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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 have always been the weird parent. Hubby has always shouldered the burden of being the normal parent. When our daughter (who I have always referred to in this blog as Monilad, but since she is now an adult she has given me permission to use her real name), CJ, was little I homeschooled her for a year and a half. One of the things we did while I homeschooled her was look at a large calendar I had and "celebrate" the random holidays. As she got older, we continued this tradition. Our favorite "holidays" were the truly random. The less they had to do with us as a family, the more she and I celebrated them. Chinese New Year's? Yes, please. Yom Kippur? We were on it. International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Yaar! Ramadan? Let the fasting begin! Scottish Bank Holiday? Where's our kilts? The Queen's Birthday? That calls for High Tea. But, by and away, our very favorite holiday has always, always been New Zealand's Waitangi Day. This morning I woke up and called her at work. (She and I almost never call each other, we text or IM each other. We only call if it is an emergency or if she wants me to sing to her.) When she answered she said, "I can't talk, I'm at work." I told her, "I know, but it's important," in funereal tones. She got really quiet. "Is everything ok?" "Yes. I just....I just needed....I needed to...wish you a....HAPPY WAITANGI DAY!" She laughed and said, "Your the best The Momma. I almost texted you earlier to wish you Happy Waitangi Day." Even though CJ doesn't live at home, she and I carry on our silly traditions together. Hubby just laughs and rolls his eyes at us. When I feed him Chinese food for Chinese New Year or Indian foods for Diwali, he shrugs and eats. Sometimes he asks, "what's the occasion?" Or, "is today a special day?" But for the most part, he simply doesn't care. Hubby is a simple man. He likes simple things. He likes his life to go a certain way. Sadly, he chose me and CJ to share his life with. She and I aren't simple people. We are the epitome of silly. We are overly dramatic. We like to dress up and have High Tea for the Queen's birthday. (High Tea consisting of tea in my good tea set, with PB & J sandwiches with the crusts cut off cut into fancy little triangles.  ) I like to tell him it is good for him. When he gets home today, I'll wish him a Happy Waitangi Day and he'll say, "Thanks. Which one is that again?"  } And then he can have a cupcake I made for the occasion. He likes that part of it.  |
| it is cold at my house. Like super cold. Like minus temps cold. The kind of cold those of you on the east coast have been on about this winter. Here in Montana we just call it February.  I had a paper and a project due this week. One for each class. The paper I just spewed out. The prof wanted pictures to go with it. Pictures. Of relevant local examples of good or bad city planning. I took the pictures. I should mention at this point that it has been snowing off and on for two weeks. There is snow piled up in giant drifts on curbs and sidewalks. Currently fields and greenways are buried under inches and inches of white.  My paper was on the pedestrian areas and greenbelts surrounding a particular throughway. The pictures showed snowdrifts and slumbering trees. I gave it up as a lost cause and just went on Google Maps satellite views and printed a shot of an overhead map of the area illustrating what I wanted.I am so proud of myself. As I get each section of my house clean I am adding it to my "dailies" section of HabitRPG as "Maintain X." As in "Maintain Kitchen." This means I bring it back to center each day. I still have a couple of places in the kitchen that aren't completely up to code, but every day, I bring it back up to at least as good as I had it the day before. On the weekend, I do "Deep Clean X" for each room. So far I am keeping up with it. Since I started doing this, I have also made some improvements in the "flow" of maintenance in my house. I had several places where I would put trash on end tables or what not because I didn't have a trash can in that room. I went a couple of weeks ago and found cheap (under $3) small trash cans at Lowe's and now, I have tiny trash cans in all the problem areas. I have to empty them every other day or so, but that is fine, because I'm doing maintenance on the room anyway. I feel like a rock star. I have done a couple of fine-tune tweeks like this in several rooms. Tiny changes that add up big. It is true, you know. Small sustainable changes really do matter. |
| So.....last night I was sick. Like, bad sick. Unexpectedly, out of nowhere sick. I got up a little achy yesterday and then my day when downhill. I went to make us dinner and when I stood up and went into the kitchen, I had to sit down in the middle of my kitchen floor because I was afraid I was going to pass out. By the time I went to bed I was just....sick. I laid down and then about twenty minutes later I was in the bathroom wanting to throw up. Now, I should stop here and say exactly how much I HATE throwing up. Hate it. Words can't describe how much I hate vomiting. Like acid in my eyes, I hate vomiting. It makes me cry and shake and my nose runs and it's just ugly. I hate it. I always have. So....there I was in the bathroom. Retching and dry heaving and basically sounding like a sick moose. Hubby, who is beyond good to me, is worse than I am about vomiting. But he is one of those people who when you vomit around him, it sets him off. He can't stand it. When our daughter was little, it was always my job to deal with her being sick because he couldn't. He also doesn't do other bodily fluids or functions. They freak him out. But...he tries. He always tries. He stood outside the bathroom door and shouted in, "You ok in there?" and other encouraging things. This happened four or five more times. With me growing more and more miserable. Up until two am. (We went to bed at 10.) At two I finally got out of bed and said, "I can't lay down, I'm too miserable." So he said, "What do you need, we need to get you settled so we can both get some sleep." Then he got me settled in my recliner in the living room with Sofie, my blankie and my phone in case I needed him. Just before he left he gave me a trash can. Just in time. Up it all came.  Finally. Finally. Finally. As much as I hate throwing up, I had been praying to just get it out of me. I was at the point that I knew if I could, I would feel better if I could just get through the actual act. Poor Hubby left the room really quick and called encouragement. "You need anything? I'll bring you a washcloth when you are done!" And he did. And I handed the poor man a trash can full of vomit. He just looked at me, green to the gills, and set it down. I told him, "No. You have to take it away or the animals will get into it. Do something with it." Keep in mind it is two thirty in the morning now. His solution? He set it out into the garage for me to deal with this morning when I finally crawled out of bed. So, I woke up this morning feeling much better only to have to get up and deal with a trash can full of cold vomit. I know you all love to idolize my husband for how nifty he is, and don't get me wrong, he is nifty. But he does have limits. Vomit is his kryptonite. He just can't deal. Dog diarrhea is another. For a man with an iron stomach, he gets really Nervous Nelly when it comes to stuff like that. I worry when we have grandkids, I have a feeling I'll be changing all the shitty diapers. To my knowledge, the man has never changed a diaper in his life. (Our daughter was 2 1/2 and long potty trained when he and I met for those of you who are about to go on the warpath.)But, I guess when you are as nifty as he is, you are allowed to have some glaring deficiencies. |
| When people I know meet my husband for the first time they often struggle to figure out what he and I are doing together. I think it is the same when people he knows meet me for the first time. We are total opposites. But we have some great points of commonality. Things we only get about one another, things no one in our lives have ever gotten about either of us before. We help each other be more. And it is nice. If you were to meet my husband he would be very quiet around you until he got to know you. And then, if he decided he liked you, he would one day in the far future (like two or three years after he met you) talk to you one on one and joke around with you. If he decided he didn't like you, it would just be dark shutters from him. No chit chat, blank face. The ladies in the office where he and I work never really understood him at all until I started working there. They pretty much thought he was just a big quiet guy. Two of the women thought he was kind of a jerk because he would never talk. Another had seen glimpses of his extremely dry sense of humor and really liked him, but barely knew him even though she has worked with him for almost TEN years. Then I started working there and I would tell little stories about him. And they realized my husband is a fucking riot. Both of the women who didn't like him before think he's all that and a bag of chips. When we met, my husband didn't have a very big outlet for his sense of humor. No one he knew really "got" him. When I was a kid my dad used to make up silly songs and sing to us. Even though I can't carry a tune in a bucket, I carried that tradition on. My husband on the other hand has the voice of an angel. But he won't sing for anyone, unless it is a silly song that he can sing to cheer me or our daughter up, or to sing silly lyrics at the animals. Our doxy, Sofie, hasn't been feeling well the last couple of days. We think she hurt her back jumping off of the furniture. She is eight and shouldn't be jumping down anymore. Today she was laying in the dining room soaking in the sun that streams in there. Hubby asked me where she was and when I told him he went in to check on her and started singing to her, "We have joy, we have fun, we have wieners in the sun!" Families are funny and develop inside jokes and shorthand ways of speaking to one another over the years. We sometimes have whole conversations using movie quotes. Today I told him I was going to lay down because I had a headache. He came and checked on me an hour or so later. When he saw I was awake he asked me in a low voice, "Sanka, mon, you dead yet?" in his best Jamaican accent. I, of course, answered back, "Ya, mon" in mine. Y'all know I've been looking for a job. Last week, Hubby's boss, G, asked Hubby if I was still looking for work. Up until last September I worked at the same place as Hubby. G owns two companies, a ready mix plant and a concrete pumping company. Hubby runs the ready mix division for G and I worked for the concrete pumping division. I left because I was doing a full time semester at school and couldn't juggle the daytime business hours. But when I left I gave a month's notice and took two weeks to train my replacement. I also gave G a little thank you card and told him if I could ever do anything for him to let me know. Forward to today. The lady who replaced me was a flake and left with no notice. I only ever worked part time. For two years, I was part time. G called me up, though and wants to create/expand a position so that I can work full time for him. He wants to take advantage of my education and prior knowledge of his companies workings. The cool thing? I will sit at a desk right across from my husband. Hubby's response? Cool! He's actually excited I will work with him. How many husbands would have that response? Happy birthday to my incredible husband.  |
| So I'm struggling to get back to work on my novel. I stopped working on it after Christmas, using each day's writing time to blog or work on other things and now I just haven't picked it back up. I don't regret blogging, though. I was talking to both my therapist and my psychiatrist and doing "group" blogging like when we do "Still Following the Leader" is really helpful for me. It is like doing months of intensive group therapy. My therapist has been encouraging me to join some sort of group so I can do group therapy, but this last week she was all, "Nevermind." I'm making excellent progress with you guys apparently. So, thanks guys!But, my problem remains, I'm stalled out on my novel. I've been doing research and some world and character building, but I'm hung up on the narrative. I like...need a push past where I am. I need......conflict. The problem is that it is at the point in the story for there to be a conflict so that we can get everyone's reaction and then move into the squishy middle of the book and then the second conflict and on towards the resolution and denouement. I know what each of these points look like in outline form. But actually writing the conflict scene is not working for me. I am not sure why. I have considered that I'm about to plunge my heroine's life into total chaos and I've become super attached to her. I mean, I've already got people shooting at her, so her life is in danger. But I'm about to upset her emotional applecart. Like six ways to Sunday. I've tried pushing past the scene and moving on to what is next, but I NEED this scene to provide the emotional drive and impetus that will provide what I need in the way of momentum for the rest of the book. In a way, I need the emotional upset of the betrayal to get me writing the next bits. It will keep the writing from being stale or trite. I guess I'm just a softie. I hate when people are physically hurt, but I was always the sort of mother who was all, "Rub some dirt on it, you'll be fine." Or, "It's too far from your heart to kill you, walk it off." But if you emotionally hurt the people around me? I am a freaking Momma Grizzly who will just fuck your shit right the hell up. And that is the way I feel about my heroine. But I need to not tip my hand about who the antagonist is this early in the book. It is a mystery who is trying to kill her. It is part of the story line that you don't know. And it is the people who love her who have betrayed her. Maybe that is why I'm having trouble writing it. I chose a story line too close to home. Color me shocked. Therapy in book form, now. I've stepped up my game. Well, too bad, buttercup! You can do this. Tomorrow that will be on your daily list on Habit RPG. One hour writing for your book. And not character development or world building writing. And not research. Or any of that nonsense. Butt in chair, hands on keys, word on word, sentence on sentence, chapter building, writing. There. Sorted that shit out. Sometimes all it takes is a good written therapy session and a pep talk. |
| So, I've mentioned like a billion trillion times in here that I'm in therapy. Sometimes I feel like I've been in therapy half my life. And in some ways I have. I've been in therapy off and on since 1992. That's longer than some of you have been alive. The therapist I have now is excellent. I love her. One of the things we work on is my toolbox. My emotional toolbox. My life toolbox. See, as a child, you are supposed to learn certain things. Certain life skills and behaviors about how to be a functioning adult. You learn them different places and in different ways. Each skill is a tool that you put into your toolbox that you can pull out later in life and use like functioning adults do. But I, like tons of other kids and people with PTSD, got shortchanged along the way. Instead of a fully stocked toolbox as I headed into adulthood, all I had was like some duct tape and an old high heel I was using as a hammer. Shit that was sorta doing the job, but wasn't real tools. So, I am having to go back and learn acceptable adult behaviors and coping mechanisms. Like real people. Lots of people walk around with missing tools and they are leading great, successful lives. You don't have to have a fully stocked tool box in order to do your thing. But.....it helps. It helps a lot. I know that I have talked about HabitRPG and Unfuck Your Habitat. Those are tools I use to keep me on track like other people can do with no problems. Lots of people can clean their house and keep it clean without external aids. I am not one of those people. So, I added helpful tools to my toolbox. I need external aids and cues to help with that. That doesn't make me childish or any of the other names I've been called when I told people about them. It makes me smart because I got help when I needed it; how I needed it. I watch TED videos sometimes and I watched a TEDx video today about a woman who did a similar site to HabitRPG except she did it for health. It is a wonderful video and I would TOTALLY link it here, but I can't find it. I watched it on Netflix. I will give you the website, though. SuperBetter  I'm not sure yet if it will be a great site for me or not. I'm not sure if it will be a tool I can use and put in my tool box. But just in case any of you can use it in your tool box.....good luck. I posted it on my Facebook for my cousin who battles a host of physical ailments.In the meantime, I will continue to learn new ways to do things. Ways that work for me. Ways that help me be a better wife, friend, mother and person. And I will keep sharing my tools as I find them and I would appreciate if you guys would share your tools with me, because I believe we can all use ways to be better from time to time. |
| Yesterday I went to school early and met with a classmate at the library. I told her I would buy her a coffee if she would meet up with me and let me look through her physical textbook for the class so I could compare it to the syllabus and determine which page numbers correspond to which chapters. (My ebook version page numbers don't correspond to the tree book page numbers.) I ordered a Decaf Vanilla Latte. Easy right? I got it and it was super hot, so I waited to drink it. I finished my project and went to drink my latte and discovered that there was no vanilla in it. So there I was drinking hot bitter milk. Ew. What kind of world do we live in where people actually drink hot bitter milk on purpose? It was uck. I'm not one to complain or return foods, but life is too short to drink hot bitter milk. So, I nutted up and went back to the barista and asked for the shots of vanilla I paid for. I was proud of myself. And I didn't have to throw away a whole coffee. Or choke it down. --- Can I just say how freaking in love with HabitRPG I am? I've been combining it with UnfuckYourHabitat.com and I am REALLY making some strides in my house. I think the main stride I'm making is in the way of maintenance. In the past, I have cleaned in spurts and then left things to rot. Clean, dirty. Clean, dirty. Clean, dirty. It's no way to operate. Doing it this way, instead of not cleaning something because I can't face cleaning the whole room, I can clean it in little batches. Sectioning off the room into areas and tackling it in manageable bites. Anyone can eat an elephant. You just have to do it one bite at a time. And you don't have to start with the asshole. In the past I always started with the asshole and tried to swallow the whole elephant in one sitting. Now, I clean one section of a room at a time and then each day I just reset that room to zero--meaning keep that room back to the state I got it up to. Then I chip at another section. Rinse and repeat. And I feel like I am slaying dragons while I'm doing it. --- I'm writing using 750words.com every day. It is really helping to motivate me and keep me writing. It costs me $5 each month. I have the option to pay $5 for HabitRPG, too. (Although you can play it for free.) But 750words costs $5. (It's free the first 30 days.) I like it, though. It is an excellent place to just spew things down and have to be accountable for daily writing. I know that I already pay for here, yada yada etc., but with 750words, there is no one to see. I don't have to set it to private. I don't have to click anything, I can copy paste it if I want, there is an automatic word count, there is a word cloud and some other metrics. It is weird. But, I just.....I like it. --- I've been going through Netflix while I'm not working and during my down times during the day, I watch movies and TV shows. Today I watched "Brokeback Mountain." I'd never seen it before, although it was one of those I've always meant to watch. It was good. It made me sad, but it was good. I really loved the acting in it. I thought that Heath Ledger should have gotten an Oscar for that. I really liked Jake Gyllenhall's performance, but Ledger's was really good. *Spoilers* The scenes where he cries because he misses Jack Twist or is afraid he is leaving him are so moving. He wants to be with Jack just as much as Jack wants to be with him, but he knows it isn't possible. He loves him so much. Jack is just in so much pain and wants to almost spread the pain around. Ennis just holds it all in hurting for the both of them. Jack just wants someone to love him. Ennis wants Jack to love him. And only Jack. Such love. But not enough to kill them both.  So sad. |
| Response to Bonus #2: You are Spock and you have beamed down onto an alien planet. Describe what you see and remember you must remain logical and detached with no emotion. Spock's Log: As I look around the planet, it is definitely M class. This area of the planet is extremely Earth-like in appearance, with high mesas such as can be found in what was the former American Southwest. The indigenous people here are primarily tribe based. The tribe we encountered upon beaming down call themselves the Oo'naut. And while they appear to lead very basic and primitive hunter gatherer lifestyles, they are also in possession of extremely advanced technology. I have been unable to ascertain its origin. It was this technology that led us to believe that the planet was prepared for contact from the Federation. We are not sure at this juncture if we are in error yet or not. The Oo'naut are not frightened by us and are very congenial hosts. When we arrived they greeted us in a pleasant manner and began making plans for a welcome feast. The Captain informed me that unless we found any signs to the contrary, we would stay for this feast and see what other information we could find about these people. The village is ingeniously arranged. The central portion of the village is laid out with the communal buildings clustered within a moderately sized blind canyon. On a cleared park area, there are devices that to the eye look like clusters of prisms. A broad rainbow beams out from each cluster and shoots up in relays to the tops of the surrounding mesas which are otherwise unaccessible. This is where all of the dwellings for the village lie. Safely out of range. One somehow travels on these rainbow beams. It is technology I have never encountered. The Oo'naut are unwilling to discuss the technology with any of the crew and the beams are heavily guarded by some sort of warrior class. When asked about the beams, the Oo'naut become close mouthed or simply say, "It was a gift from the gods." We are unsure as to what that statement means. Perhaps there are other, more advanced peoples on this planet, although our scans indicate that this is the most advanced technology to be found. Mr. Scott asked one of the Oo'naut about warp capabilities and was informed that they have never traveled "in the sky." He was further told, "that is where the gods live." Most perplexing. The warriors carry small weighted throwing sticks with razor sharp tips. We have not seen them used, but have been promised a demonstration during the feast. |
| Response: "Invalid Entry" When I was in junior high and elementary, I read everything I could get my hands on. I was like a flower in the desert. If I could get water, I sucked it up. My small home town had summer reading programs when I was a kid and after the first year, I wasn't allowed to participate any more with the other kids because I blew them out of the water. I would read more than the rest of the kids all combined. We lived out of town and only "came to town" once every three or four weeks. It was always an event because we would get to go to the library. My mom cut a deal with the librarian and instead of the rule about checking out three books every three weeks or whatever the limit was, we would bring a cardboard banker's box and I was allowed to fill it each time. Then I would read my books. I once checked out the entire Hardy Boy's series and read it in three weeks. There were over fifty some odd books that my little library had. It took me two goes to read the Nancy Drew series. (They had more of them.)That summer I also read all the Cherry Ames, Three Investigator's and any other cheesy kid detective book the library had. I think that summer I read four hundred some odd books. The next kid down read twenty. I think that was the summer between third and fourth grade. The next summer I was allowed to start reading the higher level books because I'd read all the books in my reading level and the middle school level in the public library that I was interested in. I was allowed to read high school books. ~gasp~ It was so exciting. When my daughter was little and sucking up books at roughly the same rate I did, I turned her on to the Nancy Drew's, the Three Investigator's and the Hardy Boys' books I loved when I was little. I tried to read some of them again to get that same feeling I got when I read them long ago. Oh. My. Gawd. Have y'all read them? The writing is wretched. The plots are soooo freaking transparent. You want to grit your teeth at how obtuse the heroes/heroines are. But, like me, my daughter LOVED them. Couldn't get enough of the dang things. I guess you can't go home. Some children's books stand the test of time, The Wind in the Willows, the Harry Potter series, Alice in Wonderland. Some, though, were written for a simpler time and you can't go back to them, you can just look at them in the rear view mirror of you mind and remember how they made you feel when you read them the first time. I think that is the true test of a book. Can you read it twice? Can it stand up to a second reading? Or is it flash and wonder the first time through but the second time, all you see is the man behind the curtain pulling the levers and the mystery and excitement all drain out. And reading the book again becomes a chore. I know people who won't re-read books. Sometimes I think that this is the reason why. They don't want to ruin the glory of the first read. Not understanding that for really good books, there is the depth and surety of meeting an old friend on a second or third or forty third read. And if it turns out the magic isn't there? Then it never was. |
| ATTENTION WdC friends and family: I am working on a project for a geography Tourism Planning class. I need people who are willing to complete a questionnaire for me and return it by this Sunday. In order to do this, you will need access to a computer with Word and the willingness to give me honest answers to twenty short answer questions about tourism and recreation--it will take about 15-20 minutes to do the questionnaire and about 5 minutes to do the emailing it back and forth. If you are both willing and able to do this, please give me your preferred email address and I will send you the questionnaire. Nothing needs to be printed. It can all be done on your computer and then sent back via email. You do not need to know anything about either subject and you do NOT need to be a traveler to participate. We need a variety of subjects for the project. Thanks for your help and support! PS--I need people who reside in the US only. It is fine if you travel internationally, but not if you are a citizen of another country. (That is a different group from me!) |
| Response: "What if virtue is mainly biological?" Nature or Nurture. The classic question for humanity. My personal philosophy? "There's no judgement here." I tell that to people all the time. Sometimes jokingly. Sometimes dead seriously. Always truthfully. My husband and I say another thing. "You do you." Meaning a handful of things: Own your shit; your shit is none of my business; and I have my own stuff going on, I don't have time much less an inclination to be in charge of you. As long as you are willing to extend these same courtesies to me and mine, I don't have a problem with you and yours. You do you. You own your shit. You be in charge of whatever your brand of morality is, I'll be in charge of my brand of morality. As long as those things don't seriously intersect, then you and I don't have problems. I am too stressed, depressed and distressed being in charge of myself to try and get wadded panties about things like who you are marrying, who you are sleeping with, and what you get up to behind closed doors. Morality is a weird concept to me. I guess I don't understand getting all bent up about other people's private or even public business. Do I care about Miley Cyrus twerking or swinging around naked on wrecking balls? No. I like some of her music. And even if some of her life choices can best be described as....well, questionable, they are her life choices, not mine. I have more of a problem with that jackass Robin Thicke and his rape promoting song "Blurred Lines." That is the kind of shit I have a problem with. There is some definite judgement on my part there. But, on the flip side, our constitution protects rape promoting dickheads like him. Just like it protects my ability to rip on him. That is the beauty of being an American. And the horror of being an American. We live in a country where it is not only acceptable to write a best selling song about rape, people give you awards for it. So is that nurture? I guess it is. But we as a nation nurture good behavior, too, so there is some balance. I suppose that when people talk about the downfall of society, we mean when the bad outweighs the good, but who is measuring the good and who is measuring the bad? What is our yardstick? What are our criteria? Are they Christian morals? Are they Victorian? Are they Puritan? Prevailing societal accepted norms? How can we tell until we are so far down the slippery slope we can't climb back up? Will we know? I don't know. Until then; you do you, there is no judgement here. |
| When I saw the title for this lead and then read the first paragraph, I thought it was going to be about all the new social changes in the state of Colorado. As I read the leads, I pay attention to them, but one part of my mind is also formulating how I will write my response. I was thinking I would talk about how I am faring in Montana. But then I read deeper and I realized what the lead was really about, Erika's state of mind since she moved to Colorado. Hmmm. That opens up a whole different can of worms. I could write encyclopedic volumes about psychiatric meds and how they have helped me. And I have. I have so many times I feel like y'all get tired of hearing about me and my journey through the valley of the shadow of crazy. So I let this entry percolate. Last night Hubby and I were talking. Have you seen ads for the new movie with Joaquin Phoenix called "Her"? With the computer? He has a mustache and a different look than he has ever had in a movie before. I laughed and told Hubby that I didn't recognize Phoenix. I thought it was Kevin Kline in the movie. Hubby just stared at me. He was stumped at the fact that when people change their appearance in fundamental ways: beards, mustaches, hair color changes, wigs, etc; I struggle to recognize them. I have seen Lady Gaga in a thousand pictures, videos and on television a number of times, yet every time she is in a new getup, I don't recognize her. He and I discussed why it is that I have that trouble. I am a social chameleon. I can fit into nearly any social setting or situation with almost any set of people. I call them my masks. But what that means is that I can't recognize when other people change their masks. It baffles me. Hubby on the other hand is one of those rare people. A completely honest man. He does what he says, he says only what he truly thinks, and if you ask him what he wants or feels he will tell you the unvarnished truth. Sometimes it is painful, but you never have to wonder if he is lying or prevaricating. He will sometimes say, "I don't think you want to hear that," if he thinks it will hurt your feelings, but he won't pull the punches. He doesn't have masks. He has modes. Blinds up when he is with me and blinds down stealth mode when he is somewhere he doesn't want to show his feelings. That's it. On mode and off mode. I think that is one of the reasons I was attracted to him so much. I don't have to try to figure him out. He isn't a puzzle to me. He doesn't confuse me. I don't have to adapt to him. I don't need my camouflage. With him, I am truly myself. I had a strange childhood. I always had to use my adaptive camouflage and be who my family wanted me to be. I was never allowed to be who I am. Until I met Hubby, I was never allowed to be who I am. Now he is my rock. He is my anchor. I am a kite sailing off in high winds and when I go too far, he reels me in and reminds me, "No. Come back. That is just a part you are playing. Come be who you really are." Is it any wonder I love this man? So that is my current state. After eighteen years of marriage and nineteen years together, I am still discovering how much I love my husband and why. |
| Response: "The Line" Drawing lines has been a theme for me this past year, too. Over the years, I've drawn a lot of lines. I've crossed a lot of them, as well. But this past year I really have had to drawn some serious lines. Some Picard sized, "The line stops here, no farther!" Some have had to be lines Hubby and I drew together. Some I've had to learn to draw on my own. I said in an earlier entry that I have gone back into therapy. One of the things I'm learning is how to stand up for myself and draw those lines. Last year I had a friend, some one who I thought was my best friend. I gave her chance after chance. I wanted to believe that she was my friend. And she abused our friendship, and lied to me on several occasions. So I had to draw that line and say, no more. It isn't ok to hurt me. It isn't ok to act like my friend to my face just so you can take from me. But I grew from it. I grew as a person and I am learning how to be a little choosier with my friend picking. I'm also learning to put up better boundaries so that it isn't as easy for people to cross lines with me. I am learning to be open without letting my heart fall out. Together Hubby and I are learning to draw new boundaries and open up our horizons. We are learning to be open to new experiences and doing new things. We are loving new road trips and hanging out together. It is our way of working out being empty nesters and on our own. |
| Response: "poo poo pi dou" I like the random list of things to write about. It provides flexibility. Work: Still none. I am applying for a Admin Assistant job in the City Planning Department, though. I am kind of excited about it because it entails using both my degree AND my work experience. Plus it is a foot in the door to City/County jobs for Planning (which is what I kind of want to do with my degree). I will keep you updated. Food: The vintage recipes that Cappucine  listed were hideous. Note all the tuna ones. It is funny how dietary tastes change over the years. I got up this morning and felt "chef-ish" so I cooked my Irish oats. I cook Irish steel cut oatmeal in milk and then add handfuls of various dried fruits (cranberries, cherries, blueberries) and chopped apple for sweetness. Then right before I eat them, I add a little table cream and butter. Mmm, butter. Sometimes, I take the apples and core them then hollow them out, using the chopped out bits in the porridge. Then I fill the hollowed apples with the cooked fruit and oats mixture and bake them for 20ish minutes at 350 degrees. Mmmm. Baked apple oatmeal. I also stuck a pork tenderloin in the crockpot. I was feeling inspired so I did a sort of Asian-Caribbean fusion rub on it. It has brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, pepper, paprika, anzo chile powder, fresh garlic, Siracha, rice vinegar, and sesame oil in it. Then I cut up an onion and spread around the tenderloin to really kick it up a notch. A little water....tonight when I get home, I'll take and just sort of....shred it with forks and let it simmer another 30 minutes or so in the onion and rub juices. Mmmmmm. Yummy! I think we can have it over rice or rice noodles or something. Or maybe I'll make like a flat bread to eat it with, like Indian food. Hmmm, I'll have to think it over.Weather: About two years ago, in the spring, there was a horrible storm in Bozeman. It was THAT storm. People still talk about it. Almost everyone in the valley had to have their house re-roofed due to wind and hail damage. Including us. About six months after we had it roofed, we noticed bubbling in the paint in the foyer ceiling.  No bueno. So we called and the company who did the roof came right out and fixed it. It was a problem with the flashing, yada yada, no problem, problem fixed. About six months ago we noticed that the siding on our front porch was having a problem like water was getting behind it right underneath a gutter. ~sigh~ Again, the call to the roofer, WTF, dude? He FINALLY comes and looks, it's a gutter problem, they'll take care of it. Meantime, Hubby tries and tries to seal it because our siding is obsolete, can't be patched, whole house would have to be re-sided. Today, the gutter guys FINALLY come and look at it. No, it's a ROOFING problem. So, sorry. Can't help us. WTF?! They'll call the roofing guy. I'm just about over the whole thing at this point. I'm letting Hubby deal with it because he is nicer than me. I'm ready to start calling people's parentage into question.  Reading: I've been reading Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson books again because I finally got the latest one and any time I read a new book in a series, I always re-read the entire series and THEN read the new book. I have a friend who thinks that is crazy, but for me it's not a big deal because I read so fast. The other day I took one of those online tests to test your reading speed and I read and retain at a rate of somewhere over 1250 words per minute. I have had people call me a liar when I tell them that when I'm in a groove I can read as many as twenty to thirty books a week. (And not just YA books either, I'm an eclectic reader.) I was thinking just yesterday that of all the horrible injuries that I could sustain, I think going blind would be the worst one because I'd have to rely on someone else to read to me. ~shudder~ Anything else would be manageable because I would have books. My husband knows exactly where my nook is and that in the event of an accident, getting it to me is a priority. Time: Ok, must go for now. Speaking of reading, I need to read a chapter on Tourism Planning. Woo, woo. I know y'all are jealous! Those are my classes this semester. A class on Tourism Planning and a class on Urban Planning. (Yes, like zoning and infrastructure and where do we put the new sewer treatment plant....city planning.) |
| Response: "Invalid Entry" . I have so many -obias and "personality quirks" that I've almost stopped keeping track. Here's one: I must brush my teeth with a green toothbrush. We have discovered in a dire pinch, I can do it with a blue one. But that's it. I'll let them rot and fall out of my head before I use a different color. And I prefer cinnamon toothpaste. I'd rather just rinse with plain water if I have to use mint toothpaste. It's gucky. Mint toothpaste on a red toothbrush? What is this madness you are peddling? I'd share a toothbrush with a homeless person before I'd do that.One of the most awful movies I have ever watched in my life is A Beautiful Mind. It makes me cry so hard. I cry throughout the movie. And I cry because I identify so much with him. I get that you are supposed to be horrified and shocked by the realization that the people he was seeing weren't real, they only existed in his mind. But, I had to watch it three times to really understand that. The first time, I just couldn't get it. I struggle to understand movies like that (and Inception) because my world is a world of colliding realities. It isn't a question of accepting one and rejecting the other. To me ALL OF IT is real. I cry because it could be me. It could be me getting shock treatments and having people treat me like that. I struggle with agoraphobia and I struggle with schizophrenic tendencies. I once spent several months only leaving our house once a week to go shop for groceries and only doing that if my husband or my daughter would go with me. The rest of the time I spent at home talking to a four foot teal colored dragon named Henry who lived in our basement. My amazing husband did not have me committed. He just kept loving me and supporting me emotionally, mentally and physically. And our daughter grew up in a world where periodically Mom took a break from reality to live in an alternate one. But there was always love. There is always love in our family. Last night, Hubby and I were talking and I asked him, "What made you go out with me? Not just once, but twice? Why do you stay?" And he said, "You needed me. You needed someone so badly. But I want to help you get to a place where you don't need me, you just want me, and that's the reason you stay." He's a beautiful man.I don't know if I will ever not need him. I always want him. He has such a generous soul. Even though I am broken, he keeps handing me the glue so I can repair myself and he holds me together while it sets. A little at a time, I am slowly becoming a whole person. The person I was meant to be before life fractured me. I hope he is still with me to see the final product. I think I will be beautiful, too. Like a stained glass window. |
| Having a migraine sucks. But it is the post migraine that sucks almost worse than the migraine. You have what I call "migraine hangover." Your body is trying to recover from the fact that your brain was trying to kill you. The meds make you dehydrated. And then they make you pee every 30 minutes because they are sooooo hard on your kidneys. You want to do nothing but sleep because you feel like death warmed over because you got NO sleep while you had the migraine. But, you can't because then your sleep schedule is all skibosh and having a crazy sleep schedule is sometimes enough to trigger what is called a "rebound" migraine. Yes. That is a real thing. So you wander through the day like some sort of zombie, accomplishing nothing. Just wanting to sleep so fucking badly. Peeing. Knowing you need to eat. But the thought of food leaves you kind of...meh. Because earlier when you were in the deep throes of the migraine, even the smell of the hand sanitizer at the Urgent Care was enough to set you off vomiting, much less food. But if you don't eat......."rebound" migraine. ~sigh~ But fixing food is so..........beyond any coordinative abilities you might possess at this point. So you rummage around in the fridge and wind up choking down some questionable left over spaghetti from a week ago because it was the least labor intensive and provided the most protein. And bonus! You got that out of the fridge! I found a thing on the interwebs. HabitRPG It is part daily checklist, part role-playing game, part quit a bad habit, part start good habits. It is kind of cool as hell. It is for those of us who are addicted to the quest-type RPG's. Basically it helps you turn your life into one. You get health points, gold and experience for completing tasks. And you are the one who designates the tasks. "Blog daily" You check that shit off daily, you get prizes. You miss a day, you lose health points. Completely addictive. You can also set up prizes and rewards that you must earn. Like for me? I have "Coffee out" as a prize. It costs me 25 gold to get coffee out in the world. I have to EARN a latte!! I know, right? You set what the prize costs; you set what the tasks earn you. Need to write more? Track it and earn gold while you do it. Want something like a new video game? Work towards it and feel like you earned it! Jenn  , not gonna lie, as much as you guys game, this site made me immediately think of you. |
| Bonus--Turn yourself into a god or goddess. What are you the god of? Do you care if people believe in you? What happens if they don't believe in you? Etc. Describe it all, of course. The Momma is a goddess. She is the Goddess of me, Sofie the dachshund. The Momma is my magical, wonderful, life giving, All-Encompassing Goddess. She feeds me, morning and night. In the morning, when the Goddess awakes, She comes down the stairs and goes through the magical portal into the secret food storage area where the special food box is held. I am not allowed through the magical portal of food storage places, but sometimes I stand in the doorway and watch the proceedings. In the evening, when the Xena song plays on The Momma's magic box, The Momma feeds me once again. This time She feeds me wet food and a special treat that I eat out on the patio. When I need to go potty, I alert the Goddess of Backdoor Openings and She lets me out. Every time, all day long. She even gets up in the middle of the night if I get out of bed and have to go potty. I worship The Momma. I follow Her and love Her and stay by Her side at all times, as close as The Momma will allow me. When The Momma sits in Her throne, She lets me sit next to her as long as I don't stretch out my legs and hog the whole chair. And as long as the special sheet is in place. When we sit in the chair, The Momma has a blanket that she covers me up with. She tells The Daddy, "I think Sofie is part parakeet," because every time The Momma covers me up, I go right to sleep. Sometimes, The Momma calls me a "stinky little beast" and She puts me in the rain place. And She sings the "Washa Washa Washa Little Dog" song while She shampoos me all over. I like it when She does it. When I am super stinky, She sings the "Scrubba Scrubba Scrubba Little Dog" song and really scrubs me. After we washa washa, she sings the "Rinsa Rinsa Rinsa Little Dog" song and makes it rain on me more. Then She sings the "Time to Dry Off Little Dog" song and rubs me with a towel. That is my favorite. I wag my tail and dance all over the bathroom while She does it. I think it is funny to make the Goddess chase me. I love bedtime. Every night The Momma says, "Bedtime, Little Dog." And that means it is time for me to dash upstairs and run up my special steps onto the bed. I burrow under my personal covers and The Momma says my favorite phrase of the day, "Tuck, tuck, Little Dog." And then She tucks the covers around me for the night. And then She kisses me on the head. And I lick Her air because She doesn't like when I kiss her back, 'cause I eat cat poop sometimes. |
| My entry for "Invalid Item" . The most difficult part about rowing ducks is the size of the oars. *ba dum ching* I've been sorting myself out over the holiday break. Not everyone gets a holiday break, but for me there is a rhythm and pace to the year. Post Halloween, there is a slowing down to the year. Here in Montana, the seasons really show themselves. Fall slides slowly into winter. The aspen leaves collect in the gutters and ditches. The garden dies off with the corn stalks as the last sentinels in the snowy winter landscape. Thanksgiving comes and goes. Fall family visits slide one into the other. For me, the school year wrapped up. I was left at the beginning of December with no job and the reality that I had to attend school. One. More. Semester. Because instead of graduating this past fall, I had a minor mental breakdown and barely escaped with the two classes I was able to finish. I'm back in therapy. I'm doing the work. I hate that I have spent the last eighteen years of my life working through the bullshit issues and problems from the first twenty five years of my life. How fucked up is that? How utterly fucked up is that? Anyway......where was I? The pace of my year. Right. I worked for some friends at a couple of part time jobs at the mall. It was good and the money was ok. It got me out of the house, but wasn't super conducive to a long term job search. So, now I'm doing the job search thing full time. And now that my resume is correct, I'm hoping that will go better. ~throat clearing~ Enough said on that topic. The harvest time of the year slid easily into the switch of the year from "getting darker" to "getting lighter." I love the solstice. I love that day on which I know from that point forward, night will no longer be growing. Night will no longer be creeping toward the afternoon and lingering longer in the mornings. Instead it will reverse that course and the sun will win the battle each day and the night and the cold and the dark will be slowly vanquished. Until the summer. Until the summer when the days are so long that I am begging to sleep, but the sun simply won't go down and the days are so bright and hot. Then the solstice happens and I know that the night has won and soon the heat will be less and the nights will grow and the fall will come and the snows will fall. And then I welcome it. And the year turns. Christmas was good for us. We didn't really do a lot gift wise, but we had fun together. We found the perfect tree. Which I undecorated yesterday and goes out tomorrow. We ate what we wanted and did what we wanted and loved each other and supported each other. There was love. There is love. And the year slid over to a new one for us. Hubby and I don't really do New Year's celebrations. We are boring. We are both recovering alcoholics and homebodies. So we like to sit at home and watch movies and TV shows. We play video games together. We chat with people online. We call family. We don't do resolutions, but this year, we decided to start some new traditions. We started a Blessing Jar. I dug around and pulled out a nice large Mason jar with a lid and we are filling it with our Blessings and good things from 2014. Then next New Year's Eve, we are going to open our jar and count our blessings. That will be good. We usually get to the end of the year and struggle to recount the good things. We just remember the bad things. They are easier to remember for some reason. It is a human failing, that propensity to remember only the bad. Probably why I'm still in therapy. I started school yesterday. Again. For the last time, hopefully. And if it isn't, that's ok, too. If I need to regroup again and row my ducks again? I'll hang onto my oars. They are a bitch to find in that size anyway.  |
| Response: "because they said so." I have one daughter. One child. I didn't plan for her. She happened. I couldn't have an abortion because I was too far along before I realized I was pregnant. I was still having a light period my first two months of my pregnancy. I was on the pill that whole time. I was on the pill when she was conceived. With a man who was a total train wreck. An abusive horrible train wreck of a man. I didn't want to have children with him. So I left him to go have her on my own. My whole family railed against me having her. I wasn't responsible. I wasn't married. I wasn't in a committed relationship. And then when I was. When I was, they hated him and wanted me back with her abusive father because that was the Christian thing, the Godly thing to do. And then the man who I thought was my Knight in Shining Armor who was going to save me turned out to be a jerk in tinfoil and I wanted out. I wanted out so fucking badly. And they said that was wrong. It wasn't the Christian, the Godly thing to do. Sometimes men are difficult. Sometimes marriage is hard. Even though we were only common law married because the day we were supposed to get really married he was so high and so drunk that he couldn't function, so we couldn't get married. Which was fine, because when he was that high and couldn't function, he couldn't beat me. So I left him, too. And they said I was bad and they said I was wrong and they said it wasn't the Christian thing, the Godly thing to do. And I met a man. And he was so good to me. And he was so good to my daughter. And he was and is so loving. And he adopted our daughter and he raised her and he provided for her. And when I couldn't have his child and had to have a hysterectomy, he held me while I wept. He held me and told me he loved me and he told me it didn't matter. He told me he had a daughter. Our daughter. And he always refers to her as his daughter. And he has always loved her as his daughter. He says DNA doesn't make a father, love does. And he is right. And I know now that that is the Christian thing, the Godly thing to do. And that they were wrong all along. And that if I have ever seen the face of God it is because I have looked at my husband's face when he laughs with our daughter. |
| Response: "Invalid Entry" Sometimes, people get strange head canons going on. A canon, for any who might be wondering, is basically accepted back story. And a head canon is a sort of "the author didn't tell me this, but this is the way I imagined it in my head, so this is the ONE TRUE WAY." The current hegemonic viewpoint is in the process of being rewritten in so far as women and minorities are concerned. That sounds like a funny thing to say when you consider that it has been going on since the Emancipation Proclamation and suffragettes first marched, but when you stop and look at time on a large scale, then 50, 70, 100 years isn't very long. So, the hegemonic viewpoint is under construction concerning women and minorities. And when I say the hegemonic viewpoint, I mean, the global Eurocentric model that has held sway on the Earth since the Dark Ages. That's what I mean. So, yes. I mentioned yesterday that I have been called a "feminazi" for my part in the ongoing update. Because, contrary to what many people think, it isn't a war. It isn't a battle or what have you. It is a system reboot. It is a rewriting of the head canons of millions of people. Men and women. They are figuring out that what they believed isn't the ONE TRUE WAY. And that is startling. Some people can adapt to that and some can't. So in true Darwinistic fashion, we are going to have to wait and see who passes which traits on. Which traits survive to the next generation. For the update to be properly installed, those who can't adapt will need to die out and take their old head canon with them. While those who have adapted, who have moved past the old hegemonic model thrive. But, it can't happen overnight. And it can't happen completely in one generation. I know that we are in the age of instant gratification and that many people suffer under the current viewpoint. I personally have suffered horribly under it. But I believe. I believe enough that I taught my daughter a better way. And I hope that she has the courage to live a better way even in the face of being downtrodden under a patriarchal society. And I hope that she can teach her children an even better way than I taught her. Because that. That is the way forward. To change everyone's head canon. One update. One person at a time. |
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