lunabee34 | Help me dress Emma!

1. So Emma is looking to develop a style/personal aesthetic which I think is so cool. I always wanted to have a distinctive style but didn't know where to start and so didn't start developing my own style until my late thirties. I think it's really cool that she's interested in building that now, and I told her I'm more than willing to help her slowly build a wardrobe. She's already rocking a fantastic haircut (short and asymmetrical, buzzed on one side and longer on the other) and some great new glasses with black plastic frames.

She's looking at some amalgamation of butch, soft butch, and tomboy style--definitely masculine and menswear inspired.

Does anyone have recs for blogs or pictures or how-to-dress-a-baby-lesbian posts or stores or even items of clothing that she might be interested in? At this point, she's still in the conception phase.

2. My thyroid levels are within the normal range. I am unimpressed. I feel like the unstated message here is that I'm just supposed to feel like shit. I'm supposed to be tired, I'm supposed to have no energy, this is just normal and okay. *sigh* Maybe it is. Maybe everybody just feels like this, and I'm being whiny.

3.

The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate by Gary Chapman

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I think most of what's in this book isn't as revelatory as it was in the early nineties; the idea that people express love in a variety of ways that aren't always perceived as an expression of love by the recipient has filtered down into pop culture consciousness.

That said, I think the five love languages Chapman comes up with are pretty accurate, and I can identify where most people I have a love relationship with fall on the continuum. I also think he has some good advice for how to start expressing love in the language your partner speaks and what to do if that's hard for you or if you're feeling unloved because your partner isn't speaking your love language.

Chapman is a Christian and refers to Jesus and his teachings periodically (mostly in the context of what he had to say about loving other people), but the book doesn't seem preachy or proselytizing, and he refers to psychologists and scholars just as often.

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The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star by Nikki Sixx

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow. This book is a hard read. I can't believe Nikki survived doing that many drugs and living so destructively. I think it's wonderful that he was able to get sober and to find some happiness; he was using drugs, alcohol, and indiscriminate sex to self-medicate the trauma of his childhood and the resulting depression. What strikes me most about his diary entries from 1987, the year the book covers, is how sad and self-loathing he is and how little value he feels his life is. He hates doing drugs and hates the kind of person doing them makes him, but he feels powerless to stop. I'm so glad his story has a happy ending (well, not really ending because it's still ongoing!) and that he's not just sober but genuinely finds happiness and fulfillment in his life.

This is also a reality check. I mean, here's a person at the height of his fame--he's rich and famous and creative. He's arguably one of the most important American musicians who made music that still endures. I can turn on any classic rock station today anywhere in the country, and if I leave it on long enough, Motley Crue will come on. Nikki is also really smart; he's constantly writing in his journal about what he's reading and what book he just bought at the bookstore. And yet, he can't keep his life on track. All these gifts and he's a junkie. Addiction and depression really don't care about what you've got going great for you; add in the money and fame that keep you from ever hearing the word no, and it's a recipe for disaster.

Very interesting look at addiction, Motley Crue, other bands that were popular at the time (most notably Guns N Roses), lots of NSFW pictures (Seriously, I hadn't been paying much attention to the pictures as I was reading, and then suddenly I realized that I was looking at a naked woman with a pickle in her mouth and a beer bottle up her hoo-hah; this caused me to page back and realize that the book is full of pictures of naked women; so that's either a feature or a bug depending on your druthers LOL).

One of the things I really like about this book is that Nikki gets the people he's writing about at the time to actually comment with their memories and perceptions of events; sometimes they disagree with him or come to different conclusions than he draws and that makes the book feel balanced and nuanced.

Caveat: Women do not fare well in the world of 1980s rock and roll. Lots of sexism in this book that is never addressed by Nikki or any of the other people who weigh in on what he wrote in his diary. That might be a dealbreaker for some.

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4. Reading The Heroin Diaries made realize that I had just been assuming that you can go to the drugstore or Wal-Mart and buy needles; I mean, tons of people inject themselves with legitimate medicine on a daily basis. But clearly that can't be the case or Nikki Sixx wouldn't have spent so much time when he was a junkie using the same needles or trying to find needles. So, does anybody know--how/where do you get needles if you're a diabetic or whatever?

Crossposts: https://lunabee34.livejournal.com/544155.html

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sholio

re: needles - I don't know if this is how it works for humans, but we have an injectable medication we give our dog, and we get needles from the vet along with a few months' supply of the medication. We collect the used needles in a jar (they're one-use only) and take them back to be disposed of. It's not carefully tracked, though - they don't, like, check off needles given out vs. needles returned, and they gave us a supply of extra needles in case we had any problems inserting them. Perhaps it's similar for humans - you get a supply of needles from your doctor along with whatever needs to be injected? It's odd that you can't just buy them over the counter. The vet was very adamant that we needed to bring them back to be disposed of rather than simply throwing them away, however.

And good for Emma. I'm glad she's got that strong a sense of how she wants to present herself at that young an age. :) I'm still figuring mine out.

From:

kaberett

yep, UK works on prescription... and via needle exchange programmes, which are underfunded harm-reduction wossnames.

From:

Help me dress Emma!

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