rise up are, "I don't want you to go. I love you. You having to leave isn't right and it hurts and I need you. I want to wake up with you every morning. I want to come home to you every night. I want to goof off every weekend with you and show you all my favorite places, in Atlanta and just in my brain. And two days is never, never enough."

When the only words are, "Don't go." And I feel hollow. And he shows me weird-looking trees and I force a laugh, and I attempt sexual innuedo when he's feeding dollars into the machine to get a MARTA token. I stare at my hands, imprinted with circles from my Badtz Maru steering wheel cover, and I say things like, "Call when you get home" and "Have a good flight," because he's already heard the other words. And "I love you," which I can never say enough.

When I left him in January, we had only just met. In February, it was growing love, but an overriding lust; we made out at the train station. In early March, it was MegaCon; we were exhausted and harried, but bittersweet. In late March, I was still dealing with the trauma that had been inflicted on me only days ago; we were muted, hollow, off.

This weekend was not just Noodle and shopping, sex and movies. This was long quiet times. This was...just being.

This was the first time that I had to fight the tears back until he disappeared from sight down the escalator.

There is a hole here, the place where he fits into my life. One day, he will stay. One day, I won't ever have to say goodbye to him again.

I wish that day was today.

Another facet of the perfectionism

Perfectionism as attempt to be Good Enough, from the girl whose test score of 97% was never good enough, because her parents insisted that she should have received 100%.

Perfectionism as a control issue, from the girl who once strictly controlled her food intake and sexual response because they were the only things she could control.

It slips on like a mask. Perfect mother, perfect daughter, perfect survivor.

Something I've always said, cribbed from Wolverine: "I'm the best there is at what I do." And I am. Everything I do, I do with utter confidence that I am the best at it, that I'm perfect.

But whereas Wolvie follows that line up with "And what I do isn't very nice," I follow it, at least in my head, with, "If I'm *not* perfect at it, I don't do it."

Perfectionism as Control. I will not be made to look silly. I will not fail to excel. I will not appear in public... imperfect, unfinished.

I've been working on this for years, tiny bit by tiny bit, and I'm now making a concerted effort. Because... this keeps me from singing. It keeps me from laughing - reflexively, I laugh with a hand over my mouth. My teeth are imperfect (my enamel is thin and my dentin shows through). It keeps me from being the silly wacky girl that comes through in flashes from time to time. It keeps me from drawing, from painting.

It takes courage to reverse that lifelong reflex, to push through the fear of rejection, and be my dark, weird, cracked, imperfect self. It's hard every time I do it.

But I think that if I keep working on it... it'll get easier.