I have decided to clown around.

... Ha Ha! Let me explain. I was reading the other day about some clowns and how much fun it is to have a side career of working birthday parties. I realized there's not too many Asian clowns, and I don't know of any that are Viet Namese.

I'm going to the costume shop today and getting some basic supplies. If they are open, I don't know. I am going to practice face painting on some old pillowcases I have. Then I am going to the library to get some books on clown skills, because I don't have any. Here are the things I could do already, in my act:

• Face painting (if the pillowcases work out)
• Spin Art
• making funny gestures
• doing a silly voice
• balloons (regular ones, I can't do animals yet)

As you can see, there is room for growth!

You might be wondering why this sudden interest in clowns! Well, I heard about a local clown named "Looney Dooney" on the radio and supposedly he was a huge hit at this festival. I know that in a week I have to go to my cousin's little baby's birthday party (she is 3) and not only can't I think of a present, but also I want to bring something fun to the party.

Why not bring me, as a clown?

Now I just need some names. Help me out will ya?

Some ideas:

• Tuyet the clown
• White Phoenix the clown
• the Viet Namese clown
• Yellow Flower Clown
• Herro, I am a Crown
• Danh Tu
• Silly Sally
• Sirry Sarry

Wow, I can't think of anything good. Help a sister out, yo! (That's slang)

I'll let you know how it goes... I am starting to feel not so excited about this idea anymore.

Haiku

Breakfast
Beautiful jelly!
Golden, crispy piece of toast...
Now, I feed myself.


Flower Vulva
Oh wonderful rose
Opening, and curling out
My body, my soul.


Origins
I don't do laundry.
I am not from Hawai'i.
I'm from Viet Nam.


Gothic Ruminations
In my spirit hole
A ghost, needing transport, rides
in a wheelbarrow.

It's all for the birds

I feel like I kind of lost my mind there for a little bit. I should never have gone to WomanCamp!!! You know how sometimes you do something, and it seems perfectly Okay and normal while you are doing it, and then afterwards you wonder what the hell you were thinking? That is how I feel about "Vulva Time" with Justine. It's also how I am starting to feel about "Cuddle Party"! What the hell am I doing?!?!?! It seems like I am trying to find myself, and all I am doing is doing these weird things that have nothing to do with me at all!

I need to listen to my inner voice. My inner child, if you will.

And my inner child is saying "Tuyet, cut the crap."

So today, instead of reading Woman Power stuff on the Internet, and wondering if maybe I should be a Wiccan, and reading about Goddess Worship and Menstrual Blood Rituals and all that stuff, I just went for a walk at the local bird sanctuary.

Here is what I saw:





The simple feathery beauty of their little heads made me happy.

I think happiness will be just as simple as that. I'm not going to find it in strange rituals, or Spin Art, or in some woman teaching me about my "pleasure centers". I'm going to see it in the simple beauty that is all around me.

Hey, I think I might be growing!

But I did like that Spin Art. I might do that one again.

I am so blue. Also, answers.

I found a fun thing called Blog Things, it is where you can find out about yourself by taking quizzes. I think this is a great tool for me! Here is what I found out today.

You Are a Blue Crayon

Your world is colored in calm, understated, deep colors. You are a loyal person, and the truest friend anyone could hope to find. On the inside, you tend to be emotional and even a bit moody. However, you know that people depend on you. So you put on a strong front. Your color wheel opposite is orange. Orange people may be opinionated, but you feel they lack the depth to truly understand what they're saying.

What Color Crayon Are You?

~d. Thank you! I am trying.

Martin. No worries, you spoke from the heart and I like that. Why did you delete?

Nick. Welcome back!

Chris. No idea. Did you sell that car yet?

Entertainer. Ha!

Also, BBC, I think you are right that Justine and I probably shouldn't been looking at each other's vulvas so much. She was pretty convincing that I needed to know about my anatomy. But don't think I don't know about my "playground" as you call it, I did have a lover for 11 years after all. It just wasn't a playground per say ... more like a stomping ground. I will tell the story as soon as I can!

Chuck, are you serious?

This cast is getting on my last nerve. 3 more weeks!

I am an artist! For now.

I just got back from an amazing week at WomanCamp. It's like a getaway for middle-aged women like me, who are on a spiritual quest to get in touch with who they are. I made a lot of friends, and when I have come back down to Earth I will write about it. I made one really good friend name Justine, who helped me get in touch with my womanhood by holding me while I slept and telling me I was beautiful. I never felt so close to a girlfriend before! We also looked at our vulvas together, and she showed me which parts were for pleasure and which were for childbearing. Now I know more about vulvas than I ever thought possible, and I can open a vulva shop! Ha ha. Lastly I learned that people can have very different hair patterns. I don't want to think about Justine's vulva much more, to tell the truth, but I have a feeling she is thinking about mine. Just a hunch. She did spend a lot of time touching the different parts while she was teaching me, and getting really close in her studying of my anatomy. It made me feel sort of funny in my stomach.

On another note! I learned a form of art called "Spin Art". It is where you have this giant tub with a spinning mechanism, and you drop paint onto the canvas as it spins. It makes beautiful paintings! Here are a few of my creations!




I had a really good time at WomanCamp, and I can't wait to go back. Meanwhile, I am going to try to express my artistic side, and maybe change my phone number so that Justine can't keep calling me.

I need to "get over my hangups".

Part of my journey into my womanhood is learning to get over the fear of my own body. I think my fear stems from the upbringing of my culture and that I always was subservient to the wishes of my Popo and my Pipi when I lived with them. These would be my grandparents. Whatever Pipi wanted, Popo and I would do. Then Popo would boss me around as a way of feeling better about her own self. Who did I boss around? the dustrag and a can of Pledge. Sometimes a dishrag, just to mix it up.

When I got my first period, I thought I was dying and I went to the school nurse in hysterics. She couldn't calm me down so I was taken to the emergency room and given a Lorazipam. Later she gave me this book so that I could learn about the changes my body was going through. I was a late bloomer, so it may have looked a little strange to be reading about my body at age 16, but I didn't care, it was fascinating! I still have the book and have been reading it a lot lately.

When I got together with Cao, we tried some of the different things that men and women try to do together using their bodies. We had a lot of fun, but it was never as "great" for me as it said in the book. Some time I will tell the story of Cao and the things we did. If I ever fall in love again, I would like to try those things again. But I don't know how that is going to happen; I don't have any more male cousins and I sure as heck arent' doing that with the girls!!!

Yesterday I got a mirror and spent about 20 minutes looking at my vulva. I have never done that before! I had the book open to the page where there is a diagram. I learned the names of all the parts and then quizzed myself. It was fun and informative! Except that afterwards, my hip joints hurt from sitting like that so I had to get in the tub.

Thanks for all your advice!

Okay so I did something really brave & different.

My friend Pam has these parties on weekends sometimes, they are called Cuddle Parties. They are like a slumber party for grownups, and first she sends you some paperwork on it to explain that it is a party for adults who want to cuddle. I guess that is why it is called an Adult Cuddle Party, maybe? I don't know. Anyhow, you can read about them here and learn if you want to have one. CuddleParty.com can help you plan it!

If you ask me, I strongly recommend it!

First of all, there are rules:

1. Everyone wears regular clothes or pajamas, no lingerie and no nudity. The whole time.




2. Everyone has to come at the same time. It started promptly at 7 pm and after that no one is let in. Otherwise it is, like, awkward for the cuddlers.




3. Nobody jokes about sex or says things that are suggestive, like "ooh, is that your pee pee pushing on my butt"? Even if it is (which totally does happen, you are cuddling after all!), you don't say it!




4. Ask permission to pet or stroke someone. You can say no; you can change your mind also.




5. No eating of any kind. Only afterwards!




6. No bodily noises. Excuse yourself if needed.




7. Laughter and some tickling is encouraged!




8. Also, crying.




9. Tell the Cuddle Guard if anything strange is seen or felt.




10. What happens at Cuddle Party, stays at Cuddle Party.

So, we all got on the floor and at first it was really weird, and nobody was touching, but soon some people started spooning and pretty soon everybody was lying around, on top of each other, next to, heads on each other's bellies, etc. Here are some pictures that Drew (Pam's boyfriend) took:

(printed with permission of participants)

It was really fun! At first I was really shy but pretty soon I was spooning with Pam and my neighbor Leslie, and we had like 3-woman sandwich on the floor. At one point Leslie, or maybe Pam even had her hands really close to my breasts, and I didn't even mind that. You just let go and enjoy being physical with people you hardly know!

At the end you got to sign up to host the next cuddle party and I didn't sign up but I took a card and I will think about it! It helped me feel less lonely and also maybe will ease me back into human contact. I haven't touched another human being in a really long time! Weird how that happens. Next thing you know 3 years have gone by and you have forgotten that other people are warm and soft, just like you.

Hope you don't think I'm weird and you learned something today. Even if you think I'm weird, I don't care, because I got snuggled on both sides by two of my best girlfriends! And you didn't.

I took 2 giant journeys into my womanhood yesterday!

Steps 1 & 2 have to do with making peace with my family and history.

1. I finally packed away all of the pictures and letters that I have of Cao (my third cousin and former lover) and put them into a place where I cannot access them. They've been sitting out on the table beside my bed since his death in 2004. I didn't burn them, because it is never smart to "destroy history", but I did put them inside a shoe box under my bed, so that I would have to work a little harder to get at them. It's a Queen Size bed and I am 4'9" tall, so it's not easy to reach!!!

2. I sat down with my mother and talked to her about how her "cold" disposition towards me in my childhood years has contributed to my doubt that anyone could ever love me, and to feel "out of touch" with my own body and emotions. I tried to do it in a non-blaming way the way Dr. Schieff (the therapist who is slowly guiding himself into my womanhood and taking me with him) told me to. It turned into a very close conversation in which she shared that her father (my Pipi) was cruel to her when she was a child in Viet Nam, while he loved his sons with devotion. By the end of our conversation we were both crying and hugging. I think this was a big step for us!




In other news, I am going to make banana bread! Also, I am getting my haircut.
Thanks for stopping by!

Thanks for caring everyone.

Hi everyone! Thanks for all of your messages of love and hope for my poor ankle and Denny, for the box of chocolates you sent. Why were half of them eaten? I rarely eat stuff I get in the mail. Never, in fact. So I gave them to my neighbor Mrs. Frey and she ate them. No offense! It's the "gesture" that counts, and this is a gesture I could really wrap my lips around.

Okay, so here is how I did the stupid thing. I have been trying to get in touch with my inner child, T.A.P. (Tuyet Ai Phuong --- Turning a Page --- thanks, BBC -- although the first thing that came to mind was Take a Piss). So the other day I was at the elementary school on my street, where there is a playground, with my friend Madu and her baby son, Ussi. Ussi was playing on the jungle gym and I started thinking about how he is really in touch with his inner child, which is really "enlightened" for a kid who is only four. Most people don't even know they have an inner child, and there he was, acting like one! If a four year old can be that evolved, god damn if I sit on my 45-year-old ass and let life pass me by! (Sorry for swearing, but I am trying to "free" myself by cussing when I feel like it. One of these days I might even say the "F-word" and give myself a "breast self exam" if I could get over the fear of my own body! But I am off track, sorry).

So, since Ussi was on the jungle gym, I decided to join him so I was running and jumping and climbing, and sliding on the slide, which was actually very dry and non-slippery and gave me sort of a "road rash" on the backs of my thighs, and I had to put ointment. Then I climbed this sort of geodesic dome thing and was hanging from the bars of it and swinging, and when I let go to "dismount" I heard/felt a "snap" and then my ankle started to burn. Damn! (sorry)

Madu took me to the ER where I had to wait like 3 hours for an xray and it turned out the bottom of my "tibula", or whatever the bigger bone in the leg is called, has a crack. Not a big crack, but still a crack.

So now I have a cast that looks like bubble wrap and crutches so I don't put too much weight on the ankle, and getting to-from work has been a real "hassle", and I have been so tired.

I will update again soon, like after I write thank-you cards for all the fun little presents I have been getting. Like cards and chocolate, which I already mentioned, and mail, which the mailman brought up to my house instead of leaving down in the box, and a cushion so I could elevate from the lady who shares my cubicle at work (Camilla or Clitella or something, I don't know, she is new.) Everyone is so nice!!!