I remember flying down the isle to see Return of the Jedi. I remember rocking Leia buns on the daily and playing Star Wars all the time. If you would have told little me that one day I would text my dad the trailer for a new Star Wars – a REAL new Star Wars that would make me feel like I was running down that isle in anticipation of Return of the Jedi starting again, I would never have believed you.

But, I so just did.

A Wookiee will forever be my co-pilot and I will always be a Rebel Girl. And now my two favorites are coming home. ‪#‎happyrebelgirl‬

And so are we.

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged. While I continue to write in my journal regularly, I’ve not been good about getting it online as of late. I’ve had A LOT going through my head over the last few weeks and I need to just purge it out there so I can move on. We all need a good purging and moving on it seems.

I am a geek. I am also a nerd. A dork. A mom. A cancer patient. I am silly. I am smart. I am creative. I have blue eyes. I love wearing lipstick and painting my nails but I have no clue what blush is for. I’m pale, like albino gone wrong pale. I love to read. I love to knit. I love to create. I love cosplay. I love my geek community. All of these things, among hundreds of others, are parts of who I am. What makes me, me.

And I am sad. I am tired. I am frustrated. I am sick to death of all of the hatred out there. It has gotten to the point that I’m starting to see people I respected and admired in a whole different light. A light that I don’t like.

I am also a hypocrite.

I am a hypocrite because I am sick of seeing flaming hate blogposts and giant soapbox blogposts and calls of lynching blogposts. And yet I write a blogpost about it. But mine won’t contain hatred. And I am not on a soapbox. No pointing fingers. No sense of righteousness. Just a plea.

A plea for it all to stop.

One of the best feelings is when you say “well, (insert book/movie/super hero/you name it here) is my favorite.” And another person squees “MINE TOO!” It’s that little spark that creates a bond. When geek finds geek. That’s the stuff that BFFs are made of. I see it with my girls all of the time. Lilest’s first day of Kindergarten she wanted a PB & Banana sandwich cut out like a Millennium Falcon for lunch. When I asked her if she was sure, she replied “that is how I will know who is going to be my friend. If they know what it is, we’re BFFs.”

Since that moment, they’ve both encountered guys and girls that have called them weird for loving Star Wars. There were some rough moments, but they didn’t let it change them. They’ve gotten flack for declaring Twilight silly and offering forth Buffy as “a much better interpretation of a human and vampire love story.” But, they still stand by it. They are only 7 and 8 though and it’s going to get rougher and rougher out there for them.

Especially if they see the adults in the geek community fighting and divided. We are better than this. I’ve seen it. I have seen the incredible things we can accomplish when we work together. When we cheer each other on and support each other. When we don’t shun each other and throw steaming balls of hatred over a disagreement.

We are all human and won’t see eye to eye all the time. That’s normal. But, it’s how we handle the fact that we disagree that matters. If someone doesn’t believe you are a “real geek,” oh well. Their opinion doesn’t change who you are. It doesn’t make you any less you. There is no litmus test. There is no one person that has the right to declare that. When you start screaming back and throwing out names and “cred,” you end up sounding just as douchey.

Yes, geek girls do exist. Arguing otherwise at this point is completely and utterly ridiculous. Yes, some of them are gorgeous. Yes, some of them love to wear make up and get dressed up all of the time. Guess what? Some of us aren’t. Some of us are merely average, normal gals that sometimes get all dressed up and sometimes love to rock our geek t’s and jeans. And we’re not any less geeky for that either. Nor are we less awesome. Nor do we love our gorgeous geek sisters any less.

There IS NO STANDARD. Just like there is no one way to geek, there is no one way to look like a geek. And gals, this goes for guys too. Our fellow geek guys are amazing and a ton of them support the Hell out of us. Are we sticking up for them? Not all of them are booty photo snapping, geek girl hating misogynists.

I’ve thought a lot about it, and the ramifications of saying this (and well everything this post contains) and I decided to just get it all out. Backlash be damned. I don’t even expect many to read this.

But, I think it really needs to be said- WE HAVE BECOME OUR OWN WORST BULLIES.

I have seen it over and over. Someone says/blogs/tweets/comments something that someone is hurt/upset by. Instead of handling it like an adult and saying “hey, that hurts” or “hey, that’s not right” and countering it, a whole new blog post is written, followed by “hey look at this person said this to me” is tweeted. Then swarm of people rush to defense and go after the culprit. I am ALL FOR supporting and backing up our friends and our community. The moment we hate mob up after someone though, we are doing it wrong. We are NO BETTER. Yes, disagree. Clearly make your case. But I am seeing one incident after one incident turn into giant snowball of hatred. I’ve seen post after post pop up to cash in on the momentum of the snowball. Who is really winning? NO ONE IS.

I would like to see us all go back to the way things were. To spend FAR LESS ENERGY ON THE NEGATIVE and START APPLYING ALL THAT ENERGY ON THE POSITIVE.

Instead of writing a retort about “poser cosplayers,” let’s write posts on all the positive things cosplayers have done. I know some AMAZING men and women that volunteer their time and cosplay talents to do so much good. Instead of writing a retort about “poser geek girls” let’s write posts about all the awesome geek girls and guys out there and they projects they are working on.

Forget trolls, don’t feed the negative. If you absolutely have to, give it a giant fucking bowl of positive.

Pretty please, let’s let go of all this negativity and get back to the love. I’ll totally share my Millennium Falcon PB & Banana Sandwich with you. Well, unless you have a peanut allergy. That would be bad. <3

(This post was originally written as a guest post for my friend, Doug’s, blog. It was an honor to be asked to guest post and I encourage you to check out his blog here.)

Last year at this time I started a tradition. One that has made a HUGE difference in my life. It wasn’t easy, but it was very necessary. That tradition was spring cleaning my life.

We throw open the windows of our home, brush away the cobwebs and pack up the winter clothes. It’s our symbolic gesture of greeting the new season. The season of growth and change. Warmer weather, flowers, sunshine. We restart the diets that we started on New Years and failed already. All that good stuff.

But, what about the rest of our life? Cleaning our house, though most of us secretly hate it, is a rather easy thing to do. Going through clothes, revamping diets- those are mere habits at this point in our lives. Last year I decided to go just a bit further with cleaning. It wasn’t so much as a conscious decision really, life just pointed out my need to take a look at the people in my life. Who I was surrounding myself with, how they made me feel. Who they really were. Who I really was. What impact they had on my life.

Most of my life I have fought for the underdog and put everyone else’s needs before mine. It’s how I almost completely lost myself in an abusive marriage. It’s how I’ve run myself down repeatedly year after year. I always rationalized it as something I was SUPPOSED to do. That putting myself first was selfish and horrible.

And then I got cancer. It started out precancerous. It seemed like just a scare. A little blip that sucked but I would move past it quickly and be just fine. When it came back cancerous and things got dark, I retreated inside. Talking about it made it far too real. And, above all, I didn’t want my girls to know. They had enough on their plate at the time. Their dad had gotten his girlfriend pregnant. A baby half-sister was NOT sitting well with them. It may seem like nothing, but to a 5 and 6 year old that were never a priority to him, having to fight with another for the bare minimal attention they already received was a rough concept. The last thing they needed was to fear losing me.

So, this inner retreat meant I somewhat disappeared from various social media outlets as well. It just kind of happened. It was all just a blur. I was trying to keep up with everything going on in my life and then balancing dr. appointments and lab work and treatments. I was a mess, but didn’t really realize it. Then I had a couple of friends get upset at my disappearance. I took a deep breath and explained the situation. One of their responses “Well, if you don’t tell anyone, we don’t have any way of knowing. So, you can’t expect me to be sympathetic to you not being around when I needed you.” Yet, I had no idea they needed me because their way of showing they were having a rough time was to disappear off of social media. The same social media that I had backed away from. See the lovely double standard there?

Other things happened as well and I just had to sit down and take a really painful look at things. I suck at cutting friends loose. I give people chance after chance after chance. I try to cling to all their good qualities, sometimes to the point of completely blinding myself to the faults. But, there comes a time where you have to step back and look at that friendship. Is it strictly one-sided? Does it balance out? Is that person a stream of constant negativity? How does their role in your life make you feel?

After answering all of that comes the even harder part- what do you do about it? Do you emotionally put up a wall and hold them at a distance? Do you break it off completely? Do you sit down and explain the situation and work on the friendship together?

That part fucking sucks. There’s no sugar-coating that.

You know what though? When you are done, I promise you that you will feel so much better.

This year, still fighting recurring cancer, but this last round finally came back only precancerous. So YAAAY for that! My immune system is completely shot though and my doctors SCREAMED at me about my stress level. To have a doctor tell you “Fuck the cancer, it’s the stress that’s going to kill you” is a pretty big wake up call. And, it is just in time for spring cleaning time this year.

Time for decisions to be made and people removed from my life. It’s never a happy thing, but it is so freeing. A really wise person reminded me recently that when you clean out the negative, you leave so much room for more positive. And I need all the positive I can get right now. We all do. Getting rid of my first weed has already made a huge difference. People that dwell in and thrive off of constant negativity will suck you dry. Their need to be one up in the misery department all of the damn time will leave them alone and bitter one day and it’s not a place you want to be dragged to. If nothing is ever good enough for them- that is their fault, not yours. Get off the train now.

Another really wise person I turn to when deep cleaning? Bob Marley.

“Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.” -Bob Marley

There are people in my life that I love to death. That I know would be there for me if I picked up the phone and uttered one word- help. And they know I would do the same. Shit, a couple would hear it in my voice and I wouldn’t even need to say it. And guess what? We don’t talk every day, every week, maybe even every month. Life gets busy for all of us. It’s understood and that love and support is still there. We fit each other in when we can.

Then there are the ones that I talk to every day, every week, every month that I’ve said help to and they’ve not bothered to be there. And anyone in my life knows me saying “help” is one of the hardest things for me to do. I took wanting to grow up and be Wonder Woman VERY seriously. I can do it all myself, you know. Yeah, not really but that’s another post. 🙂

In the mean time it is time for me to listen to my man Marley, throw on some Three Little Birds, and clean up the rest of my lawn again.

How does your lawn look?

Most of my life I’ve been the Debbie Downer of April Fool’s Day. My inner Spock (when properly coffeenaited) is pretty quick. So, I was hard to get. I guess the harder you are to get (in this case only for me) the harder people try. Over the years people have gone to some pretty great lengths to catch me unawares. Either way, it was a day I was completely “meh” over.

Until 7 years ago and a case of heartburn. The only time in my grown up life I ever got heartburn was when I was prego with Grace. I was home on the 1st, though I can’t remember why. Morning started normal. Then I felt it- heartburn. It had only been oh 7 months ish since I had Eldest so I was hoping it was risidual or something. And then I counted. Eh only a day late, surely that wasn’t anything.

Then I panicked and called one of my best friends with “I think I might be pregnant.” You know that someone knows you inside and out when you call them on April Fool’s and say that and their response isn’t “ha ha April Fool’s” it’s “Um, you’ve been pregnant before hon so if you think you are, you probably are- go get a test!”

So, off I went to Walgreen’s and back I came with two tests (we always do two, I have no idea why) and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. Don’t judge. And 10 minutes later I was sitting on the couch FREAKING OUT as I stared at the double-lined stick. I called her back crying “HOW AM I GOING TO HANDLE TWO OF THEM!?!? ” I was terrified. I hadn’t really gotten fully used to being a mommy yet and Eldest was planned. We wanted two but I so was not expecting them to be so close together. Her response was “you’ll figure it out and it’ll be fine.” And she was right.

Telling Father of the Year was a totally different beast. I sat there wondering when I should tell him. If I told him today he’d think I was kidding. If I told him the next day, he’d scream I waited. Either way I was screwed. So, I made him a card and waited until he got home. Then Eldest and I gave him the card. Then he screamed about it being a shitty April Fool’s joke and stayed pissed off the entire night. I showed him the stick, I burst into tears. He just kept calling me an asshole.

Much, much later, we’re in bed and he says “It’s 12:10, you know it’s not April Fool’s Day anymore, right?” My response? “You know I’m still knocked up, right?”

And then I fell asleep while he freaked out. 🙂

So, now I absolutely love April Fool’s Day. It reminds me of Lilest and she’s 1/2 of my heart. And if you know her, it’s hilarious that I found out on this day that she was in my belly. 🙂

You would be (or rather should be) Hellbent on finding a mother that wouldn’t love to protect her children from every horrible or hurtful experience out there. I am certainly no exception. In fact, as much as I joke about my mama bearness, I know that I have the ability to go off the deep end of neurotic when it comes to my girls. They are my world. If I could roll them in bubble wrap and lock them in one of those medi-bubbles, part of me would. Deep down I know they need to go through things like pain, hurt and sorrow to appreciate joy, love and happiness all the more. But, heaven help the first person that breaks their hearts. And heaven help the friends that have to hold me back from tearing that person’s out.

The girls have fallen in love with Adele and understandably so. I am convinced her and I would be besties if we ever met. Not only is she amazingly talented, but she’s off the charts adorable and charming. And she loves to swear. We’d have such fun together. One of their favorites of hers is “Someone Like You.” In mom mode, I think “okay, no sex and cursing so it’s okay for them to listen to.” I tend to not ever really gauge how deep a song is and whether or not they will “get it.” I suppose it’s just knowing them so well. If they have questions, they ask. So, tonight they asked me to “find a youtube of her singing it.” I was happy to oblige. I figured they’d yell at me to sing along as well (bless them for loving my really horrible singing) and that they would sing along as well. What I hadn’t anticipated was the emotion they did so with. And the discussion after that occurred.

Turns out they get it. They get the song. They learned through it that love doesn’t always work out. That you can love someone with all of your heart, or think that you do, and that may not be enough. Or someone could love you like that and you not feel it. That someday someone may break their heart and love again much quicker than them. That romantic love is a tricky thing.

I suspect they will continue to amaze the Hell out of me on a regular basis. That I will continue to wonder how they came about such wisdom and how I was lucky enough to be blessed with them.

So tonight we leaped our first hurdle. Our first open talk of broken hearts. And we all survived. I know that when it really happens it won’t be as easy, but tonight may help make it just a bit easier than it could be. They know that Disney is just one story. That mommy is still on good terms and, in some cases, very good friends with people she once loved like that. That we all survived and have loved again.

As I tucked them in, they had me skip the usual lullaby and sing “Make You Feel My Love.” And then Lilest asked me again why she couldn’t marry me because she knows I will always love her and never break her heart. After I was done explaining, she then asked me if she could marry Adele. 🙂

I will never love anyone more than I love those two.

If you’ve met my girls, there is no doubting where they came from. I couldn’t deny them if I tried. If you’ve met the rest of my family, you may wonder about me though. All the people that I take after have passed away. One of the most important ones, my grandma Katie, would have been 95 today.

Not a day goes by where I don’t miss her.

My gram was not like most grandmas. Yes she embroidered and crocheted and made the best soup ever. Her Matzoh Ball soup was my absolute favorite. But, she could also drink like a fish, smoke like a chimney and cuss like a sailor. Well, to be more accurate, she had made sailors blush.

My grandpa died young, but she always wore her wedding rings. In fact, my engagement ring was a replica of hers. If you tried to tease her about needing a man, she’d say she had one. If you said “one that’s still alive” she’d say “What the Hell for? So he can sit on my couch and make me fetch him beer? No thank you. I need another man like I need another goddamn hole in my head.”

When my dad was big and scary, she told him to go to Hell. When he told her not to use the “f word” around him, she told him to fuck off. When the world told her she needed to stop working at 65, she lied her ass off and got a job. When my parents told her there was an e on the end of my name, she told them no. Katie was feisty as Hell.

And, as I predicted for years, when God told her it was time to go, she cussed his ass out all day long before she went.

She was the only grandparent I’d ever known and the only strong female role model that was consistently in my life. In middle school I used to miss the bus on purpose so I could walk to her house and wait for my dad. He would be mad, but I got to hear story after story of her life from raising my mom and aunts and uncles to riding to work on the back of a Harley. Getting screamed at was so worth it.

She was the one that taught me not to take shit from anyone and that I could be and do whatever I wanted as long as I put my mind to it and “you don’t have to use your tits to do it either, you’re a smart one, you use your brain.” This is the same woman that set her mind on teaching her bird to hate Frank Sinatra and by George every time ole blue eyes came on, her bird Louie would BITCH up a storm. If you were to tell me she had a fling with Frank that went bad and that’s why she hated him, I would not be shocked at all. My grandma was a Hell of a woman.

I have a million grandma stories I will eventually find the strength to write, but for now, I’m easing into it. Her death is a wound that’s never really scabbed over. I look at my daughters and know how much she would love the Hell out of them. They’d come home dropping four letter words like crazy and hopped up on Brach’s candy, but I wouldn’t care.

It’s time for me to make my annual Brandy Old Fashioned Sweet (her drink of choice the last couple of decades of her life) and toast her. I will leave you with this…

When I moved out to California, I would call her once a week to check in. She’d ask how I was and I’d tell her the soup sucked. One time I called and she sounded kind of funky so I asked “Grandma, is that you?” True to form, her reply was “No, it’s Mrs. Fitzimmons, who the fuck else would be answering my phone?” From that point on, I would call and ask for Mrs. Fitzimmons and she’d laugh and say “This is Mrs. Fitzimmons, how’s my favorite little smart shit doing?”

I miss you Mrs. Fitzimmons.

That beauty in pink with the glasses is my Katie. The woman to her left is my mom. The woman below looking ready to knock my Uncle Gene the Hell out? Yup, my Katie. That gorgeous red afro belongs to my ever-amazing Aunt Carol. She’s the one from my #BoobieWed post. The two of them together would make the perfect woman.

My doctor called me while I was just done dropping the girls off this morning. I’d already made the decision that I NEED to make time to write down our conversations. Especially the silly ones. This morning’s was fun. As a geek mom, I have the ability to chronicle their lives for them in a way generations before me couldn’t. I can assemble an entire book with photos and captions, a book of them. They can keep this book and pull it out and read it to their children one day. I have made myself a promise that, no matter what, I am going to do this. I have to.

None of us know how long we will be here. I have great plans and decades to spend with my girls in my mind and heart. But, it’s not solely up to me. So, doc informed me that I have the most stubborn white blood cells and cervix she’s ever seen. The fact that I am abnormal is not a shock, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that this was the one time in my life I wish I was called normal. The cells bother her, the cervix we suspected and it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s back. But, it does mean I get a hot date with a LEEP and sadly she said they just can’t LEEP away my entire cervix. One of these days it’ll buy me dinner first damnit.

I’m at a different place this time around, a different mind set. While I’ve always had the “let’s do this! Let’s fight back!” attitude, I was getting weary. Balancing everything was a trick before, now it’s flat-out draining. This past summer when I made the decision to go back to work full time, rather than freelance, I picked a place that was very unlike me. Yet, it fit perfectly. It’s a seasonal company. Meaning, I get laid off over the next few weeks. A lay of with pay enough to get me through it and time to take a step back and revamp. A much needed breather. A chance for a re-birth.

And I plan on taking advantage of every moment of it. I’ve revamped our eating habits and begun training for the Dirty Girl Run. I’ve begun to reorganize our house, though you probably can’t tell looking at it right this moment. The girls and I have settled in to the new schedule so far, but this is just week one of it. Now, it’s back to the things that matter. Refocusing on the dream and making it happen this year- cancer or no cancer.

Another upside of all of this was that it allotted (read: forced) me to take a step back and look at everything and everyone in my life. To boil things down to what is most important. To come to terms with what I may truly mean to some and them to me. To take stock and make an effort to mend some that may have needed mending and deal with whether it was reciprocated or not. You know how you know when someone is a real friend? It could be hours, days, weeks, years since you’ve sat down and really talked, yet a beat is never missed and that love is still there and even if they don’t have time at the moment, you can tell they are happy as Hell to hear from you.

And I’ve learned that if you completely fuck it all up, there is tomorrow.

Every single day we all get a re-do.

P.S. So today’s conversations on the way to school…..

Lilest: “GIVE US MATH PROBLEMS!!”
Eldest: “YEAH MOMMY!!! MATH PROBLEMS!”
Both: (chanting) “MATH PROBLEMS! MATH PROBLEMS!”

They are such nerds! Now, coming up for math problems for a 6 and 7 year old while driving may sound like a piece of cake. My girls don’t deal with “what’s 3 + 7?” Nope, they want WORD problems. Which means that I have to keep track of my own problem while I’m making it up. Possibly on a lack of coffee. While driving through a town that I swear has the worst drivers ever.

Me: “Okay, Hailey first… if there are 3 houses on the right side and 4 houses on the left side, how many houses are on the block?”
Lilest: “Duh, that’s 7. MAKE THEM HARDER!!”
Me: “Okie Dokie. If there are 14 houses on this block and 7 are on the right side, how many are on the left?’
Lilest: “SEVEN!”
Eldest: “SEVEN! HEY! IT WAS MY TURN YOU BIG DOOFUS!”
Me: “NOT OKAY!!!”
Eldest: “You gotta take turns cuz I know more stuff than she does, I get harder ones.”
Me: “Okay, (insert eldest’s name here) there are 12 houses on the next block, all with 2 windows. How many windows are on the block?”
Eldest: “Good one! Let me think!”
Lilest: “That’s a multiplication problem.” 
Eldest: “I KNOW!!”

Eldest got it right. In fact they both got all of theirs right. Lilest’s next one was “If mommy drinks one cup of coffee every hour and I spend 3 hours at Starbucks, how many cups of coffee will I have drank?” And Eldest got the last one with “If we got to AJ Bombers for dinner and they have a big special going where hamburgers cost $1.00 and sweet potato chips are $0.50 how much would it cost all together if we each got one hamburger and one order of sweet potato chips?”

I love that they love to learn. I love that they are a bit competitive in that department. I love that we take the time to actually spend time together in the car on the way to and from, well anywhere together. But, especially to school. We both need that love in the morning.

I am having one of those days.

Now, I’m willing to bet that your first thought was “oh yeah it’s Monday” or “awww that sucks.” But, I’m not talking about one of THOSE days.

Don’t get me wrong, the calendar says it’s Monday, the monkeys managed to bust out mad karate moves on each other this morning, fight over the Wii remote (she that controls the remote rules the Netflix streaming) and we barely got eldest to school on time. Laundry mountain is close to having snow covered peaks. The thousands of emails I have in my inbox (literally and I’m so not proud of that number) that I need to get to and handle scare me, my plate is beyond full and if I pause long enough, I’m sure the feeling of overwhelmedness will start to creep in. I’ve been giving my To Do the list the stink eye for a while now as I fight to catch up on being sick for 6+ weeks and all I really want to do today is drive around and huggle people that I have not seen or talked to enough in far too long. Standard crazy, somewhat stressful morning.

You know what though? It’s a freakin awesome day. Why? Because we have a roof over our heads, food in our fridge and the monkeys and I love the mess out of each other. I’m pursuing my dream and there are people in my life that remind me how much I mean to them. Those that are on my huggle hit list know that I love them and get what I have been through and that I would be all up on them in full on huggle more often if I could. I guess simply put, I have amazing people in my life that love me despite of (and sometimes because of) my many flaws.

N O T H I N G. E L S E. M A T T E RS .

And all of this means that I’m back. I am back to 110% Natali again. Still a bit run down but OMG it feels SO FREAKIN good.

Honey, I’m hoooooooome. 🙂

It’s been almost a year now since I have written my “Yup, I’ve Got Boobies” post. To date it is the scariest, most emotional post I’ve ever written. Yes, even more so than the one outlining me standing there with a knife in my hand staring a stalker through my patio door. Breast cancer is far scarier than any stalker.

As soon as that post went up, my awesome tribe of geek girls responded with an outpouring of love and support that went beyond just RT’s. That’s how we roll. One laughs, we all laugh. One cries, we cry too- then whip out whatever we can to make that turn to laughter. One makes a stand, we stand behind her.

We are strong. We are geek. We have boobies. We use our powers for good.

And I am so proud to announce that we have banded together to create a project for the cause. Coming your way soon…

The #BoobieWed Geek Girls Edition Calendar

There are more than 250,000 women living in this country that were diagnosed with breast cancer under that age of 40. That does not account for the thousands that did not detect it early enough and lost their battles with breast cancer as a result.

The strongest weapon in beating breast cancer is early detection. That is the fuel behind this project- driving home the importance of it and reminding women (and yes men) to check their breasts regularly and remind those in their life to do so as well.

For more information please visit the amazing organization Young Survival Coalition.

And stay tuned for more to come on the Epic Gift That Keeps On Giving.

Now go give ’em a squeeze and make sure they’re happy!!!

Remember #BoobiesAreStrongerThanTheForce But they still need to be checked.

If you were with me for the last post, you got a lil introduction to my dear friend the #truthbat. You also heard tale of the things in the outside world that have driven me to the point of this giant two-part blog. Now I’m going to let you in on my inside world. If you missed the last one, let me get you up to speed right quick.

1)We as women have got to stop treating each other and OURSELVES like shit and blaming it on men. Seriously, knock both parts off! #truthbat

2)We need to put the damn Ginsu knives down, step away from all the bullshit, stop knocking each other down and start building each other up. #truthbat

C) If we fail to do this, we are dooming every lil girl in our lives. Period. #truthbat

As the events in the last post were occurring, there was a theme interwoven directly in my own life. My own relationships with women. They forced me to wield the #truthbat on myself and do some reflection as a woman. As a friend. As a mom. As me.

I’ve always known I wasn’t wired quite like other females in my life. Growing up when other girls were gossiping, primping, vying (i.e. brawling) for social status and boys’ attention, I was doing my own thang. I wore what I liked, listened to what I dug, talked to whomever I wanted to and hung with more guys than girls. Part of me has always chocked it up to being kind of different in general. I just related to guys more than girls. None of the other girls rode a skateboard or played video games, could hack a computer or really shared most of my interests. I was just me. And I still am in a lot of those ways. Not that I haven’t grown, changed, evolved. I have. But, then and now, it’s on my own terms. For me. At my hand. In my own way.

It wasn’t until I was older that I started to reflect on the confusion I face when looking at my own gender. When gossiping didn’t end. When I began to really witness the false smiles. When the females I did bond with started getting stabbed in the back by other females. I still don’t play well with others in that manner. And I’m clearly still reflecting. But now I know that I am not alone. While I still have a bunch of guy friends, I also have a bunch of pretty incredible females in my life too. Others that are also wired differently. Or are they? Is it a matter of wiring?

While on my crusade of reflection, I’ve been looking at women in my life directly, in my life via other friends and completely outside of my life. I’ve been silently watching interactions between women in stores, at functions, on Twitter, on Facebook walls and yes even on the dreaded TV. (Total random side note/question stemming from “boob-tube” as slang for TV. Why is it that boob originated in like 1905 to describe “a stupid person; a fool; a dunce” and is now used to describe our breasts as well?? Welcome to my random ponderings) In all of this, I found a big commonality. Another reason for me to be proud to be a geek girl. In a whole, I discovered a whole lot of love amongst my sisters in geekdom. Enough for me to state that I believe that, in terms of groups, geeky gals bond and support each other more than other groups. You can get several geek girls together and no drama. Are we truly wired differently? Is it because we get so excited when we encounter each other that we bond and support rather than engage territorial behavior? Don’t get me wrong, we will talk all kinds of smack against each other via Xbox Live while playing. But, when we log off, it doesn’t carry over. I have seen so much support from geek girls for other geek girls’ projects and lives in general. It makes me squee. We are, for all intents and purposes, a minority in our own lil right. We’re cool with that though. We’re cool with each other. And we support our fellow geek guys.

Alright, having said that, I need to state, we aren’t perfect. We are not superior. We have our own lil quirks. In fact, one recent incident has been gnawing at me because it doesn’t stick with my theory (ok, technically hypothesis as it can’t truly be proven).

Months and months ago there was a geek girl I started following on Twitter. I Follow Friday’d her every time I did them. I tweeted at her to engage conversation or show support of her project. After months of this I realized that not only had she never followed me back nor replied to any of said tweets, she really wasn’t nice to people. So, I figured “eh, it’s just Twitter” and I unfollowed her. A few weeks went by and the path of turmoil she was creating went outside of Twitter and into people’s lives. It bothers me because it’s people I call friends, but I’m trying not to let my claws out. Yup, I have one of the traits that I have scolded other women for. #truthbat. Mine come out DEFFENSIVELY to protect those I care about or the underdog, not OFFENSIVELY to claw my way to feeling better or to a higher position. Regardless, I am still trying to use them sparingly and I totally didn’t want to start using them on another girl that waves a geek flag or shake up my lil geek girl community.

So, a couple of weeks ago I got a new geek girl follower and she’s great. When it came time to do some Follow Friday’s I used the old one from the aforementioned geek for this new one. I swear my only thought was “oh! I always liked this one, now I can use it for her!” That’s it. Nothing else occurred to me regarding it until the new girl was happy and RT’d it. And like a minute later guess who suddenly requested, after all this time, to follow me? Yup. The Aforementioned One. And I let her. Trying to be nice. Trying to give benefit of the doubt. Trying not to shake up lil community. Does she talk to me now? Yup, she’ll send me a random tweet on Friday mornings. Only on Friday mornings. Now she’s incited full-blown eye twitchage. To make matters more difficult, one of my good friends that is being affected by the Aforementioned One outside of Twitter is left in the same quandary I am. We are used to being ourselves, calling people on stuff and confronting situations head on. Yet, because it is a fellow self-proclaimed geek girl, we don’t feel like we can do that. We are forcing ourselves to smile, be polite and try to let her behavior slide. Which goes against who we are in a lot of ways. I realize the very posting of this is so passive aggressive and I’m not the passive aggressive type. Which bothers me all the more. The decision to do so comes down to two things. The first is me saying “fuck it.” If it shakes things up, it shakes things up and I accept full responsibility for everything that I’ve said here. I’m not sure what else to do and I need to just get it out. Maybe just the purge will do it good. The second is to prove an important point in this whole post- THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS TO EVERY RULE, EVERY THEORY. #truthbat Not every geek girl is wired the same way. Not every woman is wired the same way.

And not every exception is a bad one.

This brings me to another recent situation. We’ve all heard of the dreaded love triangle. The old scenario and it’s variations; two women fighting for same man, same man dating two unknowing women. Not long ago I found myself witness to a doozy of one. I lost track of how many women and the full drama that ensued, which is all unimportant. I know it sounds juicy, but I don’t dish. The reason it is here is to bring forth something that took me aback. Typically when drama of this nature goes down, the women don’t team up and go against the man (at least right away), the first reaction is to extend claws and gouge each others eyes out. Amidst all the craziness, all the drama, all the hurt feelings, the confusion, the gamut of emotions on all party’s parts… two unheard of things happened. The first was two separate women involved on two separate occasions uttered “This would be so much easier if you were a skanky whore, but you’re not. You’re really great” and “Wow, I gotta say I really like you. I didn’t want to, but I do.” Yup, insults didn’t fly. Eyeballs remained intact. Secondly, those two women both offered respect to another woman’s decision as to what she was going to do and what she would and would not discuss and actually followed through with the respect. And only one confirmed geek girl in the whole bunch.

We have it in us ladies. If while faced with matters of the heart, which tend to be the most sensitive of things, we can remain respectful and polite, well there’s no reason why on a day to day basis we can’t work together to move past these stereotypes that we’ve placed on each other. Yup, placed on each other. #truthbat

In my quest of reflection I have worked on who I am. Specifically who I let in my walls. This blog may make it seem like I don’t have any walls. I lay an awful lot of myself out there. But, I assure you I do. It’s a rather complex series of walls as well. Built over the years by myself, sometimes by the doing of others, sometimes by my own. There are people in my life that I like, people that I call acquaintances, people that I call friends and people that I feel a true bond with. Those that I feel the bond with are allowed access past more walls than others. For that reason, I tended to avoid bonding and I think especially women, as odd as that sounds. So, I have, in the last several months, made myself more open to possible bonds.

Out of the bonds I have made, I was wrong about only one. It’s still a hard one for me because we shared some really deep commonalities that most would never understand. Been through the same levels of Hell together. She showed me her Hell, I showed her mine. In the end though, her drive for acceptance of others, for attention from others proved the bond to be false. You have no idea how it hurt to know that I had shared so much with someone who turned around and pretty much pissed on it and bastardized it for her own benefit. You know what though? I’m ok. It didn’t kill me, it didn’t wreck me, it didn’t change me and it didn’t prevent me from bonding with or hurt the bonds that I had with some AMAZING women.

Maybe it’s not so much how we are wired. Those that are similar to me in how we treat the majority of other women, interact with them, support them, peacefully exist with them all have faced the threat of being forced into a stereotype at some point in their lives. Maybe it is a matter of embracing and being true to who we are no matter the circumstances.

These women are all very different in their own ways. If we were all standing in a group, just looking at us and our vast differences, you would wonder what the connection would be. What it comes down to is our cores. Our hearts. Our characters. And I love every one of them. We don’t talk every day, we don’t get together every week. But each one knows I am there for them and I know they are there for me. That if anything was needed the other would be there in a nanosecond. That no matter what direction our lives may take, no matter what distance lies between, no matter how long between conversations, that bond will remain intact. It’s not a forced bond, it doesn’t need to be babysat. It is nurtured naturally in its own way, it’s own pace.

They have all taught me lessons that I will forever be grateful for. Thank you will never be enough. Each has overcome very different obstacles and emerged beautiful, inspiring women. Women who lead by example.

The first happens to be the first woman I have ever proudly called my “BFF” (even though she’s more of a soul sister), who has the biggest, purest heart I have ever seen and we have an undying pact to lovingly whack each other with the #truthbat as needed. The saner pea in our crazy lil pod @StacySnook. She’s also the only one in my life that has truly taught me to embrace my inner girliness I have shied away from for so long.

Stacy’s incredible self journey

Stacy’s awesome salon

Where Stacy prettied up my eyes.

The woman who gives herself far too little credit, is beyond real, who taught me to take risks, that dreams aren’t worth anything if you don’t work toward them and proves geek girls don’t come in one boring mold. In fact, she makes her own in so very many ways. My sexy ass sista in geekdom @KyleeLane

Kylee’s shop (for reals I own some and O M G!! You need!!)

Kylee’s kick ass new project!

The woman who has helped me keep more balance in my life so far than anyone ever has, that has taught me it’s ok to take time out of life for myself to work on me, the person that encourages me regularly that being a work in progress is indeed a good thing, my voice of reason (and dorky sista from another mista) @BerniXiong

Berni’s site (aka a lil corner of sanity)

The woman who reminded me how crazy but how fucking awesome my life is because our lives are so parallel at times it’s straight up Twilight Zone and she was the first IRL woman I met that was just as dorky as me, but so freakin’ aweseomsauce that it made me proud to be a dork. I know we don’t hang like we used to, but she deserves to be here as well. I will always walk through Hell wearing ruffles for her, the woman who made me wish I had a stache to flaunt @SaraSantiago

Sara’s words of wisdom we’d all be better living by

I have to admit I am in awe and so thankful for all the response and support from everyone that read the first part of this post. I hope that the second part hasn’t let ya down.

My quest shall continue. It’s legacy will hopefully live on with my girls. I hope one day they will, as @GeekWithSoul has wished for his daughter, read this and laugh about how things USED to be. That they will have pages of amazing women in their lives that also lead by example.

But this will only be if we make an effort to step up, lead by example, work toward change and gently keep each other in check when we don’t. Seriously, I may love your ass, but if you step outta line, I’m coming athcya with the #truthbat. *mwuah*