Hil, I'm dealing with some semi-similar health stuff right now (and have in the past too). Do you have a prof that you trust that you could talk to about all this? I find that being upfront and honest about what's going on goes a long way...especially if they've seen you continuing to plug away.

{{{Gris, Hil, vw, Cass, niecelet, and any others I may have forgotten}}}

You guys! I am wearing a DRESS today! I can't remember the last time I did that. I feel cute and sassy and like I need more dresses. Also more tights (patterned and colors) and boots (maybe a red pair and a brown pair).

I'm at a point in my life where I like wearing dresses, though I own bloody few of them. I need a style advisor and some expendible cash.

We need a photo of GC in the dress.

Doggie~ma to Darcy and her people! Girl~ma to Gris and Tom!

I am too busy to post right now.

Oh! The convo about Southern/Yankee/etc has enlightened me! I grew up in Tennessee and Virginia and have lived in New Jersey for ten years. People react to me differently here, and now I know why. I look people in the eye when I talk to them, rather intently I've been told, and I talk about myself, tell stories about my life really, and no one else here does that. I thought I had bad boundaries and there was something wrong with me, but now I realize I'm just Southern.

Oh how I wish I had time for a long post on Southern identity! Alas, I am already behind this morning. Short version: We are deeply fucked up and that's why I love us.

t nods

It's weird. I don't plan to ever live in the South again. (There's some possibility we'll move back to Oklahoma, where DH grew up, but that's not really the South. Or the Southwest, or the Midwest--it's a little bit of all three.) If money and family weren't an issue at all, I'd either stay here or move to England. But I will always consider myself a Southerner. That's where my roots lie. It's strange, but it's gotten stronger since my father died, that sense of connection to that one little corner of the Appalachian foothills where my family has lived for generations. I've left, I love the life I have now, and I don't share the politics and worldview of the majority of Alabamians. But still, I am who I am because I come from that place and those people.

I don't do the whole not meeting each other's eyes thing if I am actually having a conversation--that really only applies with strangers, at least for me.

Yay dress for GC!

I'm giving tests all day today; hence, lots of posting.

Susan is totally me. I love the South am damned proud to be Southern, but I don't think I can go back there, much as there are things I love about it.

Kristin, can I e-mail my address to your profile addy?

I need a style advisor

a-hem.

and some expendable cash.

Can't help you there.

Susan, I deeply identify as Alaskan even though I don't plan to ever return. I love the wildness of the place, the fact that you feel like you're somewhere no one has ever been before. The pressures that living there put on people make them some of the more interesting characters I've ever known, and also creates a need to build a circle of friends/acquaintances quickly, because you never know who you might need to call to dig you out.

I'm very ambivalent about the South. I'm not from there, though, I just lived there for half my life.

I used to say that DH and I had mixed relationship, he's Jewish and I'm Californian, because that's the most dominant piece of my cultural identity. Fortunately, they are in no way mutually exclusive.