HNT #27: Zine Symposium

A couple days ago I posted photos and said a little about my first time tabling at the zine symposium. Today K. sent me a photo she took of me there. A couple (a few?) years back I was interviewed for an article on GLBT Buddhists in Just Out. I was nervous before, but relieved after. It felt good to be more out. I knew though, that the sort of people who would read Just Out would be more accepting in general of my choices in life.

Bringing my non-monogamy in the form of a zine to the zine symposium is yet another step in being more publicly out. I found the community of zinesters quite accepting, as it is full of people who bare their innermost thoughts in a way they know will never be censored.

My library is one of the first to purchase and catalog zines for checkout. Others got zine collections before us, but none as far as I know had made them part of the card catalog and available for checkout. The next step to outing myself more would be to get my zine in the collection, if that's possible. That's a hard one. I work there. In a public card catalog, there would be no more selectivity to my self-revelations. I know, this is pretty public too...but someone has to be looking for this, and I try not to attach my full name to this. I also need to think about the effect it could have on Steve and K.

Tabling at the zine symposium was a test of sorts. People would ask me questions that required me to find the essence of this my dual spiritual path. They would ask the questions, but were they the student or the teacher? Is there a difference? They challenged me, I challenged them.

They asked, of Buddhism and polyamory:

"What is the connection here, in a nutshell."
"Liberation can be found," I responded.

"What is the Great Activity?"
"Love." oops, oh, they were asking about the subject of the zine.

"I never thought to put Buddhism and polyamory together."
neither did I! it's just how my life played out...
I said something about trying to show they're compatible.

There is something naked and pure about selling your ideas to strangers. You sit, looking up at the browsers walking by. They pause. Some take a sticker. Some have eyes only for the zine. Conversations develop, sweet open faces. We are in this together, no barriers of publishing houses between our words and each others' minds. We are not strangers, we are funky iconoclasts who recognize our differences in each other. It is easier to reveal here in front of a computer screen. There we give each other the gifts of acceptance and vulnerability when we meet in person.


Happy HNT, all. Click on the Half Nekkid Thursday button in my sidebar for more HNT revelations.

HNT #23: River Tour

On Memorial Day I went on a 2 hour river tour with my Little Sister mentee. She's of an age that she doesn't like her picture taken, so it's appropriate that the HNT photo hidden somewhere in this slideshow shows me facing the camera but her faced away.

Portland has twelve (or more?) bridges that span the Willamette River. Two bridges span the Columbia to Washington state. Our tour headed south, passing under the Hawthorne, the Marquam, the Ross Island, and the Sellwood bridges. The Portland Fire Bureau held its Memorial Day salute just as we were about to dock.

HNT #21: Wall of Frames

I was inspired to share this due to my blogger friend who wished to get some frames and create an art wall. He's the one who inspired me to carry my camera everywhere and take more photos. He takes great photos. I told him here that what I do is haunt Goodwill and other thrift stores for frames for one or two dollars. Maaaybe three if it's unique. (He is also nominated for Hottest Daddy Blogger at Blogger's Choice Awards...help me at least get him up from page 5 by going here and voting for him. Hurry, I think voting ends soon.)

I also mentioned that some of the HGTV designer shows give you the tip of taking many different frames and spray-painting them the same color, then the frames look like they go together. Or, like I did, you can make them go together by having them all be different.

This wall has grown organically. It started with the vertical line of 5x7 art over toward the left: those are birthday cards sent to me by my dad over the years. (Speaking of birthdays, tomorrow is my 40th. I'm having a party...just a reminder to youse in the area that I've invited...PLEASE SHOW UP. I need you. I'm TURNING FORTY. And if I didn't invite you, it could be an oversight...drop me a line if you want to come.)

Top right, that's a watercolor I did several years back. I just dabble. I get around to painting about once a year. I hope to paint some of these flowers I've been photographing. Speaking of flowers, see the lower octagonal frame? I printed that photo with my new color laser printer. A birthday gift from my sweetie. See those flower photos here.

I was talking to my sweetie Steve about the wall last night. I like the random nature of the thrift store find, and I like that I break the aesthetic rules. Some are too close together, there are blank spaces where there shouldn't be. It keeps growing. It's always not quite finished. It's always ready for another frame, another piece of me.

The old photos? My grandparents on their wedding day, and later with their children, my mom and her sister. The Buddha photo on the right? My altar, from a newspaper article on people and their personal altars. It was called "Altared Spaces." The back of the head? That's me waiting for the plane in New York, wanting to see what my new hair stick looked like when in my hair. Which brings me back to my blogger friend, I bet he likes the New York scenes. That's how we first met...he found me due to my first New York trip stories.

Click here for more HNTs, and click the photo for a larger version. I welcome questions about what you see.

HNT #20: Festival

For four or five years my library system has held a Dia de los Ninos y Dia de los Libros. It began with just one library branch, now it is held on different days at four or five. This was the first year I happened to be working at a branch that holds the event. It took over the whole library (back in April) with face-painting, flower-making, photos with Curious George, food, and live music.

Curious George was quite popular, and I began to wonder if I would ever get my chance for a photo op. (On reflection, I realized I have never before had my photo taken with a storybook or Disney or other costumed character.) The poor volunteers needed to take frequent breaks because it is hot in there.

Finally, I got my moment...the Polaroid camera ran out of film, and I stepped in and asked a friend (who just happened to be nearby with her little boy) to take my picture with Curious George, using my camera. Just one photo, all we had time for before the volunteer returned with film and more kids lined up for their photos. Unfortunately, just one blurry photo. The kids glued their Polaroids to cards with a magnet for fridge posting. I'd helped my co-workers with the card prep. I also helped a little bit with the backdrop. The clouds and the sun are my handiwork.

That day I learned to make tissue paper flowers. It's so easy. I made a few while at the reference desk, gave a couple away.

Go here for everything HNT. It's the 2nd anniversary.

HNT #19: Peace work

Yesterday I was busy spreading the word about the June 2nd event I am working on. Many newspapers and tv stations have community calendars online. There are many other community calendars online that even more people go to, such as craigslist, or indymedia. I was surprised to find one tv station that long had a calendar, now doesn't, but just about every other local one now does. I also discovered any non-profit can get a 30-second on-air announcement on AM Northwest if we bring 15 people to their studio audience. Hmmm.

The ways in which we connect and spread the word are rapidly changing. Some people only operate through myspace: email, calendars, connecting, advertising. I made my BPF Portland myspace a little more appealing by adding some photos. (I refuse to add music or blinky-blink backgrounds though...I can't stand that about the myspace culture.) I dug this one out from the archives for this week's HNT. This was probably 2002. November, light Portland rain, I'm the peace sign next to the creator of the costume. We were trying to draw attention to a news conference that occurred a day or two before a big march and rally. This little mini march took us in front of the Federal Building.


I'll still be there for a big march, I'll still arrange a meditation vigil for the rally space, but at this point I wonder how much it helps. We are blacked out of the media. Remember March 17, 18? That was the anniversary of the Iraq war's beginning. Did you hear about it on national tv news? Hardly a blip. It might sound like I agree with Utne Reader, who has a cover story called Protest is Dead. Yes yes yada yada, I've been hearing that from the beginning. Arguments about how we can be more effective. I think they overlook 1. that there is a concerted propaganda effort to minimize our impact (and they further it by believing it) and 2. publicly recorded reaction or change in administrative policy is not necessarily a measure of our effectiveness.

They compare today with the civil rights movement. They assume that the media's ignoring of the big march is because we haven't been doing those same sort of things the civil rights movement is doing. Umm, not exactly. It is also a bit like comparing apples and oranges. We can't sit in at a lunch counter in our own town to directly stop Iraqi civilians from being blown up on the other side of the world. There are people here doing civil disobedience. People are getting arrested for merely attempting to talk to their own governmental representatives. That hardly makes the news either. It's not dramatic enough. It's not bloody enough, and somehow that translates into not brave enough.

No, the way I see that the peace movement is succeeding is that more people are 'converting.' Big marches are useful for bringing people into the fold, getting them hooked up with a social action group of their choice. This is how I've witnessed this work here in Portland for the last 5 years. It has certainly worked to get me involved. Now here I am furthering the work of peace by connecting people to people. It doesn't appear to be anti-war work at all, but it is. Some people are reluctant to get involved in something unless they feel they know you. It's a cultural thing. Some people have a view of pacifists that makes them reluctant to get out in the streets because they don't think it's peaceful enough. It's a cultural thing. Many people will come to a non-political festival in a park. It's a cultural thing. They must make a connection, must they not, between the pacifists who are organizing it, and the stereotypical view they might have of pacifists? It's all connected. It's all interconnected. And it is all about peace.

Utne Reader's Joseph Hart says, "The first step toward building a movement is getting people's attention, which is not easy." Umm, we have been, it's just been under the radar of the corporate news networks. I don't see that we've had a continuous peace movement for the past four decades...not one that had enough people involved. What the movement is doing now is creating new hippies, new peace-for-lifers. That is hardly ineffective.

HNT #18: Dirty Work

I've been busy lately with planning for Portland's summer Buddhist Festival, though that hasn't stopped me from watching too much TV, or reading too many blogs. I've added a bunch of books and library-related blogs to my bloglines, under the guise of "professional development." Librarians are interesting people, and it's easy to find more and more people to read and I myself write less and less.

MySpace seems to be the way to connect to younger people. Anybody interested in reaching teens and young adults needs to use MySpace, whether libraries or bands or activist groups. In the interest of promoting the Buddhist Festival in the Park, I created a MySpace page for BPF Portland. Within a week I got an inquiry about Buddhism in Portland. I guess Yahoo is just too old school.

Yesterday though I spent my time catching up with household chores. The toilet needed fixing. I installed a new flusher mechanism. Except for the uber-messy bits, I like putting together mechanical things. This was not as bad as the other messy chore I did yesterday...anybody who knows me I procrastinate from hell to high heaven over cleaning the filter media for my turtle's aquarium. ew ew ew. But, I care for my turtle and want it to live in a clean "pond," so I do it, eventually.

So the messiest thing about installing a new flusher mechanism, the old black rubber washers. Some kind of chemical reaction takes place so you get inky black goo all over. I could not get it all out of my fingernails. I missed the replacement of one: the cone washer in the water intake hose. This of course caused a leak and I drained the tank again, pulled out the brittle inky washer with a pliers, replaced it and connected it all again, and still it leaked, but just a little. I may be able to do these things on my own, but I still need the strength of a male hand for that final quarter turn that will close something up snug. Steve gave the final twist when he got home late last night.

Not feeling very naked lately, so here are the naked dirty nails from my busy day yesterday. Happy Half Nekkid Thursday.

HNT #17: Zen Studies

I have been busy catching up on my blog about Dharma School. Three lessons I've given from February to April 1st, and I hadn't written about any. I'm becoming better about taking photos. Mindful that Mom the Minx wanted to see the "sandbox photos," I snapped a few during the class. These are not my hands, but I realized this was perfect for Half Nekkid Thursday.

Mini Zen Garden

Sometimes I record the class so I can listen to write it up. Something about my hesitant cadence and soprano voice sometimes rubs people the wrong way, and they think I'm having an attitude where there is none. I can't hear it when speaking, but when I listen to myself recorded, I hear shades of prissiness and whininess. Some of that may be karmic ghosts of past lack of confidence, something that affects the timbre of my voice even though I may speak with confidence now. Some of that may simply be my soprano, sometimes girlish voice. Nothing I can do about that.

My Dharma School blog can be found here. The funny thing is, Steve just recently went back and read my stories and enjoyed my pictures. I'd told him about the blog but he hadn't had the time to look, and needed to google for it. More photos of the hands shaping sculpey are there, as well as some sweet photos of my cat stepping on a previous lesson's project to get to me.

(for more HNT see link on sidebar)

HNT #13: Tattoo

Cyberwarlock asked to see a better view of the tattoo. He clearly has a thing for Badtz Maru. Me too. Last week I didn't have time for HNT because I was busy writing about Buddhist sanghas. (see earlier posts) This week I've been busy thinking and writing about a vision for community networking.

Here's my lovely Prajnaparamita, when she was brand new. 2003? Follow that link for a blog post on my Sunday School lesson on Prajna Paramita. I showed the girls my tattoo, but I covered her boobs with a bandaid and joked I was making her rated PG for them. They thought it was funny.


Last week I did find time to see the Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt. Cyberwarlock has Egyptian tattoos, I was thinking of him and looked for his images. The exhibit featured "the largest selection of antiquities ever loaned by Egypt for exhibition in North America. It included objects that have never been on public display and many that have never been seen outside of Egypt." During the final days, tickets were sold out. As an art museum member, I still had to pay for tickets, but they were cheaper. As often happens, I waited till the last possible week to go, but fortunately I did buy the tickets in time. I so wanted to touch the carved stone pieces of the exhibit. They cried out to be touched, especially those that were originally gods in temples. People made offerings and touched them, rubbed away the hieroglyphs. I didn't touch. I'm a good girl that way, I obey the rules that make sense. It took Brent and me over 2 hours to go through the whole thing, we were tired. I wish I'd gone more than once.


I learned from the audio guide that women would be depicted as lighter-skinned than the men. This symbolized wealth, because it showed they did not have to spend their days laboring in the sun. I was reminded of my observation that all romance novels depict women as lighter-skinned than their dark handsome lover on the cover. If not lighter-skinned, the men are at least in shadow, so they're still darker. I wondered if this is a deeply ingrained collective memory for us humans. (In my years of working at the library, I have found only one exception to the rule.)

I saw what I thought was a necklace of gold cowrie shells. It had a diameter of about 6 inches. It was a belt. I know we modern wealthy humans are large, even the smallest of us, but it is startling to see.

The audio guide informed me that I would see images of the lotus featured frequently. For the Egyptians it is a symbol of regeneration. The narrator also said that it has been shown to have narcotic properties, and something about putting the cut stem in a bottle of wine. Hmmm. Made me wonder, is there a hidden history in Buddhism? The lotus features prominently as a symbol of enlightenment, they tell us because the bloom is so beautifully pristine even though it grows in muddy water. Because it grows in muddy water. Our lesson is that our wisdom, our pure enlightenment, needs the muddy water of this messy life. It's a good lesson. I've found it to be true. But now I wonder. While we have a precept warning against intoxicants, Buddhists also have a history of using stimulants to stay awake and meditate for long hours into the night. Green tea, anybody? (There's a whole nother conversation there...enlightenment, or braincrash?)

Notice Prajnaparamita is seated on a lotus. Most Buddha statues will be. Hey, I brought it back around to the topic of the .

HNT: Favorite of 2006

The good Os, founder of , set us the task of finding our favorite HNT from the past year, no matter how short or how long we have been joining the gang. Hands down, my Grandma wins. I get so much more pleasure from looking at her than at me. When I see her hair, I remember visiting her hairdresser with her at an age before I understood that her hair would naturally be grey but the hairdresser kept it dark. When I see her hand, I see her ring and I am reminded of her long comfortable relationship with my Grandpa, but that after his death she became her own person again, and she seemed to enjoy that. Her papery wrinkles remind me of the many years of my life she has blessed with her love. The old Vaseline jar reminds me of her house filled with large and small mementos of a life and a family, my family. I am reminded of how soon she will die, and her family...her daughters, her grandchildren (including me) will sort through the remains of her life, and how hard it will be to throw away such things, even as we say, "Ew."

But, if I have to pick one of myself, I would pick the one from the week of the Boobiethon. Meant to be a hint of the photos to be found there, I liked this cropping, as did other HNT folks:

Happy HNT all, and Happy New Year.

HNT #9: Tree Santa

I've always liked Os's peek-a-boo photo from behind the plant, so I took this one for the HNT theme of Christmas Trees. My father-in-law carves these goofy santas every year for his family. There's one where Santa is flying on a giant duck. On the um, err, tall and err, shapeless Santa he painted the names of all the recipients of the carvings that year. I fuzzed those out, don't want to volunteer other people's names for this half-nekkid thing. He carves somewhere around 20 a year, I'm not sure. He inspired his granddaughter to start carving.



Sometimes there are angels. I really like the snowman. Not so crazy about the egg-shaped Santa (not shown) that holds a stars-and-stripes decorated shield. I was trying to get more of my hair in this photo, but this was the best I could do. I like that the photo of my Buddha shows up in the background. That was taken for a local paper's article and people's home altars.



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HNT #8: Sleep Apnea and the View

I'm still watching The View after a month and a half. I understand the show's ratings have gone way up since Rosie O'Donnell joined the show. love her! My favorite part of the show is the Hot Topics section. Get any 4 women together around a table and a cup of coffee or tea, and will the talk not inevitably turn to sex in some way? More on that on The View, later.

I am more hooked on Rosie's blog. Towards the beginning of my reading it, a couple of her fans mentioned her snoring and urged her to get checked for sleep apnea. Rosie said she could never fall asleep in a clinic. Another fan mentioned she could get it done at home. So Rosie finally did that, and they covered it on the show. Indeed she has sleep apnea, and sounds just as buoyant and amazed at how good she feels as I did when I got my CPAP machine. Rosie and her doctor worked with the Sleep Doctor, a sleep expert on WebMD. He was able to hawk his book, Good Night. Rosie seemed to want to blame her weight for the sleep apnea (good grief) but he, the good doctor that he is, managed to squeeze in that people who aren't overweight have it too, and to convey that sleep apnea can cause weight issues. It can also cause death.

People who snore, especially loudly with a snort, must get that checked in a sleep clinic. Don't be embarrassed! Rosie talked about how she was embarrassed and wouldn't go to the doctor. Steve and I think too that because a person's brain is addled from sleep and oxygen deprivation, there is a weird denial that happens.

So here I am, showing my naked medically treated self at night, wearing my mask that blows air from my CPAP machine into my throat, keeping the airway open while I sleep. I call the notion of sleep without my CPAP "fake sleep" because when your airway closes, you never fall asleep deeply enough for REM sleep. Happy and well-rested HNT all!

HNT #7: Headed to Bed

Osbasso, creator of Half Nekkid Thursday, featured his fresh-out-of- Bed Head today. Mine is what the mirror sees as I get ready for bed, brushing my teeth, etc. No one else sees that, really, though some people might get a similar view for other reasons. See how my hair is in a braid? When I was younger I used to braid my hair to get it up off my neck when hot. Now I wind it up in a bun. Often while at work at the library the handiest hairstick is a pencil. (pencils work the best, too) How librarian-ish is that?

Now, I braid my hair just for bed. I have to, and have been doing so since I was about 18. My hair is a tangled mess in the morning if I don't. Sometimes I remember the show Little House on the Prairie when I do that. Ma Ingalls had her hair up in a bun during the day, and her very long hair in a braid at night.

HNT #6: Eyeglasses

I was feeling sort of narcissistic and silly about posting another HNT, but I clicked through the 122 HNTers before me, and I felt better about it. What is blogging but at times silly and narcissistic? Certainly some of my resistance may be because I feel like hiding a little, still licking my wounds a little. But, looking through the others, I am inspired to be silly and to come out of hiding.

I got new glasses this week. Another HNTer posted eyeglass pics here, so I thought, why not, we've got our mini-theme for the week. It took me a couple of days to get used to the ground appearing closer to my face. My vision took on that warpy feeling like when you're just starting to get tipsy. I could see individual leaves at the tops of trees. My prescription didn't change much, they say. In fact it's wobbled back and forth the last ten years. I've wondered if there's really been no change, and it just depended on how awake I was at the time of the vision test.

My frames have also wobbled back and forth for the last 5 years. You see, in 2002 I discovered rhinestones. I felt the need for a peace pin, being surrounded by so many flags on lapels, cars, windows, homes, etc. I found a rhinestone peace pin on ebay. Peace pins weren't easy to find at that time, apparently others had the same idea. The sparkle caught my eye in the mirror one day, and I had to get more. Who knew I had some crow in me, I don't really wear jewelry.

So then I found vintage unused frames on ebay, the first pair black. Two years later, the same seller still had some. The second pair same style but brown:



I figured he was going to run out soon, so I bid on another pair, black again, this one a quarter inch smaller. (I paid less than $25 for each unused frame.) Sometimes I think maybe I'll turn into one of those old ladies that still has her same eyeglass frames from the fifties, or the seventies. People won't be able to recognize me if I actually change my frames. Shouldn't I branch out, change my style? I work half-time in a library, and I would say at least a couple times a month somebody tells me, "I love your glasses." A couple more times a month, some stranger on the street says the same. So I keep them. I glanced around at the eyeglass shop. All the frames looked exactly alike. Who's going to say "I love your glasses" to that? Nobody notices the switch, black to brown, to black:



The first photo is cropped from this in my hotel in Flushing, Queens. Do I look sad, or just serious?



Felicityattheling with her artwork inspired me to start talking about it here. This is what I do, get emotionally naked. So often we humans carry around our despair, our unhappiness, our fears, our anxieties, all alone, and we think we're alone in our experience. In the past I hid from others and myself, this out of fear. I came out of hiding among the right people and in the right place, and that fear lost its grip on me. I resonated with Felicity's art: I too felt the fear of being alone. I felt what I thought was love, but really it kept me from loving fully. When I no longer was afraid to be alone, that is, when I had enough confidence and love in my own self, that fear no longer blocked my full loving potential.

Now, many years later, I love to love. Each new experience teaches me how I can love without expectation, without conditions. If violence begets violence, love can only beget more love. I have faith in that. So when I met someone in New York that seemed to have the possibility of a deeper connection, I couldn't turn away even though I am wary of long distance relationships. Well, I hadn't seen all I could see in NY either. And airfare was so cheap. So I went. And he spent some time with me, but he blew hot and cold. He would say he would meet me, and not show after all. That evening I had a choice, to become angry and bitter over being hurt, or keep my heart open to love. I chose love. The moment we met we touched something greater than either of us. I would not spoil that by closing off my heart. I wouldn't let him either. At the Polyween party, Darklady pointed out that people are skittish when encountering polyamory for the first time. I was forgetting while I wasn't completely trusting him, he is probably not trusting me either. She counseled patience.

The great thing, keeping my heart open, not closing off, I come home to my best sweetie with more love than ever.

HNT #3: boobiethon

It is half over already, but here's a hint of what I'm submitting to the boobiethon.

HNT #2: My Grandma

I missed last week because of my visit to my grandma, so this week she is the subject. I was poking around in the medicine cabinet that is inside the newly installed half-bath that is um, basically in the kitchen. There was just no good place to put a bathroom on the main floor, and it's getting more difficult for Grandma to go up and down the stairs. Incidentally, the medicine cabinet is the same as was always there. Grandpa installed a second sink on the other side of the kitchen sink, and above that sink there has always been this medicine cabinet with a deep storage closet behind it. Grandma would climb up on the sink to get at the stuff in there, such as booze or flower vases. The contractors removed the sink, put in a toilet, a wall behind the kitchen sink, and a plastic accordion-fold door with magnet latch. I found this ancient glass jar of Vaseline in the medicine cabinet, and thought it would be goofy to take a photo of Grandma with her antique Vaseline. She blithely contined to read her paper.

I can't say that I have any bad memories associated with my grandparents. My sweetie Steve sometimes remarks I always seem to have bad stories to tell about my childhood. Not when it comes to my grandparents. My mother's husband once complained that we kids always escaped to the grandparents. Wait, stop. I wasn't going to share a negative story. (Two just reared their ugly heads.)

Of course there is the embarrassing story where I was 3 or 4 years old and there was some big family gathering. My grandpa got a pool table for his basement, and all the menfolk were downstairs in the basement, us kids buzzing around them and playing at bowling with the plastic bowling ball and pins. Those red and white chairs may very well have been lined up, and people helped themselves to Red White and Blue or Pabst Blue Ribbon in the fridge behind the bar. I loved the hand-cranked foghorn AhOOOOGAAHH. At some point one of the dads would have to tell us to knock it off. (You think kid's toys are noisy. Hah. ...Grandma sold that, sadly.) So, the embarrassing moment.

An odd thing about this house, no bathroom on the first floor til recently. There is a closet with a toilet in the basement, and a full bath on the second floor. Hmmm. Wonder where the outhouse was back when the place was built in the 1800s. I found out recently that when they moved in, my grandpa put that basement toilet in and fashioned the closet. I latched myself in to pee, and no sooner than I did, some uncle or second cousin knocked on the door and said he had to go. I thought it'd be funny to make him wait, so I stood up on the toilet and giggled while he said, "Come on out, Heidi." I was too little to understand that he was drinking and he really really had to pee. Giggling away, I peed my pants. I guess it hadn't been that long since I'd learned how to use the toilet, but I didn't remember that. Subdued, I climbed off the toilet seat lid, unlatched the door, and meekly snuck away. Upstairs in the kitchen all the women were doing womanly things like packing up or putting out food, washing, drying dishes, etc. I soon realized no one was noticing I peed my pants. After a bit it dried and I thought that was the end, but the next morning I woke up with a horrible rash. Mom asked what happened, and embarrassed again I told her about playing the joke and peeing my pants. She told me I should've said something, she could have washed me off! I was surprised that her reaction didn't match up with my embarrassment. She just considered it an accident, while I thought I'd been an idiot.