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 |  "Clean cup! Move down!" ~~the Mad Hatter, Alice in Wonderland, Walt Disney cartoon |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Sometimes in life, you have to pick up and move down the table. A regroup, a fresh start. A clean slate. |
| I've decided to go ahead and die before I have to pee again. I can't take the pain. It's like trying to give birth to a hedgehog. It's like peeing razor blades. I almost passed out last time. Ugly business passing out on the toilet. No dignity involved. |
| Nothing. But we've moved into the ready position. I feel like I'm giving birth to a boulder. In my life, I have had: a C-section, an abdominal hysterectomy, a broken elbow, two broken bones-one in either foot, my gallbladder removed, I've had endometriosis so bad I had to have pain shots directly into my stomach, I have chronic migraines. I consider myself something of a pain connoisseur. I am more than passing familiar with it in many of its myriad forms. I have decided that kidney stones are the most painful thing I've ever experienced. On a 1-10 scale, I rated my broken elbow a 7. My hysterectomy? That amped me up to about a 8.5, possibly a 9. I've decided to rate kidney stones at a solid 11, possibly a 12. This is while on oxy, by the way. It hits that painful WHILE. ON. OXY. In other news, I heard back from the GI specialist in Billings. They know what is wrong with me. I have something called "Fatty Liver Disease." It is a chronic condition with no cure or treatments, but it can be reversed and/or managed through diet and exercise. The main symptom (the one that sends people to the doctor)? Pain in the liver. Like I kept saying...all along. My liver hurts. And all the doctors kept saying....that's not a thing. And I insisted? Yeah. That's a thing. I hate doctors. |
| No stone yet. On other fronts...apparently I am taking too much oxy. Not all at once, but cumulatively, It is making me unsteady. I fell down our stairs today.  Not a little bit either. No dainty tumble. Not a tiny stumble. A full scale yard sale, arms flailing, Chevy Chase style free fall down the stairs. It hurt. Hurts. A lot. Injuries categorized: skinned knee, or should I say, rug burned knee; twisted neck, hip, shoulder and back; multiple bumps and bruises in unmentionable places; and a partridge in a pear tree.  Three days I've missed of work now. On a positive note, I'm watching tons of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. And playing World of Warcraft. And reading. And shopping on Amazon.  Last night we ordered dinner delivery from Johnny Carino's from Cafe Courier. I told Hubby I was tired of Spaghettios. He's been very good through all of this. I am dreading telling him about the stairs, though. UPS is here.......I wonder which of my purchases has arrived? |
| Fall has arrived in Montana. And like the rest of this year, the foliage is the last to know about the turning of the season. It's like the weather department and the plant and tree department of Nature aren't on speaking terms this year. As I sit in my living room typing this, it is 64 degrees. My hands are freezing. I have another kidney stone. They are hoping we can analyze this one so that we can know why I am developing them in the first place. In the meantime, it is a waiting game. Waiting and pain. And drugs. Yay oxy. I've had this open and writing at it for an hour now. I keep having to go back and fix typos. And try to round up my train of thought. I'm watching Deep Space 9 on Netflix. It keeps capturing my attention. Oxy is great for pain, crap for concentration. I keep going.........."Squirrel!" CJ and her husband visited week before last. It was a good visit. Son in law had never been to Montana. He was suitably impressed by it. They have decided they would like to move up here. He's a fireman, so we are pretty sure he can find a job easily. Fireman are always needed. We took them shooting. SIL had never really been out to a firing range to shoot a host of weapons. CJ kept getting tickled at him. Each time Hubby would hand him something different and explain how it worked and then step back and let him fire it, his grin got bigger and bigger. He just kept shooting and shooting the 12 gauge. We finally ran out of shells for it.  Holy cow. I'm super Squirrel. I've been at this two hours. We went Saturday to Billings (a two hour drive one way) for a 10 minute blood draw for my GI doctor. It was for a specialized blood test no one here in Bozeman does. It supposedly tests for liver scarring. I still haven't heard from the doctor. I may need to call them. There is one more test she ordered, but I don't think I will do it because my insurance won't pay for it. We'll see. |
| My diploma finally arrived. After much back and forth and where-the-hell-is-it?! from me to the Registrar's office. Turned out they had to reorder mine because they spelled my name wrong on it. So it didn't come til today. Several days after the fall semester of school started. Whatever. I hate MSU. I guess I thought I'd feel...different somehow. I thought...I don't know. I thought I'd feel some sense of accomplishment. Some sense of, "Alright! I did that! How awesome am I?!" Mostly? I feel exhausted and discouraged by the whole process. Sitting on my dining room table is a piece of paper that is the monetary equivalent of a new Porsche Cayenne. Without the resell value. Or the fun of driving it. I actually cried some. I may cry more later. I'm just so.........I don't know......relieved it's over. I feel like I'm mostly just glad it's finally finished. It should be different. Right? Maybe it's me. I just feel like the hassle and whatnot wrung any excitement I might have felt out of the whole process. Maybe I'll feel excited later. It's hard to feel excitement when FedLoan and NelNet are emailing me and calling me daily trying to dun me for student loan repayments. It's especially hard to watch all the presidential idiots drone on about reforming the student loan process and how wonderful it will be in the future. Ya. Great, grand, wonderful. What about those of us who are stuck with the broken system? What about those of us who mortgaged our futures hoping for something better only to find out later exactly how broken the system is? There aren't any jobs in my field. I have to do something else. Or move and work in the oil industry. |
| On the way home today I drove past a field full of big round green net wrapped hay bales. It's haying season. In the next field over, the wheat is heavy and ripe on the stalk. It's time for the late summer combining. On Wednesday I went to an early doctor's appointment and I heard honking and looked up to see a V of geese flying south overhead. August 1st I celebrated Lughnasahd. It is the first of the four harvest festivals I celebrate in a year. The late afternoon thunderstorm season is here, so much so that we are having grass and forest fires from lighting strikes. All the signs are pointing to fall. They say that because of El Nino we will have a long cold winter. I've heard mixed reviews on whether it will be wet and snowy or just cold and dry. All reports agree it will be long and cold. We will see. September and the start of PUMPKIN ALL THE THINGS!!!!!  is just around the corner. I look forward to the first pumpkin latte of the season. They are my favorite. August is my least favorite month of the year. I hump through the month of record heat each year praying for the return of cool nights and reasonable daily temps. Being a redhead is hard. Taking meds that affect your internal thermostat makes it that much harder.In my religion, the year is divided in half. The light half of the year and the dark half of the year. I follow a Reconstructionist Druidic path. Aine is the goddess of the sun that rules over the light half of the year from Beltane to Samhain. (May 1st to Halloween) Her sister Grainne the other goddess of the sun rules over the dark half of the year. The first two months after each sister takes over are wonderful each year. May, June, November, December. All nice months. I look forward to them. But the middle months. Ugh. January, February, July, August. Those are the yikes bad months. Then we are back to the tolerable months. March, April, September, October. When the sisters are at the height of their powers it's just....intolerable. ------ I went to see another specialist last week. A second opinion. She was....less than pleased with my first opinion. She has already run four new tests on me. She kept asking me, "What about your....X, Y, Z, did they test any of those?" I was like......"Nope. The last doctor was of the opinion I needed to get over it. Buck up, little camper." She was aghast that the other doctor basically wrote off the liver problems that were showing up. She also said that there is no medical reason for me to just live with pain. And that the notes she got from the first doctor didn't mention the pain I've been in for months AT ALL. Like no mention. She WAS PISSED. Totally worth driving two hours for the appointment. I felt so validated and so...heard. I said all along that the other doctor was blowing me off because I am a mental health patient. Hubby was furious after my new appointment. He said we are going to wait and see what the new tests turn up and if it turns out I have some totally treatable thing? We are suing the first doctor for malpractice. And we aren't suers. Like we are super against suing, but she can't be allowed to keep treating mental health patients like that. It isn't right. |
| I finished reading Casual Vacancy this past weekend. The book hangover from this book was so heavy, that even now a week later, I am still lying in bed at night or driving to work thinking about these characters. And not in a good way. This was such a traumatic, wonderfully awful book. It was a train wreck from the first chapter to the soul wrenching final chapter. This cast of characters were the most horrible, most normal, people I have ever experienced in print. They were so...terrible to one another, but at the same time, so relatable. With every one of them I kept thinking, "Oh, I've felt that. Oh, I know that person." The plot is there, but this is a completely character driven book. And JK Rowling keeps you reading because deep in your soul you want to believe that she will give you a happy ending or that it will all be okay in the end. And...it's not. At. All. It is all horribly awfully soul crushingly wrong in the end. I want to hate this book. It made me feel sad. So very sad. But I can't. Because JK Rowling is an incredible author. She puts you there. You are in the scene. You are with the characters living their lives. You believe. That is her magic. It was the magic of Harry Potter and it is the magic of this book. What an awful magic it is. I keep using that word, awful. I can't think of another word that describes what an emotional train wreck this book is. I love how masterfully, how skillfully, this book is written. I hate how it makes me feel. How a week later I continue to feel about these pretend people. How I will still feel about these people years from now. You wield an dangerous power, JK Rowling, use it wisely. |
| Today was my 19th wedding anniversary. Twenty years together. We married one year to the day from our first date. It was a lowkey celebration. One I think we are both now regretting. Ok, first the parts we aren't regretting: This weekend it was hella hot in Bozeman, so we made plans to hole up in the house and ignore the heat. I got us four movies and we watched two Saturday and two Sunday. Movie review: It was a Chris Hemsworth weekend (because I pick the movies-duh!). Blackhat, so-so. This movie could do with some serious editing. The plot drags at points and there are plot holes you could drive a Mack truck through. In the plus column, Chris Hemsworth shirtless. Yum! Rush. When this movie came out, all I could think about it was......meh. But, OMG.....it is excellent!!! We really, really enjoyed this one. I picked it on a whim, but of all the movies this weekend, this was our favorite. I have less than zero interest in Formula One racing, but, that didn't matter, this movie is so character driven it is fabulous. It is based on real events, real people and they do SUCH a wonderful job with it. Must see. Night at the Museum III. This one was bittersweet to watch. The first one was the best one of these and the other two have been pointless grinds, in my opinion. There are some genuinely funny bits, including a cameo of Hugh Jackman where he essentially pokes fun of himself. But, throughout the movie, I kept thinking.........why is Robin Williams playing a straight man? In his final (? I think there was one more movie...idk.) role this? this is what he played? It saddened me. Wild Card with Jason Statham was the last movie we watched. It is a remake of a Burt Reynolds film which was based on the book Heat by William Goldman. (Whom you may know from his book The Princess Bride.) Throughout the movie, you are asking yourself.......wtf am I watching? Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. But we gave it two thumbs up at the end. Excellent action, a wild ride from start to finish, you both know what is going to happen and simultaneously have no idea what the hell is going on. It is really good. So....movies! We do a lot of movies together because Hubby does movies the way I do books. And it is a sharable experience they way books aren't. It is difficult to simultaneously experience books. During the season, we watch our TV shows together, too. But in the off season, we choose shows to stream on Netflix and go through them while we eat or hang out. Right now we are watching our way through Star Trek: Enterprise. (We've been hung up on this one for a while because Hubby gets in grooves and binge watches other shows himself that I watch only sometimes: MASH, Quantum Leap....etc.) Today, I came home from work and Hubby had gotten me a really pretty bouquet of flowers and a nice card. When he got home he said, "We haven't eaten out in a while, you should order something, go pick it up and we can watch our show." Sure, sure. On to the regrets. I got us Olive Garden. We both love Olive Garden. Olive Garden doesn't love us so much. I'm mis.er.a.ble. My stomach is killing me. He isn't in such great shape either. The food was fine, he just is on such a strict regimen of no-fat food, exotic fatty foods mess him up now. Me.........well, we all know I shouldn't color outside the lines right now either. It was good while we were eating it, but now we both remember why we eat what we fix at home. Back on the band wagon tomorrow! |
| This week Dr. Seuss' widow and assistant released a "new" Dr. Seuss children's book. Which Pet Should I Get? A few weeks ago Harper Lee's publisher released Go Set a Watchman. Is this a new trend in publishing? If so, is it a good one? Is it one you would like to see continued? Here are my thoughts on the subject: I think neither book should have been released. I think both releases were money grabbing attempts by people other than the author and neither release resulted in quality product. Although a competency hearing was held for Harper Lee after allegations were made that she was not capable of consenting to the publishing of this book and even though she was found competent, various sources close to the situation have stated that she was in fact NOT competent and has not been since her stroke. Her sister who took care of Lee's affairs for years once stated that after the stroke Lee would sign anything that anyone she trusted put down in front of her. I find it interesting that this deal didn't happen until the sister had died and there was no one to watch out for Lee's interest. I have not read the book, but reports are that it is clearly an early draft of To Kill a Mockingbird that has been heavily edited, although in some places passages are similar to the point of being verbatim. The Seuss book, on the other hand, was in fact a "new" book. It was a book that was found by Audrey Geisel (Seuss' widow) when cleaning things out one day. I love a good Seuss book, I think the man was a genius. However, I also think there must be a reason this book wasn't published in his lifetime. He didn't die unexpectedly. He published books right up until his death in 1991, "finding" an original unpublished manuscript from the 50s or 60s means he never meant for it to be published. When Robert Jordan knew he would die before he could finish his Wheel of Time series, he made copious notes, diagrams and several rough outlines for how he had planned to wrap the series up. He then tasked his widow (and editor) Harriet with finding a suitable author to finalize the series. She interviewed people and found Brandon Sanderson for the job. The books show that they are authored by Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan. That is how you handle post-death publication. (Even though I know Harper Lee isn't dead, it is more or less the same thing. She didn't really write that final product.) Not the shambles of the other two books. At least that's my take on the deal. |
| Shooting, shooting, shooting. Our range had a shooting expo this weekend in conjunction with Murdoch's (a ranch supply franchise across the west). Range members got to go from 8 to ten and then the general public got to come in afterward. Various gun, ammo and accessory vendors set up at the range and you could buy ammo tickets and go shoot all the guns on display. Mossberg, Beretta, and Remington had shotguns you could try on the clays. I tried a Remington and Hubby shot a couple of Berettas, including a reeeaaaalllllyyy nice over and under. Mossberg had what they called a chainsaw shotgun. It's a riot gun with a pistol grip and then an overhand secondary grip. You shoot it from the hip instead of the shoulder. It was pretty cool. They had tons of handguns you could try: Sig Sauers, Kimber, Beretta, Smith and Wesson, Ruger, and more. Hubby shot some of them, but I'm so happy with my Walther, I didn't bother with the handguns. It took me a long time to find the PK380. I just love the grip of it. By trial and error, I have decided that although I CAN shoot a .38, a .357, a .40, even a .45, I prefer the .380. Hubby said he liked some of them, but he prefers his Glock. My favorite thing of the day was shooting the Remington ARs. I shot the AR-15 3 times. I'm in  . I told Hubby this needs to be my next gun. I had wanted a shotgun, but I think I really really want an AR-15 instead. With a good scope. I also want a nice Crimson Trace laser for my PK380. (They were there, too. ) We both got raises this past week, I told Hubby it was dangerous coming to the Expo because now I know what I want to spend the extra money on. |
| Shooting again tonight. I went with a college friend this time. We had a lot of fun. He and I meet up once a month or so for dinner or lunch, but since I've had my eating problems, we haven't been able to do meals together. I had the idea last week while I was shooting, I realized it was a great thing for us to do together instead. I like doing things with C because he and I can geek out over stuff in our field. He is working in the field doing GIS for a local company and he's really loving it. So he is a great way for me to keep up with things and have intelligent discussions in that arena. Hubby and one of the other trap shooters finally talked me into trying trap next week. Hubby is going to do some light loads so as to reduce the kick, hopefully to reduce the chance of me getting bruised. So...we will see if lighter loads and no pressure from the other shooters can help me. C said he was interested in trying trap as well. Maybe he can learn with me. Hubby just realized...........I'm a left eye dominant shooter and a right handed shooter. That's doable with handguns, but not so much with long guns.  Hunh. I need to go shop on Amazon for an eye shield now. I forgot that. I automatically compensate for it when I shoot handguns anymore because I've done it for so long. I have to adjust my aim just slightly or my shots drift. Dang. I hate wearing an eye shield when I shoot. I feel like a pirate. Ok...off to shop. |
| Today marks twenty years sober for me. That is all. |
| Saturdays are my errand days. I do the grocery and other shopping and also do any personal errands on Saturdays. When I don't feel well Hubby always says, "Make a list, I'll go." But unless I'm in bed sick, I always try to go myself. I like the routine of shopping. I'm not a "shopper," meaning someone who goes out each week to clothing stores or the mall or whatever, but I like my loose Saturday routine. Today I did go to the mall, though. Once a month or so, I go get my nails and toes done at the place in the mall. I usually try to round that out with a "spa day" and get my chin waxed and my bangs trimmed or my hair cut every couple of months. The place in the mall I go is nice. It is run and staffed by a group of chain migration folks from various parts of Southeast Asia. It has done so well, they opened a second branch across town. There are men and women techs and the owners are super nice. They have a good reputation as fair business owners, too, because people who come out of the local beauty school vie for spots working for them--males and females. The owner Lin does my nails and has for years but I get various folk who do my toes. Today I got a yellow french tip mani and yellow toes. Occasionally I do art on my toes. Last time I got rhinestones, this time I was thinking I'd get little flower petals, like sunflowers. Yellow, sunflowers....see? But I wasn't paying attention and after I said, "Flower petals," I thought that was all I needed to say. The girl who was doing my toes.........let's just say English and her aren't fast friends yet. I was reading and when I looked down she grinned at me and said, "Grr, tiger toes!" So now I have tiger striped toes, not flower petals. She did a great job on the rest, though, so tiger striped big toes are fine for a month. I like sitting in the chairs and getting a full body massage from the chair while I soak my feet and relaxing while they massage my instep and calf. I like how relaxing it is to have someone file my nails and sit with the little ultraviolet light over them as the shellac color goes on and hardens instantly like magic. Watching the timer count down the seconds on the light is kind of hypnotic. Hearing the wash of sound and smells and feelings from the salon around me. The soft buzz of voices. The louder hum of voices out in the mall through the open glass doors of the salon. The sharp chemical smells of the acrylic nails and the acetone. The buzz of the Dremel tools as the nails are shaped and filed. The bubble, suck and swirl of the pedicure tubs. The content vibe of men, women and even little girls being pampered and feeling beautiful. Afterward I went about my shopping and I kept that soft vague feeling of contentedness with me. I went to Walmart and Costco, both of which were swamped, but I didn't let if bother me. I just let myself center into my happy place of shopping. I was part of a larger machine. I flowed with the crowds, choosing foods and items I always choose. Week after week. I am but a cog in the wheel. I didn't buy that much; we don't eat that much. Hubby eats the same thing every day. Over and over. Scrambled eggs with spinach, diced green onions, feta cheese and Tabasco. With them he eats corn tortillas. I can only eat ice cream--strawberry and coffee-- and tuna salad. So the shopping is relatively easy. Milk, spinach, green onions, feta cheese, corn tortillas, tuna salad. I did buy some Ritz Crackers at Costco. I thought I'd see if I can eat my tuna salad with crackers this week. Squishy white bread goes stale too fast. I need to clean out my pantry. There are things he won't eat and things I can't eat that are probably going bad. I should give them away or something. While I was at the mall there were fifth wheels and travel trailers open to walk through. I have a dream of one day not living in this much too large for us giant house full of things we don't need. I dream of down sizing to a tiny house or a travel trailer for good. I explored them. I really, really think I could live in one. The only thing I would miss? The full sized kitchen. Some tiny houses come with full sized kitchens, though. I want a full sized kitchen with full sized appliances and a washer/dryer combo. I also don't want to have to climb a ladder and don't want a loft bedroom. I want a full size ceiling bedroom and a full sized closet. Some of those travel trailers have the most deplorable clothing storage you've ever seen. |
| I went shooting for the first time this year. Hubby shoots trap (clay targets with a shotgun) on Wednesday nights during the spring, summer and fall and I try to go out periodically and shoot, too. I don't shoot trap for various reasons. I don't like the kick of a shotgun. I possess the knowledge on how to shoot a shotgun, but shooting it over and over on the line bruises my shoulder. I also don't possess the visual acuity to accurately track the clays as they fly. I need stationary targets to shoot at. Or more forgiving, large targets. For those of you who don't know what the hell I'm talking about, trap shooting works like this: Between one and five people stand at fixed intervals in front of a clay thrower which is housed in the "trap house". The clays or "birds" are bright (usually neon orange) colored disks made of a pottery material that shatters into a billion pieces when you shoot it with a shot gun. The clay thrower is a fixed, usually automated, machine that a scorer with a trigger will set to throw a clay for the shooter when the shooter shouts, "Pull!" The shooters line up at the chosen points in front of the line and each goes down the row taking their turn shouting, "Pull!" and then attempting to shoot the clay as it is flung out high and away into the air--like a bird suddenly taking flight. Once you shoot five from your position, you all move down a step to the right with the person on the end shuffling back around to the beginning position. Sort of like musical chairs. And then everyone shoots five clays from the new position. At the end, each person has shot a box of shells--twenty five shots. Scoring is done by the puller/scorer. He pulls the clays each time (which are loaded into the machine in large quantities at the beginning of the night) and then scores a hit or miss accordingly. You are said to have "run the line" if you hit all twenty five. Hubby can do that usually. He belongs to the trap league and his team did well this past spring and I think they are doing well for the summer as well. While Hubby is doing all of this, I go off to one of the shooting bays (which aren't really "bays" they are bulldozed areas with high bermed sides) and shoot my pistol(s). I don't always shoot my .22 because it is really hard to find ammo for it right now. And when you do find it they limit how much you can buy. I have been really lucky on finding ammo for my .380, though so I mostly shoot it. Tonight I shot both of them just to shake the rust off. Yikes was I rusty. Although, I had to try to MacGuyver my target when I got there. I am super organized about my shooting paraphernalia. I have my shooting bag with my ear protection, my guns, my ammo, and all my gear in it. And I have a bag with targets, a cute little staple gun and a box of extra staples. I even have extra eye and ear protection in that bag in case we have guest shooters. And at some point over the winter, Hubby rifled through my target bag and swiped my cute little staple gun! I got to the range before him and was trying to find the damn thing and finally decided it had fallen out at home or something and was trying to pull old staples off the backdrop mats and hammer them in with rocks. It was a mess. I hammered a staple into my fingernail. (I have long, manicured nails.) Hubby pulled into the bay right as I was cussing and trying to tape it up using old tape I had scrounged off of one of the other mats and he was all, "What the hell are you doing?" I told him I'd lost the staple gun and he said, "Oh, I have that."  He gave me my staple gun and drove off laughing at me. I almost threw my rock hammer at him. Hey, I was making it work. I had a plan. And a hole in my fingernail. Good thing I go in Saturday for a new manicure, I hope she can file that part off or fill it with some acrylic or something. Once I got to the actual shooting, though, it was ok. I was rusty, but I was still hitting center mass. When I was done I went back up to the main club and was talking to Hubby between sets and one of the other trap shooters was razzing me about what I was wearing (what I wore to work-sandals, a sundress, all my jewelry). He asked me what I expected to hit wearing all that, I needed to get some sensible shoes and pants on. I laughed at him. I told him, "Jeff, I shoot to practice in case someone bad is going to get me. I won't have time to tell them, 'Hey, wait til I get my sensible shoes on, will ya?' I need to know I can shoot in cute little sandals and sundresses. Because if I'm firing my gun, I'm firing it to kill someone." Hubby just grinned at him. Hubby told him, "Ask her how far away she practices from." "How far?" Jeff asked me. "About 10 to 15 feet. I figure that's close enough that I know if they've got ill intent towards me." They all laughed at me. But nobody dissuaded me. |
I don't know if any of you know L.L. Zern  or not. She's hysterical. If you aren't regular readers of her blog, may I highly suggest it. Read back some of her old ones. I'm not kidding. She's a riot. She and her whole wild band down in Florida.Anyway, Linda sent me an ARC of her latest book Beyond the Strandline. It was excellent. Since we were kind of discussing dystopian teen novels just yesterday, I thought it was apropo to bring it up. It was so good I read it in one sitting yesterday. I just inhaled it. I had to know what happened next. She is an incredible storyteller. It hits Amazon on Aug 5th. I'll remind you again when it comes out. She has a couple of other books out, too. Her blogs are really funny and I (foolishly?) expected more comedy and hijinks in the book. No. It is adventure and kind of hardcore and just wonderful. I don't want to spoil if you are going to read it, but.....so so good. She has a facebook page "Author Linda L. Zern" that you can go check out to see more about the book, too. |
| I haven't read this book in years. Almost twenty years to be precise. It is one of CJ's favorite books. It is that book for her that she reads and rereads over and over again. She used to read my copy, because I have a hard copy, but it is getting old and rather worn, so I got an ecopy and she bought her own hard copy this past week because I told her I was reading it and she got excited and wanted to read it, too. As I was reading it, all I could do was think about all the things I love about it all over again. First, CS Lewis' writing. I love everything about this man's writing. EVERY. THING. Knowing that the book was written in the 1950s, you don't read the book and feel it is dated. It is like reading Tolkien. It is timeless. The words just flow in and the story unfolds. I struggle with other classics because the words, the prose, feels stilted and dated to me. Not this. I also love his exploration of the various types of love in this retelling. Yes, we get the twist on the classic tale, but while the gods' tale is covered there is so much more exploration into the human condition. Throughout, even when she is talking herself into believing that she is doing the right thing, Orual still questions every step, just like a real person in real life questions themselves. The revelations at the end in the dream that Cupid has cursed her to carry the burden of Psyche's journeys juxtaposed with her realizations of the realities of her own life as she looks back on it are especially jarring. Her true relationship with Bardia, her revelations about Fox, her revelations about herself, these are the rare insights we have into ourselves that are hard to look at, ugly in a way. Many people can't do it, look at themselves in a harsh light and then live with the realities of those truths. She is basically sitting in judgement on herself. When Fox tells her that the gods can't speak to us till we have faces, it is a look back at the fact that she has hidden her face in truth from the world with her veil, but also, hidden from herself. She has hidden so many of these things from herself. Until she can see her own face, her own true self, the gods can't judge her for her life. She first has to judge herself. I think that more than anything is my favorite take away from this book. Until we can see ourselves, even the ugly parts, then we are like Orual with her veil. Hiding. Masking for the world. Masking from ourselves. Masking from our gods. We must all unveil. |
| So I'm pretty deep into this bizarro new diet I've got going on. Dinner tonight? Tuna salad sandwich. On the squishy store brand white bread. And I'm not talking fancy ass tuna salad here either. I'm talking old school: tuna, mayo, a tiny squirt of mustard, some dill relish, some seasoned salt and some pepper. I inhaled this sucker while wandering around the kitchen making the second one for tomorrow's lunch. I had a handful of Snapea Crisps with it because I needed something salty and chippy and I am craving veggies bad bad bad. The Snapea Crisps are nice because they are sort of both. http://harvestsnaps.com/products/snapea-crisps-lightly-salted The rice part of them isn't so good for me, so I can only have a handful at a time or I think I would just sit down and inhale the bag. I'm washing all of this down with a doctored up International Delight Vanilla Iced Coffee. I buy the cartons of their Iced Coffee which they say you are supposed to drink straight, but they are too strong and too sugary for me. So, I dilute the hell out of them. I usually do about 1 part iced coffee to 4 or 5 parts milk. I know, I know. The Dinner of Champions. But, none of this stuff hurts my stomach OR my liver. I got up all congested in my head and throwing up this morning. I was like, Whaaa? Because I've been SUPER careful about what I've been eating. But, I think it is the weather. It's been doing the typical thing it does here in the West/ in the mountains during the summer months. Beautiful or even too hot during the day, then rain/Thunderstorms start around 3-6 pm. The barometric pressure is always up, down, up, down. My sinuses are all draining all over the place. I think I had drainage in my stomach from the night and upsidaisy this morning because that is primarily what it was.  Not to mention over half my diet is dairy right now and all that does is produce mucus.Gawd. I know y'all are so tired of hearing about me being sick. I think every other entry is about me throwing up. Yesterday was a really great day. It was cool most of the day so we just chilled out in the house with the windows open. Hubby went back to bed to nap once I got up, which was a lazy ass ten o'clock. He chillaxed upstairs watching random things on TV while I dinked around on the computer playing pointless Facebook games and listened to an audiobook. I read part of the day, too, and finished a new Laurell K. Hamilton. I had been rereading her Anita Blake series so that I could savor the new one. ~sigh~ I new books.I have been listening to Veronica Roth's Divergent Series. I really like it. Hubby and I watched Divergent a few weeks ago because he likes the Hunger Games movies although he sees Katniss as weak emotionally. He thinks she is too emotionally unstable to be the leader of the rebellion and that basically she is just a hot mess. He likes Tris better. He thinks she shows more backbone and that there is "less crying." I haven't told him he won't like the second movie if he is looking for Tris to be emotionally stable. If the movie follows the book, she turns into a hot mess. I am about to start the third book, where according to CJ, the hot mess continues. Hubby also just basically has a HUGE problem with the bow and arrow being used as a serious weapon in a world with guns. He thinks it is essentially pointless. So, the fact that Tris will shoot people with a gun ups her in his book.Hubby and I have our 19th wedding anniversary coming up and we have discussed we want to take a vacation, but what we really want is to just stay home and do what we do on lazy Sundays. Where we don't leave the house, we play video games if we feel like it, we each do our own thing if we feel like it, we each watch shows on Netflix if we feel like it. We don't call people, we barely talk to each other except to say, "Hey, come see/hear this cool thing!" It is sooooooo relaxing. His parents are pushing us to GO and DO and SEE, etc, for our anniversary and we are like, "Meh, no thanks." Leaving home is just hard for us with the pets and with me. We have to figure out, can the dog go? If not who can we get to come stay the night, every night we are away, with the dog? If so, who can we get to come feed the cat while we are gone? While we are gone if we take the dog it is a constant, ok, what do we do with the dog when we get out of the car to eat? Can we take her in here? If it is just me and him, it is the whole, we need to stop because I need to eat. I need to pee. I need to walk around. I can't walk that far/fast, etc. I can't eat this kind of food. Well, that was the only kind of food there was, so now I get to be in pain/be sick. It's just............hard to travel for us. We like staying home. |
| After reading y'all's comments from yesterday's post, I realized that I may have grown........I don't know......inured to the idea of death and major injury in my industry. I am worried now about y'all's opinion of me and how I put it in a list like that. CJ and I have actually talked about the fact that being bipolar means I'm kind of sociopathic. She and Hubby sometimes half joke that I'm super egocentric. What they mean is that if shit happens outside my monkeysphere, I often can't be bothered to give a shit. I mean, sometimes I fake acceptable societal responses in given situations because I know that are called for. I'm intelligent enough to get WHY people are bothered by things and I am emotionally in touch enough to have those responses myself if something affects me personally, but if it doesn't, I am not bothered. Take for instance the death that J- witnessed. I took the phone call when it happened. I knew he was messed up and I was able to talk him down, but the whole time I was talking to him, even though intellectually I got why he was messed up by the situation, all I could think was, "Shit, we just lost an operator for the day, how does this affect the big picture?" When I was able to put him on hold and then explain the situation to my two office mates they both started crying. I was like...........ok? How is that fucking helpful? Shit. Should I have cried? Is that the proper response? Fuck. Too late. Move on. Work the problem. Jenn  , you sometimes worry about this in your blog, but I don't. Because I don't really worry about it. I have accepted this about myself. That's why I don't think you are. Because if you were, it wouldn't worry you. It only worries me when I can't conceal it. You have like...social anxiety not sociopathy. When stuff like school shootings or earthquakes other large national or international news happens sometimes, I'm fascinated by the newsiness of it...the story...but I'm not emotionally invested in it. I don't have a personal connection with the players. I don't care about them. I get that they are people and that I SHOULD care about them and I guess I do in an abstract, it sucks to be them kind of way, but I don't get all teary eyed and up in arms and send them money and supplies and etc. It doesn't affect me. And when people stand around doing watercooler talk about it, I struggle to emote properly. "Oh, yes. Very sad. So tragic." I think this is why I'm a good safety coordinator for my company. As a bipolar, another trait I have is that I'm a huge ass stickler for the rules. I like everyone to follow the damn rules. To. The. Letter. I can get caught up in and excited about all the fucking rules in my industry because, let me just assure you there are TONS of rules for my industry, and while I can't get all emotional about people dying, I can get super uptight if those asshole die or get injured because they weren't following the rules. It makes it look like I give a shit about my coworkers. When what I really give a shit about is if they are good little rule followers. Would I feel bad if one of my coworkers died or got bad hurt? Yeah. They are in my monkeysphere. I know them, I joke with them. I like most of them. Some of them a lot. In fact, I'm the only person in the office who can accurately put name and face with every worker we have. (Except our new CO and ID guys.......no one has met them in person yet.) The rest I see monthly for my safety meetings. I know them all by name and I know them all because Hubby is their ultimate boss. Sometimes they come to me and use me as a............I don't know......bridge? to Hubby. Some of them are scared shitless of Hubby. To me Hubby is a teddy bear. To them, sometimes Hubby is a grizzly bear. They see me as a lesser evil. Although a couple of them saw behind my public mask once. One day a handful of them saw me lose my shit in a bipolar fashion. One of them later told me, "You know, I always wondered how you two worked as a couple. You are so sweet and nice and [Hubby] is kind of a scary dude, but I'm thinking of the two of you, you are the scarier." Heh. Yeah. Good call, J. So......yeah. I promised to share more. So I'm just going to leave this here. |
| This week was a total shit show at work. And while I'm a big believer in what you focus on, you manifest in your life, so I honestly try really hard to focus on the positive not the negative. But holy Christmas, this week was a mess. This week we had: one of our operators call in upset because someone had been killed on his jobsite, right in front of him....squished  (we sent him home for the day); two different pumps break down a day apart on the same damn jobsite, both of them right in the middle of HUGE pours, and this job is in Helena, which is 2 hours away from our shop; and 50 other piddly little nitpicky things that wouldn't normally matter, but all together just......gah!July has just been a trying month so far at work. August isn't even here and it is shaping up the same. We are going to have four people gone on vacation the first two weeks. Even though company rules clearly state no vacations during the summer. Period. Sadly, it's hard to enforce when one of the people going on vacation is the owner. ----------- We have a new (ish) Firehouse Subs here in Bozeman. One of our Friday night date night things to do is get Firehouse subs and watch a movie at home. Lately, I haven't been able to eat what I usually get there (steak and cheese) so I've tried to get a couple of different chicken things with no luck, everything hurt me or made me sick. Tonight I tried the tuna sandwich, though. Yay!!! Super good, super tasty, not at all upsetting to my tummy!! And...and and and.....Now I have a new something to try at different places and to make at home. Tuna sandwiches. |
Another meal, another strawberry shake. At this rate, before we can sort this digestion thing out, I'm going to be the size of a house!  Right now I am having frozen vanilla lattes for breakfast, small chicken whatever doesn't hurt for lunch chased with a strawberry shake, and small chicken or plain noodle whatever for dinner chased with a strawberry shake. For variety, I've decided tomorrow I'm having coffee or vanilla shakes. The shakes/frozen coffees seem to be the key to painfree dining. I think the cold milk smooths things through my tummy or something. I'm feeling okay with very little pain as long as I follow this crazy new diet I've worked out. Now I wait til the 20th to see the GI Doc again. The mean one. I think I'll try to get in to see the good Doc about my lump in the mean time. |
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