Dream of the Dragon

A fresh start

2011-12-05T20:36:00.000-08:00

So it's been quite some time since my last, worthwhile, post. Oh, sure — I've bitched and ranted and been derisively sarcastic and moody a few times since then, but I've deleted those posts as pointless in the end.

Yeah, life's a bitch sometimes. Hell, it's a bitch rather more frequently than is really necessary, I think. And yeah, all my disgusts and angers are usually justified as easily avoidable annoyances or legitimate dangers to my direct physical well-being.

So?

I'm done with reacting to such things in a way that lingers. Sure, spur-of-the-moment cuss words will fly, especially when someone almost kills me on the freeway because either a) they're drunk, b) they're too impatient to wait literally two more seconds for me to fly by and thus make their turning across the freeway a safe venture, or c) both. You bet your ass I'll cuss then. But.

But, that will be the end of it. As my heart slows, so long as I don't need to change my pants, it's over. Yes, that person is a moron. No, they probably don't realize it (because they're a moron), and probably aren't even thinking of the near-destruction they just caused (because their brain is too small to account for more than a two-second memory span, which may account for their error in judgement). So, if they aren't giving me and my racing heart and possibly soiled panties any thought, why should I waste any more thought or emotion on them? They're clueless; they most likely won't live much longer and thus will negatively affect the world less.

I, on the other hand, plan to live long, and damnit, I plan to live well. This means being actively in control of my happiness and my physical and emotional well-being.

For those of you who may being thinking, "Oh crap, it's another one of those new-agey, mumbo-jumbo, happy-go-lucky and let's all be friends weirdos," you are obviously new to my blog. This is understandable; I haven't actively written in a few years, and didn't exactly have a huge, religious following before. However, should you care to take a glance at even a few of my older posts, you will note a most definitely non-happy-go-lucky vibe.

The long and short of it is, I'm tired of bitching, no matter how justified it may be. I already have intensely negative thoughts in my head — why give them more oomph, more power, more reality and impact, by concentrating on them further by writing them out? That only fuels my anger because believe it or not, I'm one of those sick and twisted people who kind of likes being angry. It makes me feel a little bit powerful, but only in my own head, where of course everything I would say is always perfect and right, and no one dares to talk back. In actual confrontation, it's a bitch and confusing and humiliating and not at all the way it goes in my head — it's just generally shitty, leaving me to feel even worse than I would if I'd kept my anger to myself.

So, I'm done with it. I'll think the thoughts that are bound to come roaring to the front when bullshit arises, and then I'll let them go and move on.

Now, some of you may say that anger is in fact a good thing, and healthy. To an extent, I agree. It means you know what you will and won't put up with, you know what you consider right and wrong, and you are strong in those convictions. Sure. However, it can also be blinding, and worse, it can be addicting, detracting from the rest of everyday life and thus shadowing other, just as healthy and empowering emotions that are just as necessary to one's development and direction in life.

I don't like fantasizing about angry situations and all the things I could say and do in my anger that would prove me indisputably right and in control. I don't like thinking of all the bad things that could happen, or could have happened and what my angry reactions could be or could have been. I don't like liking the thoughts these fantasies bring.

And that's where I've been for about a year or so now. Angry, liking it, fantasizing about it, not liking that, getting angry about that, fantasizing more. I have been, in my head, a vengeful albeit-justice oriented vigilante, delivering razor-sharp, witty, cunning, hurtful truths about any number of things. I've been smooth, fierce, even a martial-arts expert.

I've been living in my head a dream that in reality would crush me. I don't actually want to hurt anyone's feelings, and this becomes painfully obvious in confrontations. I don't actually want to be some smooth-talking, suave but heartless heroine, and this becomes painfully obvious in my attempts to make clear my messages so that I don't hurt anyone's feelings. OK, I might actually want to get physically violent with some people, but only really with the true monsters — the Hitler types, the Phillip Garrido types, the "let's torture kittens just to feel powerful" types. Them, I could do awful things to. The idiot who damn-near T-bones me at an intersection where they should be lawfully (and just in keeping with common sense) stopped and waiting? Not so much. Sure, I'd probably hit something in frustration, but it would more likely be my own steering wheel or dashboard than their face. And the physical pain that would bring would just make me feel ridiculous and small and dumb and in pain, which I'm not fond of.

Essentially, I've not been me in my own head, and that's a whole new level of disturbing. I want me back.

I want to dream real, night-time dreams: of flying, of sneaking through haunted houses, of walking through fairy-haunted woods and swimming leviathan-haunted, alien-haunted lakes. I want to day-dream of my wedding, of taking up new hobbies, of all the awesome things I could be drawing. I want to convince myself to take a painting class (because I'm way better at drawing than at painting, always have been). I want to write poetry again. I actually have the beginnings of some sort of fun-promising poem in my head:

"Dark down deep below the Gr'Lambrollwhelks,
Whose foaming eyes seek shelter in the mud,
There lives a ..."

A what? I don't know. What's a Gr'Lambrollwhelk? I don't know, but I think it's kind of fish-like, without actually being a fish, and it's ancient, and magical, and perhaps — yes! — shrouded in mystery and whispered legends. Oh. And, despite (or perhaps due to) living in salt water, it has foaming eyes. I'm thinking white foam, maybe slightly phosphorescent. Kind of gross, I know, but I can't get the imagery out of my head. How do you pronounce Gr'Lambrollwhelk? "Gruh•Lamm•Brole•Welk." Where did I come up with it? Beats the hell of me. Perhaps it's my muse's wacky way of luring me back into words.

It's working.

On top of just being plain old sick and tired of being sick and tired of hearing myself bitch, my anger and anxiety has begun to affect my health in ways I can no longer ignore. Heart problems run in my family, and lately I've had issues with a tight chest and too-rapid heartbeat when stress is consistently high. And oh wow, has it been high lately (very ill family and many ER trips will do that to a person).There's no panic involved and I can breathe just fine, so I'm hesitant to chalk it up to a panic attack, which has been suggested by others ... though I've never had one, so I suppose that could be it. But, I mean, don't you have to feel panicky for a panic attack? This is just a weird heart thing.

OK and for the record yes, I know I should see my doctor about it if I really do think it's a heart thing. The thing is, heart or panic or whatever, it's most definitely stress-related, and I think if I can actively work to lower my stress it will resolve itself. After all, it's new, and seems to follow my stress, only having occurred a handful of times and only at my most stressed out, anxious moments.

So, I've been enjoying a much healthier diet (I'll blog about juicing soon), and am working on reducing my anger reactions and reaction times. It's already helped me with a clearer head and more positive (slight, but persistent) outlook, and energy — which makes me feel good no matter how crappy a day may be.

If you're worried and thinking of giving me a little lecture about the heart thing, don't worry. Despite my fantasies I'm actually a very level-headed person and I try to be smart. I'll give a better diet, exercise and lowering my stress a couple of weeks, and (unless external family-illness circumstances get worse) if the tightness and rapid heartbeat don't stop, or get worse, I promise I'll go see my doctor. I may not be a genius, but I'm not dumb. Generally. I just don't want to waste money and time on something I may be able to positively affect and resolve on my own, but I'm open to the possibility that I may not be able to. So, heart stuff stops and I'm all good. Heart stuff continues, I'll dish out the cash and run the gamut of heart-tests.

Here's to hoping that I can actively lower my stress and my anger reactions, and allow myself to be a hopeless, head-in-the-clouds-in-a-good-way dreamer again. I think I hear a pad of paper and a pencil calling ...

Fetch boy, fetch!

2009-01-26T12:52:00.000-08:00

Am I really so much of a geek that upon seeing this fish training kit on thinkgeek.com, my heart fluttered and I excitedly looked over at my betta fish, Zaphod, here at work, thinking, "This will give him something to do all day!"? Am I really so much of a geek that I actually want to buy this silly little kit and teach Zaphod to play soccer?

Yes. Yes I am.

If this momentary geekasm actually turns into me getting the kit and wasting valuable company time in fish training, I promise I'll record the results and post them on YouTube.

Cubicle Warfare

2009-01-19T09:28:00.000-08:00

It is considerably noisier in my new cubicle at work.

I'm actually in a cubicle now, by the way. I'd always just had a desk, or two desks together, before, in a much quieter, more peaceful area of the building. Now I get to listen to three different police scanners - one right next to me - reporters and editors talking on the phone, ad reps on the phone, and editors discussing stories and photos with reporters and photographers, and the photo editor is right next to me, too. And I get to listen to all the way too loud talkers I had always loved being far away from before.

This is the biggest change that has taken place at work lately. So many people from all departments have been let go that there was a lot of empty space, unused desks, in the editorial department, right in the very open middle of the building. Even having shut down the office of one of our sister newspapers and having moved all those reporters, photographers, and ad reps into our building, there was a lot of space, and a lot of unused equipment to deal with. The place looks like hell, with desks, chairs, filing cabinets, light boards and innumerable baskets and trays for organization scattered and piled everywhere.

In order to store all of said junk and to make the daily going-on more efficient (see: my boss and I are now babysitting the editors, who refuse to do their jobs unless we do), the production and graphics department was just moved out of the room that the production department had been in for nearly twenty years, and which the graphics department was just moved to. We were moved out into the half-full editorial department, which, even at only half full, was not big enough for all of us to cram into along with all of our various tables and boards and printers and such.

We're all in cubicle-quads now, and scrambling to find space to organize or even just to set papers down without getting different piles mixed up and important things lost. Our Editor, the head honcho below the Publisher, is showing his usual dumbass qualities in bitching about the fact that there is now a filing cabinet where he used to stand and lean on the cubicle partition to talk to the photo editor. That cabinet has to go, he says, because leaning on that partition is "you know, part of the whole thing, we have to be able to do it."

Never mind the fact that the cabinet is being used by the graphics person who now has her desk there, and so needs it, and there's no where else to put it. Never mind the fact that the dumbass could just stand up straight and talk to the photo editor, just one small foot back from where he's used to standing. Never mind the fact that in his walled-in little "office" in the corner of the editorial area, his space has not been affected at all by this move.

Yesterday when he was bitching about the cabinet, I not-so-diplomatically but nonetheless calmly told him, "Ya know, Mike, everyone else has had to make adjustments with this move. You need to do that, too."

He mumbled something along the lines of "well ... yeah," looked down and fidgeted a bit, then walked away.

Right after I finished warning my boss this morning of that little bitch-fest, Mike walked by, slowed down and fidgeted as he looked at the cabinet, paused as if he were going to say something, then continued on to his desk when he saw my boss and I calmly watching him, waiting.

I doubt he'll mention it again, but if he does, I'm ready to list off all the huge changes and sacrifices we had to make to get here, what we can no longer do - things which aren't luxuries like leaning but actual necessities we'll have to now live without - and calmly tell him it's easily half his own damned fault for not doing his job and causing us to be late all the time and to put out a crappy excuse for a decent newspaper. If he'd pulled his head out years ago, efficiency wouldn't have been one of the issues leading to this move. Storage space could have been found somewhere other than our old department, and he could lean on partitions to his heart's content.

And I will pull no punches. I'm tired of this place and easily half of the people left, and he's the Big Bad Number One on my shit list. He has been for years, and I'm tired of being a nice, sweet little worker who doesn't make waves. Because this place needs to be shaken up. The shaking-up is happening, but we're not seeing much effect yet other than bitching by people who haven't had to move or sacrifice but who suddenly are unable to lean.

I'm too tired to be angry. I'm just disgusted. And the increased noise doesn't help, especially from those individuals who like to bitch and fret at the top of their lungs all day long (and who, not surprisingly, are some of the dumbest ones here). I've set up and decorated my little area as nicely and warmly as I can, to make it as comfortable as possible. I've even got twinkling christmas lights up.

If I can't have general peace and quiet, and I can't have some of the space I used to have and still really need, at least I'll have a nice looking and nice feeling cubicle to slave away in.

My area looks just as nice and sweet and inviting as it ever did in the old room. I still smile and try my best to get things done properly and on time. But the shiny smile, like the twinkling lights, is a lie. If anyone oversteps their bounds under the tired and never correct excuse of "this is the way it's always been," they will see the abrupt, no-nonsense side of me that doesn't put up with bullshit. I have a feeling there will be quite a few shocked people wondering what happened to the old me in the next few weeks, but the truth of it is, this practical side is nothing new. I just didn't need to show it before because we had our own space. We had enough space.

Now we're in the pit, and I'm ready - eager, even - for blood.

I think, once I have a few bucks to spend, I will finally order some of the cubicle warfare toys from thinkgeek.com. Maybe I'll try to catapult mini marshmallows into the Editor's cubicle office. I'm in the exact opposite corner from him - it would be a worthy feat, I think.

"Grown-up-ism"

2009-01-02T21:37:00.000-08:00

I know it sounds kinda funny - it does to me, anyway - but sometimes I wonder when I'll finally be a "grown-up."

I'm 27. And a half. But I see other 26, 27, 28 and even 29-year-olds around me everyday, and they don't seem grown up to me, but more like relentless, overgrown teens playing dress up. Maybe it's the maturity level of the individuals themselves, their decisions and reactions and apparent morals (or lack of them). Maybe if I knew more people, I'd realize not all late-20's people are still dumb as rocks.

Maybe not. Those I've always considered "grown-ups" have been older than me by at least five years. Always. At 22, I thought I'd be one of the "grown" ones by now, but I still feel awkward and stumbly and sometimes teenage-ish, with a twist of real life experience to make me shut up and think before speaking and acting (definately not a normal teenage quality, so maybe that says something).

Maybe my idea of grown-up is needs an "l" at the end of it. I think of grown-ups as being in control even in the worst of situations, cool and calm and able to handle anything. And if something so awful comes up that they can't fix it, they roll with the punches with dignity, without freaking out. Grown-ups have always been, I guess, stereotypical heroes to me, and I wonder when and if I'll ever become one, or if what I'm thinking now and realizing as each year passes is that this is what being "grown-up" is. Worrying. Wondering. Planning. Hoping. Worrying some more. Freaking out, and not where no one will notice.

And rolling with the punches not because it's suave and dignified and a symbol of strength, but because there is nothing else to do. Because life rolls, and tumbles, and falls apart and rebuilds into harrowing dark ruins of unfamiliar and unpredictable twists and turns and pitfalls and closing doors.

Maybe, at 27 and a helluva lot wiser - if not exactly smarter - than I was at 22, I am a grown-up. Maybe the ideal I held hand in hand with the title is just a dream, or maybe not and I can still attain it, or some semblance of it.

I tell myself that once I graduate, once I get my bachelor's and then my master's degree, I'll feel like a grown-up. That my golden ticket to that elite hall of cool-headed gods is a piece of paper that will grant me financial stability.

I tell myself money will make me feel better.

Honestly- it will help tremendously with decreasing my stress level, as money (or rather, the lack of enough of it) has been the bane of my existence for the past few years. Not having to worry so much about making it through another month will certainly grant me a level of cool-headed calm.

But it won't make me an adult. It won't grant me maturity and the wisdom to make the right decisions, be they easy or difficult.

In those fields, somedays I feel wizened, ancient. Other days I'm just another bumbling 14-year-old, bewildered at why I can't have my way because it seems so simple, really ... and angry that I have to act my age.

I doubt that money will change that, so I try to ignore that fact that had I stuck with the two-class-per-term schedule, and never taken any breaks, I'd have received my bachelor's degree at the beginning of November, and would be working on my master's degree right now. I try to ignore the sting of putting off my wedding to an now-unknown year because I don't know anymore when I will finally be done with school, bachelor's and master's degrees in hand. I try to think of something other than the fact that the bachelor's degree will no longer be my birthday present to myself this year.

I focus on bills which make me cringe and sometimes cry when no one's looking. I focus on dishes that pile up again before two full loads are clean. I focus on picking cat hair off of clothes and sheets, because it works as much as a distraction as a helpful bit of cleaning. I worry about possible leaks in the bathroom and on how high our heating bill will be in light of the very badly insulated living room, which was an add-on to the house's original structure. I focus on trying to form cohesive, meaningful sentences to string together into posts here - again as much of a distraction as an interaction - and then grumble when nothing comes together well enough to be released, and seen.

And I think sometimes that I really hope this isn't what being grown-up is like. I hope that I'm in a sort-of half stage of trying very hard - and making progress - but still missing some all-important something that will make all the difference when I finally figure it out.

In fourth grade, I met my favorite teacher, the one who most influenced my life in school - the one who stood out from the rest and earned a place forever in my heart. Her name was Miss Jackson, and she insisted we call her Miss J. She told stories of her youth and her dreams and her projects at home and her vacations. She sang songs to us and with us, made games out of math (we loved "Fourth Grade Feud") and took us on field trips too numerous to count, to places that really mattered and made us sit up and take notice.

She made us laugh, and at the end of the year on the last day of school, when she cried because we'd be moving on without her, we cried, too.

Miss J turned 27 that year.

She was mortified.

As she bemoaned becoming "so old" and still not even being married or with any kids of her own, we sat there puzzled and bemused.

Old? At 27? Was she crazy?

27 wasn't old. 90 was old. 100 was old. 27 was grown-up, but still very young. We knew she still had many long happy years ahead of her, and couldn't understand what the fuss was all about. She wasn't old.

We told her as much, and she laughed and thanked us but I don't think she believed us.

Now, 20 years later, I think I understand her.

She wasn't feeling age itself, I think, but rather the passage of time in relation to milestone achievements in life - love, marriage, her own home, raising a family. She didn't even have a boyfriend (something we never could understand, because she was one helluva catch, we knew, and any man lucky enough to turn her head would have been blessed the rest of his life). She knew, I think, that it wasn't age but the lack of seeming age-related accomplishments and titles and behaviors that began to weigh on her that year.

My best friend is working on her master's thesis.

The girl who used to be my other best friend, the third of our trio, has been married, has a child, and will be married again soon. Another close friend from my first run through college is married, with a kid.

Hell. My boss - who is a few years younger than me - is already married and owns his own house. He was married and a homeowner before I even met Matt.

Another close friend - like a big brother to me - despite having not graduated high school or college, has enough job experience and social connections that he will never want for a job (or three) or a place to live any where he goes.

Even my ex-con younger half-sister moved out of the house, got a job, and got her license years before I did. Never mind the fact that she's been in and out of prison ever since.

I guess I feel like I should be a grown-up by now, by the standards I held in my ideals of "grown-up-ism" all my life. I should have had my bachelor's degree years ago, and should be almost done with or even have my master's degree now. I should at least be renting a full, reasonably-sized house, if not owning one by now. I should have a job that means something to me, that is actually turning into a career, rather than loathing and fearing for the one I have. I should have the option to go out and get married next weekend if the fancy strikes me, rather than being forced to wait indefinately until I'm done with school because being married will kill my chances of any financial aid, which I need. Not that I'm looking to have kids anytime soon (if ever), but I should have the financial stability to be able to take on that responsibility if I chose to, or if (god forbid and knock on wood and all that) the pills I've been on for years fail me and we get a "joyous surprise."

I should have the stability and control that I always thought would come with being a grown-up, if I am a grown-up, right? I shouldn't have to wonder and worry and dread checking the mail and cringe over buying shampoo and conditioner. I shouldn't have to let the "check engine" light stay on in the Jeep indefinately after it's having been on for easily four months now, because we can't afford to even have the problem thoroughly diagnosed, much less fixed.

I should be able to show the world the same bright, cheerful and ever happy face that Miss J did, rather than hiding fear and stress with a small, shy smile while I look to the side, not daring to meet another's eyes for fear of giving my darkness away.

If I am grown-up, I should feel like it, right? Or is this really what it feels like no matter how old or experienced one gets?

Maybe the calm cool-headedness I always saw in others was just a well-honed mask like my eyeless smile. Maybe being grown-up is all about smiling through the dark, beause at least you have that much left that's yours, that you can control. Maybe rolling with the punches serves as much as a distraction as a reasonable reaction.

I begin 2009 unsure of where I stand and where I'll stand six months from now, but certain strangely and inexplicably that it will be more stable than where I've been the last few years. I don't know if I'm a grown-up yet, or if I ever will be, but I'll try to meet the eyes I smile at, calm in the tumult and graceful in the rolling. I'll try not to think about time and timelines and milestones. I'll try to think as much about today as tomorrow. I'll try to learn from my inner bumbling 14-year-old as much as from my inner 6-year-old and that haunting, ancient soul I sometimes feel peeking through, wise and tired and peaceful.

I'll try to enact the everyday life lessons that Miss J taught me 20 years ago, when she was my age and a symbol of a happy and successful journey through life.

I'll try, and maybe I'll figure it out.

Good fortune to you all in this new year. And good learning to me.

All's well

2008-12-16T12:33:00.000-08:00

I don't have breast cancer.

Just a cyst, which was gone by the time I had my follow-up appointment with my doctor. Needless to say, I was relieved.

And I zipped over to the nearest coffee shop I could find after leaving the doc's office and quickly quelled the week-long angsty headache that had gripped me, screaming for caffeine. The good thing is, I don't need as much of the damn stuff to wake up now, nor to stay awake, but really I'd have rather just avoided that whole "let's see what happens when we make the caffeine fiend go decaf for a week" experiment.

Between that scare, the lack of caffeine, and the increasingly stressful and uncertain situation at work, I decided I need some time off from school to get my head straight and relax. I was doing pretty good in this class, but leaving everything until the last minute, and I wasn't retaining what I was learning. So I'll be retaking this class when I go back in February. Till then, I'm not even gonna think about it. I'm just gonna relax and see how the work stuff pans out.

And make Snickerdoodles. Lots of 'em.

Happy holidays, all.

Fondled (by a machine!)

2008-12-10T19:06:00.000-08:00

I have been officially inducted into the world of mammograms and all the fun worry that accompanies them. Oh, joy.

I had my yearly physical last Friday, and my doctor found a lump in my left breast. She quickly assuredme it was probably nothing - most likely, in fact, just a result of all of the caffiene I've had lately - but said I'd need a mammogram and ultrasound to check it out.

Oh yeah, and no caffiene for a week until I go back to see her again this Friday for test results and follow up exam to see if the lump is still there.

The mammogram wasn't so bad, aside from having another woman fondling me in places I don't particularly want just anyone to fondle. The squishing wasn't horrible, just weird.

And from what I gathered from the tech who took the pictures, there might not have been anything found with the mammogram (I have yet to get official results, so that could be wrong, but she seemed to be srtuggling and squinting to find anything at the time).

The ultrasound, however, found one black blob that I know about for sure, because by that time I'd gotten bored staring at the ceiling and so craned my neck aroudn to watch the screen. This dark spot (a lump, I'm guessing) was located, however, in a different place than where my doctor had found the original lump, which is ... disconcerting ... I belive this was the second dark lump/spot found with the ultrasound, however, because while I was still staring at the ceiling before that, the ultrasound tech had paused and clicked and tapped on the keyboard in much the same manner near where the original lump had been found.

So I might have two lumps. Maybe more? I tried not to pay attention until I got bored and had to see what was going on on the screen. I mean, it's not like I was thrilled to be there, ya know?

Sigh.

I have told myself repeatedly, "I'm not going to freak out. It's probably going to be just fine. This kind of thing runs in the family. Lumps (cysts) are apparently common for my age anyway. I'm NOT going to freak out."

And so far I haven't. But I have been pretty put-out and a bit depressed, and no matter how much I rationalize and read soothing things about breakthroughs, I've been worried, too. Not full-on, wringin my hands worried, but just that general unease taht tickles the back of yoru brain constantly, just beyond reach but there enough to taunt you and make you shiver a bit and turn away.

I don't feel particularly peppy right now. I'm not scared at this point - at this point there's nothing to actually be scared of - but I'm leery and dark and sluggish and unable to really concentrate on anything. Which is bad because I had an internal deadline for my group project today, which I will be missing to turn in my part tomorrow. It's not a bad thing, per se; the group can easily wait one day to review and comment on my presentation, which is the actual "group" part of the project, with plenty of time to spare even if I turned it in Friday instead of tomorrow, but I still feel bad about missing the deadline. They want to finish this damn project early and I don't blame them - I do, too.

And that just makes me feel a bit cruddier. I haven't been very into this class this term, focusing too much on work instead. I'm lucky this has been so far a fairly easy class, or at least a subject that comes naturally to me. I've gotten all A's except for one B+ (which would have been an A but I turned the assignment in one day late and so suffered a 5% mark down), and my intructor leaves comments as to how exceptional my work is. Makes me feel good, but I keep feeling like I don't deserve the grades, because I'm putting everything off till the last minute.

I need some good news on Friday. Or at least promising news, even if I have to get cut up for further inspection. I can handle being cut up. I can handle a not-so-great diagnosis, even, because it's not the end of the world these days like it used to be.

It's the waiting that's wearing on me. It's the not knowing, one way or another, what's going to happen next.

Sigh.

Kitteh-Zombeh Cheeks (no exploding spiders this time)

2008-11-12T20:47:00.000-08:00

Remember my long-ago post (in fact I think it was just about a year ago) about Matt's blocked salivary gland, complete with warning to would-be spider smashers to always use a smashing device larger than the body of the spider to be smashed?

Well, now Goblin's the one with a swollen cheek that looks like it's about to burst and wriggle out tentacles or some such.

His swelling is not a blocked salivary gland, however. It's swollen glands along the edges of the corners of his upper lips, swollen so horribly as an overreaction to something. To what? Beats me. Like blocked salivary glands in humans, it's apparently fairly common, and not too terribly worrisome, mostly.

This happened to him once before, in late August, and when I took him to the vet for it then he got a steroid shot that cleared it up completely within about two days. This was good. What is bad is that cats generally can only handle four of said steroids shots in one year before those same steroids start messing with their systems, giving them diabetes and other nasty conditions. Since his shot for the first time this happened was only a short two months ago, I was a wee bit worried about having him need another so soon. What if this kept coming back, and he reached the four-shot limit for the year and then it came back again? What then?

When I took him back to the vet today, she expressed this same concern even before I could (she's good). So instead of a shot, Goblin's on similar steroid pills (lower dosage, but still kinda up there). One pill twice a day for the first five days, then one a day for the next five, then one every other day and at that point I need to try to cut the dosage - by halving the pills, and possibly even skipping two days between, until either he doesn't need them anymore or we find the lowest dosage needed to keep his lips normal cat size and shape. The hope of course is that he will not need to stay on them forever, but the vet said that if for whatever reason he does, the pills are not likely to do damage the way the shots would have. Apparently these same pills are given to cats with asthma, who need to take them daily, and there are (usually) few ill side effects, if any at all.

So, I feel better about the pills. Even if he starts lifting weights and meowing in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice (heh, heh, funny mental image), I'm ok with it so long as the poor lil' guy can rub his poor lil face against things without suddenly stopping and squeezing his eyes shut because it hurts.

And, giving him the pills is not a horrible, dangerous feat (how many of you have seen that viral e-mail "How to Pill a Cat" that keeps popping up and no matter how many times you see it, still makes you laugh so hard you're afraid you're going to pee yourself?), thanks to the fact that he loves to eat, period, and the pills can be easily hidden in a glob of wet cat food. He just scarfs the glob right down, either unaware that there's a nasty yucky little pill in it, or not caring because dude, it's food! So I won't be blogging anytime soon about my harrowing experiences with bullet-fast spit out pills and claw marks that will forever scar me, and I'm pretty sure I'm cool with that.

Right now he's curled up on the couch beside me, sleeping kitteh-zombeh sleeps and occasionally twitching. After his two pills today, his cheek is noticeably less swollen already, and about two hours ago he actually rubbed his face (the less-swollen side, anyway) against my hand without stopping from pain. Sweet lil' bugger, he is, at least when he's not living up to his name.

So my heart is happier knowing I won't have to worry about shots for him that can do harm, and knowing that, just like the shot, these pills are clearing up his adverse reaction to whatever is is really fast.

In other news, Matt is out of town working on music and various odd jobs with a friend up in Northern-Northern California, and I miss him. He's been gone since last Thursday, and won't be back till sometime next week. This is, by far, the longest we've been away from each other since we met. No, really, It's weird. He's become such a part of my life that while I have enjoyed the silence to catch up on some reading, I find myself more often than not restless, pacing the house because I'm bored and have no one to talk to or at least be bored with. Goblin has been doing his part to make me feel better, sleeping either between my knees or on the pillow above my head most nights.

And I finally got my last grade for the class I just finished. All A's, baby! And next week it's on to the next one ...

Grumble-worthy news: Sacred 2: Fallen Angel was released Tuesday, and supposedly shipped out to stores that day. Due to the holiday, however (and btw thank you vets and currently-active soldiers! You rock!), there was no mail service that day, so while I was originally supposed to pick the game up today, I have to wait ... one ... more ... day ... *gasp, shudder*

Oh, the agony. I'm sure I'll live, but it won't be a happy living. It will be a loooong 24 (maybe even 48 - oh, the horror!) hours till I get my grimy lil' paws on it and promptly spend most of the weekend glued to the computer ...

A tiny burst of creativity.

2008-11-05T16:32:00.001-08:00

Yes. We can.

2008-11-04T07:24:00.001-08:00

Aaaaahhhh! And Yes! We! Did!

Whooo!

Meme for whomever wishes to waste some time.

2008-11-03T16:28:00.000-08:00

Are you taller than your mom?
I think we're about the same height.

Have you ever been on a blind date?
Nope. Never trusted my friends' judgement on who my Mr. Right might be lol

Have you ever peed while on the phone ?
No. Well, ok, yes, sorta. I mean it was a really important call I was waiting for so I took my cell into the bathroom, and of course the call arrived right at the worst moment. I "held it" and ended the call as quickly as possible, but was getting a bit desperate toward the end. It's kinda hard to do the pee-pee dance while actually sitting on the pot.

What do you have pierced on you?
Earlobes, once, and right nostril. Considerably more conservative than a few years ago.

What do you have tattooed on you?
A koi on my right arm, a horned viper on my left, "So" on my left wrist and "Ha" on my right ("So, Ha" is a meditation), Eyes of the Buddha on my right inner forearm, dragon on my chest, two dragons on my back, a dragon on my left leg (inner calf), and the bust of a unicorn on my right hip. I did the last two myself with a disposable insulin syringe and india ink in my first run through college years ago. And they did not get infected.

When is the last time you saw fireworks?
4th of July, at the El Dorado County Fairgrounds.

Do you remember your first favorite song?
Ah gods, yes. And no, you're not allowed to laugh. "I Swear" by All 4 One.

Favorite fruit?
Blackberries.

Vegetable?
Corn! On the cob! Raw!

What was your first screen name?
Shimmer, way back when AOL was cool n' stuff, and I snuck into "Teen Chat" even though I was only actually 12.

What are you planning on doing after filling this out?
Well, I should get started on the assignment that was due tonight but that I didn't do because I was glued to the TV watching the election updates (omgYAY!1OBAMA!!1!), but after a very long past week and a half at work combined withthe victory shot of Gentleman Jack I'm sipping now (omgYAY!1OBAMA!!1!), it is entirely likely I'll just go to bed instead and whip out a kick ass paper tomorrow.

Do you sleep on your stomach?
Only when I've just had more work done on the tattoo on my back, which means rarely. And then, not so well.

Are you dating the last person you kissed?
I'm engaged to him! :D

Have you ever broken someone's heart?
My ex said I did (even though he broke up with me), but after much wise thought I've come to the conclusion that he never really new his heart in the first place, so I couldn't break something that was never really given in the first place. And, well, he broke up with me. Out of the blue. Because the two times per year we saw each other took up too much ofhis time which could be much better spent getting shitfaced and fighting in bars. *eye roll*

What are you listening to?
Keyboard taps and our upstairs neighbors taking a shower.

Next time you will kiss someone?
Probably as soon as I finish this survey.

Have you ever injected a drug?
Myself? No. But the anesthetic that the dentist injected into me when I got my wisdom teeth removed about 8 or 9 years ago was fucking awesome. I (literally - no, really I swear) became one with the chair as I melted down into it in a very slow, Nirvana-like blink.

When was the last time you felt like your heart was actually breaking?
'Member that ex I just bitched about? Yeah. I was young and naive and it was my "First Love" and I had not yet gotten to the "wise thought" stage yet.

Do you get along better with the same sex or opposite?
Generally, the opposite, likely from long, fun childhood years of being a tomboy. Who wants to play dress up when you can climb trees and scare the shit out of each other with dares to walk - slowly - through basements you just know are haunted?

Have you ever kissed someone whose name started with a Z?
No, though I did have ahuge crush on a Z-named person in Jr. High and so would have kissed him, given the chance.

What is something you disliked about your day?
Ya know, despite work and school and finances and stuff, today fucking rocked.(omgYAY!1OBAMA!!1!)

Have you ever liked somebody and never told them?
Pfft. Duh. I am only human, after all.

Do you have a best friend that knows you inside and out?
Three of 'em, actually.

Do you currently hate someone?
Yeah, but let's focus on the positive right now (omgYAY!1OBAMA!!1!).

Would you ever dye your hair blonde?
Sure, but it would have to be professionally done. Bleach and I have a bad relationship.

Have you ever gotten a sunburn so bad it hurt to move?
Yep.

What is bothering you right now?
Thanks to Gentleman Jack (and only one shot, jeez!), naddadamnthing.

Have you ever read an entire book in one day?
Yes. Oh, yes. Oh, glory days, that I miss so much ...

If you could move to Africa would you?
Sure, if it would be a smart move for future plans.

Pretend you've had 10 beers, describe what you'd be doing right now?
Drooling and snoring and not moving much from whatever position I happened to collapse into.

Whats your favorite day in the month of march?
Saint Paddy's Day! Yay for leprechauns!

Does anyone have a crush on you?
Not that I'm aware of. Unless you do and you're not telling.

Do you like Batman?
I want to be Batman.

Is your birthday on a holiday?
No.

Where did you get the shirt you're wearing?
TJ Max.

Do you use an alarm clock?
No. I use an alarm ringtone.

Do you ever snort when you laugh?
Yep. And squeak. And pee a little.

Did you kiss or hug anyone today?
Yep!

What was your first thought this morning?
Something profane, most likely. I'm not a morning person.

Would you rather talk on the phone or chat in IM?
Depends on who I'm talking to.

Did you have a dream last night?
Probably - I usually do - but I can't remember it if I did.

Do you have a facebook?
No.

Are you currently frustrated with someone?
About half the people at my work. But it's all good. Things are a'changin', they are ...

Fark.

2008-10-27T20:03:00.001-07:00

I would give just about anything for a long, deep claw-foot tub right about now, and on-demand hot water. And super-duper-bubbly bubble bath.

I have the entire bottle of champagne, unopened, to drink myself into oblivion with when I happen to chance across said claw-foot tub. I have novels waiting, unread, making long faces and puppy-dog eyes at me from their dusty perches on the bookshelf, to read (see: escape) when I find that tub.

Hell, I even have all manner of super-soothing, beautiful music to blare at ridiculous levels while I pretend I don't have neighbors or that said neighbors are deaf already so who cares how loud the music is anyway? when I discover that wonderful tub ...

Sigh.

The work situation is scary right now. Like, really really scary. People are being laid off left and right (although I've been assured several times that my job is totally secure) and one of my co-workers in the production department just got the axe today. That leaves me and my boss as the only two people in our department now, and while we are both damn fucking good at what we do, we're not that good. Even with energy drinks ... Even with energy drink IVs.

Sigh again.

To make up for the now re-goddamn-diculous understaffing issue in our department as well as the graphics department, the two departments are being merged. This will help, definately, but with the graphics department hurting just as much as we are, we still won't be able to keep up the pace we have been. Tasks will need to be reassigned, and that is always like pulling teeth around here. Or more like squeezing blood from a rock. Because we've been so damned fantastic and amazing and machine-like for so many years in the past, we are apparently thought to actually be machines, or minor gods, or just plain perfect in every way except for an annoying habit of demanding that other people do their jobs on time so we can do ours (imagine! The nerve!).

We're not perfect. We are only human, and we have human limits. Even with energy drinks (even through IVs!) we cannot cram 18 hours worth of work into 8 hours, even skipping lunches and breaks, much less do it every day and not get a wee tiny bit snippy about it. It's just not possible.

But we're expected to do it. And to smile about it, no matter how obviously fake and hate-laced the smiles are.

I'm perfecting my "happy-sneer." I've learned how to bare my incisors and make people think I'm still a darling little angel.

Oh, where oh where is that beautiful, claw-footed, double-bubbly oblivion? The thought that the master's degree I will earn someday after getting my bachelor's (which may now take me even longer to get, as I may have to change my schedule to maintain only one class per term all the way through, instead of taking two each for the last three terms) will allow me to have that claw-foot tub is the only thing some days that keeps me happy-sneering like a sweet thing, when what I really want to do is

just

walk

out.

Meme from Mum.

2008-10-23T16:35:00.000-07:00

What is your favorite thing to wear? I have this pair of really great pajama pants that are bright blue with cartoon ducks all over them. The kicker? They're angel ducks and devil ducks. With those, an overly big T-shirt and no socks or shoes is just heaven.

Last meal you had at a restaurant: Old-fashioned spaghetti with meat sauce at The Spaghetti Factory in Citrus Heights, hearty portioned and split with Matt, with a scoop of Spumoni ice cream for dessert.

Name one thing that scares you: Spiders (see said "I hate Spiders" post a few down from this one).

Who was the last person in your bed? Matt, this morning, because he always gets to sleep in ...

What were you doing at 7:00 a.m.? Sleeping.

Last person you hugged? Matt.

Does anyone you know want to date you? Besides Matt? Not that I'm aware of.

When was your last encounter with the police? My Mom's answer: "About four years ago a young neighbor from up the street failed to make the turn at the end of our cul-de-sac and zooped headlong in his Toyota pickup down our short, very steep driveway. Apparently he forgot where his brake pedal was. He reached the bottom of the driveway at roughly 30 mph, where he crashed through the chain link fence dividing our property from our next-door neighbor’s. After taking out her second fence and heading into the forest, his Toyota finally stopped when it got stuck between two pine trees. The poor guy was, as you might have guessed, very drunk. Miraculously, he wasn't hurt, but he was dazed and disoriented. I helped him into our kitchen, gave him a cup of coffee and called the sheriff while he sat there alternately apologizing and complimenting the decor. The officer who showed up arrested him for driving under the influence. I felt bad – the guy was young and obviously messed up – but what do you do? There'd been damage done to our neighbor's property, and it was just sheer luck that I’d happened to park my own car up on the street the night before. Normally, it would have been right at the bottom of the drive, and he’d have crashed right into the back of it. At the time of morning this happened, my daughter and I could well have been getting into the car to go to work. We just happened to be running a little late, so we weren't walking up the driveway when he flew down it. So ... yeah. It was an interesting encounter. It was made even more memorable when the officer, who was sorta cute, flirted with me."

Yeah. That was creepy. While Mom got the glory of being flirted at by the cute cop, I got the anti-glory of being flirted at by the drunk, fence-crashing neighbor himself. I was not impressed.

Have you ever driven without a license? Nope.

What time of the day is it?12:36 p.m.

Who/What made you angry today? Not so much angry, as just disgusted at the ever increasing stupidity of drivers in general: Being cut off by some dick on Broadway this morning. He was stopped a a stop sign, and I was going straight on Broadway. He was not supposed to go ahead and pull onto BRoadway until it was safe to do so ... i.e., not when someone is only ten feet away from him and closing, on Broadway, without a stop sign (yeah, that'd be me). Dumbass pulled out right in front of me, slowly, and didn't even seem to notice that had I not slammed on the brakes and come to a complete stop (again, no stop sign for me) I'd have t-boned him.

Oh, sigh.

Do you want anyone? I want The Vampire Lestat. Badly.

Do you like birds? Yep. I still fondly remember waking up to the soft, sort of alien sounding coos of morning doves in the trees outside my window at the apartment where we lived in Bremerhaven, Germany, as a kid. I'd love to have a pair at home.

Do you download music? Occasionally, through iTunes. You should hop on iTunes and find my fiancee's new album: The Injured AERM Army, by Noisepsalm.

Do you care if your socks are dirty? Only when I don’t have any clean ones handy. In which case I’ll put the dirty ones on, wrinkling my nose, but I soon forget all about it. <-- Ditto, Mom.

Opinion of Chinese symbol tattoos? Unless you're Chinese or have some other meaningful connection to the Chinese culture, why not have words in your own language tattooed? At least then you'd be sure to get "Sweet Hunny Bunny Princess Grrrrl" inked on your butt, instead of "Prostitute."

What are you doing tonight? Working on and hopefully finishing my group project for school.

Do you like to cuddle? Yup.

Do you love anyone? Yup!

Whose bed did you sleep in last night? Mine.

Have you ever bungee jumped? Nope, and I don't care to, though I would like to try skydiving and base jumping.

Have you ever gone whitewater rafting? Nope, and I really don't care to, as I've never really relished the idea of bashing my brains in on a huge boulder after being dumped unceremoniously off of a silly little floating device that some crazy ass thought would be fun to ride down raging torrents of very fast, very strong water, just for the adrenaline rush and the hope of getting laid by a probably unimpressed girlfriend. I'll stick to swimming in calm waters, thanks.

Has anyone ten years older than you ever hit on you? Yes. Kinda creepy.

How many pets do you have? One Chinese Water Dragon named Heironymous, two kittens (Goblin and Sister), and a bunch of fish: one German Blue Ram - nameless, one (grape? grapevine?) Knife Fish named Tiger, one Parrot Fish named Peaches, one Gold Gaurami- nameless, one Betta named Asher, 27 tetras (13 blacklight, 13 neon, and one white cloud) - all nameless, at home. At work, I have a much smaller tank with four goldfish and one tiger barb.

Have you met a real redneck? I am a redneck myself.

What's the weather like there?$@#$%?!$%#!! hot. In #$%@$%?!$% October. $%?!$$%?!$?!!! damnit.

What are you listening to right now? Office whitenoise, fish tank filter, and coworker talking.

What was the last movie you watched? The Happening last night. M. Night needs to work on his casting. The story itself was fantastic, but much of the acting sucked very, very badly, which unfortunately killed it for me. C'mon, M. Night, you can find much better actors than Mark Walberg, and, well, most of the cast actually - only the guy who played Raul or Julien of whatever his name was did a good job. Even Zooey flopped in this one. Go back and watch Sixth Sense and see what you did exactly right with that one, then try to mimic that great casting in your next movie, cos seriously, you've got the gift for story telling, but you need to choose better people to portray them. Seriously.

Do you wear contacts? Nope. At least, not yet.

Where was the last place you went besides your house? The bank. It was more than a little depressing.

What are you wearing? Jeans, a pretty, flowery/artsy-type blouse, and my black slip-ons wit the little white, silver, and pink hearts all over them.

What’s one thing you’ve learned this year?

Yeah.

What do you usually order from Starbucks? Chai Latte with soy milk.

Ever had someone sing to you? Heh. Yes. Matt sings lots of questionably-humorous songs completely at random (often while showering), usually about turkeys, Jesus, Santa, and/or various parts of the human anatomy. They're not usually sung for or to me, but on occasion he'll come up with one for me and have me rolling.

Have you ever fired a gun? Yes, once, at targets at my friend's house long ago. Her family lives literally on the side of a mountain, and enjoys collecting and training in all manner of weaponry. While I'm not so great with guns or throwing axes, you might be nervous if I have a throwing knife on me and I'm mad at you, and if I'm mad at you and I've got a compound bow, well .. you're seriously fucked then. I have moidah-lized many, may soda cans and numerous buckets full of water on the first shot.

Are you missing someone? My Grampa and a few close friends (one of them the above-mentioned who who introduced me to the compound bow).

Favorite TV show? If I must, then pretty much anything on Animal Planet or the Discovery Channel.

What do you have an obsession with? Reading good books, which I have not been able to indulge in for quite some time now (damn school).

Has anyone ever said you looked like a celeb? The singer of the Cranberries, in junior high. If I actually did look like her then, I certainly don't now.

Who would you like to see right now? My Mom, my friends.

Ever had a near death experience? Zooming backwards off of a 15-foot cliff on an ATV is not fun, especially when, after landing on your back you look up to see said now-upside-down ATV just about to land right on top of you. To this day, the fact that the ATV landed some 10 feet away from my friend and I, right-side-up, still give mes chills and makes it impossible for me to not believe in paranormal stuff.

It should have landed on us. It didn't. I am awed.

Are you afraid of falling in love? Not anymore.

Have you ever been caught doing something you weren’t supposed to? Yeah, but it was never anything that I had considered bad, or that was done with the intention of being bad. The roof of the bowling alley in Germany was just far too intriguing for an 8-year-old to not explore when some bowling alley staff left the door to the roof, at the very top of the very long stairs, behind a door that customers weren't really supposed to go through, unlocked. I was just pretending I was lost in a jungle full of booby traps somewhere and being hunted my scary, flesh-eating, jungle-natives, that's all.

Has anyone you were really close to passed away recently? My Grampa died in 2005, and my aunt and uncle died, several months apart, in 2007. Usually I'm ok with it all, but occasionally it will sneak up on me, like when I'm at my Grandma's house and I suddenly realize it's too quiet because my Grampa isn't whistling or singing softly to fill the silence.

What’s something that really bugs you? Hypocrisy. Arrogance. Stupidity. Pointless cruelty. Take your pick.

Taco Bell or Burger King? If I must, Taco Bell.

Next time you will kiss someone? Whenever I get home from work today.

Favorite baseball team? You assume I like baseball. I don't.

Ever call a 1-900 phone number? Nope. I read Laurell K. Hamilton for that. ;)

Nipple or Nose rings? My nose is pierced, and Matt's nipples are (which he apparently flashed for shock effect at a family get-together last weekend ...)

What’s the longest time you’ve gone without sleep? Everyone has these great stories about having stayed awake for x amount of days and hallucinating from sleep deprivation and stuff. I'm not nearly so thrilling and adventurous. I can't remember ever having stayed awake for even a full 24 hours. I think a friend and I tried to once, just to see how many cartoons we could watch in that time, but of course we fell asleep sometime in the wee hours of the morning while Bugs Bunny forgot to turn left at Albuquerque.

Last time you went bowling? Just a couple years ago, actually. Strangely, I bowl better when I'm drunk-ish.

Where is the weirdest place you have slept? Again, I'm far too dull to have a good story here. Weird for me is anything other than a bed, couch, or floor, so I guess camping would be my "weird" sleeping place, and even that's not really strange at all, actually.

Who did you last speak with on the phone? A teacher at a local high school wondering about the finer details of using a new program to out their high school newspaper together to send it to us (my work) for printing. I've never used said new program, and my boss - who has - is on vacation, so no progress was made.

What does your last received text message say? “Call when u can" from Matt.

What’s the closest orange object to you? A can of goldfish flakes.

Fun kitten video + Noisepsalm music

2008-10-18T22:54:00.000-07:00

Ha! I figured out how to use iMovie! This movie is made from various early videos of Goblin and Sister doing what they do best, with the song The Villain Theme by Noisepsalm in the background, plus a few sound effects. I think it's pretty spiffy, m'self :D

I hate spiders.

2008-10-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

Have I ever mentioned that here - that I hate spiders? I do.

Well, ok, Daddy Longlegs' are ok, and I actually think that jumping spiders are pretty damn cool, but those are the only two exceptions to the rule. Now, if a spider is small, I'm usually ok with it until and unless it crawls on me.

If I know it's poisonous, or if I don't know whether its poisonous or harmless but it's really fucking big, I revert to a little sissy girl and shiver and shake and squirm and wring my hands and wish I could just die or that I had a really big fucking gun or something to properly threaten it with.

When it's a really fucking big spider, and I don't know whether it's poisonous or not because I didn't get a good look at it because it was 1:30 in the goodamned morning and I was sleeping ok? until the damn thing decided to skitter across my elbow under the edge of my pillow and after freaking out and turning on the light and looking and not seeing it and then feeling it at my elbow again just on the inside of my shirt sleeve and squealing I'm sure and GRABBING IT and throwing it at the bookshelf right next to my bed only to freak out further because oh my fucking god the thing was big enough to GRAB HOLD OF AND THROW, well ... I have a tendency to stand in the middle of the kitchen, damn near naked because the fuckers can hide in clothes, arms folded tightly and fingers digging into my arms hard enough to hurt, terrified to even sit on the couch because if a spider can crawl on me while I'm sleeping peacefully in my bed why the heck can't one crawl on my while I'm sitting on the couch at 1:30 in the morning trying not to cry because I'm so freaked out?

Yeah. The wee early hours of this morning sucked big time.

I eventually ended up sleeping on the couch (the logic that bed or couch made no difference really in terms of easy spidery access tossed aside defiantly ok not so defiantly but because I really had not other choice) wrapped as tightly and coccoon-like in the covers as possible so as to leave absolutley no possible bit of space where a spider could crawl in, and of course I laid there for a good two hours staring at every corner and at every bump on the walls or ceiling that I could have sworn wasn't there mere minutes ago, rigid and trying to ignore those horrid little tickles you get on various limbs and such that feel like little insectle legs but aren't and you know this because you just not long ago HELD IN YOUR HAND something with real insectile legs so you know the difference between real spiders and the heebie jeebies but damn if you don't twitch and swipe and wimper at the heebie jeebie-tickles anyway.

I am now facing the prospect of trying to sleep tonight, and the thought makes me want to go stand in the middle of the kitchen again with all the lights on. Sigh. Good thing I don't have work tomorrow. I doubt I'll be getting much sleep.

No time. No point?

2008-10-11T08:14:00.000-07:00

Total and complete edit: Yeah, never mind.

I just got moody, as I sometimes do. I'm over it ;) New posts soon.

Obligatory kitten photo blog

2008-07-17T21:19:00.000-07:00

Kittey Kassells and PlayStations.

2008-07-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

This is Phoenix’s last week with us. We take him back home on Friday. I’m kinda bummed.

He’s a cute kid, and while he has his moments at times that leave me a bit grumbly or eye-rolly, I’ve had fun with him. He keeps trying to get me to play Soul Calibur # with him on the PlayStation, which he’s been glued to since we got it two weeks ago. I promised I’d do battle with him again before he goes, which with him means setting aside several hours, because a few little versus rounds simply are not enough. He wants to unlock new stuff – weapons, armor, playable characters – as well as build and modify new custom characters, and of course he has to excitedly explain all the cool stuff he’s learned and show me cool new moves and awesome, skull-crushing new swords which are as long as the characters are tall and about as wide, with wicked looking spiked and eyes and stuff on them. Which is all well and good with me, it just means I’ll be locked into it and unable to escape for awhile, so I need to wrap up school stuff and errands a little earlier this week.
I’ll miss having him around.

Matt and I took him to the Rockstar Mayhem Music Festival on Monday, as a sort of early birthday thing; he’d never been to a rock concert of any kind before that. Despite it being amazingly hot, he had a blast – we all did. We gathered stickers and autographs, and Phoenix was thrilled to have the Metal Mullisha (daredevil motorcyclists screaming up one ramp to spin, flip or give the devil horns in mid air before screaming down another ramp) sign his shirt. We had to get their autographs well after their show, as their normal signing was right as one of our favorite bands was playing, and when they walked over with a sharpie in hand, the wide-eyed, sheepish-grinned look of admiration on Phoenix’s face made the day.

Despite having fun with him, I will enjoy getting my usual peace and quiet back. Being almost 10, he’s chock full of energy all the time and if he’s not glued to the PlayStation, he’s creating things with boxes and such for the kittens. Which is cool and all and who am I to curb creativity, but the little bits and pieces left laying all over the place are a bit overwhelming, and the constant, “hey Cary, come look at this!” interruptions to show me new windows and drawbridges in the “Kittey Kassell” is only charming the first dozen times or so in one evening.’

And, ok, it will be great to once again not have to bother with getting dressed before going to the bathroom at night. It’s too hot for clothes, but he sleeps on the couch so if I need to pee (and I do, like ten times every night) I need to shove on clothes and sweat and grumble before I can do so. Which wakes me up more than I’d like to be. And makes me hot, which makes me grumpy.

Still, I’ll be looking forward to his next visit. He makes me remember my own childhood days (something I love to do), and I can’t help but smile even when he’s showing me the updated new wing of the Kittey Kassell and how it attaches to the main part and how the kittens get into it and how it’s so cool and where he’s going t o make a new window for it and how he’s going to create new string-toys to attach to it, all while I’m trying to read for a school assignment due that evening.

He’s a good kid.

Lurv.

2008-07-13T22:08:00.000-07:00

I lurv this photo.

Bleargh. Braaiiiiiins (and shoulders).

2008-07-12T03:04:00.000-07:00

It's 3 in the morning and I am wide awake. And grumpy.

I can't sleep because of being so ridiculously wide awake, which I think is making up for the night before. Last night I slept like the dead. Literally.

I slept much more soundly than I usually do, and during the few times that I woke, I was so very sleepy and muzzy and out of it I felt almost drugged, zombie-like. I was slow and extremely clumsy in my movements, to the point that my balance was so badly off I had to be very careful walking to and from the bathroom, and kept running into and banging into things. Blinking was not a quick matter - my eyes kept wanting to stay closed, even as I was up and walking. Despite such good, deep sleep, I slept in until almost noon yesterday, and that's despite having gotten to bed at a very reasonable hour. When I finally got up around noonish (because I really felt absurd sleeping that long, not because I couldn't sleep anymore) I was still fuzzy and zombie-like, scraping my chin across the edge of the bookshelf next to my bed and my back and shoulder against the bathroom door handle when I bent down to gather clothes off the floor to wash them. My balance was still badly off, and I remained in this alarmingly sluggish state until I dragged myself down to the gas station at the bottom of our road and got an energy drink. All was well then, but I'm still sort of weirded out by the whole thing.

This has happened before, several times, all within the last few months, and I hate it every time, feeling clumsy and weak and out of it. This was the worst experience of it, and I really really don't like it. It scares me that I can be that out of it. It truly felt like I was drugged - like when you start to wake up from anesthesia.

Tonight's (and into this morning's) total and complete inabaility to sleep must be making up for it. I'm tired. I want to sleep. I just can't.

On top of being so awake I'm also dealing with another thing that has me weirded out and I think on Monday I'm finally going to call my doctor about it.

All my life, I've been a side-sleeper. Doesn't matter which side (although my right side seems to be even more comfortable), but I can only easily sleep on my side. Sleeping on my back has always been very hard to do (I just can't get comfortable), and remains so to this day. Forget about sleeping on my stomach. Way too uncomfortable.

For the last three or four months, I've been having strange shoulder pains, and it feels like they are slightly dislocated. What really grosses me out is that if I shift a bit while on my side, whatever shoulder I'm sleeping on will actually pull partially out of socket with a pop and a slide. I can alwasy just shift back and pop it back in, but it freaks me out, and over the months it has begun to cause pain in whatever shoulder I slept on during the day. Now it hurts after just a few minutes of lying on my side.

I have tried (and tried, and tried) to train myself to sleep on my back because of this, putting a pillow under my knees for proper back alignment.

I can't sleep on my back. I just end up twitching, shifting my arms and legs this way and that and back again, turning my head from one side to the other and back, trying to fool my body into thinking it's on it's side my turning just my hips to the side a little, and all to no avail. It is not comfortable, and I cannot sleep.

Now I can't sleep on my side either, because it hurts my shoulders too much.

What other sleeping positions are there to try? I guess I could prop myself up in a sitting position on the couch, but I bet that's all kinds of bad for the back, neck, and shoulders, too.

So, I can't sleep because I don't like pain. Even sitting here, a good fifteen minutes after having given up on sleeping, my shoulders hurt, and make sickening popping and grinding sounds when I move them, as if they are still just ever so slightly out of socket.

I'm beyond frustrated. It seems the only good (and pain free) sleep I can get now is the totally random zombie-sleep that freaks me out and leaves me in a bad mood because it's so damned freaky and I don't know what causes it. The rest of the time, I'm tossing and turning, trying to force myself to sleep on my back and giving up and just trying to ignore the shoulder pain so I can just sleep.

I have pored over everything I can find on the internet about sleeping positions and shoulder pain and all I can find is dozens of conflicting bits of advice about how to sleep to prevent back pain (and my back is perfectly fine), or the obvious advice to not sleep on an injured shoulder. But unless simply sleeping on them for 27 years can injure your shoulders, mine aren't injured. No matter my search terms, no matter what medical websites I try, there is absolutely nothing connecting sleeping position with shoulder pain and slight dislocation.

So I get to go back to the doctor I don't trust or respect (or like, the ignorant bitch) because I have so far been unable to find another doctor taking new patients, and see what she has to say about both the zombie-sleep and the shoulder pain. And I hope to god she actually listens to what I'm saying instead of hurrying me along, asking about my GERD (which I've never had, bitch, it's Gastritis) and what birth control I'm on now (the same one I've been on for several years now, look at the chart you're holding in your hands, dumbass) and generally just not doing anything at all to give me any faith in her as a doctor. If I'm lucky at least one of the two issues might be resolved, at least partially.

I think if I can figure out what's going on with my shoulders and fix that, the better sleep may well prevent the random zombie-sleep and the frazzled, muzzy, drugged feeling I get afterwards.

Cross your fingers for me, k?

And give me your braaaaaiiiiins ...

Burning the evening oil.

2008-07-09T10:15:00.000-07:00

I just discovered yesterday that I could potentially be earning up to 15 hours of overtime per month - 20 hours even, if I'm really busting butt. This has me grinning.

I've always been very careful to either not accrue any overtime or to get as little of it as possible - no more than two hours per paycheck if I can help it. This is because over the years I've seen other people get warnings about their overtime and on the rare occasion recieved a warning or two about it myself. Our company doesn't like parting with money unless it absolutely positively has to. However, about six months ago I had a streak of staying late that lasted about three or four months, wherein I accrued two-and-a-half to three hours of overtime check after check after check, and no one said anything. Mildly encouraged but still fearful of some stern warning which could come at any time, I decided not to press my luck and stopped staying late unless I really had to to catch up on something I couldn't get to during my normal hours (previously I had been staying late to catch up on long-term projects which had no real deadline and weren't terribly important, just terribly helpful). For months now I've been either right at 80 hours or a few hours short. In fact I've been short anywhere from three to eight hours on many of my checks since then, what with school and doctor/surgery/physical therapy appointments and such.

With Matt not working and receiving a disability check for roughly half of what he made while he was working, finances have been just a bit worrisome. We always come out on top easily enough, but my savings has been steadily dwindling because once we've taken from that to pay a bill on time instead of paying late and paying more with late fees, when one or the other of us gets our pay check mere days later we don't pay back that savings withdrawal. We do things instead like going out to dinner, which adds up pretty quickly. In short, if we pull our heads out and stop doing luxury things like that, we will be just fine. Hell, we might even be able to slowly build that savings back up to more than it was before Matt's injury.

We've actually been talking about this lately - ways to save money, and even turn things back around to where we're putting some into savings rather than taking it out or just letting our savings sit and build on the interest alone. Having recently googled "money saving tips" I came a cross a good many sites - blogs, some of them - chock full of little everyday, easy things to do to save money. Some of them we're already doing, some of them we're working on, and some we will be implementing as soon as possible.

I just hung a clothesline in our yard for drying most of our clothes, since the washer and dryer we got from friends with this last move has increased our energy bill by a quick and painfull $50 a month, and according to our energy provider's website, it's the dryer that usually accounts for most (more than half) of such increases. So the dryer will be used only for unmentionables, and when it's time to wash and dry sheets and blankets, we're packing those into the jeep and taking them to the laundromat down the street, which has the biggest washers and dryers I've ever seen ever, all operated for about the same as, if not less than, the regular small, crappy ones at the apartment we lived in before. For probably around $5, we could wash and dry two comforters, our sheets, and our pillow cases - possibly even all in one ginormous load. That beats the at-least-four loads of washing and at-least-six loads of drying (because our dryer just isn't up to drying comforters fully the first time) we'd have to do at home to get them done.

Many of the money-saving tips are simple discipline things, like remembering to turn off lights and appliances (and not even using lights until and unless you really actually need them). Unplug the nightlights as soon as you get up in the morning. Don't leave the T.V. on when you leave the couch for a sit in the throneroom for a bit. Turn off things like DVD players, printers, etc., completely when you're done using them. You know - simple things that usually go untended.

Other tips are of a different kind of discipline. Leave your credit cards at home when you go out, so that you can only rely on the cash you have on you rather than being able to make spur-of-the-moment big purchases you don't really need, but that you suddenly decide you want. Make shopping lists and stick to them, buying nothing that isn't on the list no matter how tempting, because you probably don't actually need it (like we didn't need the pie and ice cream we got the other day ... but my gods is it tasty!) If you're out and something catches our eye, go with the "ten minute rule:" wait ten minutes before putting it in your cart. In that time you'll be able to think about why you really want it, or if you even do want it at all. You'll probably not get it in the end, most of the time. I can attest to this, sorta - I can't tell you how many times I've found something just absolutely wonderful and then about ten or fifteen minutes later, while still looking around, changed my mind and put it back. If I had bought it right away instead of continuing shopping, I'd be stuck with it, unsatisfied and with less money.

Another good tip is to not save your credit card information on your internet accounts (except for bills), for the same reason. As you're digging out your wallet and card and typing in the info all over again each time, you're giving yourself the chance to rethink the purchase. Sure, a pair of uber-comfy, gel-insole slippers with headlights on them so you can see where your'e walking at night and prevent stubbed toes and bruised shins is a fantastic and wonderful invention - but do you really need them? No. Do you really wanna spend $45 for that novelty luxury? I wouldn't, if I really thought about it.

So now, along with all these great tips - most of which we should be able to implement fairly easily - I've been given the official go-ahead by my boss to rack up some overtime to help out our finances. The only catch of course is that I have to be doing actual real, needed work, not the long-term, deadline-free, not so important projects (although some work on those is ok).

No problem. With so few people in so many departments now, I can always find something to do that will greatly help out with the daily goings-on. And the real kicker is I don't even need to stay too terribly late to do it. I've gotten used to eating my lunch at my desk, which means I stay clocked in during my lunch because I'm actually still working, so there's an extra hour a day right there. If I then stay only one hour later than usual, I can get an extra two hours a day, four days a week (Sundays are my odd days, where due to the workload I actually lose an hour, but I can stay an hour later that day too and just get a full eight hours.) So just with those simple changes right there I'll be getting eight hours of overtime per paycheck - 16 hours per month - if I so choose.

And it's all good. No warnings. No raised eyebrows. Only a pat on the back for being such a good little worker and some much needed extra money.

Yeah, I'm grinning.

Well, it's about time!

2008-07-07T17:17:00.000-07:00

I think I've reached the point with my education that I'm ready to get the ball rolling on starting up my own business.

Blam. Just like that.

What I want to do is sell my artwork in various forms. Flat art will be prints (framed or unframed) of my art, or the originals for a higher price. I also want to put it on shirts, jackets, mugs, calendars, note cards, and the like. Now here's the tricky part, the part I might not actually jump into until I've actually had some success - custom artwork and design. Tell me what to draw, I'll draw it. Tell me what tattoo you want, I'll design it. Tell me what logo, advertisement, or event poster you want, and I'll design it. It's the custom part which will probably make me more money in the end, but will be harder to figure out, unless I get lucky with the Amazon Webstore option, which is how I've decided to run my business online.

Now, before you go all hogwild applauding me for finally (finally!) doing what you, me, and everyone else has always known I could do, just hold up a minute.

I'm not actually starting the business anytime soon. I've set a goal for officially "opening the doors" on January 1, 2009. I'm hoping to have all the pre-business stuff wrapped up by then and more importantly, have a good line of artwork to start selling. Right now I'm in the very beginning stages of planning it all out, and I'm still in the listing stuff stage.

I need to determine exactly what I'll sell first and foremost, research basic prices, find bulk sellers of some of the supplies I'll need, find a good printer, and amidst all of that is the fun job of researching all the legal angles - filing a Fictitious Business Name Statement, talking to someone about tax stuff, figuring out contracts (for custom orders) if it seems like I might need them, all that jazz. And I need to actually buy my own Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator programs, which will most likely be my biggest expense by far (although my grandmother did at one point tell me to let her know about "any of that stuff" that I might need for school ... I bet she'd consider it for business, too).

Once I've got all of that figured and filed, I just need to draw like a madwoman, then finally set up a Webstore with Amazon, and spread the word. And hope.

I'm going to try to find information online about starting up a business to make sure I don't forget anything important. I'll also (finally) talk to some of the other students in the enterprenuership club and the arts and entertainment club I'm in with my school, and get feedback and ideas from them as well as the professors who run those clubs. Those alone should prove to be immensely valuable, but if any of you readers out there have any tips, tricks, or can point me in the right direction for finding information on what all I'll need to do to start up my own business, I'd be forever grateful.

Ok, ok, you can applaud now, if you wish. The whole thing won't come together for some time now, but I'm getting started on what I need to, and when all is ready, I should be able to hit the ground running and really do this right.

Explosions-day, Star Wars style.

2008-07-02T09:07:00.001-07:00

Phoenix is visiting with us right now. He's been here a week already, and will be here for three more. It's fun, but he's getting a little bored already. We're trying to figure out what to do for the Fourth.

So far it's sounding like it will probably be a Star Wars Monopoly day, with hot dogs (and maybe hamburgers) on the barbecue for dinner, then we'll head off to the fairgrounds for the Fourth of July Family Day and fireworks show. While I've seen the fireworks show a few time there, I've never shown up too early before dark and so have no idea what kind of "family" activities and booths will be set up. It should be a fun day, all in all.

What are you and your family doing on the Fourth? Camping? Fishing? Jet-skiing? Watching movies? Barbecuing? I'm looking for some more ideas to spice it up a bit, but since fireworks and all other manner of explosives and such are illegal here, we can't even play with sparklers, which sort of limits some of the more fun fun. We do have a bunch of small squirt guns we got for training Goblin and Sister (they were quickly set aside for a bigger, more powerful, more effective - and yes, I'll admit it, fun - Super Soaker), so if it's super hot I guess we could at least have a water gun fight. Until one of us grabs the Super Soaker and another grabs the hose, anyway.

Ideas, anyone?

Silver linings.

2008-06-29T14:09:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you realize that despite life's best efforts to induce nervous breakdowns, alcoholism or hermitism, you're actually doing pretty good at keeping up and keeping on top, and that simple moment of understanding brings with it a big relief and a sort of new, resolute calm. I hit that moment this morning.

My grades for the Project Management Theory class I just finished triggered it. I got an A on every assignment, which means of course an A for my overall final grade. If I can pull off As - and high ones, at that - things are ok no matter how panicky I may feel sometimes and no matter how much I may want to just give up, crawl into a hole and just sleep the bad things away.

Despite all of the crappy things that have been brewing in my life lately, I kicked that classes ass, and it was not an easy one by any means.

• Matt hurt his shoulder pretty badly at work and just had surgery on it a month and a half ago. He may never regain his full spectrum of movement or strength in that arm, and despite surprisingly good progression with his physical therapy, he can't do a lot of things right now. This leaves me to pick up a lot of slack, which with work and school, I don't have much time to do that. I don't even have much time to tell him to hang in there, or to give him a hug when he looks most miserable.

I'm trying my best to be understanding because I've seen the surgery photos and been there at his doctor and physical therapy appointments with him to hear all about how this kind of surgery goes so I know he's dealing with some pretty amazing pain right now, but it's starting to wear on me. I feel like a horrible person for admitting it, but I'm getting kinda tired of the knee-jerk response "I feel like shit," to my question of "how are you doing?" I sort of wonder what the point of asking is, but if I don't at least ask, it might seem like I don't care, and that couldn't be further from the truth. So I keep my sighs to myself, knowing that if I were going through what he is, I'd probably be in a much worse mood than he's showing. I can handle pain very, very well for quite some time, but once I hit my limit, get out of range: even I don't want to be around me then. Matt hit his limit long ago, and is just grumpy all the time. His reaction to the situation is really actually not that bad; I think the reason I'm starting to feel sorta grumpy back is that I feel helpless about the whole thing. Aside from giving him hugs and asking that awful, stupid question everyday, there is nothing I can do to help him.

Maybe what I'm actually tired of is being so useless. He's the one who has to do the hard work of healing; I can't do it for him no matter how much I might want to switch places just for a day to give him a break. Maybe what I'm actually tired of is the silence that is all I can give back to that "I feel like shit."

• We are ridiculously understaffed at work, and it just keeps getting worse. We in the production department are continuously given more and more work to take over from people who have been transferred or let go, or who simply quit and have not been (and may very well not be) replaced. And we're not getting paid any more for it, even though we are each individually doing at least three times - if not more - the amount of work we were doing at this time last year, when we couldn't really keep up too terribly easily even then. And there is no slack, no understanding, from other departments. We are expected to be perfect machines and just keep on making things work no matter what happens, but honestly we are seriously bogged down and I have never in my life hated any job more than this one. Which is made worse simply because it's not the job I hate; it's the people and the situation. I actually really like doing what I do, we just need much, much better upper management. I'd say we need a cash injection, too, but we just purchased a weather-reader thingamagig which will read the actual weather at our little spot in Placerville and feed it into our website in real time. Because god forfuckingbid we should continue using the weather service we've used -free of charge - for years which is pretty damned accurate? I mean, it's not like every portal site on the internet (Yahoo, MSN, etc.) doesn't already have weather info. We have to have our very own report, given by a spiffy new technological device that probably cost about what the last person let go from our department made in half a year.

Can you tell I'm bitter?

• The school I go to, being an internet school with each term only five and-a-half weeks long, is very intense and requires way more work than a traditional campus school class would. This means that if I take two classes per term, I am doing school from the time I get home from work till the time I go to bed, and all day Friday and Saturday. No personal time. No time for housework or even grocery shopping, and the hair on my legs grows long (even in summer - thank god for long pants) because shaving that stuff takes time I don't have to spare. Because of this ridiculousness I have cut down to one class per term, which will have me graduating much later and is still pretty intense - enough so that dishes still pile up until I get an hour or two of free time to do them once a week if I'm lucky. (Remember that Matt can't do much right now because he's basically one-armed, functionality wise.)

• I just had an identity theft scare, which is a huge amount stress all on its own. While things are looking up with that, indicating possibly that it was nothing more than a couple of clerical errors, I won't know for sure for a while yet, so I'm still worried and feeling sort of paranoid. I'm carrying more cash with me now, so that I don't use my ATM card as much. Unfortunately I have a tendency to stick cash-back into pockets and then forget about it, then worry later because I don't have quite enough money leftover till the next payday to make me feel comfortable in the event that something happens, like the car breaks down or some such. I always end up finding the cash, but usually not till the day after I get that next paycheck and all's well again. Go figure.

• We love them , really we do, but they drive us nuts: Our two, three-month-old kittens, Goblin and Sister, wake up at around 5 a.m. in the morning. This means that we do, too, much to our grumpy, foul-mouthed dismay. When I'm not getting to bed until 11:30 p.m. or later, 5:30 a.m. is not a time when I want to be conscious. The shortened sleep hours are affecting my days, leaving me yawning no matter how much caffiene I consume. The caffiene gives me stomach aches anyway (thank you, Gastritis), but without it I'd be sleeping on my keyboard and drool and electronics just don't mix well.

• There has been construction going on along the street right below our house for the last few months now. We're situated on a cliff (about sixty or so feet high) right above Main Street, with only an empty gas station lot between the edge of that cliff and Mai Street. The road going up to our house is very steep, and one-way: going up. Despite our and our neighbors' many requests to the construction crew and its foreman to give us a simple 24-hour notice before they block off the bottom of that road - and thereby the only legal access to our homes - they have never once given us notice, even after smiling and nodding and promising they would every time we've spoken with them. They've blocked off our road seven or eight times, and not given notice even once. They work at night too, which we got used to pretty quickly until the last couple of weeks when the equipment they have been using is so incredibly loud that it wakes us up out of dead sleep despite having two loud fans going in our room to block out the noise (which usually works). One of our neighbors about a week ago, when we were all awakened at 2:30 in the morning by a horrid, loud screeling noise in the empty lot below the cliff, flipped out and started screaming at the construction crew from the top of the drive. It was the kind of half-screaming, half-weeping that just breaks your heart. He then got into his car and left for the rest of the night, probably to a hotel room to get some peace and quiet. We waited it out for the next hours or so, seething, pacing, and promising all kinds of hell for the workers once we got into contact with the city about it.

Our calls to the city to complain of the cosntruction crew's lack of respect and responsibility have not been returned. This is especially frustrating because in those calls we're not bitching about the inconvenience to us in our everyday lives (although that is aggravating to find our road blocked without prior notice) but instead we're mentioning the fact that because it's a one-way street, if it's blocked and there is some sort of emergency people could very well die while emergency crews have to fight construction traffic to get to our road only to have to go past it, get back onto the freeway to turn and go back around - still fighting construction traffic - and through town again, try to get around the very short, tree-lined, hair-pin turn at the top of the one-way street (which I have very serious doubts a fire-truck could make), and come down it the wrong way. We're not asking for official documents on city letterhead with detailed explainations of what's being done and why, just a simple, quickly scribbled out note saying "from this time till this time tomorrow, your street will be inaccessible from Main Street."

It's really amazingly simple and wouldn't take more than five minutes. But they won't do it, and if they can't be bothered with that simple little effort, why should we expect them to alert police, medical and fire crews of the blocked street so that emergency routes can be re-planned in advance just in case? That would take a lot more time, including the possibility of actual real paperwork or even being put on hold on the phone, fer gosh sakes. I'm disgusted and horrified, and will continue to attempt contacting the city manager until I am able to meet with him personally, at which point along with telling him what's been happening, I'll show him the late-night videos of construction work with equipment making god-awful nails-on-chalkboard sounds at volumes that would have the police shitting themselves to give tickets and make arrests for if it was music at a party. The foreman - who was foolish enough to give us his business card before promptly ignoring our very simple and sickeningly logical requests time and again, and whose job it is to make sure things are done properly and in accordance with legal as well as ethical standards - will no longer have a job when I'm done, if things go my way.

I've been pretty stressed lately, to put it mildly.

Somehow, despite all of this, I got all As this term. I freakin' nailed this class, and to be brutally honest, I'm damned proud of myself. When I first started the class, I was not at all sure that I'd comprehend it. Project management is not nearly as simple as making a list of things to do, and even once you get the concepts down, actually making a project plan is still very challenging because involves lots of going back and making adjustments to schedules, time frames, costs, and task dependencies not only during the initial planning, but as the project progresses as well. In spite of its complexity, I actually kinda like it (yes, yes - I'm twisted, I know). I don't know that I'll ever become a Project Manager professionally, but the experience will certainly help with any career field I choose, as well as with everyday projects around the house (and with planning the wedding, too!) So, now that my first term back is over and very successfully so, I can finally let myself relax and believe it when I tell myself it's all gonna be ok. With the construction comeing ot an end (as long as they aren't behind schedule) and Matt gaining a little bit more movement in his shoulder every day, things are looking a little bit brighter all the time.

Ya know, maybe the whole point of this post is to say, "Sorry I've been bitching a lot lately. I'm working on it."

It's my birthday and I'll get inked if I want to.

2008-06-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

That's right. As a birthday present to myself, I got some more tattoo work done. Today's three-ish-hour session was to begin fixing the snake that I got colored this time last year. The artist I went to then is relatively good if you have easy, small stuff, but the more complicated stuff is a bit beyond his talents. And being an artist myself, I of course have to complicate the hell out of most of my tattoos. No hearts with names in them for me - I gotta go all out.

So while the snake was colored and pretty brightly so and everyone I've run across who's seen it has exclaimed at its beauty, it wasn't the way I had designed the color. The artist had tried, but just didn't have the skill to get the colors to fade into each other nicely, and he completely screwed up the snake's face. Being also too kind-hearted, I didn't say anything, just decided I wouldn't go back to him unless I had something far simpler in mind, like the Eyes of the Buddha I had done later (which looks fantastic and I have no complaints about). It's not that the other artist did a horrible job on the snake's coloring in and of itself - he does have talent - it's just that it wasn't done exactly how I had done it, and I knew it even if no one else looking at it did, and it bugged the hell out of me.

My regular artist - Eddie Julian at Something Wicked Tattoo in Rosevillle, California - is much much better than the artist I went to for the first coloring. He became "my artist" with the first tattoo he inked on me, the dragon on my chest, because unlike any other tattoo artist I've had experiences with (myself, or through friends whom I've designed tats for), he actually inks the designs exactly the way I draw - and color - them. It's like I might as well have drawn the tats on myself. And that is very very important to me. If I hand an artist a drawing and tell them to tattoo it on myself or a friend, I want that drawing tattooed on me, not the artist's personalized (see fucked up) version of it, with reversed shading, crappy coloring, etc. I drew it the way I wanted it and that's what I'm paying for.

Eddie understands this. Someday, when I eventually move to Sonoma County, I will not change artists to keep the commute down (the shop is already an hour or more out of my town as it is). I will either schedule tattoo appointments to fit in with visits "back home" with family and friends, or I'll just plain ol' take a mini, extended-weekend vacation to get the work done by the artist I know and trust.

So, getting back to today's session: No actual re-coloring or shading has taken place yet. Instead, Eddie re-inked the entire outline and added the outline of all of the scales (it had only a very little bit of scale definition here and there before). Even with only that done, it already looks much, much better than it did before. I can reast easy knowing that when it's finally done, even though there will be much more black in it than I had orginally designed (no getting out of that sometimes with re-working tats) this is going to be one helluva tattoo. It will be one that I no longer cringe about, and one that won't restrict my choice of wedding dress to something with long sleeves to hide it from the photographer (that's been bugging me, too).

It's still too fresh right now to take photos of it, but in a few days I'll post what it looks like right now. And of course when it is finally done later this year I'll post final shots of it. For now, I'm freaking thrilled, and due to the pomegranite margarita I had with my oven-baked lasagna at dinner, I'm sleepy too. So I'm going to bed, to dream dreams of a prettier, darker horned viper than the one that I've tried not to see coiled on my arm day after day for the past year.

P.S. In ID theft news, there is no news, and I think that's probably a good sign. Now I just have to wait a few more weeks and order my credit report to make sure there's nothing suspicious there, and so long as that's all good, I think I'm in the clear. Yay!

This is important.

2008-06-18T15:00:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe I won't need to take a blogging hiatus after all; I'm feeling kinda talky/needy. In fact, the more I think about it the more I want to talk about what's going on with this identity theft scare - and not just for myself, but to share what I'm finding out with anyone who reads my blog.

Identity theft is a scary thing, and rightfully so: it can ruin lives not only with financial losses and credit scores damaged beyond repair, but with actual crimes committed under stolen aliases. Identity theft victims have as much to fear from sudden warrants for their arrest for crimes they didn't commit as they do from having their bank accounts emptied and new, astonishing collections bills handed to them for accounts in their names they never knew existed.

What makes it all worse is that despite everything that you can do to protect yourself now, a good majority of victims face such extreme loss because they don't act in time, even if they know about the theft; they hope it will just go away if they change a few online passwords and get new credit and debit cards.

It's not that simple.

I think (crossing fingers and toes) that I may have been very lucky. Either what happened with my scare really was nothing more than a couple of computer or clerical errors, or I caught this in time and with my acting so quickly I can very possibly stop it before I'm ruined. I have a printout of who to contact about what and have been making phone calls. Today, I saw the inside of our local police station for the first time in the nearlyfifteen years I've lived in this county. I have a fraud alert on each of the three major credit reporting agencies - Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion - as well as the new ability to lock and unlock access that information as I see fit. I have set up an account access password for the utiliy account that this whole mess began with, and set up a reverse-security check for my student loan account (wherein I ask a security question of the bank representative I'm speaking to to ensure they really are who they claim to be). I signed up for ID theft protection on the credit card that seemed to have been targetted, but maybe wasn't after all.

I keep holding on to the fact that there are so many nulling-factors in this - so many things that makes it seem like just a case of an accidental clerical error on one account and maybe just a case of mistaken alert on the other. I want to believe that's all it is, but I'm not taking any chances. I am too in-tune with the nasty reality of the world to just let it go at that; the person who seems an innocent and helpful bystander could be the culprit being very clever indeed. The seemingly mistaken alert could have been a real one which, due to my quick action in correcting my address, has been overridden, the previously changed address no longer on file. What seems to have only just started between April 2 and May 2 could have started long ago, and I may actually have quite a mess to clean up when I finally order my credit report a month from now.

I want to hope, and I am breathing easier with each phone call that turns up nothing out of the ordinary and ends instead with new, extra security measures in place. But until some time has passed - a year maybe - wherein nothing out of place is found, I'll have that little niggling worry poking at my brain at odd moments. I will wake up in the middle of the night when funds are tight, wondering if my credit card will be rejected should I need it to pay a bill or for food (it hasn't gotten to that point, yet, but with Matt getting not quite half of his normal work-pay with his disability checks, I wonder sometimes how long that will be the case).

As this unfolds, I'm learning.

Please, please, pay attention to this advice, right now:

If you don't have one already, get a P.O. box for your mail. Then get a paper shredder. Then save those paper shreds under lock and key until winter or camping time comes along, and use them as fire-starters to keep warm or roast marshmallows.

If I seem a little paranoid, believe me I'm not. Do you own research on identity theft and you'll be right there with me. In reality, no security measure is too much. If you don't have a solid internet security package for your computer (I suggest McAfee), get one. The cost of the software and license for a year is nothing compared to what you could end up losing if your idenity is compromised. Remember that money is only part of the threat. Even getting a new job could be a painful fiasco with ID theft, even once the ordeal is over and you're just picking up the pieces.

Do not wait to protect yourself, and don't think that passwords and human decency alone will save you. This is important. For those of you with families, the importance just multiplied ten-fold; it's not just your security and stability at risk now - it's theirs too.

Don't wait. Call your creditors and whatever other accounts you have - phone, utilities, even paypal - and find out what extra security measures can be set up to ensure that not just anyone can call up or log on and make changes to gain access to your personal information. Get a post office box for your mail delivery, and if you're aggravated by not being able to recieve packages at a post office box, pony up the extra money and get a box at UPS - you can get package deliveries there. Shred your important documents, but don't leave it at that, because crazy as it surely sounds, some people really are persistent enough to piece strips of paper together. Burn them. Change your various passwords regularly.

Finally, be paranoid. If you think someone in line behind you was sneeking a thorough peek at your credit card as you paid, contact your bank that day or the next and get a new card. It may turn out that the person behind you was a good person who simply looked suspicious, or it could turn out they're ordering a brand new sound system with your card number as you sit and wonder about it.

Remember: no security step is too big or small. It all helps, and with as crafty and tech-savvy as so many people are now, you can't be safe enough.

While there is a large amount of information on the internet about indentity theft, the best resource I've found so far for dealing with it is 101 Identity Theft. The Federal Trade Commission has quite a bit of extensive and important information about it as well, but the 101 site is the best organized I've seen for actual victims as far as the steps victims need to take in dealing with it.

Do yourself - and your family - a favor and check out both of those websites now. You'll be shocked at what you discover about how common and easy it is to steal an identity, and the horrors it leaves for the victims of the theft.

Now pass the word along.

Temporary Hiatus.

2008-06-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

I most likely won't be blogging for a while. I'll be too distracted and in much too foul a mood to.

It appears that I may be either already a victim of identitiy theft, or if I'm lucky to have caught it early enough, it hasn't actually happened yet but someone is definately trying.

Having just done some research on ID theft along with some prior research before for a school assignment, I'm a bit overwhelemed at the moment with everything I'll need to do to find out exactly what if anything has occurred and to clear up the mess. I may be taking a leave of absence from school next term to deal with it all, which pisses me off even more because I just got back to school and damnit I'm doing really fucking well(all As!) and don't want to put off graduation any longer than I already have.

I fucking hate people.

Poor lil' bebbehs!

2008-06-13T17:02:00.000-07:00

Goblin and Sister are home now. They got fixed today, and have only been back home for about forty-five minutes. They're zonked out on a blanket in the kitchen.

I worried all day about them, but of course they got through it ok. The drive home broke my heart though.

Sister, having lost a whole internal organ (which makes her appear emmaciated now, svelte thing that she is), is more affected by it than Goblin, who simply sat (very carefully) on one furry butt cheek and leaned drunkenly to the side and a little forward as a result of his procedure. We have one carrier for them and I asked the receptionist this morning if I should get a second one to bring them home separately in. She said no, that they'd be fine, but oh how I was kicking myself for listening to her later.

Goblin, drugged cross-eyed, kept stepping on Sister in the carrier on the way home. More specifically, he kept stepping on her newly hollowed abdomen. Because I had to drive, I couldn't cry, but Sister's agonized scream-yowls each time he accidentally stepped on her wrenched at my heart. What is normally a ten-minute drive seemed like an hour, and each pitiful kitten wail made it feel like the Jeep was going slower than before.

When we finally got home and in the house, Sister threw up. But, ever the tough-one, she wobbled back up onto her feet and - carefully, slowly - weaved her way over to Matt and then over to me, and then back again, demanding to be petted. So, gently, we pet her and told her it was all ok now.

I worry about Goblin's having stepped on her belly, but I've seen no blood, fresh or otherwise, and since getting home and out of the crate there have been to pain sounds at all from either one of them. We're supposed to leave them in the crate for a few hours before letting them out into a closed, quiet area, but I was afraid of Goblin continuing to step and sit on Sister, so we quickly cleared the kitchen and dining room area of any obstacles and things to try to climb on, put the blanket down, and let them out. After drinking some water and sniffing at some food, they both wobbled over to the blanket, carefully arranged themselves on it, and fell asleep.

I keep getting up to check on them and every time I poke my head out of the computer room to see how they're doing, they appear have moved very little, if at all. Goblin just blinked blearily at me, but that's it.

I think they're going to be just fine, but until they actually are, I'll worry.

Poor lil' bebbehs.

EDIT, Saturday, June 14: Matt, who came with me to pick the kittens up and was able to pay more attention to them than I was on the way home, corrected me: Goblin wasn't stepping on Sister. He was standing up, trying to keep his wobbly, woozy balance. Because of the confines of the carrier he was standing over Sister, with just his belly resting on her. Sister was looking around, nervous, probably because of the combination of whatever drug was still very much in their systems and the loudness and not so smooth ride of the Jeep. So those awful wails were not of pain, thankfully (although I imagine she was pretty sore, too, and that added to it), but of just plain old fear. Makes me feel better in one sense, worse in another because you really can't do much for fear except tell them through the bars that it's ok when obviously it's so not.

They're doing much better today. Goblin is almost back to his old self, running around and getting into things. Sister is not quite there, but still very much on the mend. She keeps wanting to play but if she moves too much or moves wrong, she'll stop, tense, and meatloaf up for a few mintues to let her tummy stop hurting before trying again.

Haiku and Emphasis.

2008-06-12T22:38:00.000-07:00

Mad grin; crack a smile-
If I knew better, I’d run-
No savior, I stay.

Mad grin, crack a smile:
If I knew better, I’d run ...
No, savior. I stay.

It's all about how you say what you say, really.

Smelly cat, smelly cat ...

2008-06-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

Kittens are such wonderful creatures. They purr, they pounce, they jump and tumble and snorgle and run around your ankles like an obstacle course.

And if you feed them cheese, they break some sort of record for the Worst Smell Ever, soiling their litterbox in the early hours of the morning so that when you get up to go to the bathroom, you walk into a cloud of stench so strong and pungent your eyes water and your stomach lurches up your throat and you find yourself scuttling backwards, desperately clawing at anything within reach behind you to get away.

And the smell lingers, and clings, so that - bladder firmly told to shut the fuck up - even when you run back to your non-stinky bedroom and hide under the covers, you can still smell it, like it's been rubbed along your upper lip.

Sigh.

It took me approximately ten mintues to open the litter box, secure the sides of the liner (thank gods I use liners!) and tie it off, heave it out of the box and into the trash can, tie that bag off, and toss the atrocity outside to be properly stashed in the can ten yards away in the morning. It usually only takes me a minute or so to do all that, but I had to hold my breath and squint my eyes, and when I needed to breathe I had to lurch away to the bathroom, close the door, exhale explosively, and take another big, deep breath of not-so-nasty air. When a smell is so bad it almost triggers vomitting several times in that ten minute period, one gets a little panicky. Panic is simply not good for holding a proper air supply in one's lungs, so I was scrambling to the bathroom every five seconds or so for a fresh breath.

This was at 2:00 in the morning.

After emptying the litter box and putting in a fresh liner and litter, I grabbed the can of Oust Air Freshener Spray and sprayed the hell out of the kitchen, dining room, bathroom and living room, having to go back and re-spray some places that just wouldn't give up the ghost. Then I had to grab the wind-tunnel-like floor fan and turn it on in the kitchen (pointing away from the bedroom, thank you very much) and let it run for a good fifteen minutes. This scared the hell out of the kittens, who hid at the far end of the room the whole time.

And even that was not enough. Hours later when I dragged myself exhausted from bed (that lingering smell kept creeping back into my nose and making me panicky and twitchy so that I couldn't sleep for a while) there were still a few pockets of smell lingering in odd corners here and there, despite having opened all the windows I could to air the place out. Only, now those stench-pockets were perfumed. I'm not sure which was worse: the original smell or the Oust-perfumed version of it.

I have never in my life smelled anything so bad. Remember that unfortunate co-worker I blogged about a year or two ago? She's still here, she still stinks (worse now than ever) and I would rather do a face-plant into one of the folds between her fat rolls on a hot day and sniiiiffffffff than smell cheese-tainted cat-shit ever again.

Yeah, it was that bad.

Once the trauma wears off, I will probably be morbidly impressed that a stench so amazingly awful could come from somthing so very small and unassuming. Or maybe that's just shock talking.

Note: THAT, Mom, is why I texted you at o'dark thirty to say I wouldn't be walking this morning ...

I love this shit.

2008-06-05T15:16:00.000-07:00

Wow.

Working at a newspaper, I have some perks that most people don't. Including being able to "see into the future" with my horoscope, in the future, so to speak - before the genral public does.

I just took a sneak peek at the horoscope for my birthday:

TODAY'S BIRTHDAY (JUNE 24). You're in charge of this life and you prove it this year as you call the big shots. July brings advancement on the job, and your social options widen as well. In August you're aligning yourself with those who have what you want. A move is featured in October. Education is key to raising your financial position in December. Libra and Virgo adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 30, 20, 13, 27 and 44.

Tripp-ee.

My boss graduates (from the same school I'm attending) in August. I am next in line to be boss when he leaves when he lands a new job with his brand-spankin' new degree. Some training prior to his leaving would of course make sense - like maybe a month or so before I'm put in charge???

I want desperately to move to the Petaluma area of California, and although I haven't looked at job postings much since not getting the one I applied for last year, I was just only yesterday thinking that I should take a peek again.

Despite the fact that I'll be graudating later than originally planned, I'm still using my current education efforts - 3.97 gpa (and rising back up to that 4.0, damnit) and professional certificates - to pump up my resume in the hopes of snagging the attention of a possible new employer who might be willing to hire me before I graduate. When I re-enrolled I was signed up for one class per term every term, except, oddly enough, for the last three. Although I figure this is so that my graduation coincides with the official ending of that school year, I have not gotten around to fixing this, and just decided - again, only yesterday - to go with it and see how things pan out. It would have me graduating at the end of June of next year, instead of sometime in November or December of next year, which is considerably better IMHO. Right around December of this year, I'll be at the six-months-left mark if I do that, which is supposedly when employers decide that hiring someone who hasn't yet graduated will pay off, because if they're only six months from graudation, obviously they're gonna stick it out and get that degree rather that suddenly dropping out because they decide it's just not what they want.

Oh, pleaseohpleaseohplease. I am so ready to move on and out with a better job in a place that I love, where I can finally settle.

Heh. This kinda thing makes me wide-eyed and big-grinned. I love weird stuff like this.

Photoblog: Goblin and Sister.

2008-06-03T18:18:00.000-07:00

Kitteh toes!

Chiaruscuro:

OMG kitteh tongue!!!1!:

Beaute Noir:

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but Sister is not an all-black cat; she's actually a tabby like Goblin, but like a black panther, you can only see her stripes in the right lighting. Then she's a very dark dusty brownish-grey with black tabby stripes.

Sib's.

Kitteh and Ink:

And finally, sleepinks:

Fuzz-faces.

2008-06-03T09:09:00.001-07:00

I am greeted by warm purring kittens every morning.

It's amazing, really, that they don't hold a grudge - we have to lock them into the kitchen/dining room at night so that we can sleep. And although they try to get out at every opportunity, they don't hate us in the morning. This locked-away time used to be only for a few hours, between 9:30 and 12:30, when they'd gain a huge second wind and decide it was time to go tearing and thumping and tumpling and wrestling around the house. We'd let them back out after that and they'd come to sleep with us in bed. That second wind has since increased by a few hours, long after we're sleeping, so they're locked in there all night now.

Granted, that area comprises a good third of the house, so they're not cramped at all, amd their food and litter box is in there with them, but I still feel bad about it and am charmed when they come running over to me, purring and rubbing and batting, when I get up and go into the kitchen every morning.

Of course, the purring and rubbing and light batting very quickly turns into jumping and biting at dangling fingers, and now just this morning this has evolved into bouncing along behind me as I stumble around half awake, jumping and batting at the backs of my knees and nipping at my calves. What the attratction there is, I don't know, but it's their newest game. Despite the thumps against my legs as I try to walk to the bathroom, badly balanced and groggy already from just waking up, I can't help but crack a weary smile and shake my head.

The head-butts against my outstretched hand just do me in. Sister is particularly affectionate this way, loving to have her head and face rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, purring and rubbing back so hard she sometimes snorts a little. Goblin is the one who likes to be held and carried around, toes to nose, in our arms.

They have brought a liveliness to our life that I didn't know was missing.

Opinions?

2008-06-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

I need to get healthier, and one aspect of it is that I need to lose weight.

So I need your thoughts on this.

Today being June 2, is 5 pounds a good goal for the amount of weight I'd like to lose by the end of the month? Should I try for 10, or settle for 3? I know that losing too much weight too fast is unhealthy, but aside from extremes, I don't really know what "too much" would be.

Does 5 pounds in a month sound ok? Maybe 10?

Remember, remember.

2008-06-02T09:16:00.001-07:00

This term is going by really fast, and I'm only on the third assignment. The group project - the big scary one each term that makes up a whole quarter of our overall grade - is due next Friday. Granted, thats a few full weeks earlier than most other classes have their group projects, but even knowing that, I'm nervous. And even knowing that so far this class has been a breeze (even only three assignments into it) doesn't help that.

Sigh. I need more hours in the day. I need a dishwasher. I need a vacation.

None of those will happen anytime soon (although I've been comparing dishwashers and - at least without delivery and installation added in yet - I've found one a good $150 cheaper than the ones I'd been looking at before).

I am trying to see the positive things in life, not just the constant negatives, but it's hard when you don't get enough sleep because of all the negative - or at least damned challenging - things.

Along with the gushy stuff - a man that loves me, kittens that purr for me, a roof over my head - I have some other niceties to remember. I have my own yard to sunbathe in. I get to drive the jeep everyday (because I haven't learned yet to drive the new Honda, which is a manual). I've gotten some of the color on my backpeice done this year, and on my birthday I'm having the snake's color fixed on my arm. My hair is longer - long enough to pull back in a no-longer-dorky-looking ponytail.

Aside from a few short but endurable instances, my gastritis has not bothered me much this year. Although my arthritis has gotten worse, in talking with Mama Wren I'm learning there are things - new drugs - that can be done about it, as soon as I find a new doctor.

The path to my front door from the road is gravel, with house on the right and trees on the left arching over the path to create a green, shimmering waving tunnel to walk through. With the visit from the plumber last week, we now have a water spigot outside for watering plants and such (and a toilet that no longer rocks or smells bad even when we haven't done anything to stink up the place).

I just got a bunch of fruits and veggies yesterday, as a kick-start to a healthier diet and llifestyle. Matt, although not jumping for joy, is willing to change his diet, too. As soon as I can get Mama Wren on the horn I'm starting up the morning walks again, now that Matt's shoulder is letting us both sleep better, and that makes me happy.

Matt and I have decided to get married during the break between my Bachelor's degree and my Master's degree, instead of waiting the three years or more that it will take me to finish both. My best friend will be coming to visit either this Saturday or the next, and I haven't seen her in a very long time. The local Brewfest (lots of local brewers giving away tastes - glass-fulls of it - of their best brews in the shops along historic Main Street) is at the end of this month, and I'm going for the first time.

These are the things that keep me going, despite wanting to run away and hide in a hole somewhere far away from everyone when things get rough (and they've been pretty rough lately). Although it's not easy to think of them when I'm trying to juggle too many other "important" things, I need to try to do so. Sometimes these things will hit me when I least expect them to - while washing three sinkfuls of dishes, say - and I'm left stilled and smiling, kind of happliy shocked that even in the midst of chaos, life is actually pretty good. Scary, yes, but good.

An official vacation is tentatively in the works. The good friends who helped us move and who we then helped move in turn will be heading over from Arizona for a few days in August. It's her 21st birthday, and he promised her they would spend it in Las Vegas. They invited us to go along, too, even offered to pay for our room if we culd just get ourselves there. So, if finances and work allow (and I'll make school work out one way or another) we're goign to Vegas in August.

I've never been there, and as a much needed vacation, it sounds like a little bit of heaven.

That's one more nice thing in my life to remember when things get dark.

Finger Lickin' Good!

2008-05-30T07:51:00.000-07:00

Apparently, I taste good. Or I need to take a little more time in the shower.

Goblin and Sister are both lickers, but Goblin does it more and is much more demanding about it. Once he's decided it's time to groom his very big, hairles cat companions, he will make sure we sit still and take it. If we try to pull away whatever he's cleaning - fingers, toes, arm or leg - he'll grab hold (with claws), bite the thing to be cleaned into submission, then proceed.

Non-cleaning licks - kisses - are much more casual, involving one or only a few little licks in greeting. This is on fingers, ankles, and even noses during snorgle-time. Even though their tongues are like sandpaper, I'm charmed.

Edit: There wasn't supposed to be any sound with this one - I edited it out, or so I thought. We were watching Meet Joe Black. The movie commentary combined with our own is rather boring, so go ahead and mute it if it takes away from the cuteness of kitty licking.

Kitteh Wrestling!

2008-05-28T07:10:00.000-07:00

This is how Goblin and Sister spend agood half of their time. The other half involves mostly sleeping. Yay for videos!

Music in the background is one of Matt's music projects, under his new name, Noisepsalm. (He also does some DJ stuff, under the name DJ Papa Pill; I get the two confused sometimes - oooops!).

Sleepinks.

2008-05-27T22:07:00.000-07:00

For Mama Wren, who loves kitten toes as much as I do.

Thank you, Grampa.

2008-05-26T21:09:00.000-07:00

Ok. At an hour-and-a-half before the cut-off time, I have completed my first assignment for my first term back in school. And, I think I kicked butt. I think. The assignment itself was easy, but the first assignment of the term usually is. This one seemed simpler than most.

Should I worry, then, that maybe I missed something important, and did not in fact kick butt?

Nah. I'm pretty sure I nailed what I needed to.

Getting back into the groove of school, I am very very glad I'm only taking one class per term. Although the subject seems pretty simple so far, it's still a challenge just with all the reading I need to do. This is the first class I've had that has two textbooks; all the others just had one. The reading assignment for this first phase (which has only two assignments - one week's worth) was six chapters total. With reading all day Saturday, my only interruptions being taking two breaks to put away clothes and wash dishes, I got through four. That's all day reading. And I'm a reader - I can zoom through an 800-page novel in a day, given the chance (and I have, when I had the chance).

This is tough. This reading is not fun, it's not particularly interesting (although not totally boring either). It is very dry, straightforward and uninspired. I find myself sort of zoning out and then having to go back and reread passages, so that although with all the various charts and such it's really not that much to read, it takes me hours.

So. Glad. I'm. Only. Taking. One. Class.

I will be far less stressed now with the lighter load, and with everything that's going on right now - especially with Matt's shoulder injury - that is more terribly important than I an reasonably express. Further, it will give me more time to do other things, like walking in the mornings with Mama Wren, and taking Tai Chi classes Wednesday evenings (Mama and I are starting that when the next class begins in July). I'll be able to spend time with Matt, with Goblin and Sister, with books, and with artwork.

As things slow down elsewhere in my life, school will become just one more part of the routine, and a calm will settle again. I'm looking forward to that.

This being Memorial Day, I find myself wishing my grandfather - a vet - were still alive so he could see how well I've done and am doing in school. He died before I decided to go back to school; the last thing he know on the subject was of my adamance against further college. He must have been disappointed on that score, but he never pushed me on it. Maybe he knew I'd change my mind one day.

I want to tell him thank you for setting up the fund that made college a possibility for me. I want to thank him for letting me decide when to finally put it to use, and for having the faith in me that although I may do things more slowly - like taking it one class at a time now - I will get them done, and done well if I have any say in the matter.

I can only thank the wind, and hope that if there's a somewhere, he'll hear it.

There is a cemetery just up the road I live on. I wonder if there are any veterans buried there, or just gold miners and gold theives. I should have visited it today - seen if any flags or flowers were there to say thank you to someone long gone. It's too late and too dark tonight, but maybe I'll stop by there tomorrow and talk to the wind.

Tooth Sun Dial

2008-05-23T20:45:00.000-07:00

Mama Wren made a post about early-morning thoughts, the kind that tug you along when you're only half-awake and you hope they stick around when you become more lucid, but they don't always. Hers did, and the images her blog invoked just got to me.

I immediately saw a sun dial rimmed with teeth in my head, stark - dark and light. And because of the photo of poppies at the top of that post, the sun dial in my head was in a field of 'em. The image, stark and vibrant and strangely creepy as it was, would not leave me alone, begging to be drawn.

No. Painted.

Well, I can't paint at work (much to my dismay). But, I can sketch. And so I did. This is a very basic version of my mind's image, and not quite right in either the lighting or the details. The image in my head has more teeth and a different spoke-thingy (I'm sure there's an actual intelligent term for the spoke-thingy that casts the shadow that tells the time, but I don't know what it is, so spoke-thingy it shall be, so there.) Something less butterfly-wing-ish, more delicate, decorative but simpler somehow, and - somehow - sinsiter looking.

I want to paint this.

I've been wanting to take up painting again for a long time now, but haven't had much motivation. I recently read Stephen King's Duma Key, which is one of his best stories I've read in a very long time - one of his best, ever, IMHO. It is, of course, about a guy who paints, and - of course - these are no ordinary paintings. It got to me, too.

After reading that book, I was itching to paint, and then mere days later Mama Wren posted her Morning Whimsey post and a (sacrificial?) sun dial with teeth started haunting me, and I simply have to paint it. Without a proper set of paints, no easel, and no canvasses, I put a bug in Mom's ear about it and asked her to pass it along to my dad and grandmother, since my birthday is next month. Maybe I'll get a nice colorful birthday present and finally be able to properly illustrate the time-piece that keeps sneaking up on me, and nipping.

Oblivious

2008-05-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

I just got to work, after a run through the Starbucks on Broadway. Much to my delight upon turning into the drive-through I noticed there were only two cars ahead of me, both of which had already placed their orders, so that my own wait for caffiene would be short. So I jauntily moved toward the order kiosk ... and stopped just a few feet shy of it.

The woman in front of me was in a beautiful little white mustang convertible, top down to enjoy the fresh, not-too-cold, not-too-hot morning air. Her hair was cropped short and artfully mussy-spiky, tinted blonde here and there, very classy and modern. And she was oblivious, head down, a good six or seven feet between her and the car in front of her at the pickup window.

I waited.

And sure enough, a few seconds later she rolled forward about a half foot and yes - you guessed it - the hand comes up, cell phone cradled, and plasters itself to the ear. And she stops, one half foot from where she was sitting prior, still not far enough forward for me to be able to order. Since she's looking up now I figure she'll see me in her rearview mirror and move forward, so I wait.

She doesn't.

I toot the horn once, light, polite, and wait.

Nothing.

I toot the horn two times, again quick and polite, no full-on honking, certainly nothing so uncivil as laying on the horn to vent my frustrations in noise.

And the cell-phone-hand comes down and - casually - the woman turns around, sees me, and flashes me a big bright dazzling grin, brilliant white teeth in cherry-red lips. And she just looks at me, grinning.

Trying not to grimace -trying to match her friendly casualty with frindly blankness - I wave my fingers at her in a shooing, "go-forward" motion. Unhurried, she turns back around and rolls forward just enough for me to be able to place my order. There are still several feet between her and the vehicle in front of her, more than enough for her to have moved up further (this "taking up tons of space so that fewer people can order in a timely manner" phenomenon is one I've been meaning to blog about for quite some time now, as pat of some universal Rules of Drive-thru Etiquette).

Happily satisfied that she's no longer blocking me, the cell-phone-hand goes right back up.

Enjoy it while you can. As of July 1, it's hands-free or nothing, and thank gods for that ... Not that it will fix the problem completely - people will still be distracted by their conversations, they'll just have both hands on the wheel when it comes time to swerve and try to avoid the accidents they cause.

Sigh.

As I waited for my drink and watched the woman in the white mustang convertible it occurred to me that despite having been (albeit politely) honked at three times, she seemed completely happy, laid back, and ... well, oblivious. I hated her in that instant, both because she seemed to not have enough basic common sense and alertness to be driving, and becuase that simple small bit of stupidity afforded her escape from the angst of an intelligent person surrounded by idiots. She was joyous, carefree, unruffled and just plain happy, that dazzling bright smile said. It made me think of the stereotyped dumb blondes seen in movies attatched to the arms of rich and powerful men. Beautiful, friendly, smiling ... but no one's home.

Sometimes, like those moments while I watched Little Miss Can't Mess Up My Day, I wish I were stupid. Just a little bit - not a moron, just a bit dim. Sometimes I think I might be less stressed and more able to let things go, relax, and just enjoy life if I weren't so simply smart. And I'm not a genius. I'm not top of the class. There are plenty of things that go over my head, that I juts don't think of, but compered to the seeming vast majority of the people I encounter on a daily basis, I'm damn-near freakin' omnipotent.

I think I need my own little shred of obliviousness now and then, to counter the real world.

Wanted: One clone for immediate hire, full time, great benefits ...

2008-05-19T10:50:00.000-07:00

Here we go again, kiddies.

I have officially re-entered school, and my new term starts, well ... today. The class officially opens Wednesday, but it's up and I can access it, the syllabus, discussion board, etc., all today. Which, of course, I will - despite my grumblings at having to be all grown-up and responsible-ish again. I was rather enjoying the evening- and weekends-time off. 'Specially now that I've got kittens to play with (they're so distracting!)

So - big sigh - it's back to the grindstone. Not that this is really anything new: even though I was off of school for a few terms, I was still busting butt moving and cleaning and organizing and now taking care of Matt.

Matt just finally had surgery on his left shoulder last Friday, to fix the tear in the rotator cuff he suffered from having a 30-40 lb grate fall on him from overhead while working down in the pit at the car wash and lube shop where he works. The doctor had scheduled a room for three hours, and wasn't sure exactly what he'd find but didn't expect it to take that long.

It took four hours.

The doc took plenty of photos while he was cutting and sewing and grinding and stitching, and told Matt he needed to show them to the worker's comp people, his boss, and the horrid phyisical therapy chiropractor (who is the boss' friend, who denied Matt pain killers for two months) so they can see for themselves that Matt was not "milking" the paid time off, and that there really was something very very wrong with his shoulder. I want to be there when he shows his boss, who - when Matt told him he'd be needing surgery for it - had the gall to say to Matt that he couldn't believe a "glancing blow like that could do that much damage."

I want to be there when he shows the boss' chiropractor buddy who treated him like shit - even flat out ignoring him and walking away at one point while Matt was asking about what he could do at home to ease the pain - just why the physical therapy wasn't working, why Matt was in his office several times a week, why he legitimately needed painkillers stronger than over-the-counter Tylenol.

Matt is in incredible pain, and has only the use of his right arm at the moment, needing help with all sorts of things. While I'm more than willing and happy to help, I wokr full time, and will now be doing school work in the evenings, leaving him mostly to fend for himself. He's getting better at doing things one-handed, but he can't do it all, and there are times when his pain is so bad that what he could do while he Vicodin is fresh he can't do till he takes more again, and I have to help out more. This will certainly not be an insurmountable issue, I just worry about either not being able to help him when he needs it or not being able to devote enough time to school work. Or both.

While he's first in my heart, school is first in practicality so that we can get the hell out of Dodge as soon as possible. This makes for conflicting interests, and I worry that I won't be there when he needs me, or when my class group needs me, or that the kittens' needs will be ignored, or the fishes, or Harry's.

Or mine.

This break from school hasn't been a vacation - it's been a life saver. We are now even further understaffed at work, so that while I can take a day or maybe even two off here and there, every now and then, I can't take a real, full one- or two-week vacation, and I really realy need that. I need a real break away from everything that's going on in my life right now. I need to get away from work, from school, from cleaning the house (or ignoring it and hating the mess), from Matt's entirely understandable grumpiness that has worn me down anyway after so long and made me feel like shit from his words and my reasonable but maybe selfish reaction to them, from bills and and shopping - and yes, even from the kittens. Cute as they are, funny and sweet and snorglable as they are, they're a handfull, too, and I need a break from running after them, stopping them from chewing on wires, keeping them away from the stove, locking them into the kitchen and dining room area at night (all night now, too, not just from 9:30 to 12:30) to play themselves into exhaustion away from us while we try to sleep.

I need to run away from the world for a week or so, and I cannot do it. I am unable (and with Matt on disability, I can't afford to anyway) to take the time off work. I cannot leave Matt alone right now because he's hurt and one-armed at the moment and bored and loney to the point of depression. I am starting school again, and so am handcuffed to the world by my computer. I have kittens to train and take care of and keep off of Matt's bad arm (they jumped onto and then launched themselves off of it yesterday while he was sleeping, the little shits). I have dishes to wash (Matt can't right now) and meals to make (he can't do that either). I have laundry to do and a cat-box to clean, a fish tank to clean, a lizard water-dish to clean, and somewhere in all of that I need to keep me clean too.

I've decided that, like going to the bathroom and sometimes eating, showers are a horrible waste of time. I mean, you're just going to get dirty again anyway, right? There are so many other things I could do and need to be doing in that half-hour period of time where I'm locked away from the world in the shower.

And I've been tryng to fit walking every morning into all of it. I haven't walked for a few days now, what with Matt's surgery, and probably won't again until he's doing considerably better than he is now. He's not been sleeping well (too much stress, now too much pain) so I don't want to risk waking him when he's finally zonked out in the morning, and because of taking care of him and being paranoid about accidentally bumping his bad arm in the night, I haven't been sleeping well the last couple days either. I hope to be walking again within a few weeks, but we'll see how things go.

I feel a little overwhelmed right now. Hence the lack of posts lately, despite my having a bunch of great kitten photos and even a few videos to post, along with just some things I've wanted to blog about. For instance - we've got some pretty weird people in El Dorado County. As I'm sure I've mentioned in previous posts, I type up legal documents for publication in our newspaper at work. One of the things I get to type up is name changes, which are usually pretty boring; just adoptions and marriages and "I hate my parents so I'm coming up with my very own name which is nothing at all like the one that my parents - who I hate, remember? - gave me, which I will probably regret in, oh, say five years. Maybe even two."

Bo-ring.

There is an apparently very non-boring man in El Dorado County who is legally and officially changing his name to Flesh Moy Plezure.

No, really. He apparently has three different last names he has used in the course of his life, and has also used the longer as well as the shortened version of his first name, and so listed out every single version of his real name he's ever gone by, and changed them all to Flesh Moy Plezure. I have to wonder if he's a porn star, or simply a fat, balding, socially inept, mid-thirties gamer/computer geek still living in his parents' basement who either lost a bet or serisouly thinks it's cool to change one's real-life name to relfect one's World of Warcraft screenname.

I need a break from El Dorado County, too.

A vacation is simply not going to happen anytime soon - maybe not even at all this year - so I have to look forward to the occasional day or two I can manage to snag here and there. Right now I'm looking forward to the Sunday before my birthday I'll have off because I'll be out of town that weekend and one of Matt's friends' wedding, and the Tuesday two days later I'll have off so long as nothing comes up, which is my birthday.

Before that I get next Monday (Memorial Day) off, and I suppose that's great too, except that a) Matt will not be feeling up to getting out anywhere, and b) damn-near everyone else has that day off too, so even if he were just fine I don't want to deal with the traffic and the whiny kids and rude parents who will be flooding the area. So it's really not much to look forward to other than being able to sleep in.

So all this is to say, basically, pardon my recent absence and bear with me. I probably won't be feeling too terribly chatty for a little while yet.

Kittens and Bugs.

2008-05-06T09:21:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm finally back from the land of kittens. It was a long, arduous journey filled with harrowing experiences with kitten fur, tongues, tail and toes. Oh, and the occasional whisker. Dangerous territory, I tell you, but I survived and have photos for recounting the adventure ...

Yeah, ok. So I admit, I have spent the last several days giggling helplessly at kitten antics and just haven't been able to draw myself away from it. But I promised photos, and I have them (including the fantastic argyle sock sweater - idea from CuteOverload.com). So without further ado, here they are:

Day 1, photo 1. As soon as I got home from work Thursday (the day I got the kitties) I immediately went looking for Goblin (orange tabby) and his sister, Sister (black one). I found them curled up together under the edge of the bed, and as Sister blinked sleepily up at me, I snapped the shot. Ok, say it with me now: "D'awwwwwww!!!"

Ok, here's the argyle sock sweater, as modeled by Goblin. Sister has one too, but she's a little less tolerant of it.

A better shot of the sweater.

A proper introduction to Goblin ...

And to Sister.

They like to play fight through this metalwork room divider in my bedroom.

Ok, Goblin likes to play fight through the divider. Sister ignores him till she decides it's time to put him in his place (she's made it clear she's Top Cat), and gives in to the antics.

Even sleepy, he wants to play.

And, just cos I have been bowled-over-impressed by the macros setting on my new camera, here are some bugs that Mama Wren and I saw on the El Dorado Trail while walking a few days ago:

Found this cool looking centipede first. It's only about an inch long.

Experimenting with the macros setting and distance, here's a closer shot.

Another centipede. There was a third one, like this but darker, but that shot didn't turn out so well.

Mosquito Hawk. Creepy, but cool too and very useful. They really do eat mosquitos, which makes them like super heroes in my book.

And last but not least, a Rollie Pollie (Wood Louse). I love these lil' guys, and remember collecting and playing with them as a wee tyke in Sacramento. I still grin when I see them.

I love my kitties. I love my camera. The combination is heaven.

OMGKITTEHS!!!1!

2008-04-23T09:03:00.000-07:00

I GOT TO PET BEBBEH KITTEHS THIS MORNING!!!Z!OMG!!11!!!!1!

Ahem. Sorry 'bout that. I'm just in a ridiculously good mood. Fluffy, fuzzy, wriggly kittens - two of them! - being the first thing I run into as I walk into work in the morning is just one of those classic great ways to start the day.

They were Goblin's siblings, a white one with black spots (and two extra toes on each front foot, one big one and one tiny little one between that and the regular toes) and a grey and white one (sort of a like a sylvester cat but with grey instead of black) with the softest fur I've felt on any animal, ever. As in, no living creature could possibly have fur that soft, but this kitten does. It doesn't feel real.

They were so little and hoppity and fuzzy big-eared and cute!

I get Goblin and Black Beauty (a temporary name until Matt meets her and gives her a real one) next Thursday, and although I was anxious before, now I'm practically wiggly myself with excitement. I wish I could take them home now, but the week will go by quickly.

In other news, I'm on the way to being a student again. I've turned in my re-entry essay and application, and now just need to fill out the FAFSA and a few other things before I'm officially re-enrolled. The FAFSA will have a to wait though, as I had to apply for a new PIN and I can't use it until it's confirmed (and I need it for the FAFSA and a few other things).

I have made a rather hard decision regarding school as well. Instead of taking two classes per term, which would have me graduating in about seven months, or taking the traditional two-one-two schedule, which would have me done in about eleven months, I'll only be taking one class per term, and so won't graduate for another fifteen months. I'm not thrilled about this, but with the situation at work as it is (every department is severely understaffed and overworked) and the difficulty level of the classes and the time needed to devote to them in order to maintain As, I simply cannot take on more than that. At least not right now, and not for the forseeable future. So for the sake of my sanity and home life, I'll take longer to graduate, but guarantee that final 4.0 grade-point average, which is much more important.

Besides, I'll be getting two kittens next week, and I simply cannot allow strenous studying, class chats, reports, and power point presentations to interfere overmuch with furball play time. ;)

P.S.

2008-04-22T07:10:00.000-07:00

Just in case you're so damned bored that you need anything - anything at all - to distract you and keep from literally kicking the bucket due to a chilling lack of anything to do, I have a second blog. A (kinda-sorta-when-I-feel-like-it) daily journal type thing, only it's a challenge journal in that I am limited to 100-words per post. No more, no less.

It's not thrilling. It's not brilliant.

But, you know - if you need some tiny little death-from-boredom prevention, it might do the trick. For a little while.

We're purty smart around here!

2008-04-17T12:15:00.000-07:00

Sigh.

I've been able to pretty much reign in my anger as of late, but my astonishment at how incrediby stupid people can be just keeps finding new things to be drop-jawed-astonished about.

There is a story running in tomorrow's newspaper about a mysterious explosion in Cameron Park. Since my grandmother lives in Cameron Park, I read the story just to find out if she was in any danger (she's not).

Apparently, a very large "window-shaking" explosion occurred somewhere in Cameron Park recently, but no one knows where it occurred. Several calls were made to report the big boom, with each caller thnking it came from a different area. So far, the exact location has not been determined.

Now, here's what has my jaw in my lap: along with a big, incredibly loud, window-shaking boom, there was a plume of black smoke spotted right after the boom.

Now, while El Dorado County certainly isn't New York or L.A. with probably a bunch of money to throw at local police and fire departments, we do have helicopters here, used on a very regular basis for just such incidents as this.

Why, oh why, did not one of the various police or fire personnel think to get into one of these 'copters, fly over to the big plume of black smoke, and look down?!??

Sigh again.

Birds and bees.

2008-04-15T14:00:00.001-07:00

Heh, so Goblin is a boy after all. Turns out the "puffiness" was exactly what my coworker had orginally thought it was, so I'm back to having my preferred boy kitty. Girl kitties are nice too, but I'm just partial to boys. It may not be the rule, but in my experience, boy kitties are spunkier, and I like cats that like to play and get up to mischief.

This means we're back to getting the female black kitten (still unnamed) for Matt, which I believe was his preference as well.

I would have loved a girl Goblin just as much as a boy Goblin, I'm quite sure, but this makes me happier right now nonetheless.

And yes, I will be getting a pair of argyle socks to turn into kitten-sweaters for their cameo appearances here. Much giggling will ensue, I'm sure.

Walking

2008-04-14T21:51:00.001-07:00

I start (again) my daily morning walks tomorrow. Mama Wren will be walking with me, both of us shivering in the early morning darkness till the walking kicks in and we're warm.

The walking will do my body good. The conversation will do my soul good.

P.S. Ok, yes, you're right - Goblin is a good name for a girl kitty, and so Goblin she stays. Two and a half more weeks!

Goblin or Mona?

2008-04-10T09:20:00.000-07:00

Is Goblin a good name for a girl kitty?

It turns out that the genders of the litter of kittens that my coworker is giving away got mixed up, but understandably so. He made the perfectly logical assumption that the ones that were, well, puffier "down there" were male, and the not-so-puffy ones were female. Makes sense, right?

Logic has a tendency to lie.

So, Goblin is a girl, and I've been going back and forth on changing her name. On the one hand, I'm not sure Goblin is a girly name, but that could be entirely due to the character the name comes from being male. Really, "Goblin" is a thing, not a name, so it actually works perfectly well for either gender. Further, I've been stuck on that name since before I knew I was going to be getting kitties at all, and so I feel I just can't change it. And well, the more I really think about it, the more I think it would actually be pretty damn cool to name a girl kittie Goblin.

The name I was considering changing it to is Mona, another character from Blackwood Farm. Mona is awild, wonderful, indescribably intelligent and romantic red-headed witch, and is Quinn's love - his Ophelia Immortal (he is her Noble Abelard). She's just wonderful, despite having a penchant - until meeting Quinn, and Goblin - of doing her best to sleep with all of her male cousins (and in the Mayfair clan, there are many).

It's an odd story, but endearing.

So, Mona or Goblin? Goblin or Mona? I like both names very much.

What do you think, dear reader?

Sunday, April 6, 2008, somewhere between 6:45 and 7:15 p.m., in the car, going home.

2008-04-06T19:12:00.000-07:00

I found my official first white hair. Not gray. Not silver. White. A vibrant shock amongst the kinda-sorta-reddish-brown. Right side, a little above my ear. Not at my temple, exactly - a little ways back from it.

I am telling myself it makes me feel distingushed.

Edit: I guess this is the perfect time to start that journal ...

Stubular, Tubular, Nubular Bub!

2008-04-06T16:10:00.000-07:00

Ok. So, this beats whiskey any day. Maybe I just need to watch this when I start to feel grumpy. It worked like a charm today.

This is why I'm addicted to Cute Overload.

Oblivion's call

2008-04-06T14:52:00.001-07:00

I've come to the slow realization that I've become a very angry person, and I don't like that. Granted, there has been a lot - a whole freaking lot - of stuff going on in my life lately to legitimately make me angry on an almost continuous basis, but it's my reaction to the anger that I don't like.

I used to have an almost infinite amount of patience with even the most mind-bogglingly stupid people and decisions and the worst, most cruel, arrogant and unjust people and decisions. I knew that such things were not the be-all and end-all of my peace of mind. I still know that, but so much anger and frustration and disgust has built up over the last few years that I find myself full-on outraged and enraged at even small things now.

My work life has become damn-near unbearable, with so few people working in every department that those of us with even half a conscience know that we cannot take any time off without royally fucking up the workload and sanity of those left behind at work for a few days. Those without a conscience take two or three days off a week anyway, and then have the gall to freak out at everyone else because they're so far behind in their work, and couldn't we all just drop what we're doing and pick up their slack because they'd like to leave early today you know.

The boy's work life has been bad for a while as well, with incompetent and unethical workers as well as higher-ups, and now that's been made worse since he got hurt on the job about two months ago. There's a good chance he will need surgery on his left shoulder, and his boss - who doesn't know a damn thing about running a business and is in debt way over his head - is freaking out about the cost of all the therapy and the possible upcoming surgery. Workman's comp insurance only pays so much, and the rest will come out of the boss' pocket. The boss has been playing dirty, tyring to make the boy mess up some how so that the case can be dropped and the boy can be fired and left to suffer. And he and the manager have been making lots of not-so-subtle remarks implying they don't believe the boy is really hurt all that badly, and that he's just milking it for time off. Because, you know, we're rich and can totally afford for him to lose so many hours, right?

Now, there are plenty of very very good things going on in my life as well, things that should (and do, when I forget myself) have me giggling with glee. The boy and I are engaged! (That still makes me squeal happily at times.) We moved into a bigger place, with a yard of our own. We have our own washer and dryer now. We just bought a used but in fantastic condition Honda Civic to replace my beautiful but tragically broken Subaru Legacy, which would have cost twice as much to fix as what we paid for the like-new Civic. We'll have two fuzzy, playful little kittens by the end of the month. I am actively pursuing a tattoo apprenticeship and althogh there have been a few let-downs so far that's because of the economy, not my lack of talent. And there have been rumblings of discontent with one shop's current apprentice, so that I may have a shot there after all. I took last term off from school, and am taking this one off too, to finally unwind and relax a bit.

Despite these good things, these wonderful things, I become damn-near murderously enraged when simple things don't go smoothly, like the key not being quite lined up with the key-hole right away, so that it takes me two or three seconds of curse-riddled fumbling to be able to open the front door, and I am left in such an incredibly foul mood that even I tell myself I'm being ridiculous. Then I mentally tell myself to fuck off.

And compared to work, that's nothing. At work, I am done. I told my boss last week that I am now actively looking for a new job - any new job - after a decision was made that should have flat out shocked me but instead just disgusted me. He said he understood and is right there with me, updating his resume.

This anger, and the lack of real time-off to get away from it (I was able to take last Sunday and Monday off, much to my delighted surprise, but it just wasn't enough), is starting to break me down, and worse, it's starting to break down my home life. With the boy and I both super stressed, exhausted, and pushed to the limit, we're starting to snap at each other. Simple conversations turn into arguments even though neither of us intended it. We tip-toe around each other and the house, afraid to get in one another's way, or to say or do just exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. His rants and frustraded sighs stress me out, and mine stress him. Although we want to be there for one another, we're both too caught up in the various stresses we're dealing with that no healing is found in such conversations. Instead they only add fuel to the firey anger of feeling helpless to stop or change things, or end in arguments about approaches to take to stop or change the things at work that are going so very horribly.

And I haven't spent one half-hour period of time in months without being unusualy frustrated with something. Even a nice, hot, relaxing bath at my grandmother's house (I was dog-sitting for her while she was out of town) turned ugly when I ran out of hot water before the tub was full. I stubbornly sat there shivering, muttering, and telling myself I was damned if I was going to get out of the tub because I never get to take a bath at home, damnit, so I'd find a way to enjoy it. Damnit.

After waiting half an hour for the water heater to heat up enough for a new tub-full water, I emptied out half of the luke-warm water and began to refill it. And at a little under three-quarters full, the hot water ran out again.

I was in a ridiculously, damningly black mood the rest of the night.

Actually, I have been in a damningly black mood for weeks now. That's why I haven't blogged anything lately. I've plenty to blog about, but it would all be seething bitching, and I bitch enough about it already in real life. I'm tired of hearing it.

I've been trying to calm myself lately, because I feel out of control, too on-edge to think before I react, and I don't like who I've been because of it. This is a destructive anger. This is a catastrophic anger - the kind that rips apart friends and families and it's no one's fault really, life just sucks and eventually you stop being able to deal with it. You run out of ways to deal with it. You run out of solutions and the dream of evertything being ok again feels like a child's dream - very pretty but unrealistic.

I have had many thoughts lately about "getting shitfaced" so I don't have to think anymore, and that scares me. I've never been a big drinker, and due to years of dealing with an alcoholic family member, I am very leery of such thoughts. I don't want to turn into someone who drinks to forget their troubles, but damn if it doesn't work. I've only drank to "get away" a couple of times (I've wanted to many more but haven't done it) and both times I was left fuzzily happy and relaxed and carefree, even if only for a few hours. That scares me, in a way; that the only way I seem able to let things go and stop thinking about injustices is to be under the influence of something doesn't seem right to me. It doesn't seem ok.

What scares me more is that despite that, I've wanted to drink everyday for the past few weeks. I haven't, but I've wanted to. Really badly. I suppose I should tell myself I'm perfectly fine becuase I haven't caved and drank myself into oblivion, despite having three (three!) different bottles of whiskey, some leftover beer from St. Patty's Day, and a whole bottle of Champagne right at home, and living a whopping five yards or so from a liquor store, and a ten minute walk from three different bars. But strength formed from fear of becoming like that always angry, always yelling, always drunken family member is entirely different from simply saying "this won't solve my problems, so I won't do it."

I know it won't solve anything, but I still want to do it. I still want that oblivion, that nothingness, that too temporary escape.

Determined not to become what I secretly despised for so many years, I've beem reading about anger and non-destructive, effective ways of managing it. I've thought back to other things I've read in the past, like the Tao Te Ching. I've thought about the simple logistics and reality of what too much stress does to the body, to the health of the person who is always angry. I've watched my weight rock back and forth between "ok but not great" and "too much," and I've felt the effects of too little nutrition and excercise combined with way too much stress.

I need time to myself to calm, to center, to just do nothing for a little while, but I'm not going to get it anytime soon. There's simply too much going on right now, even with school off that list for another month.

I need to find a release for my anger and fears, a distraction, a ritual or routine that allows me to get away for a little while each day. If I don't find something, I'll lose everything, little bit by little bit, and what I have - all those good things that keep getting better - I'll be damned if I'll give up without a fight.

Although I was unsucessful with it when I tried it a few months ago, I think I'm going to give daily morning walks another shot. I'll get used to the getting up earlier. I'll get used to an hour or two less of sleep. I'll get used to waking up outside, in nature, in the wild, away from home and work. I'll get to where I like it, to where I'm ready to go when the alarm goes off at 5:30 a.m.

I need something, and walking has always been an escape, and a useful, healthy one. I can think or not think, ponder or not ponder, plan or not plan, as I see fit. When I need time away from the grind to figure somethng out, walking will give me that. When I need time away from everything to think nothing beyond the feel of one foot and the other and swing the arms and cold air and waking birds, walking will give me that.

And slowly, over a matter of weeks, a month, two months maybe, I'll start to feel better. Being aware of what my anger is doing to me and those I care about is the start. Without that I'd never be able to change it. But it's not enough. I need a peace-time. I need a quietness, a silence of though and feeling. I need a kind of nothingness, to clear space in my head and heart for all the things that challenge and tempt me to rage, and as much as I enjoy whiskey, it's an occasional fun thing, not the answer to my prayers. Walking will give me that nothingness, and it will help me get back into shape, which will help my self-esteem and health. And both of those will help me more to be able to deal with the everyday things.

I think I'll start a journal-blog, a different one than this, where I do what Mama Wren's done - write 100 words everyday. Only I won't stop after fifty days. I'll keep going with it, with maybe every fifty days being where I look back and see what I've been through and learned or not learned, accomplished or not accomplished, dreamed and realized and cursed and drank for a kind of fuzziness that different from kitten-belly-fur. Maybe I'll post a photo with each post, just to remind myself that there is something in every day that is worth stopping and smiling at. Or maybe, to challenge myself to find that something every day.

Because, in all my anger, I think I've forgotten how to realize the good things in life still outweigh the bad andthat if I let them - if I remember how - they always will. I need to get back to that, somehow.

Tewtally fuzzular!

2008-03-20T09:28:00.000-07:00

OMG I can't wait. A little over a month and they're ours!

New ink!

2008-03-19T07:31:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it's not the best shot of it ( I need a better camera!), but here's the latest update on my backpiece. I finally got started on the color, and it was at this session that my tattoo artist cleared up some misunderstandings I'd had about tattoo apprenticeships and practically demanded thsat I apply at a new shop which had just opened up in that town. Or hell - that I apply anywhere really, so long as I got the basic teaching I'd need to become a tattoo artist myself.

I did speak to the owner of that new shop, and right now it's only big enough for one person to tattoo, but she's hoping to expand within the next few months, at which point she would probably be seeking an apprentice. She said she'd keep me updated and let me know when that happens, and promptly added me on Myspace. In the mean time, once this move is finally wrapped up, I'm going to head over to the new shop right here in my own town and speak to that owner (also suggested by my artist) and see if she'll teach me. Word around town is she's slammed with work and desperately needs help, so I may have a very good chance. Wish me luck!

Boxes and Goblins

2008-03-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

As the previous post probably made clear, I have reached the point with this move where I can relax and have fun a little. We still have a bit of random relatively little stuff at the apartment that needs to be moved to the new place, but half of that is cleaning stuff, which we need to clean the apartment so we can get back as much of our deposit as we can. All the big stuff, the important stuff, and the fun stuff is moved over, and about 85% put away, organized, decorated, etc. The dining room is full of boxes, so we're still eating meals sitting on the couch for now, and the kitchen is still rather half-assed, but it's getting there rapidly.

This week is our last offcial week at the old place, so we'll be scrubbing and vacuuming and sweeping like mad after work, but we have had and still have the assistance of a good pair of friends of ours who are also in the process of moving - only they're moving out of state, which is a bummer because they're really good people and we like hanging out with them. The plus side to their moving too is that we're getting their washer and dryer, and they took our old entertainment center and computer desk.

I have mostly successfully created a sort of oriental feel to the new place, with oriental and tibetan and buddhist stuff, and several nice orchid prints from AllPosters.com. Being as I love anything oriental and have been wanting to decorate accordingly for a long time now, I'm thrilled. I have had to keep myself in check, however, for kitty stuff. We won't get the kittens for another month yet, so we don't need to get all the stuff for them just yet, but of course I want to. I keep looking at cat trees and toys and collars and treats and stuff, and wishing we had the kitties already.

Soon. Sooner than it feels like, probably, which brings me to school stuff.

This term (which I'm out of) is almost over, so I have a choice. I can contact the school about re-entry now, and take the chance that the paperwork might take too long for me to be able to get back in in time for next term. Or, I can simply wait, taking this next term off as well to finally actually relax, and start the re-entry process a week or two into it to make sure its all taken care of in time for the following term.

Altough I want to graduate as soon as possible, I've already decided to go back to the traditional decellerated schedule, which will already have me graduating later, so really what's another month? And with some new career path plans (I'm finally going for a tattoo apprenticeship) the wait won't be as bad because I won't be graduating in order to get a better job then - rather, I'll be graduating just to have the knowledge and apply it properly to an environment with lots of artistic as well as business promise. Tattooing is what I've wanted to do for many years, and fits right in with some other artsy ideas which would require proper business - especially management and marketing - knowledge.

So it's possible that within the next few months (if not sooner) I'll be "out of this hellish place" and learning, finally, to tattoo. Which, with such an artistic environment to work in everyday, will give me the metaphoric kick in the butt I've needed for so long to actually do art for fun, on my own time. (Sticky note for March coming soon, if I don't hold off entirely and post the next one for April instead. Hey - I've been busy ok? ...)

This weekend was the first in a very long time that I actually got to relax a bit, hence the whiskey on Friday night, and the Irish Car Bombs and darts with a coworker last night. And, no Mom - I didn't end up with a mohawk this time. Just beer rings on the kitchen counter and the new-found knowledge that I can chug a Guinness apparently with the best of 'em. Unlike with pool, however, alcohol does not improve my darts-playing ability, but that's ok. We didn't even finish the game, in the end.

Have I mentioned I've settled on Goblin as the name for my new kitty, the orange tabby? I got the name from an Anne Rice book - Blackwood Farm. In that book, Goblin is actually a not-so-very-friendly-after-all ghost that haunts the main character, Quinn. Quinn recently became a "Blood Hunter" against his will, and now has his own spiritual vampire in Goblin to deal with before Goblin gets out of control and becomes something else entirely.

Why do I want to name a cute, probably sweet little kitty after a not-so-nice ghost, even though I haven't even met said kitty? Because until Quinn became the blood-drinking undead, Goblin was good, for the most part - his constant companion since infancy; his one true friend who was alwasy there. The bittersweet romance of that just does it for me, and so new orange kitty wil be named Goblin - my little Goblin, my fuzzy companion.

It's a fantastic book, if you happen to want to read one helluva ghost story. For Anne Rice fans, you'll be enchanted by the fact that it seamlessly weaves the vampire chronicles, the Mayfaire witches, the Talamasca, and this new and intriguing spirit, Goblin, all into one wonderful tale with a superbly naive and charming main character (Quinn). Pick it up; you'll love it.

I'm reading it again, now that I have some time to read for fun rather than academics.

I can't wait to meet my little Goblin.

Yep. Whisket riocks.

2008-03-13T22:07:00.000-07:00

Oh carp,nevermiund. A ghood friend of mine sent me a youtube viedo abotu photoshopping with a ugly person's photo or something I am not un-drubnk enough to blog thios.

thwe viedop that defartead me: )MOG@! My designer friends will fucking love this!):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EKAtO4Anxc yeah ok so it's not letuing me copy and past eany kind acode and I kinda suck on th eHTML departmwe t, so copt and past ethe link and yo;ll laugh I promise.

O god this will be me tomorrow:

o that is too fucking funy

I will hold that stree down like no one's buisnesss...

Kitty kitty kitty

2008-02-27T15:20:00.000-08:00

Talk about perfect timing!

Now that we're moving into a place where we can have a cat, I've been dreaming of kitties, looking at the photos of available cats and kittens on the local animal shelter's website, etc. I've been making lists of what I'd need to get for a kitty, as well as looking up vaccination and spay/neuter ages. Now all I need is the kitty.

And in two months I'll have one! One of my co-workers today asked me if I'd like a kitten. Of course I nodded vigorously and said "Ohmigodyes!" Turns out his cat had kittens just yesterday and none of them have been claimed yet, so I get first pick.

They are all different colors, and I'll get to see photos of them tomorrow. One of them is a little marmelade tabby and I happen to be particularly fond of those, so I'll probably end up with that one. I had a marmalade-siamese mix once - my first-ever cat that was really mine and not just a general family pet - named Merlin. He was a sweetheart, but his farts were deadly.

I made the mistake only once of feeding him some leftover beans.

He wasn't allowed to sleep on my pillow with his butt on my head for damn near a week after that.

Ah, cats. I love them so, and am very happy that I will once again have a feline friend to come home to. *big grin*

Edit: We might actually get two kittens ... Oh, joy! Oh, wonderment!

Edit, again: It's official. We're getting two!

Weirdness meme

2008-02-24T21:06:00.000-08:00

So, rather unexpecetdly, I've been tagged for a meme simply by reading a friend's blog. Well, ok, so it's not really an official tagging when said blog post begins with "TAG YOU'RE IT," but, well, it's 9:08 p.m., I have no school stuff to do (taking this term off to move), the boy is doing music-type stuff on his new laptop (late birthday present from lil' ol' me), and damnit I'm bored and need to get my mind off of the excitement of moving. Since, you know, I can't start packing and moving right this instant, which I want to do.

So. I'm submitting to the meme tagging, and present you now - purely for entertainment purposes - ten weird facts about me. You can submit to the tagging as well if you'd like and post your own ten strange facts about you, but you don't have to. You can just point and laugh at mine if you wish.

1. Just to get this started right, allow me to let you on to a guilty secret. Anne Rice got to me. I want to be a vampire. Yeah, really. Like the realistic, romantic and kickass and whiny and artsy and schitzoid and wonderful characters from her books. The part that sucks (heh, heh ...) is that no matter how much I want to, and no matter how many weird ghost-related things have happened to me in my life to make me believe in ghosts, I can't bring myself to believe in vampires. I try, I really do - it just doesn't work.

Um, any real vampires who may be reading this are more than welcome to make me a believer, though ...

2. I believe in ghosts. Have since I lived in Germany as a kid and we had a bunch of 'em in the attic (footsteps which would magically stop as soon as someone would open the attic door, no matter how long they stood right outside the door, listening to a horde of people walking around, back and forth, directly toward the door, directly away from it, etc.). The real deal sealer for me though was that one night one of them preceded my step-father and I down from the attic to our apartment door, footsteps only, just a few feet in front of us - it stopped three times when we stopped, then walked the rest of the way down the stairs to the front door when we stopped a fourth time, eyes and mouths wide, me hiding behind step-dad.

Creepy as that stuff is, I fucking love it.

3. I love the smell of a tattoo parlor - it's like a drug to me. Probably the smell of the ink alone is the major appeal, being an artist and all (new books do it to me too). But the mixture of ink and hot metal and raw flesh - and yes, blood - is just it. If someone could bottle that and sell it as perfume, I'd marinate in it. Or if it was made into incense, I'd have a cone stuffed up each nostril.

4. I have come up with strange food concoctions, many of which are better than most homemade, down-home, "just like grandma's" meals that most people salivate over. My favorite is what I call simply 'burrito goop.' The recipe is as follows:

a) Put two frozen microwaveable burritos in the microwave and heat for about 30-45 seconds, just until they'r soft enough to cut into little chunks.
b) Cut into little chunks, and sprinkle a generous amount of sharp cheddar over them.
c) Heat for another 30 seconds, then add a bit of spicy salsa and more cheese, and heat once more for one minute.
d) Remove from microwave, add ranch dressing, mix into a pile of goop, and enjoy.

No really - I dare you. It's delicious.

5. My preferred non-alcholic drink is 3/4 Dr. Pepper, 1/4 lemonade. Goes great with burrito goop.

6. Until I returned to America from my six-year stay in Germany as a very young kid, I didn't know racism was alive and well today. My school there - an American school for military brats - had us wee ones believing racism magically ended when slavery did.

Talk about culture shock.

7. I like to draw strange, dark things, like unicorns corrupted by demon claws or meat hooks and made into psychotic, too-wide-grinning, bulging white-eyed Night Mares. Further, I love the look on people's faces when they see those drawings after knowing me only as "the sweet young lady who smiles and is so nice and helpful." It's sort of like taking off the mask for a moment, winking, and whispering, "sshhhh - it's a secret."

8. Sometimes I dream of being an uber-top-secret, scientifically-experimental, biologically-, chemically- and all other cool ways-modified, military-ordered human weapon. I've escaped from the lab, am chased by the feds, and deliver a twisted but wholly accurate brand of justice to the wicked, sliding quiet and unseen through dark shadows. I never get caught, of course - just bloodied up a bit, and my reputation precedes me.

9. My imagination is vivid enough that I can scare myself shitless just by thinking about things like clowns, ventriloquist dummies, and what half-rotted, grinning ghoul/zombie/skeletal face I'll see when I turn over to face that empty space beside the bed late at night when I can't sleep because some something woke me up. I can keep myself awake for hours, terrified to move or even open my eyes. (I don't believe in vampires, but the gibbering, mad undead is totally possible.)

10. I like to dip french fries in vanilla milkshakes.

*straight face*

And what's really scary is that those are all true.

... Tag. You're it.

Movin' on

2008-02-23T16:59:00.000-08:00

The boy and I are moving!

I'm so excited I'M TEMPTED TO WRITE IN ALL CAPS TO BETTER PORTRAY MY BOUNCY LOUD HAPPINESS, but I'll spare you. This time.

So we've been wanting to move for a while now, as the apartment we first moved into a little over a year ago is now way too small for all of our various stuff and junk and things, including everyday items like pots and pans and a coffee pot that we don't even have storage space for (which consequently take up all the counter space in the ridiculously tiny kitchen). Now, working at the newspaper as I do, I have been able to keep an eagle eye out for new rental listings, and it was while acutally putting Friday's classifieds section together that I noticed a "New Today" listing for a tri-plex right here in town (amazingly, it's even closer to work than we live now). Two bedrooms, very clean, laundry room (OMG!), and small pets are ok.

I pounced. I called the boy and gave him the information and he made the call (the day before the ad was set to start running the paper!) He got the address and we checked out the outside, then called back today to say we were interested in seeing the inside. The landlady said we could see it right away, so off we went.

Let me say now, in complete internet geekiness, Oh Em Gee. It's the basement apartment of the tri-plex, totally remodeled and newly painted, re-floored, etc. The ceiling is pretty low (throughout much of it it's mere inches from the top of the boy's head, and in some of the doorways he actually has to duck down a bit), but he said that should be ok. It has a little yard (which we have been given the ok to landscape), and the laundry room is our own, so that now we need to get a washer and dryer (oh, glory days!), and it already has a cable hookup so I just need to call Comcast and let them know we're moving. And "small pet" does not just mean a cat would be ok, as we assumed it did - we can get a small dog if we want to. We probably won't though, just because it is a small yard and we don't actually own the place. But I am so getting a cat! Further, the layout rocks. It's not just squares within a bigger square; both bedrooms are sort of oddly shaped, which just tickles me pink because I hate square rooms (they're so very common, dahlink).

The boy and I both loved it, and the landlady said she really liked us and would feel good about renting to us (she made it clear she's pretty picky about renters, making sure everyone in the tri-plex gets along well), and that we seemed like "good people," which of course we try to be, although I think my grinning like a fool as soon as we walked in might have helped a wee bit. So we filled out an application, wrote the deposit check, and this upcoming Friday we meet with her again to sign the renter's agreement, pay the first month's rent, and get the key. It's ours.

I am so incredibly excited!

There is, of course, a catch. But it's only a tiny one, and with some scheduling it's all good. See, today is February 23, and the landlady wants to have everything wrapped up and the keys in our hands by March 1, which is exactly one week from now. So, in one week we'll officially be tenants there, paying rent and bills and such, regardless as to whether or not we're actually moved in yet. In order to maintain good renter's reputation where we are now, we're giving the preferred 30-day notice, so we can get our deposit back and be on good terms with the landlord and managers here for future references. This means that we'll have to pay pro-rated rent through the 23rd of March for this apartment, even though we'll also be paying rent at the new place. Ouch, but being pro-rated it's not the usual full-month's rent, so our deposit should cover it pretty easily. Also, it will give us a month to get everything moved, which is far better than trying to organize, pack, and move in one week.

In order to make things go smoother, I've decided to take this term off from school, or we really would need that entire month to get everything done. Even then it would be pretty damn hard, as most of my evenings are spent doing school stuff and due to recent changes at work, me taking a day or two off if I'm not dying is just not really possible right now, so all the packing and moving will be confined to evenings and weekends. So, this term is a break for me to move, then I'll start up again next term at the decellerated schedule, all nicely moved in and organized and rested and ready to go.

Have I mentioned I'm so excited my cheeks hurt? Smiling this big, for this long, is a bit much for the cheek muscles, but I can't seem to quit.

OMG I GET TO HAVE A KITTY!!!

Ahem. I mean, um ... We're moving into a bigger place! A better place! Where, coincidentally, I will be able to get a cat ...

I'm freaking thrilled.

Stickies from Natalie

2008-02-18T21:42:00.001-08:00

In response to the most recent stickynote challenge, Natalie sent in an adorable ladybird, and a computer mouse ghost, which probably wakes the ladybird up at night with chain-rattlings and from-beyond-the-grave moanings and such. Poor ladybird.

The cuteness:

The ghostly computer part:

Ladybird, ladybird fly away home, the ghost is about and the cookies are gone!

It's nice to be spoiled

2008-02-18T21:37:00.000-08:00

Harry's my personal hairdresser (apparently, my head was a more appealing perch than the fake tree).

OMG. Hedge-face.

2008-02-12T08:20:00.000-08:00

Now I understand why you like hedgehogs so much, mom. I mean, I knew they were cute and all, but oh my god ...

Bleh

2008-02-09T20:25:00.000-08:00

I hate being sick. Worse, I hate being this sick for this long. It's been over a week now, and despite a few days where I thought I was getting over it, I'm now just as bad off as I was when this first hit me.

I'm going to the doctor on Monday, because people are getting bronchitis and pneumonia from this, and damnit I'm worried. And, well, I just hate being sick. This has affected my school work. I'm four days late with one assignment, one day late with another, and the last two assignments for this term are due Monday. I can't think, or concentrate much. I'm still sleeping more than I'm awake.

I hate this.

Office Guardian

2008-02-08T18:30:00.001-08:00

Apologies for the low-quality photo. I took it with my cell phone. This green dragon guards my workspace at work. I've been working on him bit by bit, here and there, for several months now. Here's a close-up of his eye, which I'm particularly proud of:

His name is Puddles. Don't laugh.

Stickynotes on parade

2008-01-31T15:47:00.000-08:00

Oooh! My first art link!

My Stickynote Art Exchange post has been linked on a most awesome blog: stickynote theatre. A must-see for all sticky-doodlers, sketchers and masterminds alike. Go check it out!

I guess this means I have to actually do what I said I was going to do, and post one quick random stickynote sketch per month for anyone, anywhere, to utilize for their own creative fun. So, here's the second official stickynote:

What is it? I don't know. What does it do? I don't know. You tell me.

A quick recap of the scenario:

I post a quick, very unfinished stickynote sketch like this and you, dear readers, take it and run with it, using it as a starting spot for a larger picture like my Pebble Drop drawing. The catch is only that you have to include the stickynote background color (usually yellow, but I ran out and had to use a purple note today) for the section of the larger picture that started from the actual stickynote itself. And that's the only rule.

Create the picture however you wish: drawing, painting, computer art - heck, you can even include it in a sculpture of sorts and email me a photo of it (that would be pretty damn cool, actually ...) And anyone can do this. Once you've created your masterpiece, e-mail it to me (dragonlaugh[at]comcast[dot]net) and I will post it on this blog for all to see, with credit and a link to you.

Come play!

Memory from a strange childhood, #1: The Mean Ladies

2008-01-30T17:43:00.000-08:00

© C. Vandever 2008

One of my most terrifying memories from very very early childhood - nay, toddlerhood - was of the "Mean Ladies" who used to crawl up onto the bed, under the covers, to eat my toes. Sometimes there was just one Mean Lady, but more often than not it was a horde of them lead by the Queen of Mean Ladies.

The mean ladies were very small, no bigger than my toes themselves, and sometimes just a wee bit smaller, but their heads were large, being more than half of their total body mass. All of the ladies looked exactly the same, with the one exception of the Queen being larger - just a bit bigger than my big toe. They all wore red, at all times, but the actual clothing varied between a red dress with white collar (as shown), a red blouse and red or black skirt, or a red kimono which added to their oriental look. Now, understand that at the time, I had no idea what a kimono was, so that part may be my adult brain connecting whatever strange shift they wore to something real, and this specific connection made because of the distincly oriental look of the ladies. They also, somehow entirely indefinable, looked insectile - I think it was the eyes, which were always closed, and the long thin eyebrows; they looked like antennae at times. Also, the arms and legs, and hands and feet, where entirely smooth, with no fingers or toes or joints of any kind, and were simply thin and black, always black.

On rare occasions, the white collar of their sometimes-dresses would be a pale sky blue, but usually it was white. There was never any variation in the shade of red, or the simplicity of it. No patterns, no textures. No seams. Just red.

I always knew when the mean ladies were coming, and would cry and yell and scream for Mama Wren to come and save me. "MOMMMMEEEEEE!" I'd holler and cry and hunch up under the covers, trying to keep my toes as far from the end of the bed as possible, waiting for rescue. When she'd come running in to see what manner of horror was confronting me, I'd sob, absolutely terrified, "Mommy, the Mean Ladies are coming! The Mean Ladies are going to eat my toes!"

And sure enough, the "biting" would start as my feet woke up. I imagine I probably became frantic at that point, because as you know, you can't stop it from happening, you just ride it out, hurting and stinging and stomping. I was helpless to stop the hordes from eating me alive.

I used to wonder how I knew when they were coming (becuase I always knew a minute or two before they struck, and was never wrong), but after so many years of experience with limbs that have "fallen asleep" since then, I know now that it's just that weird feeling you get before the pins and needles kick in. Not understanding that at the time, nor the perfectly harmless and natural thing that would be just about to happen to my feet, my strange little brain conjured up a monster, as young brains are wont to do. The stinging pain scared me, so it had to be something bad, right - something scary?

What creeps me out to this day is that I don't know where the image of the mean ladies came from. It is very distinct; it always has been, right from the start. They are small, almost toe-shaped things, with large black mouths full of razor sharp teeth, and those mouths are always open and their angry hungry eyes are always closed to slits as they climb up the bedclothes, under the covers at the end of the bed and en masse, slowly due to anatomically-too-short legs (too short even for their anatomically-too-small bodies), march with black arms spread toward trembling toes. They move in unison, and are perfectly rigid, backs curved ever so slightyly forward, and there is the sound like an army, like an insect, but you can only hear it in your head, the way you can only see it in your head.

But the teeth are real - they can be felt slicing and gnawing and chewing, and the Queen of the Mean Ladies always takes the big toe for herself. All the others - and there are dozens of them, constantly joined by more ranks climbing up the sheets - are very disciplined, taking turns to eat and then shambling away, mouths still gaping to show razored white teeth.

Typical ...

2008-01-27T19:35:00.000-08:00

Yeah. Typical Cancer: Today I'm in a good mood, and so feel dorky and drama-queen-ish about yesterday's post.

P.S. Oh yeah - that F was changed to a B. S'all good.

Taking out the trash

2008-01-26T12:11:00.000-08:00

I miss writing about things that matter.

I know that sounds strange, what with the subjects of my writing lately. Of course school matters (like I never understood before, and am learning more every day now). Of course medical things matter, even when they turn out to be nothing serious at all (because it’s scary when something strange and unknown happens to your body, no explanation and no warning and no explanation after other than “take this, it’ll make you feel better,”). Of course love matters (and I’ll leave it at that, or this will turn into one of those sappy gross blog posts resembling puppy love gone on too long, or some such). Of course the things that piss me off daily matter – sure, you can say “that’s life,” but damn it, that’s not how life has to be, right? Right? Not full of stupid people, mean people, people so wrapped up in their own delusions and fears and ignorance that communication is laughable at best, pitiful or enraging at the worst? Right?

With my blog posts lately, I feel like the ultimate personification of the stereotypical astrological description of a Cancer, all moody and changeable, prone to cry or laugh or say nothing and just glare, with no explanation. I feel out of control.

Really, it’s just that life’s finally caught up with me. In the times when I was prone to write great and philosophical, or just plain weird but kinda thoughtful posts, I really didn’t have much of a life. I had a job – the same one I’ve been working for five years now. I had (for a little while) a pretend love – someone I’d tricked myself into believing was a good person who cared about me (he didn’t, in the end). I lived with my parents, rent-free, worry-free … life experience-free. I had no real complaints, and more free time than I knew what to do with.

And so I wrote.

Granted, not everything I tapped out on the keyboard was magic, but the point is, it could have been, if I’d wanted it to.

I had all the time in the world to form the prettiest, smartest words to express thoughts and feelings that I thought at the time to be very “deep.” I could write poetry, because I had the time to be still and let it bubble up out of me, slowly or too fast to keep up with. I could, if I so chose, just sit at the computer and think - about what I wanted to write, or didn’t want to, about what I didn’t know I wanted to write, about nothing or everything, injustice or wonderment or dreams.

Now I have a life. Oh boy, do I have a life. Not much of a social one, at the moment, but that’s not what matters in the end and it’s not really what I care much about, anyway. I mean I have direction now, and experience, and understanding that I didn’t have before. I have love – the real thing, this time – and all the wonder and learning and hoping and fearing that comes with it. I have the same job but am learning more about life from it now – about what I do and do not want, about what I will and will not settle for. I’m back in college, and by far doing the best I’ve ever done, and learning to be proud of that and make it known.

I’m learning that for the most part, I’ve led a very lazy, self-centered life. No, I’m not going to go terribly, deeply philosophical with this, with empty promises of getting rid of all my material possessions and “living a humble life.” I mean that for so long there was little in the way of consequence for my actions or inactions – or least not much in the way of long-term consequence. I had a roof over my head, a good family life (no matter how much I may not have thought so at times), and absolutely no responsibilities beyond going to work everyday. And really, since I wasn’t paying the rent or the bills, even that wasn’t much of a necessity, but it paid for tattoos and clothes and too many pets, so I did it anyway.

Because of this, I really could do pretty much what I wanted, or not do it. It didn’t matter. I had the computer to write through, and books to escape in. Who needs anything more, right?

It has been a slow and unsteady waking up. In the last two and a half years, I have lost people I’ve cared about to death for some and realizations that they weren’t who and what I so desperately wanted them to be for others. I have learned that I hold grudges very deeply - for years even, after I’ve already scolded myself into understanding that those things and situations really don’t matter and the grudges only make me feel ugly and psychotic. I remember good words and times, but sometimes I remember the bad ones more accurately, and longer.

I have discovered how hard it is to let go of the freedom to simply lie down, or sit down, and do absolutely nothing if I want to. I’m still having trouble letting go of that, finding myself glaring at the computer screen or the wall when I should be working on assignments due in mere hours. And it makes me angry, not because I no longer have that freedom, but because I do it anyway, angry at myself for doing it, unable to move and just fucking start typing. It makes me bitter, more so because it happens less and less now, but like a junkie going back, each time it crops up again now it’s worse than before, leaving me immobile in body and enraged in mind, cursing myself, and if the things I scream at myself in my mind to get moving were heard aloud, you might not like me very much.

You might come to understand that while I’m as good a person as I can be to those around me, I’m not such a good person to myself. I don’t have nearly the patience with my own shortcomings as I do with everyone else’s, and I’m rapidly losing faith in my ability to remain ever-patient with others, so that scares me.

I’m on edge, and I keep finding myself wondering how long it will take for me to fall off and over and start saying aloud the things I think of people and life and “oh poor fucking me, I can’t be lazy anymore.”

I find myself feeling like a petulant child, foot stomping and glaring and harrumphing, and so self-involved that I can’t see how ugly it makes me. How pathetic.

Only, I can see it. I guess I could console myself with that; if I can see it, and understand it, I can change it, right?

Please, tell me I’m right.

I should be happy that my laziness is slipping away, despite its vile, overpowering comebacks sometimes (and always at the worst times) that leave me feeling slimy and horrible and self-destructive. I should be happy that instead of wasting time wishing I had something useful to do for the vast majority of my copious free time, I do have something incredibly useful to do now, even though that means I have virtually no free time left. Rather than feeling bad that I have had to cancel the last five or six dinner and darts dates with Matt and a coworker and her boyfriend, I should be rejoicing that I’ve had the will to do so in order to get schoolwork done, because although I dearly love dinner and darts dates, they won’t land me that wonderful, someday, dream job. A 4.0 grade point average will.

Rather than being all manner of pissed off that I can’t even spend thirty fucking minutes sitting with Matt and talking, or not talking, or watching TV, I should be amazed and honored that despite our “us time” being cut down to those precious few minutes of falling asleep and waking up together, he still loves me dearly and washes and cleans and tidies up and makes me dinner and wants me to be his wife. I should be humbled, not self-righteous.

I find myself telling myself to stop bitching. And then, true to my “sometimes-I-think-too-much-(ok-it’s-more-than-sometimes)” nature, I reason everything out and tell myself it’s perfectly understandable and ok to be disgusted at blatant stupidity, and outraged when it affects me in big ways like almost killing me (“yes, asshole, that was a Stop sign you just blasted past, even though I was already out in the middle of the fucking intersection so that if you’d been paying even the most microscopic amount of attention, you’d have realized that something big (another vehicle, maybe?) was in the way of your forward movement and maybe – just maybe - you ought to slow down and figure out what it is instead of barreling forward straight at it with reckless stupidity anyway.”)

And then I nitpick. Because I see others go through what I go through and remain much calmer than I do, and I feel like I should be calm too. Sure, they’ll cuss, or mutter, or shake their heads with an angry glare, but it only lasts a moment and then they’re over it and on with life. My angers last a long, long time, and run deep to pop up again when I least expect them to. Grudges, remember? I hold them very well. It makes me feel guilty and judgmental, and then like a hypocrite because I hate it when people judge me based on one moment of my life. For all I know, that guy that ran the stop sign and had to swerve to avoid hitting and killing me was distracted and in a hurry because someone he loved was just hurt and taken to the emergency room, and he just wanted to get to them, and everything else around him went away for a while. Ok, or maybe he really was just an idiot who shouldn’t be allowed to drive, but I don’t know that, I just assume and get angry.

This part of my life, where I’m learning and discovering and evolving, is frightening. Sure, there’s excitement too, in learning that I really am as smart as people always told me, and more; that I have found a love that’s better than anything my wildest fantasies could have dreamed up; that I’m closer to my parents now than I have been in a very long time; that I’m finally learning the value of life-experience, like budgeting, and keeping track (on paper, not in my head) of the bills I’ve paid and still need to pay, and that the word “sacrifice,” in all it’s pent-up, vamped-up glory, can sometimes mean something so seemingly unimportant as not going out to dinner with the one you love, even though you know you both need it, because you can’t afford it till the end of the week, and can’t afford to take the time off from school work anyway. I’m learning what it means to juggle life, and I’ve had my share of misses and drops, but I’ve also had some pretty amazing catches, too.

I guess what I’m saying is that I miss this: writing out what’s pent up inside and scratching and gnawing to get out. I miss talking about what’s really going on in my life, in my head. I don’t need to do it every day, but I do need it a fuck of a lot more than I’ve been able to do it for a long time now. It’s making me a little psychotic, or it feels like it. Of course everything will be ok – it always is. But I need to remind myself of that now and then, and I can only do that through writing or talking, and I don’t have much time to do either to great length anymore, and it is exhausting to hold it all inside. And I haven’t learned how to just let it all go. I don’t know if I ever will – it’s never really been my nature to.

*Sigh*

And now I’m drained, but I don’t know if it’s bliss or just a sudden emptiness. But maybe empty is what I need, every now and then.

*Mere minutes later*

Ok, this is creepy. Here's my horoscope for today:
"Be wary of seamless perfection today! It's when things are not going smoothly that your brain is getting the most out of a situation. You benefit from conflict and challenges more than you benefit from peace and tranquility right now, so enjoy any turmoil you come across! Step up to any naysayers and get to the bottom of what their issues are. You'll love debating new ideas and figuring out why people who seem so smart don't agree with everything you say!"

Hmm. Guess it's just another day then. Now I feel sorta silly, sorta relieved, sorta, well ... still kinda empty. But that's ok.

What's trippier - between posting this and reading my horoscope, I logged into my virtual campus only to be faced with a big fat ugly F for last night's assigment, due to the instructor either mixing my grade up with some other student's, or just not seeing my assignment. He said in the comments section of the grade that I hadn't posted by the task deadline, but in reality I did post before the deadline (it was a discussion board assigment). I e-mailed him to correct the situation, then checked my horoscope.

Trippy.

One lump or two?

2008-01-21T21:08:00.000-08:00

It's official: I am a white-trash coffee drinker.

Carrows and Dennys have some of the best damned coffee I've tasted in a long time. And this is while I've been trying desperately to find a brand of coffee at the grocery store that doesn't taste all chemically and strong enough to bowl over a loaded semi with one teensy waft of aroma.

Starbucks? No thanks. I'm not a semi. (Sorry co-worker-Patrick. I tried.) Pete's? S'ok for those times when I go to bed at 3 a.m. and get up at 6 a.m., but only one cup's worth, and it's best done while I'm still groggy so I can't taste much anyway. Don Francisco is pretty palateable, but again, I can really only do about one cup of that (ok a traveler's mug), and I'm usually forcing the last gulp or three down. There have been various others, all of a societal niche promising the best (and consequently most expensive) cup of coffee you'll ever indulge in. Ever.

And every damn one of 'em's been gross.

But the cheap stuff that run-of-the-mill, low-to-middle-income restaurants buy in bulk is heaven. And I really mean Heaven, with a capital 'H.'

Pre-gastritis, I couldn't stomach the stuff (heh, heh, I made a funny ...) Now it's all I can stomach.

At least I'm a cheap coffee-date.

So not cool!

2008-01-18T15:37:00.000-08:00

Fark.

I just received a call from a number from the 707 area code, which, while encompassing a rather large area, is the area code for the newspaper I just applied to. Brightening, thinking, "This is it! This is the call!" I answered with my heart in my throat.

There was a pause, then, "Uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh ... Jacob? I, uh, think I got the wrong number. Is this (phone number)?"

Heart turned to a cold lump, I replied that yes, the caller had the correct number but that I was not Jacob and no Jacob lived here.

"Oh, ok. I, uh, think I made a mistake then." And he hung up.

My immediate thought, of course, was that the call was from someone at the newspaper, looking for a candidate other than me, and my heart sunk. Then I thought, Wait a minute. Even if they did mean to call some other candidate at the moment, they did have my phone number. That can't be a coincidence. Maybe that means that I'm a likely candidate too, and they just got our contact information crossed, and I'll be getting a call back soon!"

Then I googled the phone number, and it's a resident in a city a good hour and a half to two hours away from the city the newspaper is in, where I don't think they have any offices. It just happened to be a horrible coincidental wrong number (or, right number but wrong person). Maybe they were looking for whoever had my phone number before me - a long lost friend who hadn't called in years and decided to give it a shot, only to find that their friend has switched phone numbers and they can't find them anymore.

Sucks for that caller (and their friend Jacob), but at least I'm fairly certain I'm still in the running for that job. Now if I could only get my heart back to a more normal pace ...

Burning the midnight oil

2008-01-17T22:56:00.000-08:00

Ok, so it's not midnight. Not here. Not yet. But midnight passed about an hour ago where it really matters: in Colorado, the time zone for my school, the time zone to which all chats, instructor office hours, and assignments are bound. Assignments are due at 11:59:59 p.m. twice a week, which is 9:59:59 p.m. for me. I feel a bit cheated that I lose two hours of possible working time, but really I guess it all balances out in the end. Somehow. Or at least that's what the school thinks.

Anyway, here it is an hour past "midnight," and after turning in an assignment, I'm still up and plugging along with school stuff. (Ok, smarty-pants, so I'm not doing school stuff right now, because I'm blogging, but this is a break between assignments and so doesn't count, ok?) I'm attempting to get ahead in my assignments not only to be ahead and not stressed at the last minute, but also just in case something really wonderful happens.

See, I applied for a new job. A better job. In a better place. And if they call me and ask me to drive three-and-a-half hours for an interview that they'd rather not do over the phone, I will drop whatever I'm doing to bust tail to get there. Including school assignments.

The job itself isn't actually changing, per se - it's the same position I hold now, just at a much much better company (owned by the New York Times, and a pulitzer prize winner) in a much much better place. And according to the job description and requirements, they might as well have put my name on the ad. It fit me to a T. And I've got five years of experience doing what I do. And I'm damn fucking good at it. And I'm a fast learner, and an admitted perfectionist, and hate being late on anything, and thrive on deadlines and organization. And my boss and the managing editor (the incredibly intelligent editor, not the uberly, amazingly, mind-numbingly stupid one) have both promised to write me letters of recommendation. And said editor knows the editor of the newspaper I'm applying to. Not that I think I'll need or really would be ok with strings being pulled. But if she just happened to randomly call him up for a chat one day and mention that I'm applying there and how good I am at what I do, maybe he'd ask around about me, so my name would be on the minds of the right people. Maybe.

I'm ridiculously thrilled, though trying not to get my hopes up too high. Although I'm fairly certain I'm exactly what they're looking for, I can't read minds. And so I wait. And so I plan for that call, wrapping up as many school responsibilities as I can so that I won't be late with them when I have to suddenly drive like a madwoman to meet my soon-to-be new employers. And so that once I get the job, I can pack, and move, and unpack, all without missing assignment deadlines, or at least not by much.

The boy supports me 100% in this, even though it would mean moving, and possibly soon. I love that man. Mom supports me in it too - when I called to get her advice (because, yes, I feel I still need it in big life-changing decisions like this) she didn't even let me finish my sentence before exclaiming, "Apply!" And then she reassured me she was ok with me moving away. Have I mentioned my mom rocks? I'm 26, but she is still - and perhaps more so now than ever before - a huge influence on me and the decisions I make, because I know she's smart enough to give me good advice, solidly grounded in common sense and experience.

This is big. I'm too excited to be scared. There's that little voice in my head warning me not to get too excited because "it might not happen," but I keep squashing it with, "I think it will happen, but if not, it's not the end of the world, and my resume and profile will still be in their system for future openings. So, bugger off, doubter."

I read somewhere recently that to be successful in business, one should always take on jobs too big for oneself. While I'm sure there is a line to be drawn there for sheer common sense (like, if you failed chemistry in high school, maybe a job in experimental biochemicals isn't for you), I like the idea and see the merit. You'll never know just what you're capable of if you don't try.

I don't know if this is too big for me or not, but I plan to find out.

Wish me luck.

You have got to be kidding me.

2008-01-15T13:24:00.000-08:00

I have a credit card payment due tomorrow.

I attempted to pay it last night by logging into that account, but due to that bank's website being amazingly screwed up, the password field was magically shorter than my password, so that I was unable to log in, and after only two attempts at logging in, was blocked from further attempts (for my credit's safety, of course). Frustrated beyond reason (a normal feeling I come away from that website with) I gave up, wrote myself a big note so I wouldn't forget to try again today, and went to bed.

After trying again today, the password field is still shorter than my password, which is incredibly aggravating because ovbiously it was longer when I originally set up the account, so how, when, and why the available character length was shortened - and why I wasn't informed of this - I have no clue. So after being blocked again, I reset my user name and password (to the minimum required number of characters, just in case) and was finally allowed to log in and make a payment.

And then I encountered the real slap in the face.

The minimum payment - which is all I can afford until I get paid again on Friday - is $15. Now this bank, unlike any other I've ever worked with or even heard of, has a delivery system that could put UPS to shame. If you don't care when in the next week or two your payment goes through, there's no charge. If you want to specify a date beyond the current day, there's not charge either, but the payment won't go through until the business day after the one you specified. Really - it actually says that, that payments go through one day (or more in some cases) after the date you specifically requested it to go through. Makes ya wonder what the point of requesting a specific date is, when it absolutley will not, under any circumstances - even if you pay - go through and be applied to your account on that date.

If you request that they payment go through on the current day (today), there is a $14.98 fee to do so. But it won't go through until the following day (tomorrow). So, to make sure that my $15 payment is made on time, by the deadline date of tomorrow, I had to pay a $14.98 fee to request that it go through today (which it won't, which the site says.)

I just dropped my credit card balance a whopping two cents. And it cost me $29.98 to do it.

I'm envisioning the typical angst-induced cartoon of the guy bent over a desk, fists and face clenched, with a caption along the lines of "Is that all ya got?!? C'mon, I can take it!!!"

I'm so mad I could spit.

Drive-by cheesecaking

2008-01-14T12:27:00.000-08:00

I was just drive-by cheesecaked.

Ok, so there was no vehicle involved. And being cheesecaked does not mean having it thrown at you (but that would have been fun - food fights are a rare treat for me). No, drive-by cheesecaking is far more sneaky than the name implies.

I had just finished lunch at work and was busily washing my fork at the sink. It was a healthy lunch of Lean Cuisine's chicken and vegatables with noodles dish, and while fork-washing I was proudly congratulating myself on my iron will, my strict control, my quick and easy avoidance of the snack machine and all the chocolatey goodness it promises. The boy and I are finally starting a diet as soon as we go grocery shopping tonight, and I thought I'd get a head-start with a healthy lunch. Despite wanting a snickers, or a box of junior mints, or a package of powedered-sugar-covered donuts, I had swiftly turned away from the snack machine and my still demanding belly (I'm used to eating more than one of those little cuisines). I had a wickedly prideful little grin on my face, I'm sure.

I wasn't the least bit concerned when the door to the lunchroom by the snack mahcine (which opens into the production department, where I work - how's that for temptation?) opened and someone strode very quickly through the room and out the other door next to the sink, which connects up to the rest of the building. They walked so fast I didn't see who it was, but had a sneaking suspicion it was my boss. He's always running to and fro, fixing disasters and plugging in computers that people are convinced are fried, without breaking a sweat. Figuring he was off on another such save-the-day-venture, I dried my fork and thought nothing of it.

When I turned around to head back to my department, I froze in horror at what had magically appeared on the table during the ten seconds in which I cleaned my fork. While they strode by so quickly that I didn't have the chance to recognize them, the fast-walker had placed a large plate of cheesecake on the table. It was the variety plate, with regular cheesecake, and chocolate, chocolate swirl, chocolate with white chocolate chips, berry swirl, and some other variety that looks as if it might contain cinnamon in large amounts. The kind made at upper-class grocery stores, which probably costs an arm and a leg and the other arm, too, but which is so disgustingly delicious that people line up for it anyway, severed limbs outstretched, hopping and saying, "Oh, please. Oh, please! Me next!"

*Sigh*

I have never been much enamored of cheesecake - it's always been too rich for me - but lately I've taken a liking to it. Like, a big liking. It's the boy's fault. He loves it, and I have a bite or two whenever he has some, and recently that bite or two has turned into us splitting a slice ... or two ... fairly evenly. My iron will crumbled.

I halved the one slice of berry-swirl (strawberry, it turns out) and, feeling horridly guilty, devoured it at my desk, hoping no one would see. My boss did indeed turn out to be the cuplrit (sneaky, sneaky, Mr. Boss-Man) and I light heartedly chewed him out. He grinned the whole time, of course.

Let it snow

2008-01-13T18:23:00.001-08:00

Future-type stuff

2008-01-08T12:49:00.000-08:00

I've got a bunch of future-related stuff on my mind right now. School, marriage, where I'd like to move to for a new job, etc.

Well, first things' first: my last class, Managerial Finance, the one that I hated and loathed and did not expect to get an A in - remember that? Yeah. I got an A. *Big grin* I'm still on the Chancellor's list, and thrilled beyond what I can reasonable express here. That class was hard. With the completion of that class and another before it - Management Accounting - I finally recieved my first professional certificate, for basics of accounting and finance. My first real framed-boast-paper. Again - thrilled. I feel all official, and stuff.

I finally made the call to my school this morning to return to the accelarated, two classes per term, schedule, which will have me graduating mid-November of this year (whooohooooo!!!) I'm still awaiting a call back from my admissions advisor, however, on the break I may or may not take between graduating with my Bachelor's and starting on my Master's degree.

See, there are a few unknowns about that.

I signed an agreement several months ago to go for the Master's program once I have my Bachelor's, and this agreement locked me into the tuition price as it was at that point in time. What this means is that instead of getting whatever the tuition price would normally be at that future date (which would be considerably more, as price raises periodically), I'd instead pay the rate that it was at the time I signed the paper, which was about $28,000. Without that agreement I could be facing a tuition rate of more than $30,000.

This agreement was a good thing, obivously.

However, I have been wanting to take a break between the Bachelor's and the Master's programs, just to get some time to relax, and now with the boy's proposal, we are thinking that such a break would be the prefect time to get married and have our honeymoon. The unknown with this is that I don't know whether or not taking a break between the programs will undo that Master's tuition agreement, so that I'd end up paying the higher, then-current price. Maybe I could take a short break and it woud be ok, maybe not, but if I could, how long could that break be? One month? Two? I'd like to be able take up to five months if needed for wedding preparation, the big day, and the honeymoon, but I don't know if I'll be able to. I should know within the next few days, once my advisor calls me back.

Another unknown surrounding the marriage is that it might affect the amount of finanical aid I'm eligible for when I go for my Master's degree. I spoke with my boss who, being married, was ineligible for grants, and he said that he was still eligible for other aid, so I think it will be ok. I wasn't eligible for grants myself, even unmarried, only the stafford loans. Hopefully I'd still be eligible for those, but if not, the wedding will have to wait another two years until I'm done with school altogether. Well, unless the Bachelor's will land me a job that will pay me enough to make the monthly tuition payments on my own, but I'm not holding my breath for that much of an incredibly amazing pay increase. I could talk to my bank about a loan if I don't qualify for the stafford if I'm married - that's an avenue I haven't looked into yet. I'll wait until I've spoken more about it to the finanical aid department at school to see if they know anything about it.

So this is nothing bad, per se. If I can't take a break - or not as long a break as I'd like - between the Bachelor and Master programs, that's alright. It will suck with no downtime between the two, but at least I'd be done with school completely just that much sooner. And the boy already assured me that he wasn't going anywhere and would be willing to wait until I was done with school to get married if being married would adversely affect my financial aid eligibility. I've got the ring and the promise; that's good enough for now. I want to get married as soon as possible of course, but it's not necessary. Besides, the longer we wait, the more we can save and plan for a very awesome wedding, and maybe a longer honeymoon.

We took a roadtrip up north this past weekend, to take the boy's son back home (he spent his Christmas break with us and the boy's parents) and to visit with some friends. It was a nice little trip, once we got past the worst of the storms that were raging at the time. On our way home on Sunday we stopped to visit with my best friend and her boyfriend, who live in the area the boy and I would like to move to. Taking advantage of being there, we all walked around the downtown area so the boy and I could get a better feel for the place.

I'm hooked. Not only is it a beautiful area, it's also a quickly growing area with good job demand. And we'd be much, much closer to good friends and the boy's son. I'm going to start applying for a new job in that area probably around July or August, and hopefully we'll be moving before the year is over. I can't wait.

First drawing of the year: Kitbunnuppy

2008-01-02T22:36:00.000-08:00

Cute.

But evil.

And towtally snorglable.

Quite possibly THE best YouTube video I've ever seen. Ever.

2008-01-02T20:17:00.000-08:00

Who knew horses could dance? My jaw's still in my lap.

Woes of an apparent hypochondriac

2008-01-02T14:12:00.000-08:00

I don't like being cut up, really. I mean, I don't hate it, or particularly fear it overmuch so long as I know there will be anesthetics involved. But it's certainly not how I'd prefer to spend a lazy half hour or so.

I spent a lazy half hour last Friday having a small peice of flesh removed from my right calf to be tested for anything bad ( I have a kinda-sorta-but-maybe-not mysterious tan patch of skin that never faded this summer when the rest of my fake spray-on tan did). It went fairly smoothly.

I had a bit of concern when my doctor first walked in and said, "So, you were saying you have something of concern on your knee, right?" I've never mentioned my knee - either one of them - to my doctor. This is probably because I've never had anything wrong with my knee - either one of them.

I quickly clarified, pointing to (and circling with a finger) the tan patch of skin on my leg. Which was described in my chart, which was sitting on the counter, which she would have seen had she bothered to look at my chart. "Oh, ok, yes!" she replied, and after a moment pointed to where she would make the incision and remove a tiny chunk of flesh. She was pointing to a space well within the tan patch so, confident that we were all on track again, I lay back down and let her do her thing.

The anesthetic burned like a mofo, but only for a few seconds. Then you coould have been slowly, messily sawing my leg into raggedy slices with a rusty hacksaw and I wouldn't have had a clue unless I saw it happening. I felt nothing, which was nice. I left the office with a large bandage on my leg (no limp), and was mildly curious as to why it seemed to be centered a bit to the side of where I thought it ought to be, but didn't worry overmuch. After all, the doctor had pointed to shere she was goign to cut, and that was where she was supposed to.

When I took the bandage off that night to clean the tiny little wound, I discovered that she had not cut where she had said whe would. That, in fact, she had done the biopsy a full inch-and-a-half outside the patch of darker skin, on perfectly normal flesh.

My doctor, in whom I have been steadily losing faith over the last two years, sliced up the wrong part of my leg.

Needless to say, I am ever so lightly peeved.

My faith in this doctor is now completely shot. There have been several other occurrences that have had me silently questioning her competence. Not only did she randomly change a diagnosis from one session to the next, without explaination (and no mattter how many times I've corrected her on it, still sticks with the second, incorrect, random diagnosis), she's also given me attitude with the implication that I'm a bit of a hypochondriac and a waste of her precious time. This was after I came in to see her because my spleen was still swollen from Mono (long after it wasn't suposed to be any more) exactly one week after she told me I should worry and come see her immediately if it was still swollen in exactly one week.

So, I'll take my Type-A, over-worried, high-strung (her description of me, to me, when I was worried about that darned spleen), apparently hypochondriac self to a new doctor, one who has tons of time on their hands to deal with all of my myriad unimportant problems. Because, you know, that's what I'm paying them for.

I'm not paying to be degraded, ignored, and to have medical procedures screwed up by someone's lack of either intelligence or the ability to simply pay attention.

Have I mentioned how much I loathe stupid people?

The bestest present

2007-12-26T09:04:00.000-08:00

I received the bestest Christmas present ever this year, and I'm so happy my cheeks hurt from smiling so much.

The boy proposed to me. Of course I said yes. And then bawled.

And I can't stop smiling and staring at my ring. It's perfect. The day was perfect.

I hope you all had just as wonderful and happy a day as I did. :)

How to stalk a wily bag of coffee beans

2007-12-20T23:53:00.000-08:00

I was cleaning up my Myspace blog and came across this post from almost two years ago, and remembered all over again the silliness and fun of it, so I thought I'd share it here. It's complete nonsense and oddity, with a twist of Animal-Planet to it, for the overly- (or underly-, if that's a word) caffienated. Enjoy.

Random silliness in an otherwise decaffienated world

I have decided that, in my copious free time here at work, I'd like to spend the next few moments being silly. You have been warned.

And so:

Rather than sit like a sack of semi-wet clay slowly molding from the butt up to the shape of my chair, in front of a computer that derives sadistic glee out of crashing at me just to see me twitch, I'd rather be stalking a bag of coffee beans at Starbucks.

Now, understand, coffee-bean bag stalking is not nearly as casual as most coffee-drinkers would have you believe. To the untrained eye, the coffee-drinker who casually strolls up to the shelf in the coffee isle at your local grocery store and grabs a bag with little or no consideration to the vast array of options is being sly and economic, putting forth as little energy as possible in the gathering of the caffiene-bringer. This is, supposedly, in deference to a lack of energy due to the lack of caffiene (hence the gathering action.)

This is, utterly and unabashedly, wrong.

These casual grabbers are simply inexperienced. They're amatuers slogging loudly through the sacred (and oftentimes dangerous, as I'll expand upon later) jungles of coffee-stuffs and coffee-stuff-makers. They stomp upon hallowed ground with no regard to their wrongdoings! I very much hope that the following description of a proper coffee-bean bag hunt helps to awaken them to their sins and prevent future mishap in the form of foil cuts, bag-shaped bruises, and other, more myserious, coffee-stuffs related injuries.

How to properly choose and stalk a wily bag of coffee beans:

1. Finding the wily coffee-bean bag’s territory.
This is the easy part. Finding the hiding places of coffee-bean bags is like finding wet in the rain. To keep things at their most simple, there are two main ways to go about finding coffee-bean bag territory:

A. Follow your nose. When you catch the rich aroma that speaks undeniably of fresh little pellets of caffiene wrapped in devine flavor, walk in a somewhat straightforward manner until you’ve come to the entrance to the bag’s hiding place (this entrance usually takes the form of what we domestiocated beings call a ‘Door;’ however, as in grocery stores and malls wherein a coffee-kiosk is set up, the entrance may well be no more than the imaginary line drawn across an isle determing the boundary between the coffee-kiosk and ‘Everything Else Un-Noteworthy.’)

B. Find a group of other coffee-drinkers. If you can find a large group of coffee-drinkers, whose members shift and change every few minutes as they get their fixes and leave and others arrive to get their own fixes, you can be assured that you have found a ‘watering hole,’ otherwise known as either ‘the coffee isle’ or ‘(Instert Preffered Coffee Shop name here).’ Now, do not balk at the thought of trying to identify other coffee-drinkers; it’s not a challenge at all. Just keep an eye out for the jittery people and those who talk too fast (these would be the ones who’ve already gotten their fix), or for those who are shuffling along half asleep with no regard to traffic and who cannot come up with a response more intelligent than “mmrmmmphhhrguhhh....mmmmn,” to anything said to them (these have not yet had their fixes, and it is best to avoid them until such a time as they can be safely moved in status to the jittery group.) As with following your nose, make your way to the entrance to the coffee-bean bag’s territory, and after scoping the area for stray beans (nasty buggers, those - completely unpredictable!), cautiously enter.

Note: For the sake of space and time, I’ll continue this lesson with the Coffee Shop scenario rather than going over both that and the Coffe Isle scenario, as it is by far the more dangerous of the two, and far more likely to occurr on a daily basis. You may proceed.

2. Getting the lay of the land.
This is absoluetly necessary! I’ve heard too many horror stories of overly-confident hunters who, after finding the territory, refused to take in whatall was *in* said territory. Their bold, blind death-chases left them with chilling wounds, the likes of which are far too graphic to divulge here (but I will tell that not all the wounds were made by cornered coffee-bean bags; quite a few were the results of other coffee-drinkers driven to insane acts of defense when the foil hit the fan. Can’t say I blame them, really. Poor sots.)

Upon your entry to the territory, it is advised to do a walk-about. This is the act of appearing to casually stroll - seemingly without a care in the world - around the territory, all the while taking in every detail, from the direction of the hand-formed squish-crinkles in the (seemingly) unwitting coffee-bags to the grain of the wood anywhere that wood appears. You have *no* idea how important the grain of wood is when it comes to beating a hasty retreat from a mob of enraged coffee-bean bags. Remember that they are much smaller than you, and so these things make a difference. I’d explain, but we’d be here all day (it reads like a cross between high-school physics, Voodoo, instructions for building a go-kart made out of toothpicks - in French - and the unfortunate recipe for Cinnamon Cod Latte.) Please, please, for the sake of photo-journalistic deceny, pay attention to the grain of the wood!

In your walk-about, take note of the placement of possible obstacles in the form of shelves, signs, chair-and-table combos, and other coffee-drinkers and their offspring. All of these things will play a crucial role in your chances of coming away from the hunt not only successful, but with as few java-caked wounds as possible. After you’ve a reasonably clear layout in your head of the territory, carefully and still with an air of carefree-ish-ness, walk quietly to an available chair and, once again scanning for stray beans, sit.

3.Choosing a likely bag.
As I mentioned before, simply going for the nearest bag of coffee beans without taking a look at what all is available is, to put it mildly, a horrendous mistake. I’d say unforgivable, but I’ve been told I’m a bit opinionated and so am attempting ot lighten up; so, ‘horrendous’ will simply have to do. But I digress.

You will have made a seat choice which will position you in such a way that, with minimal movement, you can scan the shelves and display tables around you, thereby observing without being observed (bags are drawn to movement, you know). Get comfortable. You may wish to use props to appear non-threateing; books, newspapers and laptops have proven time and again to be satisfactory in this area. If you do use props, make sure you don’t over do it; yaks, leashed or loose and no matter the time of year, do not make coffee-bean bags feel safe. This has, unfortunately, been proven. I’ve seen the photographs of the resulting carnage, and they ween’t pretty (if anyone tries to tell you that yaks have itchy trigger-hooves, tell them they’ve no idea ... and then slap them.) Please, keep it simple.

Now, after deciding which species of coffee-bean bag you would like, take the time to choose a likely candidate within that group. If needed, carefully re-position your chair so that you are almost facing your target group, but do not face it directly. Bags often see this as a challenge; however, if you don’t look directly at them, they’ll usually ignore you.

You will be looking for signs of weakness. Yes, weakness- although the popular myth is that you want strong, bold coffee and so must have strong, bold coffee-beans, this is simply an ignorant oversight: if enough coffee-beans are ground and brewed in proprtion to the amount of water used, you can make any coffee as strong and bold as you can stand it, and then some. And so, you look for the weakest, remembering that you are in very, very dangerous territory, hunting a being that has caused more psychological meltdowns than any other thing in the world, year after year. (These meltdowns are not reported due to the fact that such reports would upset and unsettle coffee-bean bags worldwide, and the possible uprising of said bags that this could result in is, quite frankly, a harrowing thought.) So, weak is good.

Now, the problem with this is that, like most herd-animals, coffee-bean bags tend to keep their weakest members safely surrounded by those stronger and more able-bodied. It is not neccesary to watch re-runs on the Discovery channel of herds of wildebeest and antelope on African plains, but it helps. Remember: You are the lion, but even lions can fall with an appropriately placed hoof or horn (or in this case, price tag or waft of aromatic caffienated coffee-scent.)

In an act of complete selfishness, you may want to allow other amatuer coffee drinkers to thin the ranks a bit by casually walking up and grabbing just any bag; although they may be harmed through their ignorance, this will drastically reduce the amount of danger you will find yourself in later when going in for the kill. If an amatuer coffee drinker is indeed attacked, do not, under any cirmumstances, interfere. This is nature’s way, and if we were to help them, they may grow used to it and so would never learn to fend for themselves, and no matter how cute they may be, we have no right to sway the path that their futures may naturally take. Even if they cry out to you, weak and looking pathetic, please restrain yourself. In order to distract yourself form any hero-like thoughts that would only result in more pain, try actually using whatever prop you brought along for it’s originally intended purpose: catching up on the news or surfing the Net for pictures of your neighbor in a wet-boxers contest. It’s not heartless; it’s self-preservation.

4. Going in for the kill.
Once you’ve chosen your bag, you must prepare yourself for the kill. This is no small matter; have a care for what you’re about to do. You are about to embark upon an epic journey across vast feet of man-made flooring to stand right at the edge of the beast’s herd. Not even Ceasar would do so without pause for adequate contemplation of his possibly impending death.

I suggest a quiet meditation to center yourself. Remaining nonchalantly in your seat, slowly but dramatically yawn and stretch. The stretch will cause your spine to bend ever so slightly to one side (which side is your preference) and your arms to reach way up over your head, fists clenched. The yawn will do what yawns do; namely, to stretch your face in a rather unflattering manner. The combination will serve two purposes:

A. To reassure the coffee-bean bags that you are harmless and/or too sleepy to be at the top of your game and so are not an overly worrisome threat.

B. To remind you of all those muscles in your torso and arms which, if things go wrong, you may never feel again, or at least not in the same way or placement. Morbid, but there you go.

While stretching and yawning, chant in your head the following: “Isko-orchie dowge ooble itskee ra noorbe.” The translation of this chant was lost long ago, but it is believed to be, in the ancient language of the legendary Java-Javainians, a prayer for quick deliverance in the case of impending death, as well as something to do with opposable thumbs and percolation. I find it quite calming and quietly empowering.

After the completion of this simple meditation, slowly lower your arms, close your mouth, shift in your seat and look around, never letting your eyes rest on any one object for more than a few seconds. This will give the illusion that you are growing bored with your surroundings and so are getting ready to stand up, gather your props, and leave the territory unscathed and peaceful. Glance once more at your chosen bag and mark any changes in placement within the herd, and stand.

Before we continue, I must once again stress the importance of the grain of wood. Take a moment to visualize the depth and texture of the grain, as well as its direction.

Become one with the varnish, and you will suceed.

Now, speed is of the essence, but do not ignore standard agility and flexibility. Looking at an object near to, but not directly next to, the herd of coffee-bean bags, stride forward with a look of curiosity lighting your face. Do not look at your chosen bag except in quick sly glances consisting of a momentarly sliding of eyes under the lids. Do not slow as you approach the herd - slowing will alert them to your act and give them ample opportunity to strike.

As you pass the herd, still looking at your chosen random object of distraction, very quickly reach into the herd and grab your bag very firmly about the midriff and, before any of the bags has a chance to react, withdraw and speed your pace up to an-almost skip for the last few steps to the object of distraction. Keeping a tight, two-handed hold of your bag, turn scan the area for signs of unrest.

If you’re lucky, and your wrist was limber enough and your pace smooth eneough, the bags remaining in the herd will not challenge you, deferring to your obvious dominance in a show of stillness. A few might crinkle nervously, but if you make no more sudden moves their submission will hold.

If you’re not lucky, the ensuing battle will be one you’ll never forget. As all coffee-bean bag herds are different, and follow different rules, I cannot adequately warn you of what may or may not happen. Allow me to observe then that you should immediately make good use of your knowledge of the grain of any nearby wood, grab a sign to use as a shield, and run like hell, overturning tables, chairs, ond other coffee-drinkers in your wake as obstacles for the rampaging bags.

Note: If you are attacked, drop the bag you grabbed immediately! Not only will this possibly pacifiy the other bags, it will prevent you from ending up in the very awkward situation of attempting to explain to the local law enforcement just why you ran out of the Coffee Shop with an unpaid-for bag of coffee-beans.

Assuming that you have sucessfully snatched your chosen bag and not been attacked, calmly follow your normal routine of proceeding to the check-out counter and paying for the bag. Be very careful not to set the bag down, however, even if it means an extra ten or twenty seconds of rummaging one-handed through a purse or wallet for money. Once you’ve set the bag down within its home territory, all bets are off; it is then assumed that you have had second thoughts as to your own strength and resulting ability to hold the bag hostage, and so you will be duly attacked in vengeance for making the bags feel subissive to you even for those few minutes.

I never said they were not beasts of honor and integrity; I simply said they’re highly dangerous. Head-hunters are highly dangerous as well, but that doensn't mean they’re bad people at heart.

So, now that you have sucessfully hunted and taken down a coffee-bean bag, collect your props and leave in a timely manner in respect for the dead and those left to mourn. Have a heart. Go home, or to work, and make a proper sacrifice to the coffee-bean bag’s spirit by promptly grinding the beans and brewing a rich, flavorfull pot of well-earned coffee. Then with all due ceremony, repeat the chant you chanted with your earlier meditation (it is also believed to mean Thank-you in Java-Javanesian) and, finally, drink.

And don’t forget to toast the glorious dead.

Harry holidays

2007-12-16T20:37:00.001-08:00

Himself, posing for Christmas cards.

Be good and he'll leave chocolate-covered crickets in your stocking.

They might even be pre-chewed, if you're really good.

The Corpse Artist

2007-12-15T20:55:00.000-08:00

So, yeah, this Christmas will be pretty good after all in terms of being able to get presents for everyone I'd like to. I still can't splurge and by tons of stuff for each person on my list, but that's ok - that would just be icing on the cake. The boy and I just got back from our second (and hopefully last) round of christmas shopping, and I figured now's a good a time as any to update the ol' blog. So, without further ado:

School
Managerial Finance (the class I'm taking this term) officially sucks, and I now have one more occupation to add to the list of occupations you couldn't convince me to have even if you had $100 billion in one hand and a gun in the other, and gave me the choice. I will never ever be a financial analyst.

Part of this is the tediousness of the tasks. Part of it is that my brain wants to (and usually does) shut down after one simple formula becomes twenty simple formulas, all of which are needed in order to calculate twenty other simple formulas, all of which are needed to get one lousy percentage that will tell potential investors if they should buy stock in a company.

Part of it is my professor. She's been in the financial business for longer than I've been alive, and so knows what she's talking about. The downside of this is that after the first week she began teaching us as if we, too, knew what she was talking about, and for most of us this is only our first or second class that has anything to do with financial data, period. On top of that, she's one of those people who, smart as they may be, should not be teachers, because they don't know how to teach. I have been exceedingly frustrated and at times downright pissed off with her lectures and the incredible lack of information, which we are left to figure out for ourselves.

Don't get me wrong - I know that learning things on our own is part of the deal, but this is the equivalent of telling a three-year old they can't breathe underwater because that's not how the human body works, then leaving them to figure out the major details of creating a high-tech underwater living system for the entirety of humanity in less than three days because a meteor or somthing is going to hit the earth and cover it in water.

No, really. This woman gives us point A and expects us to find points B through Y to get to Z.

I have accpeted the fact that I may not be on the Chancellor's list when this term is over. That's not to say I am now or will fail the class - I just highly doubt I'll be getting an A. It's sort of a bummer, but I'm not the only one having troubles with this professor, so I know the lack of an A won't be because of my lack of trying or intelligence. That helps, and I'm not really upset anymore about it, but it still sucks. I've been on the Chancellor's list from my first term, for the first time in my life. I'm sort of proud of that.

Work
It never ceases to amaze me how stupid people can be. I know, I've said this before. But really, I'm astounded on an almost daily basis at work by the stubborn dumbness of some of the people there.

Take Crack Hen, for instance. This is the woman who works at the front desk, and I call her Crack Hen because her personality is that of a mother hen on crack cocaine. Go ahead, giggle. The image this conjures is a funny one. Unfortunately, the reality isn't.

Just a quick example of her amazing tencaity when it comes to not grasping the obvious:

Just the other day Crack Hen came back to the Production Department with an obituary to be typed up (the coordination of obituary publications is one of her many tasks, but the real work - typing it all up - of course falls to us). There was, as is often the case, some something about this particular obit that she felt required deep explaination, and since my boss is usually the one to type up obits she asked if he was at work that day, as he wasn't at his desk. I gave my daily reply that yes, he is at work today, just not at his desk at the moment. As she walked over to his desk to put the obit on it, she asked if I would tell him when he got back that she had put the obit on his desk.

Because, you know - when he returns to his desk, and sits down at his desk, and picks up the obit to move it off of his keyboard so he can type, he just might not see the obit that was placed on his desk, on his keyboard where he can't miss it, which he had to pick up and move to be able to continue his work.

I nodded.

I watched her leave the room, and when she was gone, looked at both of my coworkers who rolled their eyes as I rolled mine. We shook our heads, sort of laughed soft, amazed, derisive laughs, and muttered in soft astounded voices.

This is an almost daily occurence, by the way.

About twenty minutes later, my boss returned from lunch and we all had a sarcastic laugh as I informed him as soon as he sat at his desk that Crack Hen had put an obit on his desk, and that it was right in front of him. He sarcastically pretended not to see it. We sarcastically told him that's because he was soooo stupid. He sarcastically agreed, rubbed his eyes, and searched for the obit.

Not long after this bit of fun at Crack Hen's expense, she called my boss, at his desk, to ask him specifically if he had seen that she had put an obit on his desk.

Seriously.

More eye rolling and amazed and sarcastic muttering followed.

I had a small victory with her the next day, though. My boss worked a half day that day so that I had to put together page A-1, and we had a story that would be late and caused our press deadline to be pushed back an hour. Now, at the new deadline, when I and the editors were scrambling to get that last big story and all its photos to fit in the space alotted and I'm snarling every time the phone rings and it's the press wondering where the pages are (even though they knew of the later deadline for days, but planned their Christmas party for that evening anyway), Crack Hen walked in, obit in hand.

Crack Hen, seeing that my boss wasn't there, turned to me. At the time I had an editor standing at my shoulder watching and directing me as I pulled the story and photos together. Obviously, I was just a wee bit busy at the moment. Still Crack Hen stood like a good little junkie yardbird, at the end of my desk, obit clasped in hands, looking at me.

I ignored her, not just out of sheer irritation at her very presnece but due as well to the fact that, well, I was just a wee bit busy at the moment.

Crack Hen cleared her throat and opened her mouth to speak - probably to explain that she had an obit that needed to be typed up (nevermind the fact that the inbox for obits that need to be typed up was right next to her).

I held up one finger (not that one, though I'd have liked to) and said, quick, simple, and to the point: "On deadline right now."

Case closed. End of discussion. Go away.

And she went away.

It was ... beautiful.

Medical stuff
Remember my mentioning in my bitching about finances that all the medical bills I had were for simple little everyday things that just kept adding up, not for big bad scary stuff? Irony just might be the end of me.

The boy and I are doing much better than I had expected we would at this time of year, and just two days ago I paid off, in full, my last medical bill. Big relief that was, as yesterday was my yearly check up. You know, the girly check up? With the special equipment and lab tests? Yeah, that one. Oh, joy, thought I, and the lab tests will cost an arm and a leg and I'll be right back where I was and speaking of legs ...

After I had been thoroughly prodded in places I really don't wish to be prodded by just anyone, my doctor wrapped up the session with the typical question, "Is there anything else you need to have checked out?"

I was about to give my usual answer of "No," but then remembered something.

This summer I gave in to fashion a bit and bought shorts and a of couple skirts. This required that I either A) get a serious tan, because my skin could put Snow White to shame, or B) wear nylons. In summer. In California.

Needless to say, I opted for a tan. However, having been thoroughly scared shitless about the dangers of skin cancer at a young age, I loathe being out in the sun unless absolutely necessary (part of this is just that it's fucking HOT, but skin cancer doesn't sound fun either). This left me with the classic dilema: to tan or not to tan?

I opted for a nice spray-on tan. Go ahead, laugh. I did. But, it beats being hot for a long time just to cook your skin to a darker tone because someone somewhere said that's what's pretty, and risk skin cancer to boot.

Tanning-spray in hand, I stared at my unfasionably white legs, sighed, and began the process of spray-painting myself beautiful. Now, anyone who has tried spray-on-tans can attest to the mess, the streaks, the splatters, and the overall aggravation and humiliation that results. In the end, I think I only wore each pair of shorts and each skirt once, just so they wouldn't end up being a complete waste.

My legs - tanned, most definately - were streaky, slightly orange-ish, and bore random spots of darker tan where the original spray didn't take so I sprayed again, and it turned darker than the rest (of course). I hid my monstrosities in pants and just dealt with the heat, fashion-craze firmly snubbed.

After the fake tan had faded I noticed one of the darker spots didn't fade with the rest. Remembering those additional spritzes where it had appeared necessary, I didn't think much of it until a few months later when the spot was still there, just as nicely tanned and more noticable now against my whiter-than-Snow-White leg. I wondered a bit about it, but still wasn't much concerned. I wrote it off to the spray staining my skin more than it was supposed to - perhaps permanently - and with a sigh promtly forgot about it again.

Since then I've occasionally noticed the spot in the shower, still tan as it was in summer. It's approximately four inches around, and still fades nicely at the edges to my normal white skin. Each time I'd notice it, and notice that it wasn't any lighter, I'd wonder a bit more, until the wondering bordered on worry. Being as I'd forget all about it within a few days, worry never actually kicked in.

However, in the last month or so I've begun to wonder if I shouldn't worry about it, and have it checked out. These tanning sprays aren't supposed to permanently stain your skin, and the rest of it faded completely long, long ago. There's just this one strange area that never faded, leaving me to ask myself in a disquieting voice if maybe the spot wasn't from overzealous spraying at all, but something else.

So, when my doctor asked me the usual "anything else" question, I mentioned the spot and showed her. And my heart sunk a little when she nodded and said "Yes; it is very definately darker than the skin around it, and it's a big patch of skin too."

She said it might be a good idea to have it checked out.

In two weeks, I go back to my doctor to have a chunk of that nice, tan skin removed for testing. A week after that I'll go back to have the sutures removed. I don't know how long it will take to get the test results, but I'm hoping not too long because while I'm totally calm about it now, I might not be if I have to wait and wait and wait.

I'm actually suprised I'm so calm about it. I'm not usually the type to be calm about medical stuff. I tend to worry myself sick, usually over nothing. Now that there may very well be something to actually worry about, I'm not. Maybe it's because the patch of darkened skin doesn't hurt or feel weird to give me something to pay attention to, so that it's easy to tell myself it may very well be nothing more than accidentally permanently stained skin. And there's nothing scary about that - I'd just feel like the ultimate fashion dork.

It doesn't look suspicious at all. No lumps, or bumps, or spots or patches. It just looks like I have a nice tan - not even a dark one - only in that one place on that one leg.

In two weeks, it will be one patch of a nice tan with a chunk taken out and replaced with sutures. I could say I'm going for the Corpse Bride look, so that I'm still utterly fashionable. You know - pale as death, stitches ... It could work.

Ok. Maybe I'm worried a little. But only a little. I mean, it doesn't hurt, so it can't be that bad, right? (Here's where you humor me by nodding and saying "right.")

Sigh. Time for an abrupt subject change.

Hair
It's official: my hair is now the longest it's been in seven years, and it's mostly healthy, I think. Not fried. Not dried out. Dying hasn't killed it this time. It's a bit frizzy if left to it's own devices instead of being tamed with leave-in conditioner, and I have a mysterious chunk that is much much shorter than the rest -right on top of my head, to the right a bit. Looks sort of like someone cut off a lock of it and didn't tell me. Nevertheless, it's usually not noticeable, so I don't feel the urge to break out the clipper and buzz everything down to an eighth of an inch again.

Amazingly, that urge hasn't hit for a long time now. It used to be a frequent thing (hence the seven years of short hair that I'm only just now getting past). I can pull most of my hair back into a (dorky, admittedly) little ponytail, with only a bit tucked behind my ears falling loose. It works, actually. I think if the urge to buzz rises again, all I'll have to do is grab a hair tie to remind myself how long my hair is getting, and the urge will pass. But I doubt the urge will rise again. It usually only did so when I was outraged at the total unruliness and mess of my hair, due to the fact that it was just long enough to need taming (styling), but not long enough to be tamed. Now it is, barely, so the "fuck it - just shave it off," urge has no reason to rear its ugly head (and bare mine, heh heh ...)

Ok. I've promptly run out of things to say, and dorky attempts at wittiness to drag out simple things. So, goodnight then. And happy holidays.

- The Corpse Artist

A translation of last night's blunken drog

2007-12-11T14:43:00.000-08:00

Apologies. I don't drink much or often, so when I do I have a tendency to crack myself up by attempting to type while drunk-ish. It doesn't matter what's being typed, or if it has any real reason to exist - if I can amuse myself to no end with misspellings, random punctuation marks that appear in the middle of words depsite their distance on the keyboard from the letters I meant to use, and the simple admission that "hey, I'm kinda fucked up right now!" - I will.

It's a weakness.

The story behind last night's whiskey-induced blunken drog is simple: It was the night of the company Christmas party, and as I had to re-word the assignment due that night just a wee bit and so had to leave the party early-ish, I promptly and early on took advantage of my own and the boy's one free drink ticket (that's two free drinks for me, because he rarely drinks) and then allowed myself to be convinced (without much resistance, I'll admit) to indulge in a shot of straight whiskey with the small handfull of other workers under the age of 50 (there aren't many of us, so we have to stick together). Note that my two free drinks contained whiskey as well.

I like whiskey. It makes me fell sort of fuzzy, and raises the hilarity level of simple things - like walking, and door handles.

It also makes it a wee bit hard to write, and read, but that ends up being pretty damned funny too.

Now, no tsk-tsking. I had no problems re-working that assignment (all I ended up needing to do, actually, was delete a sentence that wasn't really necessary anyway) and got it turned in on time. And I think I did a damn good job on it, to boot.

The assignment was completed before I went to the party, but with online schooling there is a thing called originality verification - a tool which compares papers and discussion board posts to those of other students' sumissions, myriad websites, and e-books to ensure students aren't cheating. To determine the level of cheating or not-cheating, this verification tool gives each assignment a similarity score from 0-100%, and anything over 25% is unaccpetable, period. My score was 26%, so some cleaning up was needed, and deleting that one sentence that contained the monetary values used in the assignment that were also used by every other student doing the assignment fixed it.

The originality verification is aggravating to those students who are not cheating, because so often good references will be used by so many others simply because they are easily found (everyone uses the textbooks given for the course as one of the two minimum required references) and are so useful, and they will be caught in the scoring. Also, some things - like key terms and ideas whose definition and discussion are the entire assignment - simply cannot be reworded, or so many students have tried different words that there are no more left that have not been used before, and so are once again caught. The same is true of numeric values needed for the assignments, which this one utilized. Every spreadsheet I created using the monetary values metioned and the excel formulas specified by the instructor match 100% those of every other student who did them as directed as well. You can't fudge numbers. So a good half of my sim score was from those spreadsheets, which have to use those exact numbers and exact formulas, or of course I'd get the whole damn thing wrong and get an F.

Aggravating, to say the least, but usually it's easily fixable. Well, words are anyway. With numbers you're either screwed because you did it right and so did everyone else, or you're screwed because you did it wrong, so you get a lower grade anyway because you're dumb.

Further, certain strings of words that are required for every individual paper are caught. What I mean is, for my school the words that absolutely must appear on the title page - "Colorado Technical University," and the class code and instructor name - are caught every damn time. Because every damn student uses those required words on their title page, every damn time. Because they're required, and no re-wording of them is allowed. We are given a report template and if papers do not use it, we lose points. So at least one "caught cheat" for every single paper assignment submitted by every single student will be the school and class information.

Lazy cheating fuckers.

Sigh.

But returning from my rant, whiskey was no obstacle to deleting the sentence that explained what the yearly monetary forecasts in this assignment were. And since those same numbers were used in every spreadsheet, explaining them in the text was not necessary, so that the loss of that sentence didn't take away from the quality of my work.

I was responsible before, during, and after my whiskey-indulgence, so all's well, and I amused myself greatly with my blunken drog. Sure, it's not really funny now, just sort of ... well, a drunken blog stating just that. But I giggled helplessly at the time.

Forgive my easily-amused nature and its antics. And drink some whiskey - it turns walking into a wildly thrilling adventure, and the act of turning one's head into a sort of personal roller-coaster, but without the throwing up and screaming (well, unless you've had too much to drink, but that's another story).

Let it be known ...

2007-12-10T21:42:00.000-08:00

... that wihisket at the company chrismats party ix goood. Bu tit kinda makes it hard to type. An dfix school stuff. (No worries- tha paper was already written, just need t fine tune it for a lwoer similarity score. Still, kinda hard tottype.)

Happy holsidays all. And ghoodngiht.

Note: Yes, thia hS BEEN AN ACUTAL ALCHOLOL RWELATED RDUBNKEN POST FROM dRAGIN LAUGH,

pSS THAT WAS SUPOSED TO BE APERIOD. Crap, capslock ws stil on. K, goodnight for real this time. (Holy shit I actuall;y p[elled most fo that sentecne corretly,.)_

Feelin' it

2007-12-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

I'm in a considerably better mood today than I was a few days ago with my Christmas card to the void post. Actually, I wasn't really in an actively bad mood that day, it's just that when I began to write all this angst bubbled up and poured out, sort of unexpectedly. I think it was necessary, though, to get it out so I can get on with things.

Have I mentioned that Mama Wren rocks? She called me after having read the post to make sure I was okay and reassure me once again that it really is the thought that counts (and I really do know that, but I like giving gifts to people, regardless) and that actually the subtle rejection I'd felt from certain family members wasn't in my head; it really is just how they are. That helped, because I was beginning to feel like maybe I had imagined it and was being all pouty and whiny. But no; it's just life with these people, and Mama Wren learned long ago and I'm slowly learning now that it doesn't signify dislike, per se, just different views, and I'm learning to begin to let it go. I still have bitter moments crop up now and then - sometimes unexpectedly - but really for the most part, it's all good.

And after having spoken with Mama Wren for a while about the holiday spirit in general I began to feel it, a little bit. She's a smart lady - have I mentioned that? - and she has a great way of explaining things that makes you realize why things feel as they do. Of course I wasn't feeling too Christmassy - I'm working full time, doing school the rest of the time, trying to make ends meet (and succeeding where it really matters, but stressing anyway on the things that could wait but cost more to do so), etc., on top of having little room to decorate to remind my inner six-year-old that Christmas is coming soon. No wonder I felt a little bah-humbuggish. I don't have much time for anything else. So she said she'd look for one of those little table-top Christmas trees that we could put on the end of the coffee table or a shelf, so we'd have a tree at least. Or, I could put ornamnets on the fake treee (I think it's a ficus tree?) that I got for Harry to climb around on outside his cage so he can sit and watch TV with the boy and I.

He really does watch TV with us, given the chance, and his cage is placed so that he can see the TV from it, and there are times when we'll hear him clamber down from a branch and scramble over to the front of his cage. When we look over, he's staring intently across the room at the screen, mesmerized. This usually happens when there are lots of explosions going on in whatever show or movie is on, which amuses me in terms of male stereotyping. Even lizard boys like the idea of blowing shit up.

So Christmas will be just fine. I still want to get gifts for everyone, if I can, and I was just approved for my first ever "real" credit card (I have one already through my bank, but had to pay for it, so it doesn't really count, IMHO). I don't planning on splurging with it, of course (I'm a little cautious of the temptation of credit cards) - I don't even plan on using it unless I need to. In the end we'll be perfectly ok with the bills that need tp be paid right away, and those medical bills can still be slowly paid off, at least for now, without too much in the way of late fees, and will still be able to get at least little things for people. But it's nice to know that if I find something really amazing that I know someone has been looking for for a long time, I could get it for them for Christmas, just because it'll make them smile.

The boy and I will actually have two Christmasses this year - the aforementioned early one with my family and the actual Christmas day with his family. The conflicting work schedules that make essential the earlier gathering actually makes the timing perfect - this way we won't have to split up one day between two families (and two dinners). Further, the boy's parents will be picking up Phoenix that day and bringing him to town, so that he'll be part of that day too. He has a Chrsitmas break from school, and will spend several days with the boy and I before going back home. I know the boy is excited about that, which makes me excited too.

This year really will be more about family than previous years, and I like that. I've alwasy understood the importance of family, but took it for granted. Then I'd read books by great authors (specifically Anne Rice) that outlined long family lines and secrets and events and closeness, and I began to understand what it meant in a way that made more sense than the general vague knowledge of blood ties. And I began to want to know more about my own family. And now, I have the possibility of learning more than I'd vere realized there was to learn, and in the midst of it I've gained a second family - the boy's.

When I let go of the stress of bills and time, I'm really actually pretty damn excited. I just need to remember it. Somehow, I imagine six-year-old-me won't let me forget again.

Wonderful. Simply wonderful.

2007-12-03T22:38:00.001-08:00

You must check out http://dailycoyote.blogspot.com. You simply must.

This is one of the most wonderful blogs I've had the fortune to come across, and (of course!) I found it through Cute Overload. This is the photo journal of a young coyote named Charlie who was saved by a woman in Wyoming when he was mere days old, orphaned when his parents were killed. Charlie lives with this wonderful lady and her cat, Eli, and oh, you must see this! The photos are wonderful, the "Notes on Charlie" are wonderful, the whole thing is wonderful. No, Charlie is not a pet, and this woman understands that and has accepted that Charlie alone will decide what happens when he "grows up", so don't get your hackles up - she's not going to try to keep a wild animal captive against its will. And really, that's one of the greatest things about it: despite realizing the possibility that Charlie may well one day decide he wants to take off and brave the wide world on his own, she cherishes the time she has with him in this amazing relationship between human and wild animal. Check it out. You can even subscribe to get a daily photo of Charlie as he grows and learns.

Oh, you must.

Christmas card to the void

2007-12-02T15:47:00.000-08:00

This is not a happy post, though it has everything to do with the holidays - family, thoughtfulness, giving gifts not because you have to but because you care for someone and want to show that you do and make them smile for half a moment. This is a bitter post, frustrated with some things, angry with others things that I've kept to myself for years.

This Christmas season, I'm just not feeling it. Here it is, the second day of December - the second day that I by rights and tradition should be giggly and full of childish glee and wonder, counting down the days, decorating, planning - and all I can think is "I wish this were over already." I think part of the reason is that there are no decorations at The Dragon's Den, since a) neither the boy or I own any of our own Christmas decorations yet, b) said decorations cost money that we don't have, and c) even if we could afford to glitz up the place, there's no room for miscellaneous "stuff." No, really. It's that small an apartment.

No tree, no wreath, no holly or ribbons or bows or pretty multi-colored trinkets. The only candles we have are the regular every-day ones that almost never are burned because they end up in the way, and we have no available electrical sockets left for plugging in Christmas lights we might like to run around the edges of the ceiling. Ok, I could put up a wreath, but really, without everything else what's the damn point? Not even the weather feels Christmas-like. Sure, it's cold as hell at night and in the mornings, but by the time noon rolls around its usually blindingly sunny and hot again. It's pretty much still summer here, during the hours that count for wakefulness.

There's a Christmas tree at my work, but it's not in the front lobby - the most logical place to put it, so that customers can see it - or anywhere else that makes sense. It's shoved up against the grey cubicle-wall that edges the graphics department, taking up a huge amount of space in the walkway between that wide blank grey cubicle-wall and the little desk area for the courier and the lady who used to be the courier but who now does a bunch of scheduling and dummying. It's not even a department in and of itself. Behind that desk area is a big open space with a few rarely used tables, and beyond that about half a dozen ad reps, all the way on the other side of the room. Whoever put the tree up this year wasn't thinking very well.

Christmas sucks anyway when you're constantly broke and owing on medical bills (which just keep getting bigger because the medical company keeps tacking on huge late fees, even if you make regular - and fairly large - payments on them). I mean it really sucks. I've bought a whopping total of one present so far, and already I'm grinding my teeth at the fact that I really could have used that money for gas. Or for another payment on a medical bill (and these aren't bills for horrible awful things, just run-of-the-mill viruses that make you wonder if you've got lung cancer or some such but then clear up on their own as soon as the doctor tells you they will and charges you for that "duh-advice.") Then I feel shitty for thinking that, because I'm supposed to be thinking about other people this time of year, right? Not myself? But I do think of others, and see all sorts of great stuff they'd love to have and that I'd love to give them, but can't really afford. Or I could afford to, but then I couldn't pay all my bills, or at least not make enough payments on them to pay them off before the next $30 fee is tacked on. So I see stuff to buy, and I feel like a tightwad for not buying it, but then hours or days later I'm glad I didn't because I end up needing that money that I didn't spend on someone else. So I feel relieved, then wonder what he hell I'm going to get for gifts and how, and bitch about the fact that my family's Christmas is taking place several days early this year because of conflicting work schedules, so that I have even less time to buy stuff. Then I feel like shit all over again.

And do you know how much I hate the saying "it's the thought that counts"? Because I know that, really, but I also know how excited everyone gets about both giving and receiving gifts, so if I can't afford to buy someone something, even something small, I feel like I'm not playing fair, because gods know they're going to buy me something, even it if puts them over the limit on their credit card, and damned if it isn't going to be something nice and thoughtful and probably expensive to boot. And, just to make me feel even smaller, they'll probably get me three or four gifts, even though they insitsed I should only get them one, or not worry at all. Can you believe the nerve of some people? (Yes, that last bit was sarcastic.)

My family has tried the no-gift-giving thing. Not long at all after the no-gift rule was established, my aunt whined and begged to have it changed to one-gift, as in the whole white-elephant deal with drawing names so each person only buys one gift, period. So we caved, and we all bought one gift, until not too terribly long before The Big Day this same aunt admitted to having splurged and bought something for everyone - actually, several somethings for everyone. Everyone else was vastly disgruntled, because that meant we'd all have to do the same, of course. It's not that we didn't want to give each other nice things, but it would have been nice to know this tidbit of information a wee bit earlier so we could have budgeted appropriately and spent time finding thoughtful gifts rather than dashing out madly to find the first thing - regardless of price or quality - that might in any tiny way appeal to whoever we were buying for at the time.

I doubt this experiement will ever be repeated.

I've made my Christmas-money woes for this year known to Mama Wren, who nods sagely and tells me not to worry about it, that no one in the family is going to either really feel like and/or be able to afford lots of presents this year. And although I realize she's smart and she's working on logic, I've discovered that our extended family and logic does not mix as expected. Yes, we've lost two members of the family this year, and another the year before that, so that the holidays are somehow less than they were. Yes, the economy sucks right now so none of us really has much "splurge" money.

No, this does not mean we will all act accordingly.

Those who do have just the tiniest of financial wiggle room will splurge because they want to, which means the rest of us have to, because that's just the way it works. No one actually tallies the gifts to see who has one or two more or less. No one says anything if they don't receive a gift from one person. But it's there, unspoken, invisible and guilty. We all have to give equally, doncha know? It feels like a chore, not fun like it's meant to be.

And to top it all off, I'm really not that into big family gatherings. I know how that sounds: like I'm some heartless or careless person who only gets together with said family at big events, and only because I have to. You'd be half-right, but the first half of that is directed at me from said family, and so causes the second half.

See, although I try my damnedest (and I think I usually succeed) to be a good, kind, friendly, caring person, I have tattoos. And piercings. And I'm more comfortable in jeans and a T-shirt than pressed, feminine slacks, a nice floofy blouse and a sweater vest. And my hair is short, but not fashionably so. And I like things like dragons and demons and monsters and stuff. And I don't like kids much.

For most of my teenage years and past up until very recently (see: I went back to college and am actually getting all A's) I have been a disappointment. Despite my creativity and sense of adventure, humor, fun, and overall cheerfulness, I was never up to the expectations of my grandparents, my aunts, my uncles. This was never voiced, of course, but I'm not stupid. At family gatherings (Christmas was always the worst for this, just because it's supposed to be all about family) all the "grownups" would be gathered around talking, talking, talking, and us "kids" (that's despite actual age) would be off in our own corners of the house, quiet and out of the way. It was ok with the grownups if we peeked in every once in a while for a minute or two - it gave them a chance to check up on us, and then we'd be off again on our own, or could stick around if we didn't do or say much.

I began to understand what a disappointment I was when I began trying to contribute to conversations. At first I was indulged with various questions about my life, but the answers I gave were never the right ones. Those answers (which seemed perfectly ok to me then and still do to this day) always brought half-frowns and serious looks and further questions as to "why" this and "why" that, like I was wrong. If I didn't like my PE class, that wasn't a perfectly normal thing for some kids, it was a serious concern and a sort of dull shock to my elders, especialy when I explained that it being so very hot all the time in California was half the reason I hated that class. Who wouldn't like the sun, and to be out in it? Ignore the fact that "being out in it" meant running around in 95+ degree weather, without breaks, without the freedom to go sit in the shade for five minutes to cool down wihtout that day's participation points suffering for it. If I was still drawing dragons and unicorns I really should try to draw more acceptable things like portraits or landscapes or still lifes. If I played card or video games that centered around magic and adventure, I needed to grow up and understand that magic wasn't real (I learned that little fact of life when I was still a child, but I still like the idea of it - what's wrong with that?); I should instead get a real hobby, or perhaps a job mowing lawns or babysitting.

More exasperating questions were things like why didn't I know what my friend's father did for a living, or what another friend's mother liked to do in her time off? Like I should know these things because not for sheer curiosity's sake but because they were dreadfully important and I was irresponsible or a bad friend for not knowing. So sorry about that, but these things just never came up in conversation with those friends, and I couldn't see why I should be naturally curious about them to the extent that I would sit my friends down and have a lengthy discussion about all the ins and outs of their families. I still can't. It's not information that I need to know to determine whether or not someone should be considered a friend, so unless it relates in some way to me or that friend, like if a friend's aunt happened to be a librarian or their brother loves tattoos, why is it necessary for me to fill me head with meaningless titles, hobbies and quirks?

As the years passed, I didn't change much, and neither did my extended family. It got to the point in my early 20s that if I attempted to join a conversation, said conversation suddenly ended after a strained and tense last few exchanged words which didn't much include mine. This would result in a group of "grownups" and one "trying to be grownup but still obviously only a child" sitting around a table or living room, quiet, and no one much looking at me, until I'd finally get uncomfortable and leave. It was never long after I'd leave that the conversation would pick up again and the "grownups" would be laughing gaily and loudly while I tried not to feel rejected, instead once again turning to those bad, childish, worthless worlds of fantasty through either reading, writing, drawing or playing a game. And it wasn't like I simply wasn't on a level with them in terms of conversational ability - what I had to say was legitimate, appropriate and would have added well enough to the conversation. I "got it." I "understood." I could have chatted just fine, given the chance.

Needless to say, this realization made me rather bitter. What had I done to make them dislike me, or feel as if I wasn't good enough to be included in a simple conversation? Was I really so freakish with my books and my drawings and my preference of fantasy genres over mystery or romance or good old fashioned Civil War documentaries? Did my tattoos and piercings really make me a bad person? Because I didn't feel like one, and I certainly didn't act like one. Did the fact that I didn't know every detail of my friends' families make me unworthy of being a part of my own?

I eventually gave up trying to participate in family life at family gatherings, instead making sure I had a good long book to read or a pad of paper and full set of colored pencils to pass the long time on my own.

Events wherein family gathers have not felt very family-like to me since I really was a "kid," and I hate that. I've hated it for years. But I never said anything that might make my family more uncomfortable - I just went off to another room where I wouldn't be seen or heard much.

Maybe I should have given them an earful, stood up for myself, because damnit I am a good person. I always have been. If my younger half-sister (no blood relation to the side of the family in question), never much trusted before and now an ex-con, could be welcomed with open arms and cheerful invitations to sit and talk awhile, why couldn't I? What had I done wrong in simply existing?

Lately, as mentioned above, this has changed. Now I'm the Golden Child. It started very tremulously when I stated I had applied to a college to get my Bachelor's degree. The realization that I had "finally grown up" and was making a decision that my family approved of came slow and with much doubt as to whether or not I'd actually go through with the decision and the responsibility. Now, keep in mind I'd made this decision of my own volition, withough my family pushing me for it - they gave up on convincing me to go back to college years ago, so that it had become a non-topic, pointless to argue and frustrating to form the words for. I made this decision without consulting any of them, because I had to understand that it was I who wanted and was ready to return to college. Why then was my decision - even the fact that I'd gotten the ball rolling and actually applied before mentioning it - not immediately taken as the good sign that it was? Why was my announcement met with caution, not of the college itself but of my decision, period?

Again just to make clear, none of this relfective of Mama or Papa Wren. They've always included me and were thrilled about my decision to go back to college - mom even chortled over the phone when I told her. No, this distrust came from my grandmother foremost, and from other various extended family members - the ones who made family gatherings inclusive only of those they deemed "appropriate" or "acceptable."

It wasn't until I had finished my first term and could boldy announce that I was not just on the Dean's List but on the Chancellor's List that my decision was finally, fully accepted as a good idea that I had come up with and acted upon. And now I am included in conversations, despite still giving answers that I know are not liked, with very few uncomfortable silences. I am finally part of the family, albeit still the strange one, still the wandering one who doesn't know any better but who's trying, you know. I enjoy the conversations I am now allowed to fully participate in without scorn to the extent that I feel like a half-starved person suddenly given bread and water that was there the whole time but held just out of reach. A part of me wants to forget all those years of subtle rejection and embrace the family I'm finally allowed into, especially now that it's shrunken by one grandfather, one aunt and most recently her husband, my uncle, so that I feel I'm running out of time to connect. The bitter part of me - the part that holds onto hurts and indignities and injustices almost like they're bread and water themselves at times - is flat out disgusted with my enjoyment of these conversations, knowing full well that it's only a small part of me that's really being accepted.

Having been alienated - however unintentionally and perhaps without realizing they were doing it - for the latter half of my life has made me cautious. I want to know all the things about my family that I never knew because I was never allowed to learn them. I want to talk - really talk - about the things in life that matter to me, that matter to them. But I'm still afraid to fully speak my mind.

I want them to know I know they didn't see me for who I really am, but instead saw only what was different from them. I want them to know I know that those differences scared the hell out of them because they couldn't relate. I want them to know I think them cowards of a sort for not trying harder, but then that makes me a coward too, because I could have remained in their uneasy silence until I broke it and forced them to see and understand and accept me, and I didn't. I want them to know I don't hate them for it, but that I do think less of them for it, and that I think less of me, too.

I want them to know that the straight-A student they now hold so dear became that without them, and I want to see what they think of that idea - that despite their rejection I finally, somehow, became in part what they wanted me to become. I want them to know that whatever they thought of me to cause such rejection, they were wrong.

I'm not really looking forward to Christmas with my extended family this year, because even though I'll finally be able to talk with them I still can't say what needs to be said. It's not the right time, if ever there will be one. I'm beginning to get over the fuzzy-warm feeling of final acceptance, and the bitterness is beginning to eat at me again. I am still in a sense alienated from those family members, and maybe I always will be, because what they may not realize is that I haven't changed, only my actions to get to where I've always wanted to be in life. I still have my head in the clouds, dreaming of winged scaly things and worlds that only exist in books. I still draw fairy-tale pictures, and darker things that I don't show to most people. I still believe (though that belief is tried mightily at times) in the basic goodness of people, and that this belief does not make me weak or prone to be taken advantage of by bad (see: real) people. I still believe that if I try hard enough (and yeah I think that straight-As is hard enough, damnit) I can find the means to make a career with my artwork - even if it's not my full-time, every-day job. I still get lost in books in a way that I can't in any other aspect of my life, so that someone can be speaking to me, trying to get my attention for several minutes before I realize they're there, and I still love it. I still wish on stars, hoping beyond hope that the world is wrong and that magic does really exist, somewhere, if I find the right star and speak the right words.

And despite my bitterness, I still just want my family with me during the holidays, gifts or no gifts, decorations or no decorations. I just still don't feel much like family, yet.

And now I may not be able buy gifts to participate in this yearly family gathering in the only way I was ever fully able to, so that talking may be all I have to give this year. Mama and Papa Wren are great for talking, but I can talk to them anytime (not to make that less than it is - I cherish it). Some of the people I want to talk to but at the same time dread talking to are those I see only during this time of year, for one or two weeks, or a few days. They are people who I consequently don't know very well because of that and the fact that I was not allowed in for so long, so that speaking to them now will be an uncomfortable thing - for me at least, if not for them as well - and partly forced.

I'm not saying that presents will make everything better - I know that's hardly the case. I'm just saying I wish I could give them something they like so that when conversation runs dry there will be something else - something safe and acceptable - to talk about, so that I don't feel the need to leave and hide, again. A peace offering of sorts. It's taken years to get this far, and bitter as I may be I'll be damned if I'm going to let go of this tiny foothold. Family is supposed to mean something, and with those parts of the family we've lost to death and those we worry about I'm ready to sit in the silence as long as it takes to get to know these people before they're gone. I won't hide anymore.

I just wish I had something other than uncomfortable converstation to give to make it go a little smoother.

Charlize Theron, with a duck head

2007-11-27T16:25:00.000-08:00

That's right. You saw it here first. Charlize Theron, with a duck head. This rare shot was captured - probably with much danger to himself - by Patrick Hillman over at Blowing Shit Up With Gas. He's good at that kinda thing - discovering all manner of strange and head-shake-inducing secrets of celebrities, and then posting them for the world to see, for it's own safety. Rarely do we see such "Candid Camera" shots as this, though. This is a real treat. I mean, who knew her mother was of the feathered persuasion?

Actually, what I want to know is, how the hell does she manage to cram that long neck and bill into a full-head human-mask all the time? Talk about cramps. And ruffled feathers. Still, I think she should be proud to show the world her true face - it's actually quite pretty. And she doesn't even need makeup, the lucky bitch. Look at those eyes! I'd kill for those eyes ...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, any other takers on the sticky-note exchange? This is the first response (thanks Patrick!) and it was fun. Send 'em in, peoples! Mum? Patrick B.(co-worker dude)? Hot Lemon? Anyone? I'll post this week's sticky tomorrow (meant to today, but forgot, and I'm at home now while it's at work).

Sticky-note Art Exchange

2007-11-20T14:10:00.000-08:00

My previous post, "Pebble Drop, Phase One," garnered some great feedback, along with the idea of a sticky-note drawing project that just sounds like fun. So, I'm going with it.

Here's how it works:

Every week I'll post a quick, very much unfinished and basic sketch on a sticky-note, any anyone and everyone who wishes to can grab it to use in their own creative drawing (by hand or with a computer program, or both) using the sketch as the basis of the drawing, and including it in all its pale-yellow glory somewhere in the drawing. Take a look at my Pebble Drop post to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.

Once you've finished your masterpeice, e-mail it to me at dragonlaugh[at]comcast[dot]net and I'll post it here for all to see with proper credit and a link to your site.

Or, you can send me a sticky-note sketch to expand upon myself. Just e-mail it to the above address, and once it's done I'll post it and credit (and link) you with the idea.

This promises much fun.

And you don't have to be a fantastic, award-winning artist to participate. I'm not. Just doodle, or sketch, or draw stick figures, or go all out and play with oil paints or computer art programs if that's your thing. Use any style or technique you want, color or black and white, or both. It's just art - fun is what matters.

Come and play, and spread the word!

Here's the official first sticky-note sketch for you to expand upon - make of it what you will:

Pebble Drop, Phase One

2007-11-15T14:46:00.000-08:00

© C. Vandever, 2007

This started as a quick random sketch on a sticky note, which was tossed aside and ignored for an hour or so before I decided I actually kinda liked it. It just sort of spread out from there. I'll play with it in either Photoshop or Alias Sketchbook tonight or towmorrow, so keep an eye out for whatever final version of it emerges ...

Streeeeeetchingks, yaaawningks ...

2007-11-11T22:46:00.001-08:00

One more day. Juuuuust one more day. One more small assignment (piece of cake, baby). Then I can slaughter creepy crawly scaly stinky things in Sacred. Or in The Witcher (which the boy just convinced me to go ahead and buy the other day, insiting that I deserve it ... I love that man.)

One more day. Then I can sleep. Then I can read. Then I can draw.

Then I can drool on myself for a little bit, becuase no one's looking to see how smart I am.

(And I am, really ... * slurpk *)

One more day, then one whole week of bliss.

P.S. check out The Witcher. You'll like eeeeet. I promeeeeese ...

* snort *

* wipes drool off of chin *

Bad omen, or typical class structure aggravation?

2007-11-06T22:06:00.000-08:00

Should I consider it a bad omen that the very first actual marketing class I've had (Marketing and the Virtual Marketplace) I hate? Should I be wary of the fact that marketing - my concentration for this degree - seems to me to be basically a whole fuck of a lot of explaining to higher-ups just why they should ok the spending of any money at all in order to create high-profit advertising campaigns?

Or is it just the school aspect of it that has me having to explain and account for and legitimize every step, time and time again? I mean, that does show that I'm learning, but is the class structure based on making sure we understand the concepts, or a horrid reality (or - dear god please no - both?) Do marketing directors have to inch their way through red tape at every turn in order to explain to numbskull chief financial officers that yes, we really do need to spend X amount of dollars in order to draw in new customers and keep our current ones happily returning? Are CFO's really that dumb? Will the vast majority of my career consist of explaining myself? I mean, I'll be the one with the fucking degree in this, after all - shouldn't they just do what I say with a minimum of bitching and toe-stepping?

Is money really that much of a moron-maker of people who, by their rank and title alone, should know that it takes money to make money?!?

Should I be disquieted at the thought that I may have signed up for something that will drive me batshit for the rest of my too-young-to-retire-yet life? I'd make a better (and much much happier) manager, based on my other classes (all of which have been about management of some kind or other).

... If I were a manager, I could fire stupid people. Or just make them explain themselves for my own amusement. If I'm a marketer, I may be the amusement, even though it would be my research and decisions which would make the company sucessful.

These are not good thoughts to go to bed to.

I'll see what my future marketing classes are like, and hope that they're infintely better than this one. I loathe this one. I'm so glad it's almost over. If future marketing classes turn out to be just as hideous, I'll switch my concentration to management. I wouldn't even have to take any extra classes, because the classes for marketing and management concentrations are the same all the way up till not quite three-quarters of the way through the program (I know because my boss is concentrating on management and we compared our classes.)

I could switch concentration as late as summer of next year without having to backtrack and make up classes, so I have plenty of time to decide, but for now I'm a little ... well, disappointed.

Zombie cheeks and exploding spiders: How I spend my Sunday evenings.

2007-11-05T17:29:00.000-08:00

Did you know that your salivary glands can become blocked, completely randomly and with no warning signs? Did you know, further, that a salvary gland blocks are similar to kindey stones, in that not only are the blockages tiny little "stones" naturally created by the body, but that in order to get rid of them you have to wait for them to just pass through? Difference being, of course, the location of the passing - in the mouth rather than, well, you know - down there.

See, you have more than one set of salivary glands, but the major set are the ones in your cheeks, right where the mandible meets the skull (lower jaw with upper, in other words), right in front of your ears. Each gland has a tube running from the gland to the mouth, and that's what those tinsy little salivary stones need to pass through. Of course, tiny as they may be, they're bigger than those tubes (hence the blocking action.)

Did you know that if one of those major salivary glands gets blocked, within fifteen minutes of blockage that side of your face will swell horribly, from your temple to a good two inches down your neck, with a huge bulge right in front of your ear?

Have you guessed by now that this hurts like an M-Fer?

Now, do you know the truly horrifying part? Let me tell you. In order to get those stones to pass, you need to - obviously - salivate. Profusely. Being as the tube to release the saliva produced is blocked, this only creates more swelling, and an incredible amount of pain. If you don't salivate, and keep a heat pack on your cheek, the swelling eventually goes down to a slight puffiness and the pain subsides to a more tolerable level of constant agony. But if you're not salivating, there's nothing pushing against that blockage to get it out, so it just stays there, and the issue remains (and so does the pain).

I had to rush the boy to the hospital last night. A short five minutes before dinner I walked into the kitchen to find him rubbing his right cheek with a look of alarm. In response to my knee-jerk, "Are you ok?," he responded, "NO. Something's wrong. Something's really wrong." His jaw hurt a bit, but more importantly it "felt really weird," whether he moved it or not. But it was on the other side of his mouth from the molar that occasionally bothers him, he had not been hurt at work in a way that might affect his jaw, and he hadn't eaten anything hard that might have cracked a tooth.

Neither of us knowing what was wrong, we went on with dinner, hoping the issue would turn out to be some mysterious something that would go away on it's own. Cause, you know, sometimes that happens. I grabbed my plate and headed for the bedroom to eat and work on school assignments, and the boy sat down on the couch to eat and watch TV.

Ten minutes later, I heard the boy yell out, "Oh my god, sweetie! Come here!"

Now, last time he yelled this it was because an enormous spider had just walked in the front door like it owned the place, and needed dispatching (we're both creeped out by spiders, but I have a bit more guts when it comes to getting close enough to kill them, or catch them and let them go outside.) In response to that last yell, I had picked up a hammer and smashed it onto the back of a spider whose body alone was about the same size as the hammer's head. (Note to spider-smashers: Always use a hammer bigger than the spider you wish to smash. If you don't, they don't smash. They explode. Really.)

Expecting another spider, I mentally prepared to pick twitching hairy multi-jointed legs off of my shins. Upon walking out of the bedroom and seeing his face, however, I knew a marauding creepy crawlie wasn't the issue and left the hammer in its place, instead running forward to see what was wrong.

The right side of the boy's face was hugely swollen, to the point that I wondered if, if the swelling got any worse, a different kind of small explosion might occur. He looked half normal, and half like something a Costume and Makeup Expert might create for some sort of zombie move where the victims grow strange pulsing lumps all over their bodies that finally explode and leak out greenish oily pus, eight before they turn into zombies themselves. (Gross visual, huh? Thanks!)

No, no. The swelling on the boy's face wasn't pulsing. But at the time and owning a wild imagination, I wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if it started to.

We quickly ran through all the possibilities we could think of. Allergic reaction? No - he hadn't eaten anything new. Tooth troubles? Possibly, but he'd never had problems on that side, only the other. Bug bite? You'd think he'd have felt that, and seen it, especially on the face. Tonsil problems? Maybe. Lockjaw? Good god, but maybe. We were clueless, really.

The swelling got worse in the few minutes that we wondered what it could be, and the boy was scared. Hell, I was scared, imagination running rampant with all manner of believable and unbelievable possibilities. So, to the hopsital we went, the boy still hungry because he made my dinner first, then his, so I had already started eating and he'd had only a few bites before the swelling started.

After a too long but not nearly as long as it could have been (past experience speaking) wait, the boy was finally taken to a bed. After another long wait, a doctor came in, asked a few questions, felt around the boy's face and neck, shone a light into his ear and mouth, and pronounced that it appeared that the salvary gland on that side was blocked. She said this almost cheerily, then related (not quite as cheerily, but still with more smile than the situation warranted) the only way to fix it other than surgery: forcing profuse salivation, and alternating that with a heat pack. As she mentioned that the process would hurt, she kept that "oh, isn't the sun beautiful and the flowers gorgeous today?" attitude, and the boy merely groaned. I glared when she wasn't looking: Why are you so goddamned chipper about this, bitch? Can't you see that this pain you speak so lightly off has brought a six-foot-plus, used to hard labor and the bruises and cuts it entails, man to the emergency room, frightened?

I'm all for a friendly bedside-manner, but let's do please keep the smiles contained to smile-worthy news. Ok, I guess it's smile-worthy that his face wasn't going to explode or his head rot off, or that no surgery was required (yet) to fix the problem, but.

The prescription: the ingestion of "a bunch" of sour lemon candies. For a diabetic. Unfreakingbelievable.

So, duly released after this sunshiny examination, we headed home. I stopped at the gas station on the way and the boy bought Lemon Heads. Thirty seconds after popping a few in his mouth he almost yelled again and continued a loud chant all the way home; "Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. Owwwwwmygod." The swelling which had gone down considerably during the wait at the hopsital was back in all its angry force before we got home, which was less than five minutes from the gas station.

The boy spent the rest of the evening before bed sprawled on the couch with a heat pack and an angry look on his face, not speaking much and groaning occasionally. Later I (feeling horrible to have to cause him more pain) reminded him that the only way to get the stones to pass was by salivating. Giving a dirty look to existence in general, he sighed and grabbed the box of Lemon Heads.

Almost immediately the apartment was filled with the ride-home-"ohmygod"-chant. Feeling like a sadist, I quietly left him to his misery and went back to my school work. Eventually the chanting and then even the groaning died back down, but the generally murderous look etched on the boy's face whenever I tip-toed out to check on him told me that didn't mean the pain was gone. Bedtime saw not much of an improvement beyond a reduction in swelling.

This morning he looked almost normal again, but still hurt pretty badly. he sent me a text halfway through the day: "this is unbearable," and had to leave work an hour early because he was dizzy and so distracted from the pain that he was afraid he'd make a mistake and blow up someone's car (he's a lube tech at a local oil change and car wash shop). Right now he's busily shooting Hitler's paranormal hordes in the PS2 game Return to Castle Wolfenstien, which I think is helping to take his mind off the pain. The 800 mg Ibuprofen may have something to do with that, too, but he always seems to brighten up when he's killing things on the PlayStation. Sorta like me and demon-slaying in Sacred (did I mention I un-restricted myself and bought the expansion pack, Sacred Underworld? It rocks. And no I don't feel guilty, damnit. I'm still getting A's - all but one of them perfect scores on one class, even, so there.)

Sigh. The poor boy. If it's not one thing it's another. Less than a week ago he finally got over the nasty cold/cough bug that made its ugly way through every inch of town, and now this. Before that, it was his back. Before that, another cold. Before that, a strange heel thing (did you know that - also completely randomly - the bones that hold your feet together can separate, which causes all manner of pain, sudden loss of strength in that foot leading to falls, and permanent foot damage if not cared for properly and quickly?) Before that- I forget.

I almost hate to ask, "What's next?"

I think I'll go out and buy him a lucky rabbit foot. With a four-leaf-clover anklet on it. Chained to a horseshoe. With a tiny bottle of holy water attached to the clover-anklet (I don't know about lucky, but holy's gotta help, right?)

Thoughts

2007-10-30T09:43:00.000-07:00

Should I try to sell my art online? Finished pieces, color, black and white, quick(ish) sketches like this?

coughcoughhackwheezecoughsnort

2007-10-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

K. so I'm not that sick. I don't even think I'm contagious anymore, but damn if my throat won't clear up and stop making me sound like I've the proverbial frog in it, or that I'm actually 70-something and still clinging to a 50+ year habit of booze and cigars.

The sneezing, I think, is mainly allergies, but mixed with this cold/cough bug I've been fighting all week, the allergy medicine wasn't doing much to stop it. Thankfully my nose stopped rebelling yesterday, so I'm not walking around today with "Sneezy Pooofs" crammed up my nostrils.

And to be honest, I don't particularly feel very sick. A minor headache, an overall sort of yuck-ish feeling, and a throat that demands a constant supply of cough drops, but otherwise, I'm just dandy. I actually just wanted to post something - anything - and came across this picture of Ewegene that I drew for my previous co-worker, Sarah, when she was really sick once. It's cute. And no matter how mainly well I feel, I am sick, so it works.

So then, Ewegene's Advice for the Day: Take lots of vitamins and stock up on Airborne, and be sure to never mistake a sheep for a convenient Sneezy Pooof - it could get you brutally killed, with only a few scattered hoofprints in the snow and on your forehead to tell the tragic tale.

(What? You don't believe him? Look at those eyes. Just look at 'em. He's dangerous, I tell you.)