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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. |
| So, I'm super sucky and I disappear for long periods. Accept this. I feel bad I didn't finish the FtL contest, though. I really enjoy that. But RL interfered. The in-laws came to visit for two weeks and Hubby got the new Call of Duty for Christmas. Why you ask does that affect me blogging? I'm glad you asked. We live in the hinterlands. The hinterlands get craptastic interwebs connections. We are a step up from stringing cans together and yelling this out to you guys individually.  OK, it's a little better than that. But not much better. The point is, you can't play CoD and have anyone else on the internet or it's all laggy and you die a lot. Hubby would switch off with me if I asked, but it's one of his only hobbies. I did get some awesome schwag for the holidays, though. So that was great. Back in November, my nook 1.0 took a crap so Hubby got me a new nook HD. Woot! Love it, love it, love it.  While my in laws were here my MIL and I shopped quite a bit and she bought me some cool new sweaters and a new jacket. And I took some of the money they gave me and got myself a set of snowshoes. Yay! I took up snowshoeing! It's lots of fun. My girlfriend and I have been going. I'm not fast and I can't go far, yet, but we are getting some excellent powder to play in today. AND I don't get heat stroke when I do it. Finally a sport I can do!She and I also started having Yoga Wednesday's. There is a little private studio that this cute little older woman runs out of her home that is so fantastic. When I have more time I'll have to tell you guys about her home, it's amazing. School started yesterday and I'm liking my new classes so far. I'll tell more about them later. But for now, I need to post this so I can get to my 3 pm Geographical Thought class. It's the capstone class for the geography program. I LOVE the professor teaching it. I'm actually involved with a research project for him this semester. Really excited for the experience. Tell you more later. Got to run! |
Response to "sex, religion, politics"  .I'm gonna slap a big yellow caution sticker on this entry right now. This is going to be gritty, deeply personal and probably way more than you want to know about me. But I think Shannon feels like she is flapping in the breeze out on that limb all by herself and I'm not leaving her hanging out there alone...I'm climbing out on that branch with her. This is your only warning. When I was nineteen and having a really rough time with Monilad's biological father (it was a five year on again, off again, who the hell knows, rocky relationship) I got pregnant. I was on the pill at the time and was super-uber-faithful about taking them. I was taking them when I got pregnant with Monilad two years later, too. I guess I was just meant to have a kid, you know? Anyhoo, I wasn't ready for a child and he was only seventeen and it was a whole deal. Like a big damn deal. We were in an off again phase of the relationship and I was shit out of options, had no car and no way to get anywhere to get any options. Keep in mind this was twenty two years ago. Times were different back in 1990. People were still bombing abortion clinics and killing the doctors who performed them. I lived in the south. In the Bible belt. I went to my oldest brother and asked for his help/opinion/anything. His wife, C, in one of the only times in our almost 30 year association with one another, was really nice to me. She was eight months pregnant with my nephew and she drove me to Dallas (the nearest clinic) and was very nice and understanding and calm and just everything I could want through the whole thing. We had to walk through protesters with signs who shouted horrible things at my eight month pregnant sister in law just because she thought I was making a good decision and it was my right to make the decision. Because of the bipolar, I have funny memory problems, but I remember everything about that day. It was in February and it was cold, but very sunny. C held my hand and asked me if I was ok and if it was what I wanted to do. She told me she supported my decision and it was my right to choose and when I told her I was sure she patted my back and told me she was sure it was the right thing, too. She sat in the waiting room and endured awful, awful stares and whispering while I was called back in the room and they essentially roofied me. Then they came and did a D&C. I was about six or seven weeks along. It hurt. I've had five abdominal surgeries, two of which were basically gutting me like a deer, and a broken elbow, but this was the most painful thing I've ever felt. It hurt so fucking bad. The doctor who did it had the bedside manner of a sea slug. I'm not sure he even talked to me except to ascertain I wanted to go through with it. I remember at one point wanting to tattoo, "Yes, I'm sure, just fucking do it already!!!" on my forehead because they asked me like 600 times. Then they gave me pain pills and sent me out to the waiting room to C and gave her my discharge orders. Then we had a two hour drive home that I barely remember. I do remember that the only condition of my brother helping me was that he made me tell my parents because someone had to stay with me for 48 hours after the surgery so I had to go stay with them. No one told my little sister, who was in high school, why she had to give up her bed to me for the weekend, so she was a bitch to me. When I made the decision, I called Jackass and told him what was going on. I kind of presented it to him as a fait accompli and let him know how much it cost and when it was happening. (I think it was $500 or something like that.) He was a big kid. Big and strong. He showed up that morning clutching a handful of money and shuffling his feet like a jackass. I asked him later where he got it. He had gone to a local loan shark and hired himself out as an enforcer. He went around and broke kneecaps and cut off fingers for the money. That is where part of the money for my abortion came from. Amputated fingers and broken kneecaps. You can see why it wasn't a hard decision to not want a child with this man. This was his first idea for where to go for cash. (His family was dirt poor.) When I got pregnant the second time (with Monilad), I found out too late. I was already past the cutoff for the abortion. When I told him, he told me that was fine if I was keeping the baby, but he wasn't going to be part of her life. I was on my own. I told him, no problem. So, I cut him completely out and raised her with zero input, financial or otherwise, from him or his family. She didn't even know about them until she was sixteen. She always thought my loser ex-husband was her biological father. In fact, there is only one piece of paper that acknowledges Jackass as her father. The one I coerced him into signing that relinquishes paternal rights so that Hubby could adopt her. Legally Hubby is her father. We had the birth certificate changed and everything. (Jackass wasn't on that either.) So, you see. People make decisions like this for different reasons and it's ok. It sucks. But then they go on to have ok lives and more kids and it's ok. Life turns out just fine. For me it wasn't even a turning point, it was a marker, perhaps that I needed to change some things in my life, but not because I was a bad person or I was doing bad things. I was on birth control. I was trying to be responsible. Shit just happens sometimes. That doesn't make me or anyone else who has or needs to make this decision a bad person, it just makes us people with hard choices. |
| Response to "Invalid Entry" . Once upon a time, when I was younger and dumber, I told my therapist and my psychiatrist about my muses and how I talked to them. Turns out when you are already a card-carrying nutso (for those of you who aren't regular blog readers, I'm bipolar), they don't like you talking to "imaginary friends."  They upped my meds to unwieldy levels until I was zoned out of my skull all of the time. Hubby made them lower them again so I could function in the real world. After that I knew to keep my damn mouth shut about the voices in my head I have conversations with. "No, I don't talk to anyone in my head. I'm fine.  " In the psychiatric world, voices in your head=schizophrenia. That's bad. Like, super bad. Like, they lock your ass up for that shit bad. So normally I don't go around copping to hearing voices, but that being said.......I have muses. I have inspirations. I have little planning sessions and board meetings where we discuss the best way to approach a story. Sometimes we sit down in my mind over milk and cookies and have full fledged story time where I don't lift a finger and they tell me the story the way THEY want it told. Sometimes I have to work for it. Sometimes when I drive around, I turn up the radio like I'm singing along, but I'm really talking to my muses and trying to work through a difficult part in my novel. If you bob your head in time, people in other cars just think you are singing to yourself and smile. Smiling is always preferable to staring. Staring is Not Good. When you are nutso, you learn to avoid the behaviors that cause the Not Good staring. See the first paragraph for the dangers of that shit. Sometimes I talk directly to my characters. If I'm lucky they talk back. They tell me their stories. They are their own muse. They come, they go. They drift in and out of my mind as their story waxes and wanes. Some come and tell me other stories. Stories not their own. They are the permanent muses. I like both kinds. They both have their merits. When someone is their own muse, and they are willing to work with you, you can get to the heart of an action, a reaction, a motivation. You have to be careful with them, though...sometimes they will lie to you about why they did things and it isn't until later in the story you realize they set you up. They took you for a ride. And you have to call them out. Sometimes they do it to make their story better, sometimes they do it because they suffer from the same self delusion we all suffer from. Figuring them out and staying sane? That's the real challenge. |
| I live in Bozeman, Montana. It falls roughly on the 45th parallel. What that means is that from December until about February, we enter what I call the Dark Time of the year. The sun doesn’t rise until almost 8:00 in the morning and it sets just before 5:00 in the afternoon. For my husband that means going to work in the dark and coming home in the dark. I don’t really start getting cabin fever-y about it until around mid-January. Then I usually go hit a tanning salon. Not to tan. I’m a redhead—I don’t tan. But to just sit in the room with the bed open so that I can get some UV radiation. It’s kind of nice. Makes me feel less Winter Blues. These first two weeks of December are always crazy for me. It’s all about the lists. I have lists of my lists. I feel like Santa, checking them twice. Next week is finals week. This week is supposed to be Dead Week, but it is actually Finalize All Your Projects Week and Do Your Semester End Presentations Week. I am also utilizing it to do all of my studying. I have met with several groups in order to study for two of my finals so that I don’t have to worry about it next week. That’s the sort of thing you like to beat the rush on.Since all of my family lives far away, I’m also trying to finalize my Christmas shopping for them so I can get everything in the mail. I think Hubby’s family will be joining us this year, so I don’t have to arrange that, but everything else—including all of Monilad’s gifts need to get in the mail. I tried to do as many gift cards as possible to save on postage, but….you know, sometimes you find that perfect something. ~sigh~ I have such good intentions. This time of year, before the New Year is also when I sort of reflect back on the previous year and contemplate some of the choices made and areas where I could do with some improvement. Not regrets, though. I make it a point to never regret things. Just, opportunities for trying new approaches. I also don’t make New Year’s Resolutions about “I won’t do this, I won’t do that.” That seems defeatist to me. Now is the time of year, instead to decide maybe some areas instead where I can find some positives to try in my life. Here are some things I’ve learned over the last year and some things I’d like to try new for next year: ~~If something isn’t working in life—a relationship, a situation, anything—don’t be afraid to change it. It is ok to walk away from things that don’t work. It just means that you are ok enough with yourself to make that call. ~~What I’m doing with my health and my weight isn’t working. I need to figure something else out. Soon. I think it will be contacting a fitness trainer or something like that. ~~Telling stories and writing makes me happy. I need to get more happy in the new year. |
| Response to "Global Humanist Manifesto" The Commonsense Commonwealth. We the party of the Commonsense Commonwealth would hereby like to institute the following mandates immediately: 1.) No one person is more special or more worthy in this country. Everyone must pay their own way. In furtherance of this, there will now be a flat 10% income tax charged to every household in America. No more 5% of the people paying 50% of the taxes or whatever ridiculous way it currently breaks down. Throw out the thousands and thousands of pages of tax codes that no one understands in the first place, which will cut tens of thousands of pork-y middle management, upper management jobs with the IRS. Lean it down to a more efficient part of the government. 2.) If you can’t afford to pay your 10% because you have too many children, your children will be taken from you because obviously you can’t afford to care for them. They will go into the homes of people who can’t conceive children of their own. If you continue to conceive children you cannot support, you will be sterilized—males and females alike—and you will be charged for the procedure. You will NOT be given handout after handout from off the government teet because you think going on welfare is a career move. 3.) Which brings us to point three. No more adopting children outside the country because the rules in this country makes it too hard and too expensive to adopt children who need homes. There are plenty of children in this country who need homes and plenty of prospective parents who would like children. It’s not hard math, people, let’s figure out some basic rules and background checks and cut out a lot of the middle management government pork that prevents the two from hooking up. 4.) If you want to spend your money on alcohol, legal gambling, tobacco, fast food or any other thing under the sun. Go for it. It’s your hard earned money. There is plenty of documentation about the bad effects of all of all of these things. If you can’t figure them out, the government is not your parent. But, conversely, don’t expect the government to bail you out when you become an alcoholic, get cancer, get fat or go broke. You got yourself into the mess, get your damn self out. Join AA, I hear they are free. 5.) Health care is broken in this country. Broken like a vase smashed on the floor. What we don’t need is some Frankenstein-ed vase pieced together from the shards off the floor. Instead what we need is to flush the whole damn system and start over. Start over privately. Health care is NOT a right. Health care is a privilege. I don’t want some bureaucrat making decisions about my healthcare anymore than I want an insurance executive or a drug company making those decisions. I want a DOCTOR I choose and MYSELF making decisions. I damn sure don’t want politicians making decisions about my health care. If that means I pay for it, then fine. It goes back to rule number one….everyone pays their own way. 6.) Prisoners in this country are a problem. To reduce crowding in prisons, long drawn out lengthy multiple appeals will be eliminated. Each prisoner gets one appeal and then all prisoners with life sentences or the equivalent will be executed immediately. There is no point in paying for food, housing and medical care for these prisoners. They are a waste of space and rehabilitating them is pointless. If they are spending life in prison, why bother? Just execute them immediately and be done with it. And by immediately, I mean within one week of sentencing or the loss of their final appeal which is not allowed to take more than one month. 7.) No more endless rounds of tax exemptions if you are a religious institution or charity or anything else. Back to rule one: No one is special; everyone pays their way. 8.) The government is NOT your parent. It should not operate as a Nanny State. What ever concessions you set up as an employer are between you and your employees so that you can run your business most efficiently. Because the purpose of a business should be to MAKE MONEY. 9.) The government’s purpose should be: take in taxes, use those taxes to build infrastructure, set up agencies to oversee those infrastructures. These should include: a military, transportation infrastructures (railroad, airline and roads), and at the municipal levels, water, sewer and land use planning. Beyond that, government should leave its citizens the hell alone. |
| Response to: "Literacy Duck" . I came home from a cranky day at school. I've decided to call this the Climate Change Semester. I've listened to no less than seven lectures on climate change spread over four completely different class subjects. I have also listened to three optional extra credit climate change lectures. That's a lot of climate change, people. I consider myself somewhat of an arm chair expert on the party line for climate change after this semester. After a while the lectures all start sounding the same...sort of like Charlie Brown teacher voices. So, I was in a crummy mood after semi arguing with a professor today about whether science has definitively proven that climate change has anthropogenic causes or not. But then I got home and Hubby was watching Duck Dynasty. I hadn't ever watched this dang show before. I have laughed and laughed all night. It's basically a bunch of bearded, hillbilly rednecks down in Louisiana who make some famous duck caller. I think I'm loving this show because they understand they are a bunch of redneck hillbillies. The funniest line so far in the four or five episodes we've watched tonight was the main guy commenting on some calamity they were embroiled in, "I think it's 'cause we are idiots." You gotta like anybody that self-aware.They also are forever taking the day off to go hunting, fishing, frog giggin', and whatnot. The grandfather and father took a day off to teach the teenage daughter how to shoot a shotgun. They wound up having a shooting contest against one another while she sat around texting with her friends. While they were off doing that, the uncle, both brothers and two other employees broke the father's new samurai sword while playing fruit ninja then tried to hide it by welding it together. It was hilarious. The thing is, with some reality shows you feel like they are playing to the camera, with Duck Dynasty, you feel like they act like this all the time, cameras or no. I'm providing a link to this show so that you guys can watch it, too. It's just great for a laugh at the end of a long day. Duck Dynasty |
| Response to "always seems sublime" . Have any of you seen the movie "Pursuit of Happiness" with Will Smith? During the movie, Smith's character breaks down various parts of the movie (his life) into chapters and gives them titles. I think this blog title would be a great title for this section of my life. Hubby and I are in a rut section of life. We KNOW we are in a rut section of life, but there is no hurrying through it or going around it or any of that. We just have to keep on slogging through it a day at a time, a week at a time, a month at a time. Until we get through this boggy bit to the other side. This boggy, rutted bit we are in? That's the part where we are stuck here in a house too large for us, full of bittersweet memories, in jobs we really don't like, in an area we have no family within 800 miles of us, until yours truly is done with school in a year. Then, hopefully, the economy will have picked up enough we can unload this elephant, Hubby can get a job he likes doing what he wants to do, I can get a job using my degree or my twenty years of secretarial experience ( although hopefully not that) and we can get the hell outta Dodge.But, that is all tomorrow's plan. Today's plan involves plodding through classes and trying to stay positive. Because...here's the deal: When I get down, and I mean REALLY down. Like, can't get out of bed, don't want to attend classes, 'cause the end is never coming, down. I do the count my blessings thing. And MAN is that list long. Usually I do the Virginia Slims motto, "You've come a long way, baby" montage in my head. I try to play positive music when I'm down so that it pumps me up as I do it, too. (Heh...Yeah, it's cheesy, but, trust me, it helps!) When I met Hubby, I was homeless, my parents had my daughter and I was working on divorcing my abusive first husband. I was driving (and living in!) a 1979 LTD with LOTS of engine problems, with no insurance and bald tires. Almost everything I owned fit in that car. NOW, I am on the verge of graduating from college, our daughter is grown and on her own (sorta), I am married to a wonderful man who spoils me completely, I drive an Expedition that's paid for, is insured AND has great new tires. We live in a nice house with nice furnishings in a nice neighborhood. I have all kinds of toys like a laptop, a smartphone, and for Christmas Hubby got me a new nook HD. I have a warm bed I sleep in at night and three pets who love me. When I am done listing all the good, the bad doesn't seem so bad, you know? And it's not really bad. It's just time. I actually enjoy school. I enjoy learning (if I'm allowed to take the classes I want to take!). I enjoy being at the college with the young kids and the energy and creativity of it all. The only thing is that human failing many of us have where I have set a goal and now I'm impatient to reach the end, and I'm forgetting to enjoy the journey. When I first met Hubby, we would go hiking and he was a power hiker. We would rush off down the trail at 90 miles an hour, huffing and puffing, never looking left or right, rarely stopping. I put a damn stop to that shit after one hike. I'm not a power hiker. I'm a twaddling meanderer. "Look, honey! Let's stop and take a picture of this!" "Did you see that bird?" "Did you hear the wind?" I forget to apply this same philosophy to life. I'm a stop and smell the roses girl from way back. So.... I guess while the unknown may always seem sublime, there can be a lot of unknown in your own life if you are willing to look for it. And sometimes you have to be willing to look at the known in a new light to better appreciate it. |
| Response to: "Invalid Entry" . Except for a brief journey across campus, my day did not lend itself to bike rides or walks. Today for me was about other found things. Because my daughter is no longer in my day to day life, I notice that I have begun collecting foundling children. Today, three of my little ducks reminded me of that. My first foundling was actually a coworker who is around my age. She was in a codependent abusive relationship for about ten years. She got out of it and now she is kind of broken and has no idea how to function on her own. The poor thing is so messed up I don't even know where to start describing it. It breaks my heart to see her struggling. A few weeks ago I gave her the number to my therapist and let her know I was available if she wanted to talk. She is like a kicked dog. She is from this area and even graduated from college here, but like most abused women, has zero friends. Also, like many codependent people, she has no idea what SHE likes. She doesn't have any hobbies that are just hers, all of them were things that he liked. And now, to compound her problem, she has jumped into a relationship with ANOTHER controlling man. Immediately. And the thing that kills is that she KNOWS that she is doing a bad thing, but can't stand to be alone. Today, she and I talked about things because we (strangely) found ourselves alone in the office. That was when she told me many of these things. I'm not sure when I was tagged as Mother Confessor, but, I was and now she is one of my ducks. She told me she has no friends. So I told her that I'm her friend and we made a date to go do some things together. Some things I made HER pick that she would like to do. And we talked about her learning herself. It was good. ~~~~~~~~~~~ In my Human Geography class, I sit beside a young girl I will call Mac. Mac is an American Exchange student from Oregon. (It's like a Foreign Exchange student, except it all happens within the US.) Mac cracks me up. I only see her for three hours a week. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at two o'clock, she comes in flops down beside me and chatters at me about her week like a little magpie. She has told me she really likes me because she misses her Grandmother (who she lives with back home) and I remind her of home. I listen to her, give her advice and visit with her about nonsense and silliness. I take my nook into class every time and leave it open so we can both read whatever book I'm currently reading during class. She told me today that I'm costing her grandparents a fortune in books. I read so quickly, I have a different book every class. She always asks me what book we were reading, I never realized she was buying them for her nook all semester. She told me she is excited to ride the Greyhound home for the holidays because she knows she will have tons of great books to read because of me. It's apparently a nineteen hour ride one way. I will miss her. I told her to find me when she comes back in the spring semester. She's one of my little foundlings.~~~~~~~~~~~ On my way to my Weather and Climate class, one of my former coworkers stopped me and gave me a big hug. I'll call him Jay. Jay is twenty one. He stopped me to tell me he wouldn't see me on campus anymore after today. He only sees me on Mondays and Fridays, but he was essentially done. Only one test left and that will be tomorrow. He also wanted to tease me because he is leaving Wednesday to go to Vegas. He knows Hubby and I love Vegas and that I would be jealous. I asked him where he was staying and he told me he and his friend got a great deal on rooms at the Excalibur. I love to yank Jay's chain, so I asked him if he already has his tickets to Thunder Down Under. It was especially funny because he had on a spiffy pink tie today.  I crack myself up. He got over it enough to come back and hug me and wish me a Merry Christmas, though.~~~~~~~~~~~ I love all my little foundlings. These are just the ones I saw today. I have lots of them. It's nice to fill that niche in my life, even just a little. |
| My husband finally got me to talk to him, so I'm ready to talk about what is eating me alive: When I was twelve, the bastard who lived across the street from us molested me. I did what you are supposed to do. I told my parents. Expecting some sort of retribution or solution or, I don’t know….something. Exactly nothing happened. Nothing. So much nothing that it was then that I grew up. I grew up and realized that life is unfair and horrible and anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something. There are no heroes, there is no fairness in the world and bad things happen for no damn good reason. All the time. It is a lesson that life has been happy to teach me over and over again. My mom called me Saturday to tell me that he died. She didn’t want me to find out and be blindsided by it. Why, you ask, would I be blindsided? Because the man who did this to me was my brother’s father in law. My brother married the girl “next door.” I don’t know for sure, but I’m pretty sure the bastard molested my sister in law. And her older sisters. And many other girls. When my brother and sister in law had a daughter I swallowed my pride and reached out across a gap of almost ten years of non-communication with my brother. I called him and said, “Never leave your daughter with him.” And I told him why. I told him if he didn’t believe me to ask our parents. He hung up on me. But he heard me. All weekend I saw my sister in law’s facebook page was full of condolences and bullshit from people singing this bastard’s praise. “Nicest guy” etc. Made me feel like vomiting just typing that. I lived in fear across the street from this monster having nightmares every night for six years. I dreamed of killing him. I dreamed of awful things. I was afraid to stay home alone. I was afraid to leave the house. I was just afraid. Always afraid. And now a town full of hypocritical assholes is singing his praises. My parents didn’t believe in therapists or psychiatrists or any of that, so I didn’t get therapy for any of it until I was grown. ‘Til it had had years and years to warp and fester in my soul. Children blame themselves, you know. If I had only been stronger, bigger, better, something, it wouldn’t have happened. But it would have. Because it wasn’t about me. It was never about me. It’s about power and holding it over someone smaller and weaker. And now the monster of my childhood is dead. When I heard I just felt numb. My mom told me that she thought I could have some closure now. Closure? There’s no closure. There’s no magic anything. I mostly feel like crying. A lot. And I’m not even sure why I want to cry. The monster of my soul for the last thirty years is dead and I can’t figure out what I feel. I’m swinging wildly between numbness and anger I didn’t get to do it even after all my years of planning it. My one consolation is he died hard and in pain. Now all that is left is to get to dance laughing on his grave, maybe afterward take a big piss on it. Now days later part of me feels guilty for not being able to be strong enough or decent enough or whatever to send my sister in law a card or plant or flowers. But I just can’t. I want to post screaming rants on facebook about what an asshole shithead this bastard was, but I’ve refrained. The only reason is because my niece and nephew don’t deserve to be hurt that way. I don’t want to be the one to hurt them like that the week of their grandfather’s funeral. I’m already the outcast in my family and while I don’t care if I hurt the adults, I won’t hurt children who have no context for any of this except that they think the things that quirky Aunt Teresa (who has nothing to do with the family anymore) posts on facebook are funny. I lay in bed last night and fell asleep to the sound of my younger self screaming in my head. That can’t be right, can it? I have a project due Thursday that I have to have ready for my partner to review tomorrow and a paper due Wednesday. I have putzed around with both of them for the last two days. I’d saved them to work on Saturday and Sunday of the break thinking I’d be able to bang them out, no problem. Now I can’t do anything but read. And eat. All I’ve done is suck down comfort food. Most of which makes me sick as a dog, but I keep stuffing it in my head anyway. It’s either that or head to a bar. Or I think I have some Vicoden somewhere in the kitchen cabinet. I’m trying to stay away from those two options. Part of me knows that is the reason I became bipolar. There is always a triggering event. That was mine. Then after that it was alcohol and suicide attempts and prescription drugs and abusive men. All of that I lay at his doorstep. Sure I was genetically predisposed to all of those things (perhaps not the abusive men) before. But, he primed and armed me. Broke me. And no one did anything to help me. To help repair the damage that he did. I just tried every way I could to cope with it on my own. Mostly I failed. Small town conspiracy of silence ruining lives one broken soul at a time. Here is what I learned: No one will help you but yourself. It doesn’t help to tell. Don’t rely on anyone but yourself, they will let you down. When someone is being hurt, even a child, people will look the other way and shove it under the rug to prevent scandal. Keep your pain to yourself, no one else is interested in it. Figure out some way to deal because the nightmares don’t stop. Over the years, I learned some (few) better things. But for the most part, those early lessons have been some of the most true lessons of my life. |
| I'm in a bad place. Emotionally and mentally. I need to blog about it, because as I've mentioned I kinda do therapy in here.  But it's SUCH a bad place I'm not ready to talk about it yet and it's driving my husband nuts. Every day he asks me, "How you doing?" And every day I say, "I'm fine." In my best Eeyore voice. And every day he disbelieves me a little more. I have two more weeks in this semester, I need to hold it together for before the wheels come off my little red wagon. Not sure I'm gonna make it. Glad FtL is back on. I do really good blog therapy during FtL. PS--While I'm doing Follow the Leader, my blog is out in public again. I will go private once again when it is over. |
| So I was also talking a few entries ago about writing software and I found one that let's you do a 30 day trial. It is Scrivener . Once the trial is up it costs $40. I'm using it to work on my novel idea. I've started putting things down on paper. (So to speak.) Not gonna lie. It's epic. It's totally helping me organize my ideas. And honestly, that's where I struggle. The organization portion of writing. I wind up with notes here, there, scribbled bits jotted here and there and research tacked on where the hell ever, but this software gives you places, folders and notecards for everything and then ways to cross-reference it all. It's kinda genius. Is it perfect? No. But it's a damn sight better than anything else I've ever seen. That is all, carry on. |
| Remember I talked about the bullshit favorite soil report assignment? I got the grade on that today. I completed less than half of the assignment and then sent in a....well, a kind of chastising note to go with the assignment when I turned it in explaining that it was a bullshit assignment. I got an email back from the professor kind of chewing me out and saying if I didn't understand all I had to do was come see him, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, etc. I expected to get a really low grade based on that email. Instead, I got a 95%. On an assignment I less than half completed and then complained about. Sometimes college makes no sense to me. I have the next installment of the Favorite Soil Report series coming up. So, the original assignment on this one was twice as bullshit as the last one. Apparently I was not the only complainer. The day after the rubric was announced and explained, the professor changed it completely citing the fact that since no one could find the figures for their soils, he would make it a group assignment for our lab groups and we could work together comparing and contrasting our favorite soils. Mmmmkaay. I could care less about the soil I picked much less about the soils other people picked. Much less do I want to do a dang group presentation comparing and contrasting the stupid things.Whatever. At least I don't have to spend my Thanksgiving break trying to find obscure soil salinity and electrical conductivity information about the Lihue soil series. |
| Like I said yesterday, I've decided to make the majority of my port private. More of a beta reading group situation. One of the things I'm making private is this blog. Some of you have already been added to "Invalid Item" but others haven't. If you haven't and you would like to be, please fill out the short survey and I will do so. Thank you. PS and FYI....The window of opportunity to be a voyeur in my crazy life is rapidly closing. If you want in, I'm privatizing this thing come the weekend. This will be one of my last "public" entries. And yes, Lorien...I will share my sweet, sweet research idea some time next week once I've put up the shades. That is actually one of the main reasons I wanted to go private on this blog, so no one would steal this research 'cause I KNOW I'm gonna talk about it. |
| I gave my intent to graduate form to my adviser yesterday with four upper credits missing on it then emailed him and set up a meeting for Friday asking if he can help me sort out those last four credits so I can graduate. And then I had a minor brainstorm. I think I want to go to grad school.  Wait, what?!I know, right? All I talk about is getting out of school and finishing and being done, blah, blah, etc. But, here's the deal. I came up with a research topic that SERIOUSLY interests me. Like I want to write a paper about it. Like I want to write a book about it. Like all I've done since I discovered this topic is talk to people about it ad nauseum. In fact, as I write this, I have two other windows open researching this topic. I kinda stumbled into it while doing some minor background research for my novel and now I'm totally sucked in. I'm completely sucked in and want to do nothing but figure this out. Like a puzzle. So...for my remaining four credits, I am going today to talk to one of my professors to see if next fall he will sponsor 2-3 hours of independent research on the background of this topic plus let me TA for him for his 100 level course for 1-2 hours. I talked to a friend who TA's for him this semester and she said that she thinks he'll let me do it. The thing is I want to do the background research so that when I write the grant for the research I want to do as a grad student, I have all this kinda in my back pocket....ready and waiting just to whip out. See? If I don't go immediately, I can hold on to it and use it as a springboard for more research and if I do go immediately, then presto! it's there. But...it all depends on where we wind up after I graduate. And that depends on where Hubby gets a job. We'll have to see. So, for now....I just want to research this topic!!! On a slightly related note, I think like Jenn  I'm going to make this blog private and only available to people who want in to read it. And like Satuawany , I may be changing up my entire portfolio and making the majority of it available only to people in the circle of trust. I'm circling the wagons, folks. Time to hat up and decide if I'm going to really write, or just talk about it. |
| After reading katwoman45 's entry "stupid is as stupid does" , I have this to say: I have some friends who are...hmmmm...what's the technical term....bat-shit crazy? I also have some former friends who are even crazier than that. I've mentioned that 2012 has been a rough year for me. Part of that is a friend who attempted suicide because her live-in boyfriend left her for another woman. I stood by her while she recovered physically from the attempt (two days in the hospital after pills and alcohol) but I've recently had to distance myself from her. Some people would look at that and say I'm a crummy friend. This woman was my best friend. Hell, she was my business partner and yet, I've essentially walked away from her in her time of need. Here's how I justify it: After all of it, she has taken him back. On his terms. He tells her that they aren't dating, that it was her fault he left her and that even though they aren't dating he wants to sleep with her. All the time. And, by the way, be free to date other women, too. She says fine to all of those conditions. I just can't emotionally subsidize that level of crazy. By continuing to tell her that I'm okay with her choices and that I support them, then I'm essentially lying to her. I don't do that. I told her what I thought and told her: her life, her choices. But that doesn't mean I have to stand around watching her make crazy self-destructive ones. Recently, I've just started paring down that level of self-destructive person in my life. People are allowed to make their own choices and that's fine, not my business, but that doesn't mean I have to stand around picking up the pieces when they make those same crazy-bad choices over and over and over. It's too hard on my nerves. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In other news: Another friend turned me on to this website: Clean Sweep I'd never read this author, but based on this free serial book, I'm going to their other stuff. (They are a husband/wife writing team.) nookbooks had some of their early books on for only $.99 and $2.99. Woot! I snagged 5 books for $7. I love a good bargain like that. They are posting short half chapters of this serial with a new listing once a week or so. It's great urban sci-fi/fantasy. Be prepared to be surprised. It's not what you think. I love when authors surprise me! |
| For some reason , I had insomnia last night. That was the bad news. The silver lining is that I had a MAJOR plot development in my story that I keep in my head. Like...major. As in redo the plot and throw in whole new key character major. So, I'm pretty stoked about that. A few years ago...ok, more like 5 or 6 years ago...when I was writing more seriously. (Before I went back to school.) I bought The Writer's DreamKit 4.0 software for novel/story plotting. I used it a couple of times, couldn't get the hang of it and promptly bipolared over it. (That's part ADHD, "Ooo, squirrel!" and part memory loss/forgot I owned the damn thing. ) Yesterday I was reading through some writing blogs that I follow and they mentioned it as one of the top writing softwares on the market. I was intrigued until I checked it out and realized I already owned it. They say they are coming out with an updated version which would be good because I looked around for my copy yesterday so I could load it on my laptop. Alas....my basement office has swallowed it. I'd need to actually devote a day to cleaning the office in order to find it. I found the box it came in. Because, hey....why wouldn't I keep an empty box?  It's only like $20 if I wind up buying myself a new copy. But I'd like to wait on the new one. My main problem with the old one was that it has a crummy user interface. Like....DOS era interface. Super clunky and not very user friendly. I'd like to see it updated and given a better Windows interface. We'll see.I suppose I'm down to Excel worksheets and multiple Word documents until then unless I can unearth the old copy somewhere. I'd hate to pay $20 for something twice that I don't really love using. I sent in my "favorite soil" paper yesterday minus all the confusing water equations. I just wrote up the bits that made sense within the context of the lectures we'd had and submitted it along with a note explaining why I wasn't submitting the confusing bits. I'm sure that will get me graded down--the fact that I basically dissed his teaching/class organization style. The main problem with the class is that as far as I can tell, the professor who teaches the class (while basically a nice guy and a decent teacher) was only hired a week or two before class started. Therefore, he is using the outgoing professor's syllabus, labs, study guide and other accompanying materials. Unfortunately, the lectures have little if anything to do with these materials. So it's like taking two different classes: A soils lecture class which presents one set of materials and a soils lab which presents a whole different set of materials. And the two are only tangentially related. The assignments for the class and the study guides provided for the tests have almost nothing to do with the material presented in class. While the subject matter is related (it's all still soils) the emphasis is on different parts or some bits are covered differently. It's all just damned confusing. And, I said as much in the note I submitted with my paper. Er..half paper. Oh, well. As they say...C's mean degrees. ~~~~~~~~~ Edited to add: We've had a little warm spell this past week, but winter comes back with a vengeance tomorrow. Snows measured in feet expected across the region. Woot! Temps below zero by Sunday. Not so woot. I coiled my front garden hose yesterday. Today I need to coil my back hose and put away the patio furniture before the cold front hits and freezes the dang thing and blows my chairs to the next county. I did put away the umbrella earlier in the season. I just dawdle about the chairs because they have a locking thing on them that I have to get a screwdriver to fold them up. My hands aren't strong enough to unlock them. I'm such a procrastinator. Nothing like dragging your feet until literally the eleventh hour! My snow from before melted in 60 degree temps this past week and a half. But now....I'm thinking not. |
| I have a paper due today on my "favorite soil." ~pfft~ Like I have a "favorite soil." I could give a rat's ass about any soil much less have a "favorite" one. I run into this problem with taking lower level courses sometimes. Professors want you to do what I consider either busy work or work inappropriate to the level class being taken. The high level of soil math and water holding capacity equations along with water budgeting they want me to do for my "favorite soil" is beyond the level and scope of a sophomore level class. Not to mention it doesn't further my understanding about soil. If I felt so inclined to struggle through it, it might further my understanding of math. A subject I could wax eloquent on for some space of time and several entries in this journal. But, spending time figuring out a "water budget" for a soil that receives an annual rainfall of 40-60 inches of rain is a useless waste of my time when I am neither an agriculture nor a soils major, especially for a paper that is worth roughly 5% of my grade. Here's is some math....after completing a rough cost/benefit analysis I have decided that my time and effort are worth more than the 5% return on this damned paper. I will turn in the bits of the paper that don't annoy me and receive at least partial credit for the assignment thereby securing some points toward the 5% toward my final grade. I guess I'm just too cranky of an old lady for school much longer. It's a good thing I'm about ready to graduate. |
| In some cultures, All Hallow's Eve marks the end of the year with November 1st as the start of the new year. I've decided that's a good tradition because this last year has been a tough one for me and my family. We need a clean slate. A fresh start. A do over. A regroup. So this morning is the first day of the new year for me. I have about a month of school left in the semester with quite a few papers and what not left to finish things out. I registered for the spring yesterday. Rowed up my ducks on finishing up school completely. Graduating finally. I came in early today and met with that professor to line out my independent study course in the spring helping him with research for his textbook. Check and done. I'm excited about the project. I will be handling research into current events and relevant topics for Russia and the Middle East concerning things like sustainability, humanizing the face of "foes" and things like that. One of the things I know I will research for sure will be Russia hosting the 2014 winter games and their pledge to make it the greenest games yet. That should be interesting. The really neat part is that I'm not allowed to do any writing for the project--so as to prevent any stain of impropriety that I might have written any of the book or that he plagiarized off of me. I can do research and be a sounding board only. No papers! Woot!In celebration of my New Year I'm listening to my favorite upbeat song. Whenever I need to be pumped up I listen to this song. It gets me moving and grooving everytime. Just listening to it makes me want to dance around. [Embed For Use By Upgraded+] |
| This round of "Follow the Leader" is over. I feel almost hungover from it. It was a good round. I don't know about any of the other participants, but for me it was really cathartic. I feel like I just did three weeks of intensive therapy. Maybe I can write off the cost of my WdC membership as a medical cost under group therapy. For me the best entry of the round was by katwoman45 finishing it up. "A Second Departure (Bonus)" Although other highlights for me included: " Mary Had a Little (bonus) Lamb " , "Ignore that man behind the curtain!" , "Invalid Entry" , and "Invalid Entry" .I loved that these were entries about real people doing real things, looking hard at their lives. Asking hard questions. Laughing, crying, just....living. My favorite thing from the round, though, is that I have found several new bloggers to read. I have new favorites here to visit and comment upon. Or, sometimes, just stalk and lurk. 'Cause, not gonna lie, sometimes I do that instead. Mostly, though, I want to say thank you to everyone who really participated and commented and interacted with me this round. It was awesome. A special thanks to my regular readers who just went along for the crazy ride. You guys were great as always. Thanks, mood indigo  , for hostessing us and the judging. Although, honestly, at this point I don't care about that, because I got what I needed out of this experience. I can't wait for the next round. |
 My sis-in-law was here for the past week. I love when she visits. She is fun to hang out with. I had Friday off of school so she and I just hung out all day. Hubby had to go to Billings that afternoon. She and I went out to lunch, got frozen yogurt, went and saw Hotel Transylvania and then went out to have Chinese food for dinner. It was a full, fun afternoon. Since she is out in the field so much she misses a lot of current stuff. While she is with us, we watch current televisions shows, recent movies and anything else we feel she's missed while she was out of touch with the world. It's like reintroducing a wild animal back into the wild, only in reverse.  Next weekend we go to Yellowstone again. Should be fun with all the snow and such. I think we will be at Mammoth. I love it there. With the extra moisture, the thermal features should be incredible. I have had a nook for about 2 years now. I was thinking while I was making dinner earlier. I have a friend (who doesn't have an ereader) who tells me all the time that for her reading is a tactile experience. The book is the thing. The smell of the book, the heavy feel in her hands, the crisp turn of each page, it's all part of the experience. I used to feel that way and when I thought of myself as a writer, I thought of myself as someone who made books. Someone who wrote words that wound up in books on shelves next to the classics. Books that would stand the test, physical things that would remain long after I'm gone. Since I got my nook, I have started to think of books less as objects and more as ideas. Books aren't things to me anymore. They are ideas that stand the test of time. I only have a list of three today. But here it is. My bit of random for the day. |
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