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I just had a very random thought sometime last night while I was getting ready to take a bath. I was thinking about Jian & how accepting & tolerating he is regarding my obsession with drag queens. Yes, you read that correctly. I am talking about drag queens, professional cross-dressers who do uncomfortable things to hide their male anatomy for the sake of looking more feminine than the average female.
When I first met Jian, I never told him about my intense fascination with drag queens. Then as our relationship progressed into a more “let it all hang out” comfortable stage, I let him in on my fascination with drag queens. He couldn’t understand it at first. He thought my interest in drag queens was weird & dumb, but then one night in our apartment, he caught me watching the TV show Ru Paul’s Drag Race. For the first five minutes or so of the show Jian thought it was stupid, but as I kept up with the weekly episodes, Jian got more & more invested in watching the show as well. He would ask me questions about the drag queens, like what their names were & if I have heard of any of them before the show. Then, he got really into watching the show with me to see who the winner of that season would be (it was Sharon Needles, by the way). That was the major turning point where I knew Jian was more accepting of my intense interest in the drag queen culture.
I don’t even know how I ever learned about drag queens in the first place, but since I live so close to San Francisco, I guess I was bound to stumble upon these glorious peoples in one way or another. I saw drag queen comedians on television, but I never really understood that culture or what kind of impression it would leave on my life. I remember one time in high school when I traveled to San Francisco on the weekend with my friends & we were hanging out around the Haight-Ashbury district. I walked into a gift shop selling a bunch of random knick knacks & novelty souvenirs, & I happened to be browsing their rotating postcards rack when I noticed one funny postcard with two drag queens right on the front. From that point on I was hooked. Seeing that postcard photo of two men, with scruffy facial hair & a full face of makeup, wearing over-the-top wigs & womens clothes…it really spoke to me. It grabbed my attention so hard & shook me to the core.
Ever since then, I’ve just been so drawn to the crazy, glitzy, fast-paced, foul-mouthed world of drag queens. A part of my obsession with drag queens stems from jealousy. Yes, I am jealous of drag queens. Not that I wish to be a man wearing womens clothes, but I often fill myself with self-doubt, & critique my body build/shape. I look at myself in the mirror sometimes & feel like I have a non-descript, semi-tomboy body shape. Ok, that’s a kind of an exaggeration, but I do feel like I’m neither tomboy-ish, nor am I girly/feminine. Then I look at drag queens, dudes who wear womens clothes & impossibly high-heeled uncomfortable shoes, & I think to myself: “Damn, that dude looks more feminine in a dress than I do.” Well, a lot of drag queens look more feminine than a lot of actual women on this planet, so… it’s not uncommon.
I love drag queens. I love their over-exaggerated personalities, their costumes & fashion, their ability to wear uncomfortable womens pumps, their quick-witted humor, & their potty mouths that would make a salty sailor blush. Everything about the drag queen culture is fast-paced & extreme glitter. Although, I’m not sure I’d be into wearing 15 pounds of thicc makeup. I’m not a makeup wearing person. ((I’m a skincare kind of gal, so I don’t have to wear makeup on a daily basis.)
Every time we come across a drag queen on TV or on a billboard advert, Jian will point that entertainer out to me with excitement. He will ask me whether I know that particular entertainer or not, & we have a fun time talking about it. I feel kind of bad though that I haven’t been keeping up with the newer seasons of Ru Paul’s TV competition show, but I still keep up with all of the drama on social media as I do follow one of my favorite ‘queens’ on Instagram & YouTube. I would one day love to see a drag queen performance live, but Jian isn’t at that point where he feels comfortable enough to go with me to watch a live show. He is making progress though, like now he likes to use the popular drag phrase “yaaasss kween”, & that is just about all I have to say on this so-called thought barf. I’m heading to Los Angeles this weekend to celebrate my female cousin’s birthday. I can’t believe she’s turning the big 4-0hhhhhh. I’m glad the weather is not going to be warm this weekend. Until next time, cheers!
Today’s song of the day:
In my continued quest of documenting “99 Things That Bring Me Joy“, the next stop in my journal brings us to childhood activities I don’t want to outgrow. I don’t believe I am experiencing a “Peter Pan syndrome”, but I do still feel very young-at-heart even though I am rapidly approaching my late thirties & my early thirties have come & gone in a blink of an eye. Actually, I’m not really sure how to exactly describe myself. I can relate, get along with, & easily talk to all sorts of generations. I can chat with older adults about 1960s culture, reminisce with my own generation about our carefree youth in the 1980s & the grungey 90s, & when the kids of the next generation spit out slang lingo I can talk to them without checking the Urban Dictionary every 5 minutes.
As I have mentioned in previous posts, I have built up a lot of my current collections by adding on to things I’ve kept since my youth. Even though I am learing how to let go of items I once thought were sentimental on the basis of decluttering my home, I still keep some of my treasured childhood objects & collectible items. I use some of those items as a starter/base in building my collections. A few of my other childhood collectibles are still able to be used in my arts & crafts projects. (For example, I have a few rubber stamps from the mid-90s that I’m still using in my craft projects today.)
Aside from collectible objects, there are a few childhood activities that I continue to engage in, even as an adult. They’re not really exciting or unique, but they make me happy, no matter what age I am. Let me give you a few examples.
I wrote in an old post about the London Bus LEGO set that I had completed, & within that post I had provided a full list (as of 2017) of all the LEGO sets I owned. I’ve been playing with LEGO building blocks for as long as I can remember. My experience with LEGO blocks began with a simple tub of miscellaneous blocks that my mom bought for me at the Toys ‘R Us store when I was a little kid. There was a long span of my life (meaning my teenage years) where I stopped playing with LEGOs.
Then as an older adult, I started playing with them again, or should I say building sets again. I guess I jumped back on the LEGO bandwagon at the time when it was trendy for adults to go back to doing childhood things, like coloring & painting, in order to relieve stress. (What did they call the trend…”zen coloring for adults”??? LOL!). Now that LEGOs are back in style, & have become trendy for people of all ages, I’ve really thrown myself into building what LEGO calls “creator sets”.
My collecting of these large LEGO sets have really taken over my house to the point where I could easily turn my house into a small toy store. Thank goodness my collecting hasn’t taken over my life so much to the point where I will buy every new collectible set that’s released. I only buy the sets that interest me, but it’s still becoming an overwhelming collection that I hope to one day pass on to my future child. In the meantime, here is an updated list of the LEGO sets I have so far…
If you’ve been following my blog from the beginning, then you know all about my sticker collecting. I mean, I basically won’t shut up about it & write about my sticker collecting in practically every other post. I have been collecting (& using) stickers since I was around 10-years old. I still even have a few of my old stickers from way back when. I won’t go in to too much detail about my boring sticker collecting, just know that I’ve been collecting stickers nearly my entire life.
Do you remember when I introduced my sticker storage box (named Trevor)? Well, he’s overflowing now.
This photo of Trevor taken circa July 2012.
This is Trevor now. He is a super hot mess.
Even my craft washi tape collection got so overwhelming that Pierre spilled out, & we now have his little brother named Jean-Luc.
I’m not an avid coloring book artist these days, but I still color like a kid from time to time using a coloring page app on my tablet. When I was a little kid, I loved coloring in school. I couldn’t freestyle/hand draw to save my life, but I loved coloring. I still can’t draw (barely stick figures & crude symbols), but I still enjoy coloring from time to time.
I remember when I was a teenager & I discovered tracing paper for the first time. I had this beautiful hardcover art book from the artist Mary Engelbreit, who was my favorite artist at the time. I would spend hours in my room, sitting on my bed, painstakingly re-tracing all of my favorite prints from that book. Then I would take my treasured deluxe box of colored pencils & color in all of my traced pages, trying to copy Mary’s artwork. I had so much fun tracing those artworks & getting to color them in at the end.
Today, I don’t exactly color in actual paper coloring books with coloring pencils & crayons, but I do have a coloring app on my tablet called Lake Coloring, & whenever the mood strikes or if I’m feeling a little out of sorts, I’ll whip out my tablet (which I have named Richard), & just color away to clear my headspace, with my only worry being which color to choose. I wouldn’t exactly say that this type of coloring is a stress reliever, but it does actually distract me (in a good way) & helps me to temporarily forget about whatever was on my mind to make me feel moody.
I didn’t read comic books & graphic novels when I was very young. However, I remember one of my older female cousins was really into reading Archie Comics. I had another male cousin who loved to collect MAD magazines. He even had the board game that was a spin-off of the comic magazine.
I didn’t really start learing about comic books myself until I became a young teenager & my parents allowed me to walk to the grocery store without a chaperone. I started by reading the cheap 99¢ cents comics at the grocery store. Then when I was old enough to drive, I would spend my after school time hanging out at my local bookstore near the shopping mall. That was the time when I was introduced to the magical world of Japanese manga (graphic novels).
Let me tell you one thing, when I immerse myself in a hobby or something I’m passionate about, I will invest a lot of time & effort (& money) into it. For example, when I started reading Japanese manga (I was more into manga rather than watching anime shows), I would read two or three series at a a time. I was always searching for a new series to dive into, which actually worked out for me because it always took at least a month, sometimes longer, to properly translate one Japanese comic book into English. It’s not easy to translate sound effects, & Japanese subtlety. To show you what I mean, let me insert a photo here.
I found these while cleaning out the storage closet, & miraculously they were NOT moisture damaged or warped!
I am not sure if you can clearly read the titles in this photo or not. I will list all of the titles, so you don’t have to zoom-in & sqint. Just a fair warning, I was really into the magical girl romance genre back in those days. I also dabbled in a little of the fantasy/sci-fi genre, & of course…the traditional romance genre as well.
I haven’t quite gotten back in to reading graphic novels. Well, at least not since I graduated college, but I’m slowly dipping my foot back in to that giant pool, testing out the water again to see if I’m still willing to shell out the mucho dinero for one book every other month. I still do read, though. However, I have slowed down my reading of hardcopy books in favor of e-books on my treasured tablet, Richard. You know, it is kind of sad to say this, but… you know when someone asks the trivia question “what three items would you bring with you to a remote island”? Two of the three items I’d probably bring with me is: 1. Richard, my tablet, & 2. a power source so I may keep Richard charged at all times. (Also, item number three would probably be a hunting knife.)
Well, that pretty much sums up some of my childhood that I’ve carried with me into full adulthood. Some of these things I believe I can still carry with me throughout my childhood & not feel like I’ve outgrown them. I also feel like I can pass down some of these activities with my future offspring. At least I hope so… That’s all I’ve got to say on this subject. Until next time, cheers!
Today’s song of the day:
It’s been raining more than a lot in my city. It’s not just rain, but full on storms with bouts of hail, lightning, thunder, & gusty winds. Even though many of the cities around me are experiencing nasty sinkholes, landslides, flooding & falling trees, I’m still glad &/or grateful that I’m not living anywhere east of the Colorado Rockies. I’m much more accustomed to braving the torrential rain & chilly wind rather than the snow & artic temperatures.
Even though this winter’s rainy season (due to a Pineapple Express weather system) is completely soaking my region & making my area waterlogged, I’m really enjoying the weather. The days are wet & soggy. The nights are absolutely frosty cold (but certainly not as cold as the mid-west), but I’m happy as a clam sitting indoors by my cozy fireplace with a nice hot cup of coffee.
This brings me to my newly chosen favorite word. As you can clearly see, I’ve chosen the word ‘wet’ in homage to the weather forecast in my area. Hey guys, guess what? California is not always full of sunny days, with skimpy bikini-clad women lounging on a palm tree-lined beach. We can have very cold & gloomy days too.
It’s been quite some time since I’ve had to use an electric heating device to warm up my bed at night. When I was a kid & had to share a bedroom with my sister, we even shared a bed (it was a queen size). I vividly remember we used to have a powder blue electric blanket on our bed, & I liked to play with the temperature control buttons on the cord. I loved that electric blanket so much. When you turned the setting all the way up to the highest setting (the red button), it really made the bed super hot, so we could only use the low & medium settings (the yellow & orange buttons). That shows how powerful our electric blanket from the 1980s really was.
I also remember that my dad didn’t like it when we used the electric part of the blanket because in those days, the electric wires were sewn into the blanket (you could feel the wires zig-zagging throughout the blanket) in between the layers, & the blanket itself was made of material that, in today’s standard, would be considered highly flammable. My dad was always paranoid that we would leave the electric blanket on all night, & it would short circuit & catch fire while we were sleeping. Every time we used the electric blanket, my dad would get upset & lecture us on the dangers of flammable objects. We finally got rid of that electric blanket when it once-and-for-all died on us in the late 90s.
These days I use an old lady’s heating pad that I bought at Walgreens to heat up my bed, or should I say only my side of the bed. I wouldn’t dare use an entire heating blanket. That would roast Jian (the very warm-blooded person) alive. Any small temperature spike, & Jian will feel overly warm & uncomfortable. That’s one of the main reasons why he likes to drink iced beverages, even in these 40-ish degree (farenheit) weather. It’s also another reason why I never ask him advice on what weather-appropriate clothes to wear when we go out. Jian’s standard reply whenever I ask him whether or not I should wear a warmer jacket is always, “It’s not really cold outside. You don’t need a thick jacket. You could just wear a vest & be warm enough.” Then, I stupidly take his advice, grabbing a thinner jacket & end up freezing my buns off, regretting not wearing the warmer jacket I was debating on wearing in the first place. So, I basically wrote all of this inconsiquential, unimportant nonsense just to say that I heat up my side of the bed with a small old lady’s heating pad so that Jian’s side of the bed doesn’t get too hot for his comfort.
It’s still raining on-&-off as I’m writing this blog post. I’ve got my jazz playlist on Spotify turned on, & I just finished my large cup of coffee. It’s super wet outside, & I’m toasty warm, dry, & cozy inside my house. I’m excited that my second brother has come home for the weekend to celebrate my mom’s birthday. My oldest brother & his family is coming over later today for a hot pot party. It’s time for me to go & get ready for all the fun festivities… & food! Until next time, cheers!
P.S. Please, please, pretty please follow me &/or my playlists on Spotify.
Today’s song of the day:
Rabbits & Foxes 
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