Got my Yuletide assignment yesterday. It's pretty cool and I think there is a lot of potential in it, and I think I also can do a good job with it -- certain elements of it weird me out, but the prompter gave me a lot to work with so I think I leave some things out while still giving them what they want. So I am excited!

I go home to-day for Thanksgiving, so I'll be scarce for the next week.

Linkspam!:

A presenter in my cog psych class used this page about art by autistic people in his presentation, and I thought that was pretty neat, so here is the link. It is pretty cool from both an art and a mental shenanigans standpoint. (I also ended up talking about the gender issues surrounding autism with the professor after class, which was pretty neat -- she agreed with mhari and said that autism is generally viewed as a "boy's disorder" and not something girls are supposed to get.)

Octopodes can go on land and that is totally awesome. Plus also super cute.

Although we already knew that, Ann Coulter is a maniac and I don't understaaaand, Jesus. I don't want to live on this planet any more? Liz said I should move to Canada, but I feel it is my duty to model sane Christianity for people in America.

I am currently using this programme to try and manage my issues with computer light = migraines; I've only had it downloaded for a day, so I haven't got a real clear idea of how well it works yet, but it's an interesting idea.

This tumblr exists and it is pretty pro -- Ugly Renaissance Babies.

A really interesting essay/article on why "born this way" is a bad argument for queerness.

This guy is my hero -- a devout Muslim whose faith led him to try to save the man who shot him. I heard an interview with him on NPR on Sunday -- he was really incredible. Warning: Article contains pictures of headshot.

For your webcomic organising needs, piperka is a great site for tracking updates and keeping stuff neat.

Finally, when you have just delivered a good Caruso zinger, the instant CSI. Yeahhhhh!

I am... pretty much hot and miserable.

I am not sure how, but I ended up with the job of taking care of the poults, and the chicks (which arrive Friday), so to-morrow I will be getting the brooder shed ready for them, which involves evicting the broody turkey hen and moving her eggs to the incubator, papering the floor, and making cardboard fences to keep them separate from each other to begin with. I wouldn't mind except to-morrow is supposed to be SO. HOT. OMG. ;___;

To-day's visits were kind of fun; my first client is one who I've seen before and I really like, she keeps me really busy with cleaning and errands and things, and to-day she let me wash and brush her hair. My second client was new, but she was friendly and very nice. This is certainly a job that involves not judging anybody by appearance -- which is not to say that I make a habit of judging people based on how they look or live, but a lot of the people I visit are very low-income and live in kind of terrible houses, and I know they're what people think of when they say "white trash" and "rednecks", but so many of them are really kind and mostly lonely. And a lot of them have also lived through very tough circumstances. It makes me understand more and more that the only way to approach people is with compassion.

I did get a lecture Monday on how having babies out of wedlock is degenerate and immoral, and everybody -- including Catholic priests and gay people -- should be allowed to marry, which I thought was kind of a fun contrast.

Also, my morning lady said, "I really like you, so they're probably going to get rid of you or something!" and I admitted that I would be leaving the agency at the end of summer, and she said, "And they'll replace you with somebody crap! I know how they do!" I'll be honest, I was really flattered.

But now I am going to go back to sitting in my chair wishing I were dead because of the heat. Maria accused me of not having a real job to-day because a lot of my client houses are air conditioned, whereas she goes lifting beehives around in the heat. Then Mama said we should both shut up because this morning at work she got sprayed in the face with diarrhea. :D

Last Tuesday I learned that my preschool teacher, Miss Stacy, was held at gunpoint and sexually assaulted on her wedding day.

In response, she started an agency that provides assistance to victims of trauma, from helping a Iraq war veteran with PTSD find counselling after the death of two of his children in a fire on Christmas, to finding a foster home for an abused baby, to providing medical care for a mentally retarded homeless man some folks found in a truck in the woods last winter. One of her biggest goals is to get her clients to a point where they can join in the helping: thus the veteran offered his spare camper as a temporary home for the homeless man while the agency found a place for him to live.

So, people are pretty amazing, I guess.

She offered me a volunteer position. It's a forty-five minute drive, but I kind of think I should take it. You know? There's not a whole lot of time left in the summer, and it seems like it might be more important to do this than to sit in on Daphne's meetings in her air-conditioned office two days a week. And it was such a coincidence to meet her--went with Daphne to talk about ways to get money/support/useful information for a shelter for domestic violence victims in Perry County, since Miss Stacy has been running her agency for a long time and knows who to contact and what's feasible and what's not (she even knows which restaurants will give leftover food/free food to people if the Food Bank is unavailable and was hooking someone up with one such restaurant when we came in), and she just happened to recognise me--anyway, if it weren't such a tricky theological thingy and a statement that makes me seriously uncomfortable, I might be tempted to say it was purposeful.

Which, granted, it is so hard to know what is just ordinary life coincidence and what is God saying HEY YOU DO THAT OKAY. There are never any angels or sparkles, which would make it SO much easier. But.

Should I give up my internship to volunteer with this agency, or should I keep the internship since it is providing some practical experience and will certainly look good on my resume?

Really cool post by spuffyduds:

[T]he other day at the library I was shelving a recent People Magazine, and there was an article about Jennifer Garner's post-baby weight loss titled, "How She Got Her Body Back."

...

What weird, weird phrasing, if you think about it. What a weird thought process it elucidates. "If my body deviates from a narrow ideal, or if it deviates from how I have grown used to it looking--it ain't mine anymore. I UNOWN IT! NOT MINE NOT MINE NOT MINE. My REAL body is AROUND HERE SOMEWHERE. It is MUCH CUTER than this thing which is currently inexplicably HANGING OFF MY NECK."

Hey, writers for People! That rounder, curvier body that Jennifer Garner had for a while? It was still HERS. It was still her.

That--is brilliant. ♥