Crunch

That's my '97 Altima after I got rear-ended a few weeks ago. I had that car since August 1999; nearly 10 years that car was with me. It's seen me through a lot. I recall taking it over the Mid-Hudson bridge daily on my commute through Poughkeepsie to get to my job at the home for people with developmental disabilities. It took my to various people's homes in Ulster County when I was a Family Educator, and then it was my ride to Albany in 2003.

Before I got crunched it had just reached 202,000 miles and was still going strong... despite that the driver side lock didn't work, there was no visor for the driver, among a number of other quirks it started to accumulate.

So, as you may guess it was "totalled" even though I drove it from the scene of the accident and the engine was working just fine.

I have to say, I did shed a few tears to see my car have to get totalled - and to not have it anymore.

Yet, my man and I were able to get a great new car, a 2008 Honda Fit. See:


We like her lots. She's fun to drive and is lots more comfortable than my old Altima had become. And, over the last two tanks of gas we've averaged 30 mpg... not bad for pretty much all city driving.

SUV's

The trouble with SUV's is that you can't tell when there is a human body caught underneath it.

From the NY Post 2/11:

A Queens pedestrian was struck by an SUV this morning and thrown into the path of a van, which dragged his mangled body a gruesome 20 miles before the driver discovered it, cops said today.

The grisly journey left a trail of clothes and blood scattered along the Long Island Expressway, the Grand Central Parkway, the Van Wyck Expressway and the Belt Parkway as drivers desperately tried to flag down the unsuspecting motorist.

Manuel Lituma, 52, told cops he actually pulled over and checked under the hood of his maroon Chevy cargo van because it wasn't handling well - but hit the road again after seeing nothing wrong.

"I looked and I didn't see anything," he said outside his Corona home this afternoon. "I didn't know what happened. I didn't feel anything, I didn't hear anything.

"You can't imagine the shock I felt when I saw the body. I'm just so nervous and very sad."

The victim, who cops have been unable to identify, was hit by the SUV at 6.15 a.m. as he walked across 108th Street at 51st Avenue in Corona, said cops.

The SUV driver stopped to dial 911, and didn't see Lituma's van hit the pedestrian, cops said.

Mystified first responders thought the driver had been mistaken when they failed to find a body or see any damage to the SUV.

Lituma, 52, a freelance deliveryman originally from Ecuador, was already miles away with the body hooked face up on to a metal plate underneath his vehicle.

Cops said the body was only partially clothed - and badly scraped from its heels to the back of its head. Lituma only stopped after noticing shocked people pointing at his van on Brighton 10th Terrace in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, an hour after the accident.

They are trying to identify the victim from a broken iPhone, a business card and a receipt for cash recently wired to Mexico that was found in his pockets

Look what I made today...

a bed-skirt!

For years I've been using this black and white tapestry as a bedskirt by positioning it just the right way to give the impression that it really was a bed-skirt. But, no more. I made the real thing with it by cutting it up and sewing it to a twin sized sheet that we don't use.

Hurray, it's done after being in the back of my mind to do for ages.

Product Endorsements

Occasionally, one comes across a product or two which you love and want others to know about. These three products have had a positive impact on my life by either making things easier or more enjoyable, and I would be happy to learn that my blog readers have tried these products as well.

Peonys's #1 product of the year is...

The Diva Cup.


I picked up the Diva Cup last February when I went to visit Ms. Yellow Pants in Portland, OR at one of the neat groceries there called New Seasons Market. Anyway, I had my period while I was out there and stopped by the store to pick up tampons. Being that I was on a brief holiday, I was taking my time in the store and noticed the Diva Cups next to the tampons. I read the box, compared the price to a box of tampons... and thought to myself... if the Diva Cup works for me it is a pretty good savings over the course of just one year. So, I took the risk and bought it. And, I've been using it ever since.

What is a Diva Cup? , you may ask. Well, it is pretty much a rubber cup which you insert into your vagina to catch your period. It fits right in and is totally not noticeable once you get used to it (which for me was like a day).

What I like about the Diva Cup is three things: 1.) it is much less hassle than tampons, 2.) it is better for the environment and 3.) I believe that it is better for my body. I highly recommend the Diva Cup to any woman who is open to getting more in touch with her period, who is curious to really know how much flow she's got (as the cup has ounce measurements on it), and who would like to take another step in becoming more environmentally friendly. It's a grand product which I hope someday will become mainstream.

Product #2 for 2008:

The Fire Hydrant Shower Head from:

My man and I have been suffering with lame-ass showers for about 2 1/2 years in our new home. We love the house, we just didn't love the shower and we had been dealing with it for far too long. One day, after have yet again another disappointing shower with water just dripping out of the shower head, I did myself a search on the internets. I came across a shower head that a number of people claimed made their trickle-y shower into a high pressure spa like experience. I wanted to be optimistic, but such claims seemed too good to be true. Yet, we were in a bad situation, so we went for it. And, thankfully, we did get a fantastic shower head. It is inconceivable to me how just changing a shower head could really make such a difference, but it did - and has. We go the new shower head about 4 months ago and it is still making us very happy.

And, product #3...

Comfort Zone with Feliway

So, the story with this item is that our lovely kitties somehow moved from being ok with each other's presence to absolutely hating one another. They would fight, hiss, growl. Fur was constantly flying.. making being home a very anxious experience for my man and I. It was ugly. We did what we could to temper the kitties, but it just wasn't working until I got this diffuser that releases a cat pheromone which helps them to relax. Now, things are pretty much back to normal for Raka and Ku. See...


You can just see how happy they are now, right?

And those are Peonys's endorsements for 2008.

Troy Victorian Stroll

I just got back from a great day with my gal P. and her man J. at the Troy Victorian Stroll. There's so much neat stuff happening in Troy lately. A lot of folks are coming to the city because there is a burgeoning art scene and the fantastic architecture all around. So, events like the Victorian Stroll give you tastes of the creativity of the people in town and their desire to make Troy a great place to live.

Thank goodness I had a moment with Santa because I've been a naughty girl this year and I think I convinced him that he should bring me some good gifts this year.

Our Whole Lives

The denomination that I belong to, Unitarian Universalism has a curriculum called Our Whole Lives (OWL) which has been used throughout many congregations for a number of years. OWL's purpose is to help young people make informed and responsible decisions about their sexual health and behavior. It's grounded in a holistic view of sexuality, providing not only the facts about anatomy and human development, but of interpersonal skills, and an understanding of the spiritual, emotional, and social aspects of sexuality.

My congregation does the program with 7th and 8th graders every other year. I've been asked to come to the class tomorrow to serve on a panel of folks representing different sexualities.

I get to sit on a panel as.... the hetero. Pretty much they're looking to have the panelists talk about what it was like to be a 7th - 8th grader with our own particular sexuality, and what that meant for us. The main purpose of the panel is to normalize variety in sexualities so that youth, especially those who may be gay, will see that they aren't too much of a weird-O.

So, I've got some thinking to do. What in the world am I going to say? What would be helpful?

I rarely think back to 7th and 8th grade, nor to I think of it in context of my sexuality at the time. But, let's cull that memory of mine and see what I can come up with from those days in relationship to this topic:

- Being excited to be seated next to a boy I liked in Science class AND Home economics
- Agreeing to be the girlfriend of this boy's best friend in hopes that I would be able to spend even more time with the boy that I really liked: which was fruitless. So, I dumped him right away.
- Going to lots of dances at school in hopes of getting to dance with the boy I liked
- Oddly liking the institutional soap smell coming from his hands in Science class, as he always went to the bathroom before class started
- getting cornered by another boy who was apparently REALLY into me who I didn't tell to step off, and I wish I had now.
- Spending a lot of time reading and re-reading Our Bodies Ourselves after being introduced to it at Unirondack once summer
- taking out a non-fiction book called One in Ten about gay teenagers from the library... and spending a good amount of time pondering if I was gay...especially because my dad is gay... seems odd now that I wondered about this, especially since I was so hot for that one boy, but I did.
- Going to parties that my dad and his partner had that were for gay folks (both in and out ) in our very small community and having a grand time hanging out with the girls

The only time I recall talking with either of my parents about my sexuality was when my dad found out that I had taken out the One in Ten book out from the library. He made sure to let me know that it would be even more than ok with him if I were gay. Part of me wonders if my dad would be more proud or pleased if myself or my sister turned out gay, because then we would have more in common with one another. I get the sense that could be the case. Oh, well.

I suppose my parents just figured out that I was hetero when I would bring home my boyfriends. There was no need to really talk about it, because it was what it was. I was straight, so there wasn't much to talk about, right? Or something like that.

Well, if the purpose is to normalize people's experiences, I suppose just telling my experience will do. I do want to put some emphasis, though, on how it was hard for me even as a young adult to put the breaks on things when I was feeling uncomfortable. There have been times in my life when strangers or people I was not interested in would exert themselves on me, and I would play nice rather than say, "Get the hell away from me!" I would be nice and find a subtle escape route rather than put it out there super-concretely that I was not interested. I wish I had developed that skill earlier in life.

One time this happened, I had gone to see a friend I had met a Unirondack. (I was probably a Junior or Senior in HS) I drove the 4 hours or so to visit him - as a friend in my mind. Anyway, we were at his home and he started to kiss me. I wasn't sure that was what I wanted, but I figured... well let's see how it feels... and after a little bit he wanted to do more than kiss. I certainly did not want to do that because I wasn't even sure I wanted to kiss. But, instead of saying clearly "No!"... because I wanted him to like me, he was a friend from camp and I didn't want to hurt his feelings... I tried to more get out of it by suggesting we do something else. It took him a while to get it; that I wanted to do something else. It's unfortunate that I valued his feelings over my own. Because I didn't just put down a clear boundary of what I would and wouldn't do, I ended up loosing him as a friend because I didn't trust him anymore after that experience. I also lost more confidence in myself.

Another time I needed to stand up for myself was when I was taking a Greyhound bus back home from probably Albany. The bus was full, so I had to sit next to someone. That someone, even though we was lots older than me and didn't know me from a hill of beans, thought that it would be appropriate to try to hold my hand when I was sleeping. I just inched my hand away and pretended that it didn't happen. He kept trying.... and I kept pretending... when it was time to get off the bus he asked me for my number and I just pretended to be all-ok with the bus ride... but didn't give him my number. WTF. What was I thinking?

Maybe these detailed stories are too much for 7th and 8th graders. I think that I'll not go into the details unless it seems like they're up for it and ask more detailed questions. I don't want to freak them out and think that they'll have to deal with this kind of b.s.

Anyway, so that's my story, I suppose of my adolescent sexuality.

Crafty-ness

One of my volunteering endeavours is with my church's Religious Education Council. That means that I get to plan and implement a number of events throughout the year for children and families. Today's event was the Holiday Craft fair. We had a number of tables set up in our social hall for folks to come and do different crafty things such as beeswax candles, holiday wreaths, gingerbread houses, ornaments and origami. Even though I was at the event as a "worker" I did make the time to make my very own bean votive candle holder. What do you think?