I am here and I am not here.

It's summer. The sandals I've worn since I was 17 finally frayed away. Time to buy a new pair.

That is, if the stores still SELL wearable shoes.

I went in to a regular sized Payless and headed over to my section. And stared. And stared.

Aside from the virtual junkyard of flip-flops (which make my feet cramp), I could not find a single pair of sandals that didn't have high heels.

This seriously enrages me.

One: I have two tendon injuries in my left foot which prevent me from wearing high heels. I literally can't--not without a world of pain.

Two: The inevitable jerks who are going to dismiss the next argument, but say, "Ohhh, that's ok then, you have a right to be angry" because of bulletin #1. (Kind of like the jerks who say, "Oh, that's ok then" when I get around to the "farming meat hurts humans too" part of the veggie argument.)

I've yet to fully understand or blog about the difficulties of working in a location that on the surface seems completely woman-friendly, yet deep down still maintains sexist roots. I'm still not completely sure how to judge my boss, as a sexist pig or just a typical boss.

A recent situation make it even more difficult to separate work, friendships, feminism and attitudes. Even worse to determine if what I was seeing was sexism maybe even sexual harassment in action or a simply a stupid joke. In my workplace nothing is simple and sides are never easy to choose.

What occurred was that one night one of my co-workers complained that the contractors who were remodeling the store kept staring at her breasts and checking out every girl that worked in the store. I couldn't really do much about this unless they were being extremely obvious or made a comment which they did not do. So I went on doing other things I needed to get done. While I was working in customer service, this co-worker starts talking to our computer guy who usually only comes in late at night or early in the morning. Lately he also had been working on the remodel. She starts telling him about how the contractors were staring at her "tits". He comments that they should have been staring at her ass. My co-worker stomps off.

Me again.

So here's the thing... I have just entered into a new relationship with a guy I have known for a long time, a good friend of mine who I lost touch with for a few years and just met up with again recently. It is good, for once, it is really good. We get along great and all, and things have been going at the right pace for me and he is respectful of that... the problem is he is going to want to know why I am the way I am... e.g. abuse issues. I don’t want to talk to him about it. It is so not that I don’t trust him, because I really do, but every time I have done this with a guy in the past he has either been really put off by it, or he has started to abuse me just the same way as if that’s like a free pass to do so.

I had an interesting conversation with my dad the other day where he stated that he felt like once you feel into the area of poverty that the system is designed to keep you from ever getting out.

I don't really know about that per say. I would agree that its been extremely difficult. I don't know if I would agree that its designed that way. More or less I think that its just the way that things happen to be, and that it should change.

I look at the situation where a woman finds herself with kids and little financial support. So she turns to the system where she can obtain food, health care, reduced rent, and other options.

I still have tonsillitis, but I don't feel nearly as ill now. Thanks for the patience.

Being so seriously ill has made me realize how terrifying it is to live without health insurance, though. I completely drained whatever little savings I had going to the doctor, and even then had to ask family and friends for money.

Funny thing is, even though it was terribly dramatic, the whole ordeal was still cheaper than actually having health insurance.

I also didn't have the greatest experiences with my doctors.

I am still alive, don't worry! Somehow I managed to survive the end of semester exams with my sanity in tact, and am feeling mighty glad they are finished but not so confident in the results! Oh well.

So here is the story with the whole Women's rep thing at school... They asked me to come back and do it, because a). they figured out that they HAD to have at least one Woman on the executive and b). the guys on the executive apparently can't handle it alone (haha is all I have to say!). So I am thinking about it, but here is the thing, and yes this is pretty pathetic of me, but the guys on the actual executive who are there already don't want a girl involved. I know, so screw them, but with all that is going on, as much as I desperatly want to go in there and show them I also do not feel like being in yet another toxic environment at a place I usually love going and find a lot of solice there.

First of all, I am very very sick, so sorry if posting is short/lapsed/foggy. Mono ftl.

I got an email from Codepink today, urging President Obama to visit Gaza. This picture was included in the email. It is a picture of a girl, with the headline "I am Gaza", and the subtext, "40% of about 900 Palestinians killed in Gaza are women and children."

Personally, I think the intended message in statements like that is, "40% of the people killed aren't even involved in this fight." (That's not 100% true, but that's another debate.) Still, it's just such an uncomfortable statement. "Women and children."

Dear Body,

I no longer maintain the steady desire to be completely and utterly at war with you.

I mean, cause lets face it, its not like you're going anywhere just yet and I'm here and it looks like we're pretty much all we got indefinitely. No boy or girl I have ever met has managed to make me feel better about you. No amount of weight loss at whatever drastic cost has managed to make me see you differently. So baby, it must be me and not you and I'm sorry you're taking the brunt of this abusive relationship.

I'm not gonna lie. Lets shoot it straight. You're no model, never was. The only reason we ended up there was your pouty lips and Bettie Page hair and my momentary non-aversion to being totally naked totally all of the time. Lets face it, mother was fat. Father was fat. Both sets of grandparents are fat. My rail thin sister? Also getting fat. We're probably lucky we're only as fat as we are. Go us!

Somewhere over the last couple of years I earned myself the nickname "gypsy". I get it, I can't stay in one place, I like the rush of visiting a new city, standing in a crowd of a million people with the knowledge that not one of them knows anything about me, I like being invisible there, at least during the day, but then in the early hours of the morning in some run down hostel I always end up laying awake wondering how I can stop the feeling of isolation from ripping me apart. I don't get it.

Being alone has been a norm for me since I was a kid, I was always the loner in my family, and it seems to me that the more I expressed myself, and stood up for myself, the more isolated I became, some of that I cherish and some of it I hate. Feminism is one of those things, it can be isolating, it can be hard to express for fear of isolation, for me anyway. Especially in a community which supports abuse against women and pretty much encourages silence. In lots of ways I love it because it is an instant separator between me and them. People who I don't want to know or befriend or even try to convince that I have a voice in this damn community and I should be able to use it when I want to, and how I want to.

Dear Obama,

I really really wanted you to be MY president. The type of guy who I could say, yeah, that dude is my president. I'm happy HE is in political office. I wanted to be able to scream your name from the roof tops.

Then you had to ruin it all by putting more troops in Afghanistan and you haven't ended the war. I thought you were all "anti-war", that is what you told US. That is why all of us who marched on Washington against the war voted for YOU. To BRING OUR TROOPS HOME! Not just move them around a little.

Then you made me all happy by having your people say you wouldn't allow the federal government to come in and arrest people for growing marijuana in states where it is legal. Ah, then what the heck happened in California?

Just lately I have been trying to perform a whole bunch of turn around's in my life, I guess an easier way to say that is I have been reviewing my flaw's (which sounds terrible, but it has been anything but, more therapeutic than anything else). One thing that has come out of this is that I am at my best, happiest and most inspired when I am not living in New Zealand, and was at my most happiest when I moved to Canada for a whole year, even though that also involved a whole lot of regrouping and dealing with the stuff I left behind, which was not a lot of fun, but it was necessary to say the least.

Here's one for you.

As a recent graduate of massage school, I am currently looking for work. And it seems that almost every single ad I see has the words, "Women only."

I'm refreshed by the fact that most of the men I've met in the massage business don't simply complain that the massage trade is "so sexist, buu huu, poor us", which is what one would expect when an otherwise privileged group gets shafted for the very thing that usually awards them privilege. Instead, those I've spoken with seem to have a pretty mature understanding that their disadvantage is the result of unfortunate, overarching societal themes--particularly sexual violence against women.

Being as it is Mother's Day, I thought I would talk about what it is actually like to be a mother in 2009.

On the positive side, being a mom is probably more interesting then ever before. Now moms can be hot, wife-o-licious as one of my favorite bloggers calls his wife and mother of his children. Thanks to sperm-banks, women can become mother's without men. Lesbians can become mothers like another one of my favorite bloggers who has three sons she gave birth to and another son on the way that her wife is giving birth to. Ani DeFranco is a mom. Being a mom is "cool". It doesn't mean wearing mom jeans, but low-rise jeans and driving a convertible instead of a mini-van. I might be the only mom without an iphone, but I do have a laptop.