(no subject)

It's official- i feel like crap. It's one of those types of sicknesses where you're not really *sick*, exactly, but where you collapse into bed every chance you get and wake up with a headache. I'd love to go to sickcall, but i can imagine the conversation:

So, what's the matter with you today?

I'm tired and my head hurts.

Ok, take some Ibuprofen and get more sleep. Now quit yer bitching and get outta here!

But i'm going to take advantage of it today in whatever way i can. One of my ESOL students families invited me to dinner tonight, but i'm going to call and cancel. I've been over there once before and had a great time and ate a killer dinner (cooking's against my religion), but i'm not up to being social tonight. All i want to do is go back to bed and maybe work on some writing a little more. I had nice ideas for the Harry Potter story when i was lying in bed in that half-awake state you get when you're awake but not ready to get out of bed yet.

I did go to the DCSlashers book group meeting last night even though i felt a little under the weather, and i'm glad i did. We dicussed The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin and it was pretty interesting. No major revelations, but Nat helped me put a finger on Genly Ai's characterization that had been elluding me, and that was that the boy's clueless as all git out.

The thing i liked best about it was discussing the role of gender on a planet where there is none, save for going into kemmer once a month and mating. We talked about what it meant to be male and female, and what attributes and traits we think of as male and female, and how stereotypical we still are even though we don't mean to be.

I don't know, but i give people slack when it comes to stereotypes. They're just a way of organizing all the info into our noggins. We all have them, it's how rigidly we adhere to them when we come across someone who transcends them as to whether you're prejudiced or narrow-minded.

I confess to having a lot of stereotypical thoughts, some of which shame me more than others. For example, on Thursday for unit PT one of our officers lead us in an aerobics class, and he really put us through our paces. heehee, you should've seen the men in the group struggling with their masculinity as they tried to grapevine and clap and jump. You could feel the fear in the guys worrying about their Kinsey score climbing, baby.

I've been through this once before when i was in AIT in Texas, and the aerobics instructor nearly killed us then. She was a tough mofo. It was funny to see how both classes, then and now, were exactly the same, the men complaining about how sissy it was, and at the end were gasping too much to say how wimpy it was.

Saying all of that, I do think the officer leading the class is just a little gay. Maybe a lot gay and conflicted. He's got a wife and a buzzcut, but he teaches aerobics and has two purebred small yappy dogs (he had a party a bunch of us were invited to a while back).

I just hope his wife is prepared for the shock when she walks in on a scene later on in life...

Now see, there's me being all stereotypical and stuff. But i'm not losing any sleep over it.

4 more...3 more...2 more...1 more...and go back to bed, zzzz...