I just had to say this.

At Wal Mart today for $9.00 I bought a new set of pajamas.

Anyone who knows me knows that I like to kick around my house in sweats and a tank top or a cute set of PJ's with pants. It's all about being comfortable at home. Nothing particularly sexy about them, just something to change into once I'm home and in for the night.

So I got this pair of pajamas. They are so cute.

They're terrycloth which makes them nice and soft.

It's pants and a tank top.

And on the front of the tank top is a picture of a slice of watermelon and a slice of kiwi fruit.

And the word:

"Juicy."

Huhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh huhuhuh huh I'm juicy huhuh huhuhuhuhuh huh.

I am going back to work.

I'm going to take this one week off and then I'm going to start my new job on 5/5. Believe me, all of the wonderful people who are telling me I should enjoy all two weeks off - I would make myself completely insane in those two weeks. So many things to procrastinate. So many things that I really need to do but will find reasons not to do. Lawns to mow, pools to fix, as it is there's cars to wash and laundry to do and mothers to spend time with and clothes to buy...

I am going back to work 5/5 unless something goes horribly, horribly wrong.

If you can believe it, my fuckhead ex employer paid me out. They paid me through the end of my two week notice and sent me on my way, handed me an empty box to pack my crap in and let me leave.

So I'm done there.

No two weeks notice.

How fucked up is that?

So. New job. What else has been going on?

About a week ago, S. came with me to Cottonwood, AZ, to meet the remainder of my family. He had already met my mom and sister and the like, and now he got to meet my grandma, aunt/uncle, cousins¡K everything went well. They all love him (of course, not the way *I* love him) and they invited him to come back for Mother¡¦s Day. Family holidays are kind of a big deal in my family, so it¡¦s important that they would invite him back. Made me very proud.

S. has now moved out of his house on the base and is into his cute little civilian apartment. It¡¦s a very nice apartment with an interesting floor plan. I like it quite a bit and it¡¦s something I probably would have rented for myself. Selfish me, I still wish we were a little closer together, or a lot closer together, or in the same spot, but everything in its own time. He¡¦s quite happy with his apartment and it¡¦s close enough to the base that he can still do his job without any terrible inconvenience. He also has cable internet now, so there should be no excuse for non-regular blog updates from him for those of my friends who have been following along. ƒº

So we spent this weekend getting him all finally moved out of the base-house and into his apartment. We crammed as much as we could into my truck and made a few good trips to the apartment. Of course he put me to work unpacking ¡V who am I kidding, anal-retentive girl I am, I was enjoying unpacking and cleaning boxes and stacking things and finding places for stuff. I just hope he can find his underwear and kitchen utensils and things like that.

The highlight of the unpacking festival might have been when I wet-dusted off the vacuum cleaner. It was a filthy, filthy appliance, and it needed a good scrubbing. Don¡¦t mock me.

We also went to Wal-Mart and got a very nice little entertainment center for his living room. We lazed around most of the weekend, watching movies, dozing, and dreaming of a time when we won¡¦t have to say goodbye on a Sunday morning or afternoon, or a Saturday morning or afternoon, only to wait another week before we can see each other.

Wouldn¡¦t It Be Lover-ly?

In relaying some information about the weekend privately to a friend of mine, I told him that S. told me this weekend that he only signed his lease for seven months instead of for a full year. When I asked him why that was, he looked at me and said, ¡§Who knows where we¡¦ll be?¡¨ Now, that might sound innocuous enough, basic, normal, logical. But when I heard that, I heard thoughts of a time when we¡¦ll be living in the same place (whether it¡¦s here, another state, or another country) and having a life together. And I relayed the discussion of putting together his new entertainment center and joking that since it was only a $40 piece of put-together furniture, it¡¦ll probably be junked ¡§when we share a space,¡¨ if we don¡¦t use it in our game room (okay, so when we dream, we dream big!). And this friend said to me, ¡§It sounds like S. makes a lot of overtures and doesn¡¦t hesitate discussing a future with you. But you don¡¦t seem to do that. Is there a reason why? You seem happy about it when he does it but I don¡¦t see you doing it.¡¨

I suppose there¡¦s a reason why.

I think S. knows how I feel about it. Each week it¡¦s harder for me. Every time I leave him any more, I hate the fact that there¡¦s another week between that moment and the next time I¡¦ll get to see him. I want to hold him every day, I want to kiss him and feel his breath as he hugs me and have long discussions about ¡§Hi honey, how was your day¡¨ and ¡§What should we have for dinner¡¨ and ¡§Do you want to see a movie on Friday¡¨ and ¡§I need to put gas in the car¡¨ and ¡§you¡¦re never going to believe what so-and-so said¡K¡¨ He knows that a life together, a long term, permanent, committed, loving, trusting life together, that¡¦s what I want. But he also knows that I¡¦m a pretty jaded creature nowadays, and I don¡¦t like to speculate.

I don¡¦t fool him, I sneak it into conversation. He¡¦s not a dumb guy. Every once in a while I¡¦ll say ¡§blah blah blah WHEN WE HAVE A HOUSE blah blah blah¡¨ almost in an effort to see how he will react. And he reacts exactly as I would dream he would, in a positive, caring, understanding, loving way, and shows me that THAT is also what he would want for us.

But things are they way they are, right now.

No Need To Hurry When I¡¦m Making Up My Mind

Everything¡¦s going to be good. I just know it¡¦s going to be. But to sum-up, there¡¦s a reason why I don¡¦t talk about it. I don¡¦t want to jinx it. I don¡¦t want it to end. I don¡¦t want to talk about it to people so I end up looking like an ass later if something terrible happens. I don¡¦t want to re-live my life the way I¡¦ve lived it every single time.

By sharing it all with S. and by not sharing it with many others, including here, it¡¦s like I¡¦m protecting myself ¡V and us ¡V from the world waking up and realizing that there¡¦s no way I¡¦m supposed to be happy. I¡¦m not supposed to be able to plan a life with anyone. I¡¦m not supposed to have this joy. I¡¦m not supposed to be looking down the barrel of the future I wanted my whole life. It¡¦s just not supposed to happen. And it¡¦s like if I talk about it too much, maybe the Universe will wake up from its blissful sleep and throw the monkey wrench into things that I pray never comes.

I¡¦m so blessed to have so many things. This love is among the many blessings.

I just don¡¦t want to have fear. Maybe I¡¦ll write about a bad dream I had about S. That might be cathartic.

But maybe this explains some things. I don¡¦t know.

Seriously.

Okay, so here's the biggest news to date.

I have a new job. On Friday I played hooky. I haven't been writing about the final stages of the job search thing here because I didn't want to jinx it and didn't want to run the risk of anyone who knows anyone who knows my boss seeing it, but on Friday I was offered a job (same place I've been interviewing) and accepted. I'm going to give my notice tomorrow, and then in two weeks will expect to start a new job.

My work has just finally gotten to the point that I can't stand it any more. I just can't. I can't go in there and pretend I feel like I'm getting rewarded. I can't go in there and be rah-rah, and I haven't been rah-rah for some time. I feel disrespected on a regular basis. I don't believe for one moment that my boss is my advocate or is even on my team. I don't think he thinks I am doing a good job, and I think he's looking for reasons to tell me I'm not to keep me under his thumb. I don't like feeling resentful of my work, or my boss, or anything.

I've felt underpaid for a few years now, and underappreciated. I have been there for four years almost to the day. And the first year I worked there, I busted my butt. I was in early every day (6:30 am or so) and didn't leave until well after 5pm. I volunteered for everything. I took on more than I could do and more than I could chew, and was thrilled about it. I really really worked hard to make myself a fixture and someone no one could live without. And I hardly got a raise. Then the next year I got **NO** raise because they froze raises for everyone and got **NO** bonus. Yet, I worked my butt off. Then, I started to get disillusioned. And went through my divorce and everything in the same year, had a not so good year. And then still...

And then there's things like - Admin Professionals day. Or week. Or whatever. Do yu know that none of the people in my department including my boss wished me a good day or a nice week or thanked me for being there? Not one. Is it a Hallmark holiday? Yes. Is it mandatory? No. Would it have been nice? Yes.

Do I work too much or too hard? Nope. Do I like to work hard? Yep. Do I like to be rewarded commensurate to my work? Yep. Lately it's been a situation where I haven't even wanted to work. I wanted to do as little as I had to do while I was there. I wasn't driven to succeed. I didn't feel like a part of a team. I don't feel like a part of a team. And that's what I want.

I feel like my team doesn't like me or appreciate me, that they don't think I do enough, and that no matter what i did, it wouldn't be enough.

So I'm leaving.

Giving notice is going to be one of the hardest things I've done in a long time. My boss and I had a really great relationship for the first couple of years I was there. I trusted him with everything and he trusted me with everything. I legitimately thought he was a friend to me, and perhaps that's where I made the mistake. I don't think it's bad to be friends with your boss, but the way he's ended up treating me goes beyond a business relationship. My relationship with him has just basically gone sour. I have a lot of theories for that. One of them is the meddling gossip of a woman I work with, who my boss became friends with about the time she started "dissing" me around the office. I think that could be a good chunk of it.

I'm like, the easiest person to please in the world, generally.

But I coudln't take it any more.

So I'm GETTING A NEW JOB!!!

What's that, you say? Some details? It's more pay, better benefits, more time off that I'll be able to spend with S., it's a longer drive and I have to start dressing up, but that's not going to be a bad thing.

I just hate the feeling that I'm going to let anyone down, even if it's my stupid boss who has lost track of the things that are important.

So, tomorrow morning I will give my notice. It's going to be interesting.

Okay.

This will be short. Because the next one will be amazingly long.

Just know I'll have some big news this weekend.

The last few days I have acted like a psychotic freak. Now before the peanut gallery goes mentioning that I am usually a psychotic freak, let me first remind you of the wackos that walk around talking to themselves in the middle of the street in the middle of the day in the bad part of town, and demonstrate that when you compare that image to how I've been, it's just not that bad.

But. I've driven my friend Maury insane, I'm certain of it. I've bossed S. around like I was his mother, which was just sick and wrong. Done out of love and everything, but sick and wrong. I've laughed, I've cried, I've threatened to kill some people by beating them with a blunt instrument, I've wanted to smack my boss around, I've not slept very well, I've ignored some people and probably emotionally abused others.

If you can count yourself among the bloody and broken bodies I've left in my wake this very emotional week, please allow me to apologize. I promise, all will be revealed after my blog entry tomorrow or Saturday. Doesn't make it right, but believe me when I say I apologize.

If you're not among the bloody and broken bodies, and just have some sick voyeuristic fetish about wanting to know what makes a crazy woman tick, well, you'll have plenty to read later.

In the meantime, swing over to S's blog if'n you want an update on mah man, as he is definitely doing a fantastic job of swimming upstream. I'm very proud of him and all he's accomplished to date. If he doesn't start blogging about it, I'm going to do it!

peez owt

I wish I believed that.

Here's what has happened in the last few days.

I spent another night at the base with S. getting him packed.

I then worked my ass off.

Then I went to work, got lectured by my boss for no reason, basically shit on, and worked my ass off.

Then I went to work, got sneered at by my boss for no reason, basically shit on, and worked my ass off.

Then I got told I have an appointment at 8:30 Friday morning to meet at the company that wants to give me a job, so they can tell me about the job they want to give me.

Then I came home and worked my ass off.

Then I had four glasses of wine (well I'm on the fourth now).

Somewhere in there I found out that my internet friend Roughy and his wife are going to have a baby. And I cried. And then I saw a "friend" of mine at work who is pregnant and she suddenly just looked very, very pregnant to me. And I cried.

And I found out someone I don't even know is pregnant with their fourth child. And I cried.

I guess I've got "baby on my mind." I get that way when I am aorund my nephew for any amount of time. I guess it's good that they are moving half way across the country.

And I cried.

Work is very lonely without Ann and Kara. I feel alone and completely stupified as to how to get through the day in that festering hellhole without them.

Also found out that the "girls" are going back to Rocky Point. This time, I am not invited. Probably has to do with freaky pothead girl who has had some kind of problem with me since we came back from Rocky Point last time. But either way, I am not invited.

At least, for that, I didn't cry.

S. moves tomorrow. I am very happy for him. He asked me if I could come over to his house on thursday but I can't because I have this job interview and I have a neurotic dog who can't stand me to be away for that long.

And I have to work to make ends meet at my second job.

And I cried.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Was reading Texas T-Bone's blog and saw he did a little self portrait project.

So I figured I should update my link on the left hand side to show my portfolio on photosig.

There, if so inclined, one may see not only pictures of my own bad self, but also some of my nature photography (of which I am VERY proud) and some shots of my nephew, my favorite model. Also a couple portraits I took recently of a friend of mine.

So. If you feel so inclined. Let's hope this works. Click away. Look at my pictures. :)

Hm... and then there's THIS...

(Someone found quizilla today)

You are a true nature girl!


Which Ultimate Beautiful Woman are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Rock on.

Hm. How about THIS...

-Perfect- You're the perfect girlfriend. Which
means you're rare or that you cheated! (Rose's note - I did NOT CHEAT!)
You're the kind of chick that can hang out with your
boyfriend's friends and be silly. You don't
care about presents or about going to fancy
places. Hell, just hang out. You're just happy
being around your boyfriend.


What Kind of Girlfriend Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I wonder if S. knows how lucky he's got it... ;-)

Ugh.

I’m chubby. Squishy. Chunky. Got a little meat on my bones. Junk in my trunk. Padding on the pillow. Voluptuous. Busty. Bulky. I have “child-bearing hips.” I’m a “big girl.” There’s more of me to love.

Aw, who am I kidding? I’m just fat.

I realized that once again, this morning, when I went to put on my nice black jeans that fit me fine at the end of December, just a smidge on the tight side, and I had to lay down on my bed to zip them.

This sucks.

I’ve been so good this week, too! Salads and yummy Chinese food vegetable stir-frys for lunch. Not eating dinner too late. I’ve had 2 glasses of wine all week, and no beer. Very little on the candy-chocolate-etc. front. I’ve upped my water intake. I worked in my yard one night this week and I’ve been on walks at work two days this week. I’ve cut my caffeine back dramatically.

And yet my pants are tighter this week than they were last week.

I can not win.

So here’s the plan. It’s a grand plan, don’t get me wrong. I have high hopes. I’m like that little death monging bloodthirsty plague carrying ant and the rubber tree plant (oh yeah, no ants seen now for two days, yay me!).

Gonna start getting up at 5:30 a.m. and exercising every day. Yes, yes, I know. Maybe I’ll start with three days a week. But gonna start getting up and exercising.

No eating of any type after 7pm.

I’ll go back to caffeine in the morning but not in the afternoons. It’ll help me get up and about and feeling good about the exercise.

Going to consider going back to the nutritionist if I can manage to afford it. Still considering going back to OA, my support group for the eating disorder thing.

Cleaning out my pantry of all miscellaneous things that might be contributing to my downfall.

Will drink 68 ounces of water a day, no exceptions.

Going to be selective about my choice of foods I eat during the week but will still let myself splurge some on the weekends when I get to spend time with S. Fresh fruits and vegetables will abound in my home. I’ve been craving celery and cucumbers and carrots. Go figure.

So that’s my grand plan, outlined for your enjoyment and for my own edification. I have to lose weight. I’m dating a younger man, and I have to keep up with him. Besides, his boss (the U.S. Government) makes him exercise every day so he can stay in shape. In addition to staying in shape and being healthy for myself, it’d be nice to think I might be able to keep him around as I age gracefully.

Nothing wrong with being a little squishy, nothing wrong with being who I am, but I can’t afford to buy new clothes. So desperate times call for desperate measures.

It’s all about the bling bling.

It appears I have gotten rid of the ants, at least temporarily. While I did see one flesh-eating little demon yesterday afternoon after my triumphant return from answering the telephones, I am sincerely hoping that they have all taken home large chunks of Combat Fire Ant Killer to their families and dined. “Look honey, what I found,” they will say. “Delicious crumbs of crunchy goodness!” And they’ll tear into them, look fondly upon one another, and die feet-up in a twitching pile of red-headed black-assed plague.

A girl can dream.

So this morning, when my “roommate” Bob came up to his desk, he said, “Hey! Hey! There’s a crawly thing in my – uh my keyboard – a crawly thing! Hey! You scared them away from you over there and they’ve migrated!” I chuckled and asked him if he wanted my canned-air-duster so he could blow out his keyboard. “Sure,” he said, “I dunno where I’m gonna blow the little guy to, but maybe it’ll be away from my fingers.” I handed Bob the canned air, and he went to town.

”pfffffffffffft. Hey. There’s some uh – I wonder what that is. pfffffffffffft. Whoa, there’s some confetti from a birthday or something. pfffffffffffft. Oh, some crumbs. pfffffffffffft. Uh, wow, that used to be uh… pfffffffffffft. Okay, there’s the bug. pfffffffffffft. Uh, some more uh, yeah. It’s just uh. Yeah. Thank you, I think that did the trick!”

And he handed me back the canned-air can, now covered in frost. I think I seared off some skin when I grabbed it from him. At least he cleaned out his keyboard. Maybe the ants that have migrated their way over to his cubicle have a meal for the afternoon now. From the looks of this can, it’s a flash-frozen meal. Maybe I will run into a family of ants downstairs trying to use the microwave.

Bob is now drowning on his own phlegm. Or at least that's what it sounds like.

"squeeeerrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnkk *snort* -gurgle-"

It is a slow day at work today. The radio is playing. I am dealing with idiots who refuse to have me “in the loop” on things that I should absolutely be in the loop on, which is just another reason why I have to get the hell out of this job.

Let’s start with ”Why I’m Ticked At Work.”

The last big mailer that we did ended up being a complete cluster-fuck because I was left out of the process until the last possible moment and then set up to fail, struggling to reach a set of completely unreachable goals and expectations. In the end, we ended up doing the mailer in a way that no one wanted to do it, and it was unimaginative, and awful, and terrible, and we got very few leads and no sales from it. This is no fault of mine. If I had been involved in the process from the beginning, my valuable input could have been a resource. I was just the clean-up artist, the one putting out the fires by the time I was brought in, and there was nothing anyone could do to fix it. It finished over budget, past deadline, and way under on the Return On Investment scale.

You can imagine my surprise when I get broadsided at the tail end of last week by a frantic salesman asking me questions about the “big mailer that’s going out on the 21st” and whether it’s going to “conflict with Chad’s mailer that’s going out on the 5th.” Of course, me having no idea what he was talking about, I had to fly off the handle a little bit and mention that of course I didn’t know anything about the mailer, because apparently my experience isn’t valuable.

Then, like clockwork, my boss goes out of town and the whole mailer schedule goes to pot. So I have two salesman screeching about how it “has to go” on the 21st, and it “can’t be late like the last one.” I have the mailing list people telling me we’re not going to have the list until the 16th or 17th. I have the advertising agency telling me they don’t know if the artwork has been approved yet (and since my boss is in New Orleans, you can do the math on that). So I do a courtesy and write my boss an email and let him know that it’s been brought to my attention that there’s a mailer, and to “let me know what I need to do to make sure it stays on track.”

The response? “Nothing, thanks.”

Interesting. Considering now it’s behind schedule and the mailing list isn’t ready and now it looks like there’s going to be a HUGE conflict on the two mailers between the 21st and the 5th. So I keep telling myself that if they leave me out of the loop and I try to get back in the loop and they keep leaving me out of the loop, then I just don’t have to worry about it.

My problem is, I know this is going to not go on time, and it’s not going to be right if it does go on time, and the salesmen can’t seem to get it in their heads that I have been deliberately left out of this loop and there is nothing I can do to help them with their timing crisis.

Even though I don’t have much to do today and could seriously bust some heavy duty ass on this concept. I could be managing the mailer in my boss’s absence.

This is why I have to leave.

Old McDonald Had A Pig. With an Oink Oink Here…

I have a “roommate” at work. He is a nice enough guy. He is, however, driving me crazy today.

400 pound Bob has had some allergies this week. Yesterday he was sneezing. All. Damned. Day. In the morning after my third “bless you,” he graciously relieved me of the duty of blessing him for the remainder of his sneezes for the day.

That was nice of him.

But for some reason he then, after being so kind to me, picked up a new and annoying habit. Bob is talking to himself. Out loud. Loud. He is reading pages on the internet to himself. He is reading pages out of his books, to himself. He is reading out loud. To himself.

Now as if that couldn’t be bad enough, since I’m having a slow day today I am tending to notice every little noise, every little thing, every nuance of office life.

Bob is squirt-snorting.

He is congested and while he is no longer sneezing today, he is making an odd, squirt-snort noise. It is as if his uvula, which I estimate weighs at least a pound or two, is clogging up the back of his throat. Maybe he snored too long last night or something, but it’s causing him to have some kind of problem breathing. So it comes out sounding like a cross between Donald Duck and Babe the Pig. Not “oink” or “snort” or “quack,” but kind of a “squeeeerrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnkkkkk” noise.

It is annoying, and it is gross.

So now I can hear him. I’m trying to drown out the noise of his reading out loud to himself, but it comes out like ”Huh. So if I go ahead and squeeeerrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnkkkkk yeah then I could always squeeeerrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnkkkkk for her. That’s really interesting. Huh. squeeeerrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnkkkkk change the page to read squeeeerrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnkkkkk and I wonder if squeeeerrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnkkkkk maybe squeeeerrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnkkkkk.”

Thank God/dess the swoosh-swoosh-lull machine isn’t on today. I might have to kill someone. Is it time for lunch yet? Can I escape?

Okay. The nice lady at SW Gas waived the deposit ("one time only") and asked me if I'd consider going on the automatic deduction plan. Of course I said I would consider it, though I am not necessarily confomrtable with it. But am considering the same-amount-payment-every-month and also with the electric company.

I also need to get Quicken.

Right f'n now.

I also need to calm down.

Seriously.

Okay, well, I know it's got to be a lyric somewhere. Right?

Southwest Gas wants a $225 deposit from me because I've been late on my bill too many times. Not disconnected. Late.

And today is the last day for me to pay before my disconnect notice so I made a payment by phone but don't know if it posted.

Why, you might ask? Not for lack of money or lack of time. Just being a stupid, stupid idiot.

So, I'm being stupid. And now I'm trying not to freak out.

Lost 8 months of remission from bulemia over this little episode. Time to pick up pieces and move on.

Seriously.

Conscious self	Overall self

Take Free Enneagram Test

Thanks, Morghanne, for the link.

There are ants everywhere here.

Not little wussy ants, either. Big, gigantic, fucking ants with red heads and black asses. They're huge. And they're everywhere. And they're crawling all over me. No, I am not shitting anyone, but am going to end up shitting my PANTS if this keeps up.

They are everywhere. They are on my computer. They are on my wall. They are on my desk. They are in my paperwork. They are on ME. Yes, the little fuckers are crawling on me.

And they're mean. Goddamn little assholes, they are, and I'm done dealing with it.

This morning after I killed about 12, I went to the building maintenance guy and got some ant-bait granules, cleaned off my desk, blew it off with that canned-air stuff, wiped everything down, got underneath my desk (ants fucking crawling on me) and rearranged things under there, and sprinkled the sprinkles. I sprinkled them everywhere. I pulled filing cabinets out from the wall. I put them behind the cubicle panels. I put them under chairs and behind the handy decorative table just outside my cube. And then for good measure I sprinkled them all around up here.

I have a little problem with bugs, and my OCD-like-symptoms are in overdrive as a result of these. Fucking. Ants.

So now, there are ant granules everywhere, and the little fuckers don't seem very interested in the ant granules. Because they are still crawling on my desk. I don't know how much more of it I can take. I actually let out a bloodcurdling scream earlier today when one of them was trying to make his way up my arm and underneath the sleeve of my shirt. That would have sucked moldy, moldy ass, and I would probably have been eaten alive by the flesh-eating little pukes.

So. I'm having trouble concentrating on anything. Just when I get started working on something, something else happens and another ant comes winding his way over the cubicle wall. They have now taken to magically appearing on my arms and wrists, which is particularly disturbing because it means somehow their superior ant intellect is allowing them to sneak up on me. It's pretty hard to sneak up on me, especially if you're little and multi-legged with strange antennae and a thirst for blood... especially if it's my blood.

I am particularly disturbed with the idea that they like my arms, as if they are little ant-audobahn-racers running up and down them. I keep screeching and thrashing about, and people are staring at me funny (in a more funny way than they usually do).

And before anyone gets any brilliant ideas and decides to suggest that maybe I'm having creepy-crawlie hallucinations as part of my detox from the beer-festival the other night, let me just say, ha-fricking-ha. These are ants, they're real, I've been bit before by the freaking ants that come in this freaking building, and if the fumes from the ant-killing-granules don't kill me first, surely these little spawn of hell will be the death of me.

Bleah.

I'm pathetic.

I'm re-reading yesterday's blither and realizing I kind of half-way talked about something. Let's discuss Cody.

Cody is my dog, he's a border-collie sheltie mix. My ex husband and I got him from the pound one day when we went "just to look." Little did we know when we brought home this one year old dog, that he was going to be quite a handful. Over the next year we had to free him of the need to submissively piss himself every time one of us came home, to pee on everything in the house, to pee on me, he peed everywhere. It was insane. Finally when we got him a buddy, Rocky (who has since passed away of cancer and has been replaced with Boomer), he stopped his little pee-festival but it was still hard. Cody is also very much a man's dog, and without a man in the house he doesn't much know what to do with himself. That's why it didn't really surprise me when he started getting very attached to S.

Cody needs special time. He is my special needs dog. I have to have special one-on-one Cody time every day, whether it's an extra few minutes in the morning before I go to work or an extra few minutes when I get home in the evening. He needs some extra one on one attention or he starts to exhibit his neurotic tendencies. He's glued to me when I'm home, unless S. is at the house and then he's starting to be glued to S. He needs attention.

That's why I was surprised but not surprised, that when I came home from having spent the night with S., that Cody came in the house, looked right at me, walked across the hall into the guest room, and lifted his leg and peed there. And then he just walked right past me like nothing was wrong. Wait, let's back up a minute, NO PEEING IN THE GODDAMNED HOUSE.

I'm sure it's because I was gone and S. was gone and he was just - he's having issues.

Still makes me feel like a bad doggie mama.

I am too old for this shit.

S. let me come out to the base last night, which was a huge honour in itself. He vouched for me to get on, kind of I think as a kneejerk "in your face" reaction to freedom, not caring about whether or not his neighbors saw us together at his house. Which is very nice. So I showed up there, he got me on the base, we got pizza, and started drinking beer.

And we drank lots of beer.

After about seven hours of pizza munching, beer drinking, I think a glass of wine or two, and lots and lots of music, we went to bed as the sun came up. Fortunately for my old can't-drink-so-much-any-more ass, S. had the presence of mind to force-feed me a Motrin and a bunch of water before I hit the bed. Oddly enough, I think I was of no good to anyone, because all of a sudden it was 11am and the clock was going off, and my head was going to explode, and my stomach did somersaults. Yes, I even got a little pukey. I haven't done that from too-much-drink in many, many years. I'm just too old.

I left his house at around 1:45 this afternoon, came straight home, and went straight to bed. I slept until almost 8pm, had some more water, ate a little something, desperately was craving something I haven't had in an incredibly long time that's unlike me to crave - fried chicken. Why the hell would I be hung over and feel like fried chicken sounded GOOD to me?! Gah.

So we were up half the night - or all night - drinking, talking - I think the more time we spend together like that the more we realize that (a) we're both in it for the long haul, and (b) we are both really determined to be there for one another, and (c) we really do just have a ton in common. The world around us is changing with leaps and bounds, and it seems to be only making us stronger.

Babylon.

I wonder if I'm going to get a job offer this week.

The biggest trade show of the next six months is going on right now. I have not heard from my boss. That's a good thing. Hopefully everything will be okay.

S. said something about us taking on a musical project or two together. We sang together (again) at his house and I'm honestly pretty thrilled to say that our voices mesh really well.

This whole thing with Cody is bothering me. That he would pee in the house right in front of me. He's VERY attached to S., and I'm sure this whole little acting-out thing was due to S. leaving, me spending the pm with my mother, then turning around and being gone overnight. He's quite neurotic and is definitely my "special needs child." He doesn't like being left alone, which has caused all kinds of problems in the past with him. When I was spending lots of time away from the house (every weekend) he turned in to quite a handful, and I would come home to messes and problems and chewed up stuff... I hope he comes to adjust, and it's nice to know that S. and I can try to break up the seeing-each-other-time in some way that's fair. It makes me feel like a bad doggie mama.

S. gets to meet the rest of my family next weekend.

Now I'm just rambling.

MY MOM'S TUMOR IS BENIGN!!!!!

Must go now and drink large margarita, eat large meal and see funny movie.

Will write more later.

Thank you to all who kept her in your thoughts. I greatly appreciate it and believe I might owe her life to the power of positive energy.

Thank you.

I forgot to mention that my nephew now makes a mumbled strange noise based on consonants and vowels that my sister swears is my name. It kind of sounds like, "shhhwowoow."

They inist he's talking about me.

Last night, S. asked me a question.

I was telling him about my day at the hospital and my mom and some of the stuff she said, and some of the things that my sister said. You see, in an effort to not have to talk about my mother’s impending pathology cancer test results and whether or not she’s ill, we ended up talking about me. That’s okay, I have my days where I’m narcicisstic and everything, and sometimes it’s nice when everything’s about me. So I went along with it to a point. But when the conversation started to get judgmental, you know, I had to nip that shit in the bud.

So anyway. He says to me – and I took this as the biggest compliment in the world:

”How did you grow up in a family full of superficial freaks and still end up being normal?

Wow. Normal. Me? Normal?

I can honestly say I have never considered myself quite normal. Perhaps S’s concept of “normal” is based on his own (lovable, wonderful, adorable, desirable, good good good) abnormalities, and therefore, since we have them in common, to him I only SEEM normal.

Who thought I was NORMAL when I was 13 years old and would sit in the office room for hours at a time on my little Macintosh computer and a 300 baud modem typing furiously to the SysOp at the other end of the phone line at the Garden of Eden BBS, Phoenix, Arizona?

Who thought I was NORMAL when I was 14 years old and hosted a GT (“Get Together”) of the Phoenix CoCoNet BBS (a CoCo was a Radio Shack Color Computer, very high tech at that time) and people came to my house, set up card tables, and their computers, and swapped software and talked about interesting technological developments and ate food and hung out for an entire Saturday afternoon?

Who thought I was NORMAL when I couldn’t manage to get invited to any of my Homecoming dances (4), nor my Junior prom, nor my Senior prom, nor anyone else’s Junior or Senior prom with the exception of being a pity date for my friend Scott, who was a high ranking “officer” in his high school’s ROTC and got canceled on about a week and a half before his prom and couldn’t not go… I was a fill-in. We got pictures. My dress was a baby blue satin number, to the floor, with rosettes on the sleeves… quite attractive, if you ask me… but I still couldn’t have gotten a date to save my life.

Who thought I was NORMAL when I named my first Betta fish “Nihil” in honor of “Nihilism,” a belief philosophy founded on the idea that values, themselves, are baseless and worthless, and existence itself should be condemned and/or destroyed? Maybe I was more normal when I named my ferret, “Mouse.”

Who thought I was NORMAL when I went to science-fiction and fantasy conventions and ran around in short skirt outfits and metallic silver lame’ pirate wench costumes and actually had the forethought to volunteer with a bunch of my friends to work security at said events? Every year? For many years? Three times a year?

Who thought I was NORMAL when I played AD&D every weekend with a gaggle of friends and branched out into other RPG’s like Champions, Warhammer, ShadowRun, or any game I could get my hands on?

Who thought I was NORMAL when I started outing myself as a practicing Pagan to my friends?

Who thought I was NORMAL when I got married to an abusive drug addict?

My family never thought I was normal. No matter what I did. Fat or thin, young or older, smart or stupid, anything I ever did or said was pretty much held against me when I was growing up. I was too emotional. Or I wasn’t socially well-adjusted. Or I wasn’t thin enough. Or my boobs were too big. Or I didn’t work hard enough.

My sister ran around having sex and drinking beer and getting carried home at 2:30 am by her friends when they would triumphantly announce, “We didn’t let her drive home, but we don’t know where her truck is!” My sister had discussions about smoking pot in Mexico while I was in the next room rolling a d20 to find out where the crossbow bolt landed on Harvey Hit Chart. My sister drank bourbon whiskey out of the bottle before going roller skating and re-filled it with iced tea. Or any clear spirit like rum, gin or vodka, and refilled it with water. My sister had the New Years Party From Hell, where half the attendees ended up puking vaguely pink homemade jungle juice on my mom’s green Astroturf patio carpeting after I diligently told her that I thought adding “more everclear and more vodka” to the Kool-Aid in the cooler would be a “bad idea.”

My sister left home at the age of 18 to go live in Boynton Beach, Florida with a man older than twice her age, where she cooked him ham hocks and black eyed peas in the crock-pot and kept the house nice-ahn-tiiiidy for him while he was up the street bullshitting with the boys over an ice-cold Milwaukee’s Best, purely to “show” my parents that she was an adult and could handle her own life. My sister had lots and lots of sex, and lots and lots of drink, and lived lots and lots of life by the time she was 21.

I remember my dad asking my sister, when I was 20-21 and still a virgin, if I were gay. Because you know, in my family, the only idea worse than me being a tree hugging environmentalist bleeding heart liberal left wing Democrat, was the idea that I might be all of that. And gay.

(Of course, I was not a bleeding heart liberal left wing Democrat. I was, however, a tree hugging environmentalist, and I am not gay. S. and any boyfriend or husband that came before him can testify to that, as can the idea that I have never had a girlfriend. And one of my best friends is gay, so I don’t want to hear any suggestions that I might not be gay-friendly.)

So. Not gay. But a virgin. I can’t believe my father actually suggested that I might not “like men in that way,” because I wasn’t screwing everything that moved. I also remember being 17 or so and my mom sitting me down and telling me that ‘Sex between two people is an expression of love, and it’s perfectly normal and perfectly fine to have sex if you want to have sex, as long as you use protection.” AIDS had just hit the planet in the last few years before my mid to late teens, and condoms weren’t yet chic. People were just afraid.

I remember my mom being more worried I was going to come home from a science fiction convention with another sword or another Buckaroo Banzai T-shirt, and not that I was going to come home with a hangover. She never had to worry about that stuff with me. Interesting that I’d say I probably drink five times more than my sister now.

My sister acted out against my parents’ authority at every turn. I did not. I hear that’s the thing those young whippersnappers do – act out against their parents. Maybe that’s why they thought I was abnormal. It might have been the gaming and the computers and the book-worm-ness and the fact that I ran around with lots and lots of boys and was having sex with none of them.

But S. thinks I’m normal.

I will say one thing. It took me a long time to be able to like myself. I think I hated myself until about my 22nd birthday or so. Perhaps part of being a “normal adult” (I hold a job, I pay my bills, I take care of things, I find time to help other people, I manage to hold my shit together) is liking or loving myself.

And maybe I’ll only get more normal through the love of others. My friends have always accepted me and have been my “family” when my regular family wouldn’t accept me. Maybe that’s how I managed to be normal.

I couldn’t do it without my friends and loved ones. And I couldn’t get myself through what’s going on in my life right now and still be normal without the folks I talk to every day. You’ll know if you’re one of them. There’s not many.

And S. Couldn’t be normal without S. either.

Now, then. I’m tired. And hungry. And oddly, a little horny. I was reading MiaMorghanne’s blog (same litterpan different day) and got all happy about my labia and my clitoris and my vagina and my breastessssessss and my ability to give and receive sexual pleasure. I wonder if we have a good date tonight, and dinner’s good and the movie’s good, if S. will be okay with the idea of me putting out…

I’m thinking that won’t be much of a problem. Yay, me!

Hi, all.

Sorry I haven’t written. Lots of things going on. First of all to those of you who have asked me when S. is going to write in his blog, and update everyone on his situation, let me just tell you that I’ve been on him about it and if he’s not going to listen to his woman, there isn’t a whole hell of a lot I can do. I told him again today that he has to blog about this stuff, mainly because if he doesn’t I want to, and I don’t want to steal his thunder. This is, after all, quite a soap opera… you can’t leave things just hanging out there on a cliffhanger for too long or people start to forget what happened last. So, he’s got to get with the program and start writing or I’m gonna write for him! Bwahahahahah! I am in control! Bow before me! Serve me! Do my bidding! uhhhhh… I’m sorry, was that my outside voice?

Well, let’s see. With regard to my “appointment” on Monday afternoon, I think everything went well. I showed up a few minutes early, got comfortable, met with a few different people and took a bunch of different tests. The interview portion of the pageant went well, but not all of the judges were clear about how my answers made them feel. Tried to avoid the whole “world peace” standard answer scenario, figured I’d just be myself, and all I can do is hope it went over okay.

Frankly, the one man I had to interview with is the only one I can’t totally put my finger on how he’d feel about me. I think he’d appreciate me as a person but he didn’t really let on one way or another any particular “thing” during the interviews, and while he was cordial, I didn’t feel any real connection with him. I think he did that on purpose, and that’s really okay, it’s a pretty standard interview technique. I just don’t like not being able to read people, and since this will probably come down to his decision, it made it a little rough for me. Now, all I can do is wait.

And wait. And wait. And wait.

S. actually lectured me the other day about being able to be in a place where I don’t have to struggle and stress about all of this stuff. I’ve been tired as hell lately, wanting to crash at about 9:30 or 10:00 and that’s really unusual for me. I’m a midnight girl, typically. And I appreciate S’s perspective on all of this, and I’m glad he’s sticking by me, but I guess it can be a little hard to hear that kind of advice from anyone when you’re just freaking yourself out with stress.

I actually had kind of a daydream the other day about having the new job. I was standing in my new cubicle figuring out where my cd player was going to go, where to put my feng shui soothing water fountain, where to put the pictures of me and Shawn… how to add my own little personal touches to the area to make it my own. I suppose that’s good, right?

My mom has a CT-scan guided needle biopsy this Thursday morning, which is tomorrow, and I will be taking her to the hospital for that. We still don’t really know anything.

I wish I knew what else to write about right now, but I’m kind of at a loss for words.

Yeah yeah, I know, no comments from the peanut gallery regarding my “loss for words,” please.

Why, Georgia, Why?

JOHN MAYER AND COUNTING CROWS ARE COMING HERE ON JULY 21ST AND I MUST SEE THAT SHOW, I MUST SEE IT, I MUST SEE IT, I MUST BE THERE, I MUST SEE IT, I MUST BE THERE.

And I won’t be there, because Chad is telling me he’s looking at $125 EACH for Counting Crows/John Mayer tickets, and I won’t pay $125 to see them, and I won’t pay $250 for two people to see them, and I won’t pay $50 to stand on the grass at the lawn at the back of the Cricket Pavilion.

And I also won’t be seeing Jack Johnson in August at the Dodge Theatre, because I will not pay $50 ($38 plus Ticketmaster fees) to fight for a general admission seat to see him, either.

So. Another year with no concerts.

That is all.

My morning checklist. At least for today.

Get up --- check.
Let dogs out to pee -- check.
Pet cat -- check.
Turn on coffee machine -- check.
Shower -- check.
Pour coffee -- check.
Pet cat -- check.
Look at the fish and say good morning -- check.
Listen to music -- check.
Drink coffee -- check.
Check Yahoo for S. to see if he is, for some reason, online -- check.
Sit wrapped in towel in front of blog doing mah thang -- check.

Now, next on the list are:

Check interview suit for 100th time.
Dry hair.
Skip makeup in lieu of illusion I have nothing important to do this afternoon when I leave.
Get dressed in jeans and warm comfy shirt.
Drink more coffee.
Fill travel cup with yet more coffee.
Go to work.

Then, the list this afternoon is:

Leave work at noon.
Come home.
Put my face on.
Do my hair cute.
Wear jewelry.
Change watches.
Put on high heels.
Get in the car.
Drive to the interview.
Kick ass.

Then, the list turns into the more mundane:

Stop at pool store and get assloads of chemicals.
Put them in the pool.
Call everyone who cares and tell them about my interview.
Feed the fish.
Feed the cats.
Feed the dogs.
Be proud.

I'm nervous.

Bah.

Well. After talking to my mom and getting chewed out for bothering to try to involve her in something in my life, and after talking briefly with S. and getting a mini-lecture about how I need to calm down and quit worrying about everything, I am sitting here sipping a cider, I'm done with my work for the day, and I am frustrated as hell.

They say the truth will set you free. So.

Today I ate:

About a third of a bag of trader joe's brand honey mustard potato chips that I smuggled out of gaming group yesterday. A baked potato that was left over from dinner on friday. Two pieces of asparagus from same. Three pieces of Toblerone chocolate. And a cheese Totino's party pizza, which i baked to a crispy brown on my pizza stone. I also drank a bunch of diet coke.

The bad thing is those chips. They've set me off and my mind is racing and I'm just, in general, kind of ticked off.

You see, despite my honesty, I have some strange delusion that's tainting my perceptions of things. Let me lay it out for you.

The Comedy, Is That It's Serious.

All of my professional clothes have shrunk. Four years ago when I took the job where I work, I had a job where I had to dress up every day in polyester slacks and business suits, skirts and hose, I had to dress up. Every day. And I am now supposed to be a minimum of 20 pounds and a maximum of 35 pounds lighter than I was at that point (I wouldn't know, I am not allowed to own a scale - if you don't know why, ask and I'll tell you) and none of those clothes fit.

My boobs are bigger than they were then, apparently, because none of my expensive blazers will button. My ass is bigger than it was, apparently, because two-thirds of the pairs of pants I own no longer fit my ass.

Since we all know (don't we?) that it's not possible for a human being to lose that much weight and somehow have a wider spread-of-ass, the only logical conclusion is that all of my clothes shrunk.

It might have something to do with the fact that I am, frankly, older now. I was 29 then. I have passed the miraculous 30 mark. They say bad things happen to you when you turn 30. S. talks about it all the time - how he's "almost 30" and his metabolism is hitting that miracle-wall that we all find exactly on our 30th birthdays. That, apparently, is when we start to get old. So maybe that's it. Maybe I've just lost ... "tone?" Maybe it's the "Secretary's Spread?"

All I know is, there should be 30 pounds less of me to fit in these fuckin clothes, and they're not. I now have a bunch of stuff I have to take back to various and sundry stores.

It All Amounts To Nothing In The End.

At least if I get this job, I can legitimately go and buy some clothes that will fit me in anticipation of looking fabulous, and then I will lose ten or fifteen pounds as fast as humanly possible, and then I will go shopping in my own damned closet. It's amazing. I'm so pissed.

I'm mad about my mom. I'm mad about work. I'm nervous about this job interview. I'm scared about my mom. I'm happy about S. and what's going on with him. I'm thrilled for my friends who get to leave where I work and don't have to work there any more. I'm sad my sister is leaving. I'm confused about so many things. Where I'm going. What I'm doing. Where I'm going to be in two or three years. I have so many things I want to do in my life, and it seems like the older I get, the less likely I am to get where I want to be.

So many things out of my control. For a control freak, that's bad.

Seriously.

Nothing fits.

News flash. Nothing fits.

I'm so screwed.

I have this job interview tomorrow and the only two things that really fit me WELL are the two things I can't wear - one's a long winter skirt suit and the other one is the suit I already wore.

I can't believe I'm in this predicament. This sucks.

I've been home for a little while now and I guess I have to go back out.

To shop more.

This sucks.

2:00 pm on Monday.

Job interview.

I've put in my PTO sheet (that's Paid Time Off for people who don't work in overly-paperworked corporate cubicle environments) for half a day on Monday. I'll leave here at noon, go home, change (clothes, not like, my personality in general) and go do my thang.

Because you know, I am the new hotness. I'm the shit, yo. What it is, what it was, and what it shall BE!

Palabra.

Thank you all for your patience with my lack of posting. I got off the phone with my mother this morning, and she’s going to have a CT-scan guided biopsy on Thursday morning the 10th at 7:00 a.m. I’m going to take her to the hospital.

For those of you who know me, you’ll acknowledge that the fact that I will be even setting foot in a hospital is a huge accomplishment for me. I’m afraid of hospitals, I’m afraid of doctors, I’m afraid of needles, I’m afraid of large medical machines that go “beep beep beep,” I’m generally afraid of anything that can be remotely considered healthcare-related, in the real-life scenario.

I can watch hip replacement surgery on the “blood and guts hospital emergency channel,” and call my friend on the phone and say “Hey, put it on the blood and guts channel, it’s surgery!”

Reminds me of a Will and Grace episode I saw once where Will and Jack were fighting over the remote for the TV, debating whether to watch “Mariah Carey Behind The Music” or “Rumpole Of The Bailey” – and Grace came flying into the room and said, “PUT IT ON THE SURGERY CHANNEL, THEY’RE RE-ATTACHING SOME WOMAN’S SCALP!” And Will said “You’ve seen that twelve times,” and Grace says, “Yeah – but every time I get a little farther. Like, this last time, I actually got to the part where they –“ and she snatches the remote from Will’s hand and clicks the TV to the surgery channel, and they all leap about three inches off the couch and scream in unison, ”AAAAAIIIIIUUUUUURRRRRGGGGHHHHOOOOOOHHHHHHH!”

That’s me. “Hey! Put it on the guts and gore channel, they’re cutting a twelve pound tumor out of this lady’s - AAAAAIIIIIUUUUUURRRRRGGGGHHHHOOOOOOHHHHHHH!”

My mom had a hysterectomy when I was about… 18 or 19. And I remember being in the recovery room with her, my serious boyfriend at the time, my sister, and I think maybe my grandmother. And my mom, laying there, sliced open like a filleted fish with staples sewing her together, tubes and wires everywhere, and medical clack-clack-beep-beep machines doing their thing, coming out of anesthesia and probably feeling run over by a mack truck, had to stop and ask if I was okay. Why? Because the sight of her in the hospital, the smell of the sterile surroundings, the visual provided by tubes and lights and bandages and nurses and beds with little comfort controls on them, caused me to get woozy and I fell over. Literally. I passed out, I fainted, in the recovery room. And I hear my mother croak from under her anesthetized haze, “Tell Rose to put her head between her knees. It’ll help her not be dizzy. Is she okay?”

So I’m going to take her to the hospital, be there while they sedate her, be there while they take a needle biopsy of the mass in her lung, and drive her home, where my sister will probably be waiting at her house to take care of her the rest of the day so I can go back. To. Work.

I haven’t gotten a call yet on the second interview for that job, but still have hope. Plan to wear new slacks, blue blazer, look real sharp. Just a matter of time. I will be patient.

S. got approved for his apartment, which is going to be 13 miles closer to my house than his current housing situation, and close to the freeway. So that’s going to be good. The money thing seems to be working itself out, as since he’s active USAF lots of places are waiving deposits. So he’s going to be able to get moved in with pretty much no cash outlay plus he got a first-month-rent-free deal from the apartment place. I’m so happy for him, he’s like a kid on Christmas morning with the floor plan and his thoughts about how it’s going to be and how he can’t wait. Plus hopefully we’ll get to see each other a little more as a result, as I will be able to stop in there from time to time or spend a weeknight every once in a while. I wish there were a better way to handle my pet situation but with the zoo I have now, I can’t be gone from the house for two days at a time on a regular basis. The cats couldn’t care less but the dogs go a little crazy, and I get afraid I’m going to come home – again – as I have many times before – and find them out of the yard. That would suck.

So. That’s kind of it for now. I guess I’ll get back to work, since I should be working. My boss hasn’t bothered to show up yet this morning, he had to “meet the pool man.” I don’t know if that’s an obscure reference to something far more sinister or leading to visual images I just don’t want to foster in my own brain relating to my boss, or if he did, in fact, have to meet the pool man. But it’s 11:00 am here, and I have no word from The Man, so things have been kind of willy nilly on my priority meter today.

Oh and look. A Federal Express envelope just showed up on my desk full of trade show shit. This makes… (counting in my head)… eight straight work days of trade show shit. I love this time of year.

Off to sell the sizzle, not the steak. Peace out.

So I’m driving down the road and I hear this song. And it was really cool. I liked it. The imagery was good. And then I forgot all about it. Until right now, so I had to go find the lyrics for it. Read and enjoy. Music touches me.

Remedy – Jason Mraz

I saw fireworks from the freeway and behind closed eyes I cannot make them go away
Cause you were born on the fourth of july, freedom ring
now something on the surface it stings
that something on the surface it kind of makes me nervous who says that you deserve this
and what kind of god would serve this? We will cure this dirty old disease
if you've got the poison I've got the remedy

the remedy is the experience. It is a dangerous liaison
I say the comedy is that its serious. Which is a strange enough new play on words
I say the tragedy is how youre gonna spend the rest of your nights with the light on
So shine the light on all of your friends because it all amounts to nothing in the end.

I wont worry my life away.
I wont worry my life away.

I heard two men talking on the radio in a cross fire kind of new reality show
Uncovering the ways to plan the next big attack
they were counting down the days to stab the brother in the be right back after this
the unavoidable kiss, where the minty fresh death breath is sure to outlast his catastrophy
dance with me, because if you've got the poison, I've got the remedy

the remedy is the experience. It is a dangerous liaison
I say the comedy is that its serious. Which is a strange enough new play on words
I say the tragedy is how youre gonna spend the rest of your nights with the light on
So shine the light on all of your friends because it all amounts to nothing in the end.

I wont worry my life away.
I wont worry my life away.

When I fall in love I take my time
There's no need to hurry when I'm making up my mind
You can turn off the sun but I'm still gonna shine and I'll tell you why
Because

the remedy is the experience. It is a dangerous liaison
I say the comedy is that its serious. Which is a strange enough new play on words
I say the tragedy is how you're gonna spend the rest of your nights with the light on
So shine the light on all of your friends because it all amounts to nothing in the end.

I wont worry my life away.
I wont worry my life away.
I wont and I wont and I wont

My mom has a two inch mass in her right lung. They want to do a biopsy. That will be handled in the next three to ten days.

That's pretty much it.

I'm trying out a new comments engine. Let's see if it works - someone comment, eh.

Thanks.

Okay so it's a country song. Shoot me.

Once again, in a fit of PMS-inspired stress-related psychosis, I did something that by all rights I should have gotten nailed for last night, and I want to talk about it here and get it off my chest because I can't say how bad I feel about it.

There's a lot going on with me, including things I haven't written about here. On top of that, I am not feeling particularly well physically because of PMS and impending period. When I'm under stress and not eating well et al, and then I'm having the PMS thing on top of that, it seems to make it ten times worse. And when things like that start to pile up, for some reason I wake up one day and turn into Selfish Girl. And I'm not, Selfish Girl. But yesterday, I was.

Without giving a lot of details, S. has someone in his past that I have nothing to do with. It was over before I came along. He's been working on "getting rid of her" for quite a while now and she periodically pops back up, kind of refusing to take the hint and go away. And last night was no exception, she kind of "randomly popped up." And he let her have it, again. And I found a way to make that about me. I made it about whether or not he had told her about me (which he can't yet, as she is related to the military and could cause serious problems for him). And I made it about whether or not *I* was comfortable talking about his past. And I made it about whether or not *I* compare myself to every memory of every woman who's ever come before me. Which I don't typically do. Unless you know, I'm insane.

Like now.

So I wanted to apologize here publicly to S. for doing that, and thank him for being incredibly patient and understanding. And I wanted to just say that I recognize that as a shortcoming of mine and thta I have to work on it. Hopefully I can get it handled. I'm not usually like that. There are people who can testify to that fact. I just don't know if they'll choose to.

Psycho signing off.

Yes. That’s a lyric. It’s the Beastie Boys. I am old.

Let’s talk about Geraldo, who is embedded with the 101st somewhere in Iraq. This guy – have you read it yet? This pompous asshole, this arrogant dickwad, had his cameraman pan down into the sand where he drew a map of Iraq.

Then, he made a dot to show where Bagdhad was.

Then, he made a dot to show where the 101st was. EXPOSING THEIR POSITION.

Then, he made ARROWS showing where their new orders said they were going to have to go! He exposed RELEVANT DETAILS of a military operation over international TV, in direct conflict with the very simple rules that embedded journalists are required to follow when traveling with forces in a conflict.

What. The. Fuck.

So then the Pentagon gets a little pissed. Because let’s face it, these are our elite fighting forces and they’re closing on Bagdhad and they’re there to kick some ass as efficiently as possible. And he has basically just endangered the entire group of men and women who are there to do a job. For some ratings or whatever.

Author’s note: If I were watching CNN… which I’m not supposed to be… or Fox News… which I’m not supposed to be… then I would probably be able to comment here that those people who are watching those broadcasts hear over and over again from “embedded journalists” that say – straight-forward – ”I can’t tell you where we are right now, because of strict rules that apply to embedded journalists in a conflict. We aren’t allowed to provide any information that could endanger or jeopardize the mission.”

So. The Pentagon gets a little pissed. Because you know, now you’re fucking with the mission and risking lives. So they start the ball rolling to get his egotistical fuckwad ass expelled from Iraq. And he has the balls to comment to someone and suggest that it’s an evil rumor started by “some rats at [his] former network” (meaning, NBC) to make him seem like he’s not reliable or whatever. But today the Pentagon said, oh yes, whether or not he wants to believe it, he’s being forcibly ejected.

Because he endangered lives.

For TV ratings.

THAT is why this war shouldn’t be on television. I am all for the exchange of information and I am all for truth in advertising, but let’s be realistic. So much can go wrong so fast. People make assumptions and stories get twisted. I’d rather hear my facts cold and hard, not soft and hot and fast. I want to know what really happened, not speculation. I am getting bottle-fed this information and it’s making me into an instant-gratification junkie. Which is a rant for a whole different time, I’m sure.

Kick Geraldo’s ass out. Keep the men and women there safe. They’ve got a job to do – let them do it. Maybe they’ll get home quicker and maybe it’ll keep some folks here from having to go.

Period.