ONE MORE. 

In twelve hours, I will be walking into my LAST EXAM OF THIS HELLISH YEAR.  Three hours after that, it's all over except the drinking.  I plan on an (at least) two-day bender during which I will celebrate my 24th birthday, as well as a hard but fascinating year's experience, with friends so new I feel I have known them almost my whole life.  Then I shall be a 2L and, as is the way of my people, have my ego fanned with interesting doctrine and fed the grapes of wit and insouciance which informs the brain of the legal scholar. 

Then, of course, back to your regularly scheduled ranting. 

I wrote my first two posts on April 25, 2007.  Since then I've been backpacking in Europe, started law school, and fallen totally in love.  (Platonically.   We're just friends, you guys.)  Also, I've learned a lot about sorting through and expressing my thoughts.  I've written 105 posts on feminism in the last year - that means I've written about feminism roughly every three days.  This is a sorely-needed lifeline for me right now.  Other sorely needed lifelines are Shakespeare's Sister, Pizza Diavola, Red Queen, Donna and Red at Hillary1000, and my lovely and talented f-list.  This coming year, I'm going to be a better ally, and I'm going to keep learning, and I'm going to do more to spread the link love, and I'm going to keep my eyedropper in one hand and my teaspoon in the other.  Also, I'm going to better balance blogging and law school, and not suddenly get lots of ideas for posts when I have some important shit due.  I'm starting right now.  It's all property outlines over here, there's certainly no half-finished post on reproductive justice terminology open in my browser.   No ma'am.

Pilfered from the incomparable neurotic_orchid.  Points will be awarded for creativity and profanity.  God, I love my ego.

1. P. is....
2. P. reminds me of....
3. Sometimes P....
4. If I had to spend one day with P. we would....
5. One bad thing about P. is....
6. One great thing about P. is....
7. Without P. the world would be....
8. One day P. will....
9. P. loves....
10. Repost this in your journal so your friends can say how much they want to shag you senseless love you.

not as poetically as The Man himself, Walt Whitman, but still

 Inspired by April's challenge, posed here--Eight Things I Like About My Body:
(via everywomanhasaneatingdisorder.blogspot.com)

1.  I like that right now, right in this moment, my body has started to respond to sleep medication.  In an hour or so, I could be asleep instead of staring at the walls like a crazy person.  This is, while normal for most people, a fun new trick for me.

2.  I like my hair.  I like that it's dark and thick and not pin-straight, but not curly.  It's just my hair.  It's also highlighted a couple of times a year by a woman who's been near and dear to me my whole life.  So when I'm happy about myself in the mirror, I get to think about someone I love, too, and that's a gift.

3.  I have four permanent marks from drum corps.  Two of them are on my left foot.  They're rarely visible, as they're usually covered up and the three scars are fading.  I have an inch-long scar over my right shoulderblade, with a slight hollow underneath, where a cyst I'd had for years finally rebelled against the rest of my skin.  The front of my left foot, though it's barely even a change in pigment, is a memento of a day when I stubbornly stood in a Texas ant hill.  It bled every day for a couple of weeks.  I remember it was Texas because later that night there was dry lightning like I've never seen before.  I remember the lightening because we were still outside.  And just two inches away from that is a bone callous on the inside back of my foot.  I look like I have two ankles, but really, I'm just stubborn to stop when I'm literally down.  And there's a tiny, near-faded scar underneath my left eye, so small that I forget about it.  I wasn't very good about remembering my scar-dulling cream, and I'd bought the generic kind.  I told myself later that I had more important things on my mind, and that the brand name was a waste of money, but actually, I think it makes me look like a badass to anyone who gets close enough to notice.  I learned on the road how to be myself, and I count myself lucky to have such intriguing, but semi-private, physical reminders. 

4.  I like my calves, and how quickly and dramatically they become my ankes.

5.  I like my lips.  They are deep pink and full.  My only mirror is very tiny, so if I use it to apply lip gloss, all I can see in the mirror are my lips, and all I can think of are my most sensual kisses.

6.  I like my upper back.  My shoulders are broad and un-feminine, and they carry me around with pride.  The top of my back responds quickly to weight training, so sometimes when I've worked hard I can actually see a result, and enjoy it aesthetically without attaching my entire personal value to its beauty.  It can just mean I had a good workout.  This is something I'm still working on, both the weight training and the enjoyment of visual pleasure.

7.  I like my Mediterranean skin.  I like that it binds me to my family's history in Italy, and to the huge spectrum of browns in my beloved adopted hometown, and that it turns a deep, healthy brown in the sun.  I don't pass intentionally, because the thorny ethics around that mean to me that discretion is the better part of anti-racist valor, but when someone asks me if I am Latina, or Egyptian, or American Indian, I always say thank you.  

8.  I like my piercings.  I got my first pair of earrings when I was seven in my hometown, and then went thirteen years until on a whim one night in college I realized that I liked my nose and wanted to get it pierced.  My second set of earlobe piercings are dear mementos of my last week in Belfast, and the hole in my upper cartilege was a  whimsical celebration of Camden Town in London.  The first two times I tried to be tough, but since then I've grown up, and learned to hold someone's hand.

i tag everyone in the world!  8 things you love about your body!