On Being a Tomboy

 The topic of this post means a lot to me. It is something I have been struggling to come to terms with, spearhead, and deal with everyday over the last several years. It covers a topic that I have had to define as I grow into my "adult" self, as I navigate the turbulent waters of adulthood.  The topic is, broadly, what femininity is or isn't, and why and how that applies to one's every day life.

 

I was a pretty standard toddler/little girl. My favorite color was pink, and my favorite dress--which I called my "faggy" dress because kids say the weirdest shit--was white, capped sleeved, and covered in bows, ruffles, and lace. 

But after I outgrew my "faggy" dress, I felt a shift in me. I stopped liking the color pink because I actively decided that it was too prissy. Instead my favorite color became red, because it was more powerful and less dainty. To this day, it is still my favorite. I outgrew other accoutrements of girly-ness: dolls (that is probably a story worthy of its own blog post), playing house, "girly" toys such as fake dishes or food or makeup, and always pretending to be a princess. Instead I started finding myself more interested in more "boyish" toys, such as cars, legos, blocks, and the outdoors. I even still have a handful of my favorite cars from my childhood. I keep them as the chatchkis on my bookshelves and on my microwave.

The hatchback has been my favorite since I first ditched the color pink. Then there's a "Z120" that is supposed to be like the datsun Z240 I have always wanted, and in back there is a little 4runner. (I seized the engine on my beautiful doomsmobile of an '86 4runner on this last Saturday. sadface)

 

 

 Not pictured is the toy car a la fords with the suicide doors from the late 20s early 30s. FUCKING LOVE THOSE CARS. I rubberneck every time I see one on the road in real life.

But my ABSOLUTE favorite toy from this point of my childhood was actually this set of three plastic rats. I still have one, but I didn't feel like digging around for it to display on this blog, but when I have a real person job where I sit at my very own desk, it will undoubtedly be my little desk guardian. I fucking loved those rats. I genuinely cried tears of distraught grief when I lost the grey one of them as a little kid. For me, it was like losing a beloved pet. I took those things everywhere I could with me, so I am thoroughly amazed even one made it with me into adulthood. 

As I grew older, my three real hobbies were legos, reading, and clibing and/or building shit in trees. That's all I really wanted to do. Other than sports. The girliest physical activity I was in love with was double dutch, which to this day, I'm not gonna lie, I still kind of fucking rock at. But really, if I wasn't building intricate castles out of legos, I was reading a fantasy book marketed to kids older than myself. If I wasn't reading, I was outside, climbing up the flowering pear trees in NC or out exploring the chaparral in the middle coast of CA catching small lizards, all the while building what my mother always referred to as "Shanty Towns" in the trees because of my affinity to build myself a clubhouse with found materials. 

As I became too old for building shanty towns to really be an okay thing to do, I just biked. I would bike for hours and hours, easily clocking in 10-20 miles. In ND I found out there was a small BMX course on base and I would spend hours at it just trying to get more air, or jump across an entire hill the the small bumpy section. I started running track, after discovering in 6th grade that I LOVED running with all my heart. I learned volleyball, and eventually played on my high school's coed soccer team. I still run, and try to play a pick up game if the opportunity presents itself.

No matter what I was doing, I never questioned myself. I never stopped to ask if it was "okay" if a girl was doing what I was doing, I just did it. I didn't care that other girls were doing their hair, or putting on gaudy amounts of makeup, or trying to talk to boys in a way I didn't comprehend. I mean, I talked to boys--I talked to them about sports and climbing shit and cars--I didn't understand what all of the fuss was about. 

The first time I was forced to think about what was a "girly" thing to do and if it made me weird for not doing it was in 6th grade. I remember the girls in my PE class talking shit about the fact that I didn't shave my legs. I had never thought about it before. I had long been one of those scrawny kids with knobbly knees and I just never thought about my legs as being anything more than bike-pushers or scrape magnets. I don't remember how it went, but I ended up getting my first razor, but I was too fucking lazy and just flat out didn't care enough to shave my knees. I remember the whole month of girls in the locker room making such a fuss about the fact that I still hadn't shaved my knees. Thinking back, I probably did look a bit ridiculous, but a small part of me still doesn't really understand why it mattered so much to those girls.

My hair was the next big issue people started asking me about. When I was younger, I was aptly nicknamed "ragamuffin." My hair was this waist long train wreck that was affectionately called a rat's nest by my family. My "favorite" of their descriptions was that I always looked like someone drug me through a bush backwards. I guess that was semi appropriate since I was always climbing into the greenery and never used a ponytail holder for years, but still. I hated that. Then I got a bob in 5th grade, and as it slowly grew out I had to deal with my hair now that I had become unaccustomed to having it in my face all the time. I just threw it back in a low, sporty pony or, for a while, did this weird flipped out bun/braid combo thing that always left me with this spray of hair coming out of the back of my head. I don't think I could make it happen again in my life if I tried every day for the next five decades. But eventually, my chick friends got on my case about the weird way I wear my hair, and how it would be better pulled back into a high ponytail. I eventually learned, sort of, how to do more hairstyles, but again, it was an aspect of being a female I had never cared nor dealt with prior to being normalized by my peers.

The final, and most ridiculous, in my opinion, feminine concept I have been normalized into following, even if poorly, is painting my nails, but most specifically, my toenails. I never cared before...why should I? I was always wearing tennis shoes and climbing shit and had better things I could be doing with my time than bothering with my toes. Plus I chip the paint on my nails almost immediately, and I can't do anything for like 3 hours while it all dries....it is just a pain in the ass really. 

But apparently there is something so inherently feminine about painting your toenails that I have been chastised, sometimes more seriously than others, about the manliness of my feet. In fact, that is actually how I decided to date my high school boyfriend. 

He was over at my house during the summer between our sophomore and junior years of high school, and I was barefoot because it was my own damn house. He made some comment about how my unpainted toenails made my feet look too manly and how I should fix that. So I dared him: if he was willing to paint his nails I would paint mine. To his credit, he had the balls to do it. His toenails were purple and sparkly for like 3 months.

It has been commented on by good friends in college, and even by my only real romantic interest in college as well. I guess, somehow, me not caring enough to maintain my toenails in perfectly pedicured designs has proven me somewhat less of a female to some people? I still don't really understand.

 Since it has been SO desperately long, I did paint all my nails tonight. It was....fuck...before graduation that I last painted my toenails I think, and I last painted my fingernails before running out the hotel door to my friend's wedding a little over a month ago. To me that is really recent.

  

Clearly the ONLY way to spend your night in. Drink raspberry beer and huff nail polish.

Expect please don't actually huff anything. Especially nail polish.

 

 Yes, I do in fact have hobbit toes. I don't give a Fuck--and I think that is cat fur stuck on the paint. Lovely.

 

 

Somehow hot pink and rose gold combined to make Barbie Pink (TM) haha.

For real though, in the flash it isn't quite the same, but in the yellowy light of my room it looks like Barbie vomited on my fingers after a night of hard Ke$ha style partying. 

There's one part of my life that, at least from the outside, never stopped being "girly" or at least feminine: fashion.

I genuinely miss that outfit. I loved it so fucking much. I recently found a similar incarnation of the same geometric color blocking style in a dress on modcloth. Fuck yes.

While I gave up playing house and never did start planning my wedding while in 5th grade like most of the other girls I knew, I never did give up dress up. Or paying silent attention of the fashion of movies, shows, and street life. But that was because fashion was to me, like I have begun to realize it is for many tomboys, all about the expressions of self and of power. I knew and understood that. In college the first student group I became involved with was the fashion club where I met a half a dozen other tomboys all finally expressing their closeted fashionistas in a manner that displayed our real understanding of fashion: design and power.

I think that is why people have had a hard time accepting that I am not a really feminine person. People have become accustomed to believing that girls that like fashion are "girlier" and more feminine, but I just am not like that. They try to place me into this idea that because I like fashion and am almost more comfortable walking in 6" heels than flats, I should also be the kind of girl know the name of the bakery where I will by my wedding cake, be damned if I don't actually have a man stupid enough to go through that ritual with me yet.  But in reality, I understand the kind of message a certain combination of colors, cuts, and patterns display and I like to use that to my advantage.

I've been told by many people over my life, but most--I want to say painfully, or regretfully, or something--annoyingly (maybe?) by the only two long term friendboys I have ever had that I am not feminine enough for them. I don't know if that means that I am just some troll running around emasculating guys, or if that just means that we haven't become a society where it is okay for a girl to not be feminine yet still be straight yet.

Moreover, one of them tried to tell me for several months that he believed he had somehow taken away a large part of my femininity. I never managed to make him understand that it is impossible to remove from someone something they never had. And that it wasn't a matter of myself not being aware of something I had and him taking it from me--in some sort of illogical metaphysical cat burglary I guess--but that I honestly have never had, felt, or even wanted, let alone comprehended.

  I have never really been feminine. I don't care for it. I am more at home with a tool set than I am gossiping, or owning a bajillion pink colored things, or doing my hair. For fuck's sake I don't even own a hair dryer. I kind of fucking hate the millions of scented lotions I have been given as gifts from people who think that all girls love that kind of feminine crap, and I wish more people understood that I really, really, really have never had the intention of getting married. It isn't that I just have to wait to find the right person. I just want my career. And my cats haha. 

But really though, this is as much of a problem of over pervasive heteronormativity as any of the other issues my generation has been fighting on behalf of. Can we, for the sake of us tomboys and every other non binary fitting person, just dump these stupid expectations? 

10 Minute Salad

So I have been trying to lose weight and eat healthier and improve my life on all fronts. Part of me trying to lose weight has been rooted in my dealings with PCOS. I have recurring large, painful, horrific cysts that form mostly on my left ovary and frequently make it distend out of my abdominal wall. However, since BC pills, stress, PCOS, and years of working at a greasy pizza joint have left me overweight, I have spent the last year and a half struggling to even maintain the 15-20 pounds I have lost. I have a previous post detailing a previous dealing with doctors and proving that no, I'm not crazy, my ovary really is fucking exploding.

So anyway, I want to lose enough weight so that when I do finally have enough money and fitfo my heath insurance I can prove to whatever non total douchebag doctor that no, really, lefty might need to go. I really don't think there will be an argument when I can show a doc a swollen lump right where my ovary is. When I was a skinny little middle schooler, I would have abdominal pain and like once a month I could see a raised lump just in from my left hipbone, and it would go away a couple days later. Lefty needs to GO. But until I can find a doc who will listen, I have to lose the weight.

 So this is the salad I have been making to help me lose weight and prove to myself that eating healthier is just as fast and easy as spaghetti!

I have been using a green mix I found at Lucky's that has spinach, red and green chard, arugula, and some other kind of green. I love avocados, tomatoes, green onion, red cabbage, and cucumber as the "meaty" bits of my salad. I top it off with craisins, almonds, and swiss. 

I really do need to clean my counter off from all the random notebooks and whatnot.

 

 Green Onions are f-ing delicious.

 

 And I absolutely love red cabbage. I could eat it all day er'ry day. It's nice and kind of a spicy add to a salad. I also like ground pepper on my salads.

 I have been topping it with fresh ground swiss, almond slices, and cherry flavored dried cranberries. YUM!

 

  

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 BONUS POST

 Since I took so long to write this, I decided to add a second easy meal to it. 

 Yogurt and raspberries (on sale at king soopers today) and granola! Easy! Yum!

I have a love hate relationship with yogurt with granola and fruit. I've had it too much over the years to be able to eat it a lot. But today it was a welcome treat. I think I've been craving it.

 

Why I am Not a Vegetarian

Today I had the opportunity to describe on of my very first "I-swear-to-god-I-did-not-make-this-up" moments, and realized it was the perfect kind of story/morality lesson to go into this kind of thing.

This is one of my crazy stories that I don't actually get to talk about much, because it isn't the kind of thing that comes up naturally often, and it is also one of the most unbelievable, in my opinion, experiences I have EVER had.

So, for the back story:

When I was a small child I was SUPER into conservationism and was honestly probably headed down the road to becoming one of those super-douche vegans that chews out new assholes for people who eat too much meat. I mean, I had moved from Boulder, CO, to the conservative deep south before starting elementary school. I have no question as to where I got that neo-hyppie BS I was spouting. But damn, I was annoying about it, I am sure. Thinking back, I'm amazed I wasn't backhanded for being such a twat waffle about it at the time to my poor Southern teachers who just wanted to be left to their conservative ideologies without some prattling 9 year old explaining to them repetitively about how horrible they were for not being vehemently against the logging industry. On top of that, I was always that ringleader child instigating shit, but never really getting into trouble for it, and I'm not really sure how. I only remember two major instances now, but I know there were more I was directly responsible for.

For the first one I had to be in like 2rd grade or so, and it was PE day. That school was heavily influenced by the military, like all but a handful of my schools were, and so we always had to run a mile before we could do whatever we wanted, be it during PE or recess. I had already ran my mile, and so had my friends, and somehow, some way only ethereal deities know how, I managed to convince like 5 other girls to grab hula hoops with me and stomp around in a circle waving the damn things around our heads or like old school drum majors with giant batons while chanting "WE ARE MOTHER NATURE'S DAUGHTERS" at the top of our fucking lungs. After 15-20 minutes of this, the poor PE teacher, who I remember as an apple shaped, fairly butch woman with a bowl haircut (almost your stereotypical Hollywood PE teacher) called me--just me--over to her. She wasn't stupid. She knew it was all me that started that mess. All she did was curtly tell me to stop because I had given her a headache.

Then in 4th grade, right after my school got uniforms, I started exploring the edge of our schools campus. It was heavily bushed, all brambly and dense and I loved it. I also had a fucking psychotic obsession with tree sap...if I remember correctly I was legitimately convinced I could somehow turn it into amber. I guess I thought I could do it with my mind if I thought hard enough or something, basic geology be damned. So I would go into the wooded area and collect sap, by myself at first, because that isn't weird at all, no. I would fill up my pockets with it, and take it home to my sap collection. At home I made a snake with some of it. And some other random weirdly molded pieces of "art" I was convinced would turn into cool amber sculptures somehow. I remember one time I forgot to take the sap out of my pocket and my mother washed my wool, school-uniform-approved sweater and was so livid that I wrecked my only sweater that I could wear to school. The sap sealed the pocket shut and I was so pissed that I couldn't keep collecting sap with it. But anyway, after a couple weeks of just me oddly wandering off into the pine trees, I somehow managed to convince one other kid it was cool to come check out the pines and collect their sap. Then another. Then like three more. And we would play in the paths in the bramble. Eventually I had this entire fucking posse of like 15 other children of various grades that followed me around like some sort of woodland messiah. I remember talking to all of them, my weird little disciples, while standing up in this almost room-sized space in the bramble that we always met at. I was standing and talking some nature-y shit and they were all sitting around me receiving my conservationist teachings.

I got into a piss-load of trouble for that one. But not as much as I probably should have. It was very carefully explained to me why it was fucking moronic for me to lead essentially a classroom's worth of students off into the bramble in the shitty neighborhood we lived in. Whoopsie....My B. I think why I didn't get into more, and more real, trouble was because I was the star pupil of the school. The school administration probably realized that while I was fucking stellar in all that academic crap, my common sense side was in need of a helmet.


But anyway, clearly, on a scale of one to crazy hyppie, I was a solid Luna Lovegood. So this is why I think it is so crazy that I did not become a rabid vegan, running away from meat and attacking anyone that does eat it.

Instead, around the end of forth grade, beginning of fifth grade, I had what is arguably the absolute most fucking unbelievable moment of my entire life.

I was taking out the trash as one of my after-school chores. The trash bin was on the left side of our house, and on that side of the house the property line was lined with holly bushes. I had just put the bag in the bin and was walking back inside and heard this crazy commotion from behind me. I turned around to see this bright red cardinal flying as fast as it could away from some kind of medium sized hawk. The cardinal dove into the holly bushes, trying to throw the hawk off of it, but that plan backfired. The holly actually slowed the cardinal down more than the hawk, and as they both emerged from the holly bushes, about 2-3 feet in front of me, the hawk caught the cardinal in its talons. The hawk essentially used the cardinal like a skateboard to land: one claw wrapped around the cardinal's chest, and one around its neck. As it landed on the ground, the poor cardinal started just screaming these awful death and terror filled shrieks. But I was captivated by the hawk. It looked me dead in the eye as it choked out the cardinal, rocking back and forth on the cardinal's body, while not giving a single fuck that I was standing there.

It was the most zen moment of my life. I don't remember actively thinking anything. I actually remember almost hearing a disembodied voice be like "This is the circle of life. Deal with it" as the hawk stared into my soul. Seriously, I have never had that kind of eye contact with another living being since then. That event made me come to the conclusion that it was okay to eat meat. I had actually been contemplating vegetarianism at the time even.

This Blogging Thing Is Kind of Hard

I only say that because I want to make a meaningful blog that isn't just the half crazed ramblings of a bored, underemployed college graduate.

Figuring out what to write about isn't completely hard. What is is figuring out how to write it on a level that I would be proud of in the same way I am proud of my best academic papers. That is what I really want to achieve. Writing recipes is easy. But writing meaningful social commentary on the biggest issues of today? Fuck me, that's much harder. There are plenty of people in the world writing drivel about all the big issues facing our global civilization and I really don't want to be one of those. But there are also some amazing bloggers (and vloggers really) that are making real, tangible changes to the global society through their work on the internet and I know everyone wishes to be like that. Really it is a matter of knowing how and what to write, and actually having a worthwhile opinion and style on how you address it.

But because life is more than just mundane daily life and is much smaller than enormous issues facing all corners of the world, I want to include both aspects in here. That's kind of the point behind the name of this blog, even back when I originally opened it like 3 years ago. "My Life and Laundry" is supposed to be a kind of catch all, ya know? I hope it brings to mind both the important and the mundane.

Also, the reference to laundry is kind of a mention of my own childhood. When I was seven years old I actually BEGGED my parents for a chore I could do around the house to help them out. I know, I am probably a space alien or something for that. They gave me and my sister the task of doing all the household laundry. That chore just never seemed to go away for me. I became "the laundry fairy" as even my sister stopped really doing it. There was one base house we lived in, built in the late 40s, that had this laundry shoot that really cemented me into that position within the household. My whole family would just toss their dirty everything down the shoot and just kind of forget about it, and then like magic, 4 or 5 days later, a clean pile of (not always) pristinely folded laundry would be sitting on their beds waiting to get put away. While we were living there the rest of my family functionally forgot about the tedious, unglamorous, but insanely necessary chore that was laundry. That chore continued to a lesser degree for the rest of my adolescent life, but has had an oddly strong influence on myself as a person.

So since I am the laundry fairy, it seemed like the right name for a blog like that. Plus to me, laundry symbolizes all the daily BS that is life on this planet, mundane or otherwise. It is a very human, domestic part of our world, but is easily forgotten about amid the myriad of shiny distractions on the internet or in the pop culture world, just the same way many human rights, politics, etc, are.

CTM: A Poor Man's Feast

MOAR FOOD

My sister told me today that I don't write enough. This is for you.

About two weeks ago I decided I wanted to eat what has long been a staple meal in my family's ethereal recipe book: CTM. It, like much in my life as a military brat, is an acronym--we aren't just crazy. It stands for "Chicken Tomatoes Mozzarella." We ate it a lot while I was growing up because it is pretty cheap, and we were very, very poor. It is also fucking delicious, which made the being poor thing relatively forgettable for a while. 

You'll Need:

--2-4 chicken breasts. 2 feed 2-3 people fairly well, 4 feeds a family easy.

--Noodles. Your choice. We always went with egg noodles growing up, but this time I used some organic locally sourced brand (because Boulder) that were bow tie style.

--Tomatoes, canned or fresh, whatever you have/want. 1-2 cans unseasoned, diced, depending on how many people you are feeding. 2-5 fresh, again based on your number of stomachs to fill.

--An onion. I used red, because I prefer them, but my mother always made it with a vidalia. Use half an onion for a small amount, a full one for a family.

--Garlic cloves, also dependent on number of people. I used two cloves for feeding 3 people, I would say no more than 4 cloves though, it would be too much.

--Mozzarella. I used about 1/3 of a cup I think? Just use as much as you want really. You want the cheese to be kind of stringy and kind of part of the sauce that you end up with. For large families a full cup would be an easy measurement.

--Spices! Below is a bad picture of what I used. And my messy counter. But mostly the 11 kinds of spices. Left to right: Ground Cumin, Mediterranean Oregano, Paprika, Tarragon, Pepper, Salt, Marjoram, Celery Seeds, Thyme, Rubbed Sage, and Parsley. Dashes of each. Tarragon might seem odd, but it was just a sweet enough to offset the heaviness of everything else.

--Butter. Just a couple pats, enough to fry your onion and garlic, and a little extra to fry the chicken just so.

 Place your pan on the burning on a med/med high heat. Put 2/3 of the butter you have for this in the pan and let melt. While Butter is melting dice your onion and garlic cloves. Put onion and garlic into butter as it just starts to brown. Then add spices. I was heavy on the paprika because I like spicier foods, but you don't have to. Only use a dash/shake of each, it won't take much. Salt and pepper to taste.

 

While the onion and garlic fry up, start cutting up your chicken breasts. Cut them into nice bite sized pieces. Enjoy the picture showing more details of my messy counter.

 

Once the onions are nice and caramelized, add the chicken pieces into your pan. Once ALL of the chicken is in the pan and has had a few minutes to lightly brown on either side, add the remaining amount of your butter into the pan, spread around. This will keep help fry the chicken just a little and keep everything more moist than if you didn't use any more butter. This is a good time to add a little extra of the spices you like best. It was at this point I added another 4 or so dashes of paprika, and a couple dashes more salt, pepper, and I think thyme to mine.

 

While your chicken browns, start your pot of noodles. This will make sure that everything is ready at almost exactly the same time.

 

Add your tomatoes. I had to dice mine up. Seriously, just looking at these tomatoes makes me kind of hungry, curse it being almost midnight right now!

 I'm sad that this is the absolute best picture I managed to take of the whole process. I mean, the color composition of this photo is actually really cool, I think, but of all the things to have a perfectly focused phone picture of...

I promise I will clean my--well everything--and find my dslr's battery charger so I can take much better quality photos.

 

Once your tomatoes have gotten a chance to soften heat up, add in your mozzarella. I bought a fairly cheap, nice and "Boulder-y" hunk of organic locally sourced mozz from a local grocery store that I absolutely love here: Lucky's. 

 

I didn't even mind having to shred it myself. I actually kind of like it better that way.

 

 Slowly add in your shredded mozzarella, pinch-full by pinch-full. Stir the whole pan's contents while adding the cheese to help melt it faster and turn it into a sauce easier.

Once all your cheese is added and melted you should get something that looks like this! Only in focus. Serve over noodles! I don't drain mine, I just use one of those noodle scoops and place a serving of the CTM over top it. You could, alternatively, add your noodles into the pan and stir it all together before serving.

It really does look better when it is in focus, I swear! Enjoy!