Retiring the Trivial Buttonhole?

Oscar & Will contemplate the unexamined life. Decide not worth living.

I'm thinking of retiring little Trivial Buttonhole (or Butthole as my brother's always read it.) I've been making Mabeltalk more personal, so I'm posting here less anyway. I'm thinking maybe the things I would normally post here--pictures of the cats, vegan chat, what I'm writing etc.--I could just post on Mabeltalk on the weekends. Cause I don't usually post my regular mabeltopics on Sat and Sunday (though lately even that schedule's been all woooo!)

So for those who are only interested in checking in on me on a kittykat level, you'll know to just check mabeltalk on the weekend, and you can ignore me the rest of the time, if you're not into all the "Fat shaming! Makes me mad! Arrr!" and "Love yourself! Here's a song! Grrr!"

I think I'm also trying to reconcile my two sides a little better, as well. (Yes I'm still in this massive cocoon phase I've been in all winter. You'd think I'd be out by now, eh? I finally received my cute oracle cards. Maybe that'll help!) I've always said I only half fit the Gemini profile because while they're supposed to be big communicators and flit around to a lot of new interests (oui, c'est moi), they also have trouble with constancy. Well, I might be inconstant when it comes to clothing styles, but I've been in love with the same man since I was 15 years old.

But I do feel like 2-in-1 in terms of having a Very Silly Side married to a Very Serious Side. Trivial Buttonhole, starring Oscar Wilde, with it's funny "quotes of the now" and so forth represents frothy me. The is the fiction writer side of me. Half of the friendships I have correspond to this side. I identify this side more with my mother and my brother.* I say it's frothy, but it's super important. Georgette Heyer's Friday's Child helped keep Romanian prisoners sane. Hugh Laurie credits Wodehouse with saving his life. And Oscar said life was too important to be taken seriously. Humor is Serious Bidness.

The other half of my I associate with my father and step-mother,** and it's who I married, and I have a bunch of friendships on that side too. That's the side that launched Mabeltalk, and is concerned with fat shaming, and racism, and sexism, and other-isms, and wants to teach, and cares about people's inner childrenz, and reads non-fiction and wants to talk for hours about politics and people's relationships. This side of me ends up befriending some pretty intense people.

But I think I'm getting tired of being Trivial on one side, and Mabeltalk on the other. Maybe it's because when I'm frolicking about in Bettyland I get to be both, so separating the two sides is starting to confuse me. I don't know where to post things anymore.

I'll keep up my music blog, though, because every once in awhile I get on a real music tear and there's no blog that can hold all that. Better to keep it isolated, at least until I feel otherwise. Same with my comments blog. I'm not consistent with it, but when I do read a bunch of articles, I always come up with tee hee things to put on there.

Well. This pot's on the front burner. The temperature's turned up. I'll know any day now whether the dish is done or not. :-)

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* **

My mother and 1/3 of the Brat Pack

Okay obviously my mother and brother aren't all-silly, and my father and stepmother aren't all-serious--it's a generalization. I do come by my feminism and social politics from my mother, and she rescues animals and loves politics.

But my brother and I also know that--although our father is very funny--the truly wickedest part of our humor is a genetic inheritance from our mother's side of the family. It's also with our mother that we can watch anything from the Beavis & Butthead movie to Pineapple Express. She used to have a life sized giraffe statue in her living room. She used to spit beer at us between her teeth when we were little. She and my brother are my top "beta readers" for my writing. Her hero is Auntie Mame, and she introduced me to The Thin Man, A Room With a View, and Georgette Heyer.

Also, my mother's father (the English professor) introduced me to Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw, used to tell dirty but erudite jokes, and wore a t-shirt that said: Here he cometh, there he goeth. So yes--I stand by my statement that I associate my frivolous side with my mother and brother, the R--- side of the family.

My father gives Yoda a shave

...Whereas I'm in the midst of helping to edit my father his article taking down Just War theory from a pacifist standpoint, for a progressive Christian magazine. Next he wants to write something for them on animal rights. My step-mother repaints dolls and donates the money to an orphanage in Mexico, never approved my fandom of Prince because of all the sex in his music, and didn't get the difference between S&M and abusing women when Madonna recorded the song "Spank Me." She's adorably goofy, but not in the Wildean way.  ;-)

I haven't said much about my brother. Cause he's due for his own post soon.