Welcome to Chaos !!

Hello. I haven't been here for a while because I am trying to deal with and adjust to my new "normal" and that is all I can say for now. But I am still here....and life goes on for all of us even when it's almost too painful to live. It feels like my soul is on fire right now.
I hope that everybody had a nice weekend. Back in the day I used to get anxiety on Sundays....more so when I was still living in Sweden and Sunday night meant that there would be school the next day. That anxiety or more of an uneasy feeling stayed with me for years afterwards and I know that it is a real feeling for many. Some have a really hard time on Sunday nights.....But before you know it the weekend will be here.
Here are some things that I have been doing since I last checked in....
My garden....so pretty, so colorful. I have veggies growing....WOW! I gave this big red tomato to my friend Mr.B that happened to drive through here last week on his way to a different destination. Mr.B is so very nice and a tomato is not really a worthy "gift" for such a good friend but that is what he got. We had coffee and talked for hours, it felt good.



More tomatoes......my Mom told me that this picture reminds her of when she would pick tomatoes and put them in her shirt, a long time ago when she was a young girl. I miss my Mom.



I found a place with locally grown and organic vegetables.....a super cute place.





That visit resulted in this.....pickled cucumbers! I am bringing two jars to Burning Man.



Yes....I am going to Burning Man. Sixth year in a row now. I am slowly preparing, I lubed the chain on my bike, one of the tires needs air.



I ate at my fave food cart, Ma'ama Jama's. Yummy.



What else? I signed up to volunteer at the Humane Society. But it's not a done deal yet....first there are some formalities and training next month and who knows, I might go in the first day and decide it is not a place for me. You never know. I love animals though.....



We had a pajama party at work all weekend. How many girls dressed for the theme?
Like three. I was one of them. The girls did not want to be without their platform heels and their usual outfits, they felt that they would not make money dressed in pajama stuff and slippers. Yes...those high heels make wonders for legs and butts. I got these slippers at Walmart for $9, they are great. I felt short compared to how tall I am when I wear my seven inch platforms and my feet were happy.
I got a guy kicked out....well the bouncers decided to kick him and his group out after he had mouthed off a bit too much to several girls, I just happened to be the wrong one to get smart with. And he was from Croatia.....yeah no wonder he thought he was being better than the rest of us. I know plenty of people from former Yugoslavia and I can say this....many of the guys from there have a crappy attitude towards women. His friends that were cool, said that he was an asshole in general and he just would not quit mouthing off to me even when I tried to be nice and ignore him. Finally it got kind of heated and the bouncers were like....what is going on here? I stepped to the side and they decided he had to go. Bye.



I got acquainted with this French mastiff (Dogue de Bordeaux) today, a big and friendly boy - Quincy. He lives with another mastiff and two pugs in an amazingly animal friendly house.
I want to live like that one day.



And that's it. I am not sure when I am writing again. It could be this week or it might be after I get back from Burning Man....I just don't know. I sometimes feel that I have said everything I want to say, that I am done with the blog. I have felt like that this whole year. But then another part of me loves writing, sharing my thoughts and taking fun pictures to go with the writing. Another reason for not wanting to write the blog anymore is that I simply do not want certain people to know anything about me anymore. That is how I feel....not sure what to do. Anyhow....it's almost 1 am and I am going to bed.

Today I decided to bring out my frugal side....oh yes I have one of those. When I find change on the ground I get ecstatic!
I am always eyeing the ground for change, hawk style.
Anyhow....Oregon charges a ten cent deposit per glass bottle (not all bottles count though) when you buy whatever beverage that comes in a bottle. I have until now recycled all my glass bottles by putting them in a container outside my place when there is pick up for recyclables. But today I took my bottles to one of the bottle redemption locations and got $3.20 for them. You basically get your deposit back per bottle. So this is what I will do from now on. My daily latte is $4.75 plus I leave a tip of course. All that extra change that I find and bottle money will pay for a percentage of my lattes. Yeay!

I have squash blossoms (aka zucchini flowers) growing in my garden. I heard that you can eat them but I never tried them until yesterday. I went to a local place for dinner and saw that the restaurant had them.....so of course I wanted to see what it was all about.
I am not sure what they tasted like because they were filled with a cheese that made them taste like....cheese. They looked pretty on the plate though. Now the question is.....should I eat the squash blossoms that are growing in my garden? I'm scared! 🙂

So the night I put up those collages at the club is also the night they got taken down by one of the managers. He took them down after we (the dancers) were gone and put them in the office. I did not work at the club again for almost a week and I noticed they were gone when I returned. I had a talk to the other manager about it (we have two) and he took a look at them and thought that some of the images could perhaps be offensive to some of the girls. ???
I mean, the collages in MY opinion are funny, spot on and relatable and they are made by a dancer so how could they be offensive? If that is considered offensive to one of the other dancers then she must be a very whiny politically correct annoying person in general and I am myself definitely not politically correct. And I sincerely doubt any of the girls at the club would find this offensive.
Manager two pointed out a couple images in particular, one that is called "Menstrual Man" and the other one has a girl doing a pole trick when her baby happens to pop out.
OK, let's discuss those....yes I know that a large percentage of men are scared of menstrual blood (OMG GROSS), in some places women are shunned when they are menstruating and have to go hide somewhere until they stop bleeding. Getting your first period as a girl is often considered somewhat embarrassing and these matters should not be talked about loudly so a drawing depicting a man as a bloody tampon is of course cringeworthy for men. They can't handle it. On the other hand women should looooove getting semen all over their faces, preferably from a group of guys at the same time and we should enjoy swallowing it too, like it's a gourmet meal or something. Newsflash to men......that if anything is GROSS. And that is my opinion and I think majority of women agree. So period blood is disgusting and semen is like a nectar. I beg to differ. Period is natural and there should be no tabus about it.
Now the girl with the baby. First of all it is a joke OK. No baby has fallen out of a womb while a dancer has been on stage. Are there pregnant dancers? Yes of course. In fact we had a girl dancing until she was about eight months pregnant and no guys knew because she concealed it well and she was doing pole tricks. Somehow (I just don't know how) the baby managed not to fall out. In fact she is my absolute fave dancer at the club and she came back a few weeks after giving birth and looks amazing, better than most girls that never gave birth. I doubt she would get offended over the baby drawing.
I stood my ground and brought up the matter of the taken down collages with the owner.
He said he does not believe in censorship, this is America after all. And I was given permission to put them back up, although he too was a bit concerned that some random dancer might get offended. Well guess what, I am offended that you are offended. One more thing that I reacted over was the obvious mansplaining. Here we have men telling women how we should feel and react. I am completely convinced that we can make our own decisions over what we find offensive or not, we do not need a man telling us how to react. We work in an environment that is deemed adult oriented but some manager is deciding on our behalf that some collages made by another dancer might be offensive. Really?
I did have to write some disclaimers stating that the collages are not the views of management. I had no problem doing so. And the collages are back up on the wall.

I have been occupied with this lately.....I got a Pioneer DJ DDJ-SB3 controller. I'm trying to figure out the Serato program and all the other technical aspects of it. But today after I plugged in the speakers and I heard a song playing I just felt SO happy and excited. I don't want to say too much but I am working on something and I will be busy with this for the next month.

How about some dancer stuff? OK....here we go.
I recently found an Instagram account that I really like. And I don't have Instagram myself in case you wonder, the blog is enough. I found it by reading titsandsass.com (read it, it's good),
here is the the article I read.
A girl that goes by Exotic Cancer creates funny and spot on drawings of being a dancer through her eyes. Her art is for sale on her website. I will definitely purchase something because I am quite impressed by her art and her wit.

instagram.com/exotic.cancer/
exoticcancer.com

Here are a couple of her drawings.....





So then I thought I should make a collage of her stuff and put it up at work because if you are a dancer you can relate to most of Exotic Cancer's drawings. I mean I have heard it all and seen some stuff too. So I started working on the collage at work.



It ended up becoming two collages....one with just girl stuff pertaining to dancers and the other one with what the people that we encounter in the club sometimes blurt out.





There is a magazine about strip clubs called Exotic that come out once a month.

xmag.com



I read it (of course) and in last month's issue, one of the contributors, DJ HazMatt that writes a monthly column called "Tales From The DJ Booth" wrote about dating while working as a strip club dj. His description of dating non dancers was really good. He wrote, "The third group of woman I've mentioned as a dating possibility, is the one that (often secretly) has a distaste for the entire strip club industry. And, trust me, this group is the worst. You've never gotten into a real argument until you've had a self-described "sex-positive, body-positive, feminist" tell you about how all of your friends are money-grubbing whores who have never met their dad. Ahh, the irony of current-year ethics. Personally, I have more respect for the most stereotypical, Dr. Phil-ish, ghetto dancer, than I do a stuck-up rich bitch who marries old men for money (or expects working-class dudes to buy them expensive shots).
And, if you want to talk about women in skimpy outfits being exploited and forced to have conversations with douchebags for tips, look no further than a Dutch Bros coffee stand."

Well, personally I can say that being in a relationship with somebody for the wrong reasons (money, security) has never been my thing. That is prostitution if anything. But swept under a rug while pretending it's "real love".
So when Stormy made an appearance at Stars in Bend Oregon there was a bit of chaos.
A drunk asshole threw a wallet in her face with the excuse that he was "wasted". This ordeal did not come without consequences.....

http://www.ktvz.com/news/hummel-stars-owner-thwarted-stormy-daniels-investigation/749722212

Yes, the idiot was wasted but he is also an idiot. When dumb asses drink alcohol they do dumb shit. That is nobody's fault besides the idiots. Perhaps people that do not know how to handle their liquor and people that are a bit more moronic than average should stay home and not venture out in public and create problems for the rest of us that actually know how to and can behave normally when out and about and around alcohol. Morons, please do us all a favor and stay home with your beer cans, bottles and whatever else you like to get wasted on.
Interesting also how the oh so righteous Rudy Giuliani doesn't respect Stormy Daniels.
Funny, because he doesn't have such a clean slate himself. Just ask his ex wives. And if Giuliani feels that Stormy is not respectable then how does he feel about Dennis Hof who recently won the Nevada GOP primary? I bet he would act super chummy with Hof.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/dennis-hof-brothel-owner-and-pimp-wins-nevada-gop-primary

"Pimp Dennis Hof, the owner of half a dozen legal brothels in Nevada and star of the HBO adult reality series “Cathouse,” won a Republican primary for the state Legislature on Tuesday, ousting a three-term lawmaker."
Is Dennis Hof also not respectable or is this a status that only women involved in porn or other types of sex work can achieve?
You know, I started this blog because I wanted to show that the stigma and stereotypes associated with dancers are often grossly exaggerated and many times not true. I guess I wanted to prove something. But fuck it.....I don't need to prove ANYTHING to ANYONE. I know myself and that is all that matters. You can believe what you want. I have witnessed "regular" men and women engage in despicable behavior and I also read the news everyday about people that murder, rape, molest and torture. And those people are not dancers. So no, I don't have to prove shit to anyone.
And lastly, here is another article I came across. Written about strip clubs and dancers by a non dancer named Olivia.
She visited a few strip clubs in Portland together with a friend and here is some of what she had to say.....
"After the girls were done performing on stage, they’d circulate the club, talking to guests, helping behind the bar or hanging out by the bouncers at the front door. I watched them in awe, casually strolling through a full club in a g-string, while I’m self-conscious wearing a full piece bathing suit during summers. This is when I began realize how incredibly awesome strippers are. They are feminism and girl power and strength, put in lingerie and placed on a stage for people to enjoy. Though some dancers were thin and fit, others were curvy and shapely. But no matter what their body size, they walked around a crowded room nude, and with complete confidence. Though most associate strippers with low self-respect and morals, I saw something different. I saw women who were confident enough, and who respected themselves enough, to express themselves on a stage in front of hundreds of people.
In a “Huffington Post” article, ex-striper Sheila Hageman (a valedictorian college graduate and recent mother of three) wrote about stripping as a “feminist act.” Hageman said that, “Women should feel as free as men always have and that begins with having the freedom to choose what we want and do not want to do with our bodies. I want every woman to have the confidence to claim that freedom without worrying about what others may think. If we dare to be seen for who we are, expose ourselves fully (in whatever form we choose), maybe others who have no voice will be able to also.”
The women were sure of themselves and their place. They made it clear that they were the ones in charge, not the men in the audience. Seeing women in that position of power was refreshing, and it was inspiring.
I don’t want this message to be misunderstood, I’m not encouraging young woman to trade in their university textbooks for lingerie and high heels. But I am encouraging them to reassess what courage and self respect as a woman means. And though some will disagree, I think strippers can be a great example of female confidence and determination. Any woman on a stage, confident and comfortable in her skin, is admirable."

THANK YOU Olivia for those words.....the article brought tears to my eyes (perhaps I was having PMS and felt extra sensitive or something). But for a woman that never visited a strip club before and to be able to push any judgements aside and look at the dancers and see it for what it is - I applaud that.
Do I agree with her? Absolutely.