Things Are The Same. Things Are Different.

Bullet-form blog entry because I am a lazy, lazy human being:

• The car is dead. Long live the car. Basically, it is broken in an expensive way that will take a month or two to save for, and then it will be paid off and will need to be put into my name and insured all over again, so fuck it, we're taking the bus for a while. I'd be sadder if we lived in BFE where there wasn't a bus that ran practically outside my front door every day, but since that isn't the case? Meh. Catching up on my knitting in a BIG way.
• It is... I guess...?... springtime headed into summer here, but you'd never know it by looking. Mother Nature is being as bipolar here as she is everywhere else, and as such has seen fit to dump bucketloads of rain on us instead of sweet, tremulous spring sunlight. Again, meh. I don't have a seed planted anywhere to be impatient over, so I am doing okay. Although that makes me wish that I had a yard to plant seeds in to be impatient over, kind of.
• Coming up here in three days is my mother's birthday. Should I tell you, Internet? I think I will. The last time I went up to the cemetery, I couldn't find her grave. I ended up wandering the general area where I remembered her grave to be, wild-eyed, on the verge of tears, feeling like the worst child in the history of children, even though it has long been my philosophy that I don't need to visit a patch of earth to love and honor my lost loved ones. Also, I have specifically requested that my loved ones scatter my ashes in some top-secret place of no value (the side of the highway would even be fine) so that people will do the same for me: honor and respect my memory wherever you happen to be, and place no value on the place where my ashes are deposited.
• Like how I sidestepped how my mom's birthday will be making me feel? Alright, I will admit it. It will be miserable. I will pretend to be normal, all the while feeling a bitter, churning mixture of emotions on the inside. But nobody will be able to tell, and I will spend another year trying not to feel sorry for myself because nobody is able to tell.

And on that cheerful note, that's all the news that is news here. What's going on in your world? (Donna, I have been following along. I'm so glad your knee is working out so well. Really, really glad.)

Time To Move On

How do you know when it's time to move on?

I've always been told that quitting is for failures, for people who give up too easily. Quitting is a sign of weakness, a sign that you just can't hack it, that only the ones who hang in and hang on will find true success.

But in this case, I don't want to repeat a mistake I've already made - hanging in when the situation is obviously not right for me. I stayed at a shit job for eight years because - well, there were a lot of reasons, not least of which was fear. I don't want to do that again. I don't want to be the sucker who sits around and gets the stink end of the stick because I'm too nice to say, "Hey, you. Yeah, you. Fuck you, fuck this, and fuck off."

I genuinely like what I'm doing right now. I even - mostly - like the people I do it with and for. But there are a few people that could quite frankly never appear in my line of vision again and I'd be so okay with it.

I got a phone call this morning about a small thing I apparently did wrong last night, although since I wasn't told not to do that thing I am not exactly clear on how I would have known to avoid it. I don't start work until 2:30 this afternoon. Everyone, including the caller, knows that I am generally asleep at the time the call came in, so... what was the purpose? You had a cranky moment so you thought you would spread the joy? NO.

I don't want to get sucked into the petty. I don't want to get dragged down to that area. I just don't think I'm made for that, and I'm concerned that "blaze of glory" will not be the metaphor used for me when I get fed up and speak out about the way I feel on this.

If I move fast I might be able to work my way into a different job that would last at least a few months. It's a business owned by friends, and I'd be really good at it. I just know that if I do this, I'll be dropping a major bomb in the middle of the current place's plans. They wouldn't even begin to know where to replace me, considering the extremely beneficial (as in part-time volunteer) terms under which they have me.

What would you do?

What The Hell, Man

So I've been getting up early every day for weeks now, but until today I was able to sleep in on Saturdays and Sundays without a problem. Then, this morning, it was like one of those cartoons where the guy's eyelids roll back and go rat-a-tat-a-tat-a against his eyebrows like a pull-blind out of control, and good god, it's alive!

I don't know what to do with my bad self, either. I could clean the house, but then I'd wake everybody else up, and ... well... I kinda like the quiet. I could knit, but that seems like too much trouble.

I know! I will sit on my ass, drink a cup of coffee, and reread one of the Night Watch books by Terry Pratchett. I love Terry Pratchett. I love coffee. It's a plan!

Also on my list of things I've decided to do is to keep posting to this poor neglected blog whenever I can so that I don't feel the way I did when I remembered I had houseplants, only to take my watering can and walk over to two brown, dramatically slumped pots of twigs.

So yeah. I'm reading and drinking coffee as you read this (if you read this), and I kill houseplants. Edifying, right?

I KNOW.

Have a great Saturday!

Hey, Whoa.

I guess I suck more than a very sucky thing, because holy Bob, I haven't posted in... five months?

WAT.

Okay, it's not like I didn't look over in this direction from time to time and go, "Oh. Yeah. Blog. Right. That," but somehow the words were never there and life was just too... too life, and I was positive that all that would emerge would be one long primal whine.

You know what? I firmly believe that if there can be a primal scream then there can totally be a primal whine. So I'm leaving it. Nyah. And also neener.

And then I got another e-mail from someone I'd thought had forgotten me altogether, which sent me over here to Blawger, which led me to discover that I could fiddle-fuck with my template (always, if I'm honest, a MAJOR reason I liked blogging to start with) even more than I could before, and then I thought, "Hey! How long has it been since I posted... HOLY SHIT."

So here I am. I promise you nothing in the way of posts, because I am a busy bitch these days and come home most afternoons and fall into the sweet, sweet arms of nappytime. Or I knit. But mostly, I nap.

So. Those of you for whom hope springeth eternal and still check in on this sad and neglected space, how in the blue fuck are yez?

Crushed

Friends call on the phone; I don't answer. I hear the phone buzz - they've left me a voicemail - I don't listen.

People tromp up our stairs and knock; I sit in silence until they give up and leave.

I don't feel like being a person, being a friend, these days. I feel like sitting here in my quiet space and doing absolutely nothing. I feel like not being interfered with on my journey into a quiet place where nobody can make me do anything ever again.

Is this depression? It's hard to say. I'm too close to it to see it clearly. It could just be simple laziness.

I am lazy. My mother always said so, then my dad said so, then my mother-in-law said so. And you know? They were so right. I'm lazy. I don't like to clean things up. I don't like to wash the same dishes I just washed yesterday. I don't like to sweep and mop and dust and scrub and blah blah blah every single day of my life. It's boring. It's depressing. It's irritating.

I find myself in long diatribes on the inside of my head about how selfish and inconsiderate all the people who live with me are, how lame and rude they are for leaving all this crap all over the place and not rinsing a goddamn dish, for fuck's sake, not putting the toilet seat down, not cleaning the hair out of the drain, not caring that it's me doing the walking behind them and cleaning up their dish, their mess, their drain hair.

For a lazy person, this must be what Hell looks like, a hall stretching to Infinity, filled with doors, behind each of which lives a sink full of dishes and bathtubs clogged with slimy hair and filthy toilets waiting to be cleaned. And when you get done with one room, you turn around and find that all you've done is undone again a mere five minutes after you're finished.

If I knew what was wrong with me I'd fix it. But I don't. And sadly I think that it would be kind of like my vision of Hell anyway; I'd figure out what was wrong with me, fix it, and five minutes later I'd be back down in the dumps again.

And I'm too lazy to want to fix it anyhow.

Okay, that's my time. I'll be here to depress you all week. Be sure to tip your waitress.

And Believe Me, I Am Still Alive

Hey, wow.

It's been a while!

Things are fine, I'm fine, all is well, but you can imagine that I could use the roller coaster analogy to describe the goings-on since I last posted. Car breakdowns, car repairings, friend still not my friend, huge family dispute, blah de blah de blah.

I'd rather know how you're doing.

How ya doin'?

And Yet Somehow Life Goes On

I'm sorry for the melodrama (GETTIT? GETTIT? *MEL*odrama? BAW HAW HAW!) of the last few posts. Losing a long-term friendship that was more in your own head than in reality, and then finding out that it was more in your own head than in reality, can tend to unhinge you.

Okay, not you, me, but you knew what I meant.

In other news, since I reallyreallyreally don't want to go into that at all, I finally had to break down and go to the hospital for the tooth situation. Those of you who've been following the bouncing ball for any amount of time will know the story - I have very bad teeth, and one very bad tooth in particular. I've been self-medicating with alternating doses of Tylenol and Motrin for over a year just so I can function.

(Hey, guess what the ER doc said about that? He said I had been systematically overdosing myself for ages, which could have killed my liver, and that I was very very very lucky the tests came back fine. READ THOSE LABELS, FOLKS, AND DON'T GET COCKY.)

(Oh, god, how they tested me. Also, a CT scan. Good thing I'm poor enough to qualify for financial aid, because otherwise I'd be hyperventilating right now.)

ANYway.

My tooth got so bad that it created a swelling along my entire jaw that stood out a good two, three inches from my face. Yeah, sexy, right? So I caved and went to the ER on Friday, since I didn't want poison in my brain or an eaten-away jawbone or a heart attack because of poisons in my blood stream (all of which oh, so many people delighted in telling me about over the last year, thanks guys for the paranoia).

After a blood test, a pee test, and a scan, it appears that I am a lucky, lucky sunuvabitch and that I may yet escape death because of my teeth. Also, that I'm way healthier than I deserve to be. Also, I'm not allowed to take Tylenol for at least 6 months, and Motrin only in a pinch. Also, Oxycodone will indeed make you barf if you take it on an empty stomach with Penicillin.

Long story longer, I got a list of places that will take me on a sliding scale (FINALLY! Some light at the end of the tunnel. I guess all I had to do was potentially bankrupt my ass to find out where to go), and so what I'm doing tomorrow is calling all these places to see who will see me and help me get back to a decent level of dental health.

Hasten that fine day.

In the meantime, thanks for being there and listening to me. You guys are the truest friends I have. Except my brother, who is just the best, most loyal and true friend I've ever had. It only took a minor emotional apocalypse to figure that one out.

And The Hits Keep Coming And Coming

Problems with the rent check. They need their money NOW. As far as I can tell, we've paid these dickwads every cent they were owed, and now? They're after us for HOW much more?

I can't stand it.

I'm thisclose to laying down and giving up. And I'm not a big one for giving up.

Terror

So tonight I go and sing at a wake. A biker wake, but a wake nonetheless.

Sweaty palms, goosebumps, the shakes, rapid heart rate, and utter conviction that I'm gonna blow it big time.

Good god. What is wrong with me? Why did I agree to this?

Fuck.

Plus And Minus

Plus: We went to the Oregon Country Fair this weekend and had a great time. Lots of beautiful people, neat costumes, and great music.

Minus: We couldn't find a motel room within a hundred miles of Veneta and so we slept in our car and then I, even I, the most body-conscious woman on Earth, took a communal shower at the Fair. Coed. Yes, that's what I said. That was... tough for me, but I did it for the sake of clean hair. Baby, I'd do a lot for clean hair.

Plus: My bro has jumped through all the hoops required to start going to PSU for his art courses! All he's waiting for is the confirmation letter from the college.

Minus: My phone is out so I can't call and check the status of that. Hopefully it comes soon!

Plus: My house is clean due to having minions! Brell and the Little Missy went through this place like a tornado, and I flatly refused to clean up their messes. They recognized the necessity of cleaning up after themselves, then went one better and just cleaned the whole place! W00T! Yay, minions!

Minus: I can't think of anything else to write about today, so a boring update is all you get. Next time, perhaps?

How was your weekend?

What A World, What A World...

So basically, it comes down to this. I do NOT have a cold anymore. The thing would be ridiculous. So what is this crap that is hanging on for dear life, clinging to my face like an octopus with an anxiety disorder? What is it that's causing my lungs and throat to tickle, prickle and itch?

Dudes, it's allergies. I held out for as long as I could; I pretended there were no such things; I called it a "summer cold," a "bug," a "virus;" but friends, I have actual real allergies. No, seriously. I KNOW.

Do you know how I know this? My friend D offered me a Benadryl yesterday, and once I got used to thinking in slow motion and walking into things, I realized that my nose was clear. I was not coughing. And this meant only one thing. If allergy medicine worked like magic on my symptoms...

Sigh. I guess I'm a goddamn delicate flower.

In other news, the car? Possessed. Possessed by the devil. No, wait, it IS the devil. The devil made out of car. And it is mine. Golly, what a lucky gal I am.

The alarm problem, we thought, was solved, after a nonstop blaring session at a local mall and a frazzled call to the car dealership. They told us how to reset it, and we did. And there was peace in the valley. Right up untilllll.... now. When I got home from dropping my guy off at work, I locked the car. And accidentally set the alarm. And then, in the process of trying to UNset the alarm, I set it off. And it just kept on going off. And a call to the husband, who was in the barrel last time this happened, informed me as to how to make it reset.

Except it didn't work. Didn't work. DIDN'T WORK. Any of the EIGHT times I tried.

So now the car's down there with a battery terminal off. I wish a mofo WOULD try to steal it right now. I'd laugh and laugh and laugh. And also point while I laughed.

So that's my week so far. How are you?

Today Is The Second Day...

...of the rest of my blog life.

(Not to be, you know, melodramatic or anything.)

I am still completely pissed off and - yes, offended that the one person in all the world whose input I desired the least (well, excepting maybe my MIL) thought it was acceptable behavior to come and comment on my blog. It offends my sense of common intelligence. But then, this particular individual isn't the poster child for exceptional genius. So. There you go.

Moving on!

I am possessed with the most hateful death-bug of all time; my nose is now parched and chapped and sore from the blowing and blowing and (crying from the pain of) blowing that it's endured.

I also have a faintly worrying cough, although it's much less upsetting tonight than it was yesterday. Yesterday I was all whistly, which, if you've ever had the pewmonia, you just went, "uh-oh." Yeah, uh-oh. So I slathered Mentholatum (Medical pundits forsooth! It has always, always worked for me) on the soles of my feet, chest and back, drank lots of hot beverages, and sat around sweating while the whistling subsided and the movement started happening in my lungs. Today has been a gross-out-fest, but I'd rather be grossed out than hospitalized.

Aren't you glad I started a new blog? Now you get to hear about my cold symptoms! Woohoo!

In other news, Kate is working on something frabjous and awesometastic for - oops, can't use the old aliases anymore, so... hmmm. How about Brell? Brell will be the older kid, and Little Missy will be the younger? Okay. Kate is working on something truly cool for Brell because I won a contest. I did! I KNOW! I never win anything, and yet here I am, all winning a contest! Schweeeet!

So now, however, I have to come up with something groovy for the Little Missy. Something groovy that a knitting n00b like me can make. Uh-oh again. Oh, dear. This should be - entertaining. For other people to watch, that is. Not for me to try. Because that, that will not be entertaining for me. Unless I - I'm rambling. I'm going to stop rambling. That would be best, I think.

That's it for the moment; I shouldn't even be awake right now. Going to bed. Talk to you later!