I have nothing nice to say.
Current mood: irritated
Category: Life

I tried to have some fun and the culture police came and ruined it.

I am tired of everyone else's views.  I am interested in mine.

Mike, if you don't like the Twilight series (and I doubt you read the books), don't go to the movie.  I'm sorry we don't all have your exquisite taste.

Krista, if you don't like myspace, don't use it.  Same goes for you, Bri.  It is a tool.  If you have a better one up your sleeve, feel free to unleash it upon the world.

Natasha, you earned your vacation so I guess I can't really hate on that.

Dave, you're probably going to San Diego on business so I can't really hate on that either.

Brenda, you went somewhere?  Where did you go?  I'm sorry you're sick.

Everyone who doesn't like Starbucks: don't go there.

Nigel: you cannot go outside and play with the other cats because your dad says so and that's final.

The rest of you fuckers: if you don't have something nice or at least entertaining to say to me, shut the hell up.  I have had it with all of you, even the ones I haven't met yet.  The remainder of this year will be filled with sweetness and light, and if that's not on your agenda, you can fuck the fuck off and I'll see you next year maybe.

2:28 PM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

I hate you people.
Current mood: jealous
Category: Life

San Francisco.  San Diego.  St. Augustine.  The Bahamas.

WHEN DO I GET TO GO SOMEWHERE?!

Or, for that matter, when can I have a vacation that doesn't involve hospitals and/or death?

I hate 2008.  Except for the election.  And a couple bright spots here and there.  But mostly hate.

6:34 PM - 6 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

When was the last time I posted something positive? Ready? K here we go.

Puppies.

3:26 AM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Go go gadget emo.
Current mood: desolate
Category: desolate Life

Get this: I'm not looking forward to therapy tomorrow because I don't want to admit to my therapist that I'm not doing so hot lately.  Stupid, I know.

Got my little heart stomped on.

Moving into a new place tomorrow.

My brother and nieces, who I thought were moving back to Orlando in time for Christmas, will not be moving here after all.

One of my friends is in jail.

Little snippets of info that don't add up to this crushing misery, yet there it is.

Currently listening : The Bends By Radiohead Release date: 1995-04-04

2:04 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Got ’er done.
Current mood: calm
Category: Life

I tried to blog right after I heard about dad's death, but it was incoherent.  I was just stuttering out obvious things like "He was important to me".  Think I can do it today though.

Overall the trip went very well.  My family was incredibly helpful and kind.  In fact, the whole community was.  The funeral home was more than reasonable.  My dad's neighbors and friends bent over backward to make things easy for us.  There was a small legal snag since dad didn't have a will, but it's just beaureaucracy, not anyone being intentionally malicious.  A lot of people came for the funeral, including one of my dad's old buddies from St. Louis, which is a few hours away from Campbell, where the service was held.  He said he would've driven to hell if necessary.  <3

I'm so glad Brian and my brother went with me.  Bill handled a lot of the tedious work, like selling my dad's junk to scrap yards, and Brian was my rock, as usual.  I didn't tell any of the fam up there about the coming divorce.  I think they wouldn't have understood.  They're all married, babymaking churchgoers and as much as they like me in small doses, I think they'd shun me if they really got to know me and my liberal ways.

So this man who is buying dad's land from us suggested we might like to keep a small piece of it for ourselves.  Hearing this?  The guy who's buying the property offered to let us keep a chunk of it.  This crap doesn't happen in Florida.  We're keeping an acre (whatever that means in feet, I have no idea) in a pleasant spot with access to the road.  We had no choice but to sell the rest of it, really.  It's the only way we could pay for the funeral.  The guy who's buying it is giving us enough that we'll be able to pay for the funeral AND the legal fees we're going to have AND there'll be a tiny bit leftover for each of us.  Because we had dad cremated, several people gave us money instead of flowers, so we were able to afford the gas, food and time off from work to take the trip.  My mind is blown, really, at how generous everyone up there was, in a supposedly economically depressed area.  We never had to pay for a hotel room.  Church friends of my aunt provided an embarassingly huge amount of food.  I think I gained ten pounds while there.  Oodles of people came out of the woodwork to tell me how much they liked my dad.  Many with tears in their eyes.  It was amazing.

And now I have him with me in a Ziploc bag, in a black plastic box, until I get a neat urn online to put him in.  We sprinkled some of him over his parents' graves, while making a lot of tasteless jokes.  I plan to sprinkle a bit of him in the ocean, mostly because I love it there.  I'll think for a while about other places to scatter him.  Wish I'd had mom cremated too, but the funeral home we dealt with in Kentucky (who charged us TWICE as much as dad's) made it sound like it would take us weeks, and I didn't have weeks to wait.  It doesn't matter, really, the place she's buried is very nice.  I'd rather have her here though, on a shelf, next to dad.

I liked the quiet in Campbell, the green fields.  I shot a rifle (and hit my target, thanks very much) and rode a motorcycle.  Fished a little, got poison ivy (I think) and picked ticks off of grateful dogs.  Found some cool pictures, chilled with my nieces, held a pet chicken.  :)  It was a good week. 

12:44 PM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Ex rant.
Current mood: teary
Category: teary Life

Woke up feeling off-kilter again.  Slept too long, too deeply.  Vivid dreams about an alternate universe what-could-have-been scenario with Jim.  At first I felt sad but it's turning into anger.  I wish I could go to one of those memory-erasing doctors from Eternal Sunshine.  It would be tempting to erase it all.  Life is too much. 

The only reason I haven't tried to end it again, truthfully, is because I'm not allowed.  :)  A lot of people have said to me "No, don't do it.  Stay here.  Suffer with us.  There's good bits."  You're all right of course, there are great bits. 

Admit it, though: those bad bits are something.  People torture baby animals for fun.  Someone's probably doing it right now.  There are guys out there screwing toddlers.  Teenagers are punching their grandmothers over pocket change.  How do we go on?  My problems are small and mostly in my head, and I have all sorts of help.  How do the people with real problems and no help survive?

In conclusion, I hate you Jim.  You hang out there in your ivory tower while I smash my heart against the alabaster walls outside, and someday I'll learn to love myself as much as I love you and the others that have turned away.  Maybe I loved you for things I can't replace at Target, but I'll find my way through this like I somehow always do.

(He wanted me to write.  Probably not hateful stuff about him, but he didn't specifically say not to.)

9:41 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Nightmares of the century.
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

Oh, oh, merciful Mary, mother of God, take them away, these nightmares.  I am only one simple mortal, and my head can't take it.  My body can't either.  It's almost 2pm and I just woke up, full of mucous and sneezing, off balance, thirsty and horrified.  It's good that I'm in a happy place, mentally, because nightmares like I just had would send any of you over the edge.  Any of you.  There was incest and murder and telepathy, intersperced with sweet, sweet scenes of truly loving, joyful midwestern domesticity.  There were affluent celebrations, milestones of lives well lived, and then back to the horrors.  Beastiality, torture and bad medicine.  Dead babies.  Manipulation.  Pleading for mercy from a deaf god.  Oh, it just seemed to go on forever.  It was like a present from Satan, and the card said "So you think you've been going to therapy?  That's not therapy.  You've just been having pleasant chats with your new confidant Olivia.  Enjoy the show."  I want to howl so loud I can't see the pictures anymore.  The worst part was how all the bad was mixed in with the good.  I'd feel at ease, watching a mom teach her daughter to drive, and then there'd be a scene where that same daughter was sabotaging her own condoms because she didn't like how they felt, and she didn't give a rat's ass about becoming pregnant, she just wanted to get off.  She had this perfect, tiny, high round ass and she was always wearing those itty bitty shorts with a teasing word printed across them.  Here is the moral of the nightmares: I would've raped her inside-out given half the chance, no matter how old she was, no matter whose daughter she was.  Me.  Waking Julie.  I would introduce myself, and when I found out that getting off was her primary concern, I would carry her to the nearest darkened corner and do things.  I'm not proud of this, but it's true.  Is that really the moral of these dreams?  To point out crap I know already?  Thank you, Brain.  Is this "progress"?

I was briefly at the funny farm last month.  Did you know that, public?  Overall, I liked it there.  No nightmares.  No real mirrors.  There was a freaking drum circle.  A folk singer/guitarist came and dueted Three Little Birds with a patient.  Idyllic, yeah?  I wish I was back there, fetal-rocking in a chair and muttering "don't you worry about a thing" over and over again.  Speaking of not worrying, that's my advice to you pansies.  I'm not going to jump off a balcony.  I'm going to eat some olives and play World of Warcraft, and wonder about Brian's sister and new little niece or nephew that entered the world in the wee hours, while these atrocities danced in my head.  Writing about it really helped calm me down.  That's one of the suggestions I was given in therapy, to do more writing  (and I do not hear the devil chuckling from his throne as I type those words).  Funny, I'm not so sure about God but I have a much easier time believing in a devil.  One who won't give me a contract in exchange for my soul because I'm too easy, no challenge.  Bah.

My homework this week is to write a letter to my dead mom, telling her how I miss her, and all the things I never got to say before.  Just read the blog, mom.  Take in the fruit of your labor.  I am angry, and I'm sad.  I thought knowing oneself was supposed to lead to being less of a mess.  I know me too well.  I peeled away too many layers, and at the center is a fortune cookie message that reads "LOL".  Sigh....then again, maybe it just says "Emo much?" 

I'm out of steam.  Bye for now.

10:47 AM - 3 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment

Pity party at my place
Current mood: bereft
Category: bereft Life

I had the kind of day that hurts your heart, ages you.  I'm not going to launch into a big bitch session here.  Don't have the energy.  I just had to say something.

I miss my mom.  I wish I could call her and cry.  Tell her my troubles, be reassured that I'm not worthless.  I could call dad, but I hate burdening him and for that matter, I hate the phone.  Wish I lived closer to mom's grave so I could at least go visit her there, lay in the grass above her and feel the breeze move in my hair.  I can open up to her a lot easier now that she's gone.  She's a great listener.  Not so good at the hugs.

There are so many people in my life I can't rely on for crap.  It's true for everyone I guess, and I don't know why I keep being surprised by it, but every time someone lets me down it hurts so bad.  Then again, my apartment wasn't demolished in an earthquake recently so I guess my problems are small and I have no real right to complain.  Goodnight.

7:57 AM - 2 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

Oh yeah, and the other night I dreamed....
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

about a BASKET FULL OF EYES!

Yes, a basket full of eyes.  I was walkin' around with Lilah, all nonchalant, and she starts investigating this basket so I wander over like "Whatcha got there, girl?" and it's a great big basket full of eyes.  Lemme type that a few different ways.

great. big.  basket.  FULL.  OF.  EYES.

BASKET FULL OF EYES,  I'm telling you,  my dog was sniffing a

basket

full

of

...

...

...

.

eyes.

7:58 PM - 4 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

On this week’s National Juliegraphic
Category: Pets and Animals

So there I was in the parking lot, trudging toward the stairs when I hear loud rustling in the bushes.  After my recent brushes with alligators I find myself thinking, 'Is it an alligator?'  Two neighbors are behind me with bags of groceries.  I say "You two go upstairs - I'll investigate."  (Really, I said that, it was hilarious.)  They quickly comply, as the rustling is honestly quite loud and scary.  Suddenly shapes emerge from the shadows!  They are: armadillos!  Two or three adult ones, I'd guess, scurrying around, trying to be incognito and failing because they're big fat armored critters in some scraggly thin bushes.  I try to lure them over with Starbucks pastries but they resist. 

Okay seriously people?  There's too much construction going on around here.  There's been far too much wildlife on display.  I don't mind because I love them and cherish them and want to peacefully coexist with them, but I'm sure they're all going to get hit by cars and that will suck big time.  What am I going to do about it?   Probably not much.  I am pretty self-absorbed.  Sorrydillos.

7:47 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment