Disconnected paragraphs

The boys here think I am the manliest girl on the planet because I lift weights, because I am strong ("Not to be sexist, but you're strong for a girl." I don't know how to respond to that.) and because I drink pints of lager.

I don't really know how to respond to this. My femininity isn't threatened, or anything, and I feel like I wear all the markers of a woman (boobs, lipstick, skirts, etc) unabashedly. Part of me is somewhat flattered (I like my muscles), and part of me thinks that they have a rather narrow idea of what it is to be a woman.

My friend Charlotte is beautiful. I just want to sit around and gush about her. She likes me a lot, which never hurts, and we go out for adventures and she puts up with me while I fumble with the map and make an ass of myself. She is patient and quirky and she is damned good.

Making an ass of myself is requisite, really, for each single day. I make an ass of myself.

Anyway, today we walked along the "mountain" above the "city." (People here have no sense of scale.) We wished we had sailboats - it would have been a lovely day to go out sailing. We looked at all the birds, we chased the sheep, I took pictures of Charlotte and the real mountains in the distance.

I have decided that boys, relationships, are like pancakes. The first few aren't going to be very good because the griddle is still warming up, and they'll taste alright and they'll be edible but they won't be entirely cooked all the way through and they will be a bit misshapen and they will have too much butter in them. I hope I'm right.

I'm wrong about a lot of things. I'm reading linguistic readers and am discovering how wrong I have been in my ideas about language. It's a wonderful thing, actually. I can deal with being proven wrong. (Hell, I have to - it happens fairly often.) Nevertheless, I love reading about language and hope to hell I can find a thesis topic in here, somewhere. Archival research is for people who want to give themselves cancer from inhaling moldy books - I wanna do theory, baby.

Probably not, though.

I am occasionally deeply morose. It comes and goes. Also I am way too honest (and whingey) when I'm drunk:

"He doesn't like me."
"Oh, he likes you."
"Yeah, but he doesn't want to sleep with me."
"So?
"It sucks!

I am in deep, intellectual love with one of my professors - the kind of love where I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I want to work with him until he dies - I think he's brilliant. I want to work with him so badly that I am tempted by postgraduate study in ... English Literature. My family would have a field day with that.

This is long and you've probably zoned out. I wouldn't blame you. I don't really expect or require people to read it, and it always surprises me (and delights, of course!) that they do, but you know - I'm here for the taking. I haven't got much to give, unfortunately, in return. There are a number of long, thick debates on thuh board that I wish I could respond to eloquently and beautifully but I haven't had the heart.

2003-02-19, long

before / after

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