ponderings and procrastinations

ok, let me get a few things on the table right at the beginning, so you know where I'm coming from. First, (as I've mentioned previously), although I am heterosexual, I do not care who you sleep with/partner with/spend eternity with as long as you both are consenting adults.  I don't feel it needs discussion, or revealing, and if i ask you to tell me about yourself and the 1st thing you say is "I'm gay,"   then i have to wonder just how interesting you find yourself if you define your entire existence around who you choose to partner with.   Now, being that I am not gay, and have not felt slings and arrows because of that, it might make me sound a bit uncaring & ignorant.  But if the situation were reversed and I started out with, "I'm heterosexual," or "I'm a dork," then you can see my point.  and in my mind, you being gay is a separate issue from the prejudice and hostility and violence against people who are gay.  Which is my business, since I am a human.
 Second, I am in the middle of an incredibly huge renovation project, that has gone at least 6 days over my attention-span budget, and i am procrastinating by writing this post - so it may go long, just so you know.  and it may be hard to follow because i haven't slept in a while, and that sleep was a mess.

Yesterday, i mentioned that i mowed the lawn.  i also mentioned that i had the neighbor show me how to start the mower.  i have taken much shit over this.  but let me explain: i haven't lived anywhere that I personally needed to mow since 1977, and i assure you, mowers were different then, and there was always a kid who would do it for Five Righteous Dollars, so now it should make more sense to you and you WILL stop sending me those emails.  or i will reveal things here that you may not be too proud to remember, Captain Underpants. Fair enough?  (But i will accept a "You Mow Girl" t-shirt, xl, with the queen).
So that got me thinking about a number of things.  all at once.  as my mind usually travels.  first is how we think we have come such a long way to say "I have gay friends,"  yet our children (actually, not my children - i have none) refer to Home Ec class (now called Home & Careers) as "homos and queers."  so although people from my generation may have put aside their prejudice along with their tie-dye and water buffalo moccasins, we forgot to tell the kids.  *head smack*  duh! and no, not just upstate new york, or cornbelt states.  ev.er.y. where.  And it's wrong.  And it's our fault as adults...as parents...for not drawing the line and holding the line.  and for not re-empowering the adults around our children to set things right.  like teachers and such.  although it just kills me to say this: Like in my day.  (the empowerment, not the prejudice).
so all that somehow morphed into the fact that we, as women who were young girls, were subjected to Home Ec classes without even the possibility of taking Shop.  we never learned how to use those cool tools, or how to do minor motor repairs or how to wire a lamp or how to start a lawnmower/snowblower/or any other -ower.  We had to get permission from the principal of the school to take a woodworking class, when things began to loosen up a bit.  but only that class. and we still had to take Home Ec.  so unless we had a father who was intent on raising his daughter to be self-sufficient, we never learned.  and that was the exception.  so we grew to be women who depended on their husband or neighbor to teach them, or to do the chore.  and all THAT got me talking with my friend about retreats and workshops, and how there should be workshops for women about this stuff.  it's never too late to learn, after all.  i may not have the physical strength to pull that lawnmower cord, but i can tell someone else what they need to do to get it going for me.  but i really want to learn how to hang this chandelier i bought the other day.  Maybe we could take over cooperative extension someday.  or go guerrilla in Lowe's and make them teach us how to use all the Good Tools and machines.  I actually had a guy in a hardware store try to refuse to sell me a cut-off wheel for my drill because they were dangerous, he said.  hunh?
yes, i warned you this would go long, so don't bitch.  i hope it made some sense, but most likely not, unless you've spent some time with me and have learned to follow the trail.  so i do apologize.  and if you're gay, and i have somehow offended you, i apologize, and you must know that from the bottom of my heart it was not my intention.  quite the opposite.
and now *sigh* back to the job at hand.