sevenhelz

so i have an interview on friday. turns out charities want fundraisers - who knew?

something i was thinking while i was reading the final chapter of "corsets to camouflage: women and war", which is about the author's experience as a journalist and opinions on the idea of women on the front line. she talks about the difficulty and importance of privacy.

but in the forces you already become accustomed to communal showers and changing rooms, very little personal space etc. why is it so odd an idea that men and women mingle? or that we come up with some allowance for women's toilet needs?
forces life in not like civvy life. if we want to be in the front line - i'm trying not to speak for everyone here, i don't know what proportion of women interested in the forces care that we're not allowed to do the same jobs as men - we would have to accept a different way of life anyway. a different community, different priorities.
i can't help thinking of what my dad told me about ghana, where he spent several summers as a teenager. women have their breasts out there, and after a short period of gawking, he ceased to notice, just as the men who lived there didn't notice. what counts as normal varies in different cultures. we could create a culture where women's bodies are not unusual. not undesirable, but not so special as to be in danger or particularly even leered at. it would take time, would be difficult to deal with both men and women's attitudes, but what the hell worth doing isn't difficult?
...if we make things normal under certain circumstances i think we have a shot at equality.

I can't remember if I ever did post about physical changes, but I was meaning to. Since I've been running and working out and such I have noticed a lot of changes, the most unnerving probably being my hands widening slightly. My legs are stronger than they used to be, I've lost padding in various places. My wrists and ankles go through phases of feeling weak and clicky, but then I work on them sometimes and they get better. My back astonishes me, when I think back to how much I used to ache and compare it to how strong and upright I feel now. These last couple of weeks I've had slightly dodgy shoulders/upper back and wasn't sure whether to work out more, less or differently, but I'm trying more and it seems to be helping. Which is cool. My biceps are currently fairly huge, which is both nice and odd, and last night I think I worked out how to move my pectorals in isolation. It doesn't move my boobs much though, which is a shame. Maybe if I were still as perky as when I was sixteen. Anyhoo. Life keeps moving on.

This mobile internet lark is a bit daft isn't it? very slow, and yet i don't seem to be able to keep away. maybe that will change when my reconditioned laptop arrives. yes, i've been shopping. finally got my backdated pay from the ta, so while i'm not exactly rolling in it, i've a touch more freedom than usual. it's nice. i ebayed boots too. managed to resist the pink camo clubbing outfit though. x

I've noticed in a few situations that I'm less tactile than I used to be. It's not that I don't appreciate touch - a hug, holding hands or linking arms etc - I still like it lots, but I don't feel needy the way I used to. I'm sure this comes as something of a relief to my sister, and would be to her non-tactile partner if I were to see her again. Interesting.

In other news, I've hung some washing above my heater in my room that I really need for tomorrow, so it's getting sort of warm and damp in here. I'm considering writing a list; X number of ways you can tell your house is too damn cold. Somewhere on there would be "your clothes are probably just cold, but might still be damp", and also "you put on a jacket to step outside your bedroom".

I've enjoyed reading this comment thread :) I particularly liked/related to what carovee had to say way back up-thread, and DesertRose: "Feminism has made me less apologetic for my intelligence" :)

Hey, MaryFlashlight: "Yeah, I WAS that girl that everyone else hated." Good for you! (except maybe people's reactions, but in principle anyway!) I think when I got to high school (aged 10/11 here, don't know if it's the same) there was a prejudice there that smart/geeky people couldn't be good at sport, which very few people got over - I was put off physical fitness for years, and if I had regrets, that would be one.

I like to think of intelligence in terms of how quickly people learn, and often simply how fast a thread of conversation they can follow - or how many topics they can hold onto at once. It's not the only way of being smart, but it's the kind that makes people easiest for me personally to talk to. I've always known I was smart; feminism has helped me trust my own judgement in things, and to argue effectively (partly by giving me a vocabulary).
As regards social intelligence, I know I had to learn a lot of social rules in a systematic way, and I cunningly used my formal education to do so, studying English Language and Drama and Theatre Studies as well as Music; all forms of communication. I worry that, growing up, my brothers didn't do what I did, which was to spot that I needed these things; then again, they were a great influence on me in that I never tried to compete with their maths smarts, and despite my secret shame at the time, I'm now glad of that. It was never my passion.

Now that I think about it, one of the things I enjoy about socialising with people who've never done the academic thing, and don't consider themselves bright in that way, is that there is very little of that overbearing you-must-prove-yourself attitude that so often (especially as I grew up) comes from white guys who think they're smart (and, granted, often are, though not necessarily smarter than anyone else in the room).

couple of posts I need to read/re-read and think about.

http://ginmar.livejournal.com/1825637.html
http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2009/12/discussion-thread-personal-evaluation.html

there was another but I appear to have closed it without copying the link properly. typing fail.

So my subconscious is very quick at counting. I thought it was due to having been a cashier, but that was a long time ago and I still have some pretty good skills. The practise probably just made it more obvious. See, I can tell you how much is in a handful of change in an instant - but only if I don't try to count it. It hit me last night that that might be a little unusual. Previously I also impressed my dad by telling him "if it's all £20s [in this envelope] I'd guess about £400" and being, uh, spot on. I'm not quite as good with things that aren't money - generally I can count up to about nine similar objects instantly, when I'm awake, because I split them into a five and a four, but above that I have to consciously divide them. Still, doesn't take long.

So, flist, what's your experience of counting? Or do you find this entire topic dull?

Can somebody please explain to me how this course is supposedly full-time, with a whole day of teaching every week? Alternatively, I could do a series of short courses in the middle of nowhere in Wales, unless I stick around and wait for an apprenticeship to open up with McQueens or Rath. Funnily enough these are the same conclusions I came to at least a year ago, when I first started looking this stuff up, despite somebody recently having apparently graduated from some invisible course in Salford.

In other news, I am still bitter about the Army - not so much the not having got in, as that I spent my Whole Damn Life assuming I wouldn't get into any of the forces/services and had my hopes raised only to be dashed. I'm also jealous of people with good eyesight.