lions and tigers and bear, oh my!

Weeee!

After waiting in line for weeks, I'm riding the emotional roller coaster of hormones! Huzzah!

Last month my son was at his dad's house for almost a week, and it was scheduled right during my period, but of course. So I decided to just start my next set of pills so I wouldn't have my period at all. I warned my husband that the idea might backfire horribly, since I am absurdly responsive to hormonal fluctuations.

Well, the week was a disaster, with my son's dad calling me nearly every day (I despise the man) and my husband having to work overtime, we barely got any time alone together at all and it was just all in all in stressful week.

Was it worth it? No. And yes.

No: it led me to a nice fat nervous breakdown, with the constant fluctuating hormones and my inability to tell hormones-anxiety from reality. It seemed like everything had just gone to hell. My husband and I have been fighting, my son has been annoying the living shit out of me, and everything just seems to have gone to shit.

Last Monday, I spent the day sobbing and bawling and came to a lot of interesting psychological conclusions, and as difficult as that was, I never view hard core introspection as wasted work at all. So, there were benefits, even if they were painful in obtaining. That part of it is still ongoing.

This week is when it's finally time for my period. Ok. It's been on again, off again, because of the hormonal fluctuations. My body is telling me it isn't time, the pills are arguing Oh Yes It Is, and I'm in the middle, smiling and cursing and sobbing and laughing.

Weeee! Look ma! No hands!

I am relieved though, because at least I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. Even though I'm far from balanced, at least I feel like I can tell the difference between what is me and what is PMS.

Also, since the nervous breakdown of last week, I've been really focused on staying true to expressing my anger and frustration in the moment, no matter how excrutiatingly difficult it is. Jack and I are fighting a lot, it seems to me, and I sob that I just want to stop fighting. He tells me we aren't fighting, now we're COMMUNICATING and I tell him it makes me feel all yucky and I don't like it. It's true.

Expressing my anger makes me feel...yucky. There isn't a better word to describe it. It's like a sore spot from childhood is being poked with a sharp stick and I just want to back away from the neighborhood bully and run away. Everything inside me screams, "RUN AWAY!"

But I'm here to work through this and I'm not running away. Even if it feels like I'm trudging forward with cement blocks for shoes and might just be standing a wee bit too close to the river, I'm going to keep stepping forward.

Baby steps. Yucky yucky baby steps. But there is a light.

"There'll be detours and breakdowns

Accidents and pain

When that spark of hope grows dark

In the fog and rain

I've been bumper to bumper

But mostly I'm alone

With tests of trust and faith

Out on these backstreets of my own

But there's a light

There's a light

A light at the end of this road

There's a light - a light

Like a guide it's shining

It's with us wherever we go."

-Chris Rosser,
There's A Light, the Archaeology album

sex in the life of a dog

As I was bikeriding today, I came up to the corner near my friends house. I stopped at the corner and called her on my cell, as it is inappropriate to just barge on in (unless I'm trying to catch her and her boyfriend having sex, which would be likely).

As I'm standing there waiting for her to pick up, I see some guy walk by with a nice dog. Maybe a Rottweiler? I don't know. I wasn't really paying attention. What caught my attention was another guy that pulled up in a nearby parking lot and yelled, "Hey! Hey!" at the dog walking guy.

The dog walking guy stops. The car driving guy got out, and started walking towards the dog walking guy. Car guy yells out, "That's a nice dog! Is it a girl?" Dog guy says, "Yah..." while starting to walk back towards car guy. Car guy yells, "Have you thought about her having puppies? I mean, is she fixed?" Dog guy yells back, "Well..."(something I can't quite make out because they're getting closer to one another and no longer yelling).

The last thing I heard was car guy telling dog guy that he had the same kind of dog and was looking to breed him with another dog, and that he lived right up the street.

It was at this point that I rode away, lest I fall off my bike in peals of laughter.

I understand animal breeding, oh I do. But still, my inner twelve year old still heard the conversation like this:

"Hey! Nice piece of meat! Does it have a vagina? Does the vagina and stuff work still?"

"Yah, the vagina's still good, why?"

"Well, my dog is hard up, dude. I need to get him laid. You wanna meet up so our dogs can fuck?"

"Sounds cool!"

That said, I'm sure both dogs were very appreciative of their owners willingness to discuss and arrange their sex lives for them. Living behind a fence can really cut down on your abilty to knock boots with that poodle down the street. And that dalmation! She's always shaking her thing while she walks by.

What a bitch.

How to make me love you:

There are days when I will wake up and have some surprising e-mails. Some are hideous, truly. I've received a few heinous (and horribly misspelled, at that) offers. Then there are the bonding letters- people who write in with personal stories, questions, confessions, etc that they were too shy to post in the comments. Those always make me feel warm and fuzzy. I treasure them.

But... very rarely do I ever get an e-mail that so totally cracks me up AND feeds my ego at the same time that I must create an award for it, but today is the day.

Best E-mail Ever Award goes to Psilownaut from Stuttgart, Baden-Wurttemberg (Germany).

This is what he wrote:

yep. looks like youve got the essence of marketing right in your picture strategy...

One pair of boobs to rule them all, One sexy ass to find them,
One glimpse of a pussy to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In the Land of Introspectre where the sweet shadows lie.

and yoda style: If it is readers that you seek, to the dark-side you must bring them...

lovin it.

That may be the singularly most fabulous thing I've seen in my inbox. You can try to outdo him (please, do try! It'll make my day) but I just don't know if it's possible.

(Hint: I am a total sci-fi geek. That's where he got me.)

And Psilownaut, I don't even know what to say. I'll find a way, though.

Who am I?

Oooh, a brave little biscuit am I.

Tell me things. Tell me the things I might not want to know.

The nicer one is here if you're only in the mood to be pleasant.

Either way, I value your opinion.

hateful horrible people

Click to Watch the Crazy Bitch


Not only is she insane, which her teeth clearly show without her even spewing out of her evil mouth, but she's got a great website. By great, I mean that I feel like I need to have a gang of rabid hyenas ass rape me just to make myself feel CLEANER after veiwing her site.

It also clearly demonstrates how mental illness is heriditary.

The page on fags is a real eye opener. By that I mean I stared at the page in total disbelief that no one has killed these people yet. I also am amazed that they can manage to feed themselves, and not jam forks into their own eye sockets just with the sheer amount of stupid that is taking up their time.

You know, I've been really wanting to vent a lot of pent up childhood rage, and I think I've just found a very worthy target. That's not the point of this post, I'm just warning you in case I get a wee little bit psycho about this. It deserves it.

If anything warrants psychosis, it's psychosis.

Fuck. Where are those hyenas? I need another cleansing.

PS) Shirley Phelps Roper is her name.

Should you google it, you can come up with churches fighting back, clear proof of inbreeding within their "church", targeting dead soldier's funerals, and a little bit about Fred, the founding father of this ass backwards inbred pile of hate.

Hate begets hate. And I certainly am feeling hate towards them.

OMG, I like, totally put it together, now I want a pony! (Warning: ponies are difficult to assemble)

Going with this whole not-repressing my anger theme, I must say, I have noticed that my older blogs are much more filled with rants. As I've been pulling the old posts from the old site (I'm started at the oldest, working my way to the more recent, why I'm not sure...) I see I used to just come home and bitch about stupid shit that I saw during my day that I found annoying.

I think as I got more readers I've started to censor my own cattiness, and I've decided that perhaps I should stop. Perhaps I should go back to just ripping on people when they do stupid things I find amusing. To be fair, I rip on the stupid things I do quite often, so it's not as if I am immune to my own judgement.

That said, let me offer you this jem I found this morning:

It's about a chair. I've been researching how to make furniture, and was browsing through Target's chairs when I came across this chair and it's reviews. The review is the part that cracked my ass up this morning. One girl wrote,

"NOT EASY TO PUT TOGETHER!!! But I did it!, April 13, 2006
Reviewer: 20 year old Kalandra "20 year old Kalandra" (Tennessee, USA) -

The assembly instructions weren't easy to understand but I finally figured them out. Putting it together took alot of work though. It was tough but I got it done. It's a pretty comfortable chair too. Seems sturdy enough for me. I'll tell you that putting this chair together will not be fun or easy at all! It stressed me out. At first I put the wrong screws in and had to take it apart and start over again. Read the instructions carefully if you buy this chair. It took me about four hours. I came home from work and the box was waiting for me at my door. I thought it would be easy as 1-2-3. It was not! Let me tell you that I started putting this together at about 11:45 p.m. at night and wasn't done till about 4:00 a.m. in the morning! I was getting kind of mad while I was putting it together but I calmed down and got it done. I could not believe how many screws came with this chair. At first I thought the chair would just come out the the box and be already made. It was hassle. It was hard. But I did it! I'll tell you that when I finally finished it I was quite proud of myself. I didn't give up and I finished the task. If you like a challenge then I guess this chair would be for you."

Halfway though this I was laughing, by the end I was rolling. This poor girl needs a blog like nobody's business.

This is not a review of a chair; this is a review of her craftsmanship and ability to assemble a foam chair shipped from Target.

I'm very happy for her, and her pride at assembling the chair. I must add that I generally do not shop for chairs based on my love of a challenge, but what the hell, perhaps I should start. I am guessing that she certainly will, from that fateful day forward!

After that hearty chuckle, I found this:

For real yo, it's a 2 tone stool. No, I know it looks like a rectangular box stood on it's end, but the ad clearly states that it is a stool. This is not just any stool, oh no! It has "stained rectangular accents" and this "ultra-modern stool" will bring "portable seating into the new millennium".

Do not be fooled, people! This is NOT a rectangular block with rectangles painted on the side; they're stained, which makes it chic.

It has made me sadly aware of the Flinstone like quality of my own portable seating, which is more rock-like and less futuristic block-like.

I told my husband I want to write a review for the futuristic stool and explain to the general public how horribly difficult it was to put together. "It looked so easy, but I kept getting a pentagon!!! It took me hours, but finally, I did it! I made a block, I mean, stool! Yay, me!"

You know, there's a lot of fun to be had (and to be made of) if you just know where to look. I recommend Target. I give it four stars out of five.

PS) For further humor, please see Kalandra's review for The Weather Man.

the girl with the weight of the world in her hands

I'm feeling much better today.

After spending the last few days crying my fool head off, and basically having a nervous breakdown in the effort of trying to learn how to access my own rage, I have come to the conclusion that I am totally AWESOME at writing run-on sentences.

That, and I think I broke through.

Jack came home last night and read my post from yesterday, and I sat outside on the porch for a long time, just staring at the trees and sobbing. When I asked him about it, he said, "What you're feeling doesn't seem weird at all, baby. You've been through a lot of shit. There's a lifetime of resentment built up. I think you're doing great."

I sat and sniffled, "So...I'm not....hideous?"

(hugs) "No. Still beautiful. And maybe now you'll start learning how to express your anger in the moment, rather than letting it fester...?" he added hopefully.

(huge breath) Well, I hope so. That's the plan. I didn't go through the nervous breakdown of yesterday for nothing, people.

It just...seems so ugly. All this ugly inside me. I sat there on the porch, thinking about just killing my dad, how much better both our lives would be. I thought about if both my parents were dead, and was filled with a weird sense of freedom. That alone freaked me the fuck out, I mean, that's CRAZY talk. Crazy people kill their parents and you hear about them in the paper and think, "Holy fucking shit, are you crazy!"

Jack pointed out, "Having fucked up thoughts like that is normal. Most people supress it or choose to just not think about it or whatever. You examine it, that's the kind of person you are. You think about it. The difference is, you wouldn't ACTUALLY do it."

Ok. Good point. Wishing my father was dead because of a lifetime of misery and depression he has inflicted upon me, and continues to do so because he keeps living, is not surprising. I might even go so far as to say that it's a justified feeling. But I'm not going to go kill him, as much as that seems like a wonderful solution to both of our problems...

So... thinking that does NOT make me psycho, just traumatized. Well, shit, I KNEW that. What a fucking shocker. I didn't need a nervous breakdown to tell me that.

The thing about it all that was so awful was the feelings that came up. I just sat here and blared Indigo Girls songs (Hand Me Downs, You Left It Up To Me, Walk Away, The Girl With The Weight Of The World In Her Hands in particular) crying and sobbing and feeling like a broken child...

More accurately, feeling like the broken child that I was and that I am still.

I was going through a lot of this before the wedding, and I guess I'm not done.
~sigh~

rage....and psychosis?

I have issues with anger. That is to say, I have issues with expressing it. Repressing it is so not a problem. Yet, it is.

Due to a lot of things, my husband and I have been discussing it a lot lately. It is...challenging? I don't know if that can express my feelings adequately. To put it bluntly, I fear my anger. It terrifies me.

I don't have any middle ground between not mad and blistering rage. To express anger brings with it a rush of excrutiating power, but it isn't welcome. It's painful. I suspect it is fueled by pain.

At risk of being discovered for the dork that I am, it is perfectly expressed in the Star Wars Episode II scene where Anakin learns his mother has been taken by Tusken Raiders. The ride there, following the trail, him looking over the cliff edge and taking action, all those things I watched and related to. It was his descent into the dark side, right at the beginning. He gets to his mother, finds hope, and then she dies in his arms. He cracks, and goes out to slaughter every living thing in his sight, the Tusken Raiders, the mothers, the children, everything. When he comes back home, and Amadala asks him what happened, he looks like a child broken. His expression is childish, but blinding rage knows no age. He tells her what he did, and she says she's frightened by the way he's acting. He is indignant, defensive of his evil deed by saying he wasn't strong enough, if only he was strong enough the whole situation could have been avoided; he could have saved his mother.

I am not as attached my mother as I am my innocence. But, the scene represented a loss of his innocence as well, not just his mother.

As a kid, I experienced both. My mother was there, but busy trying to raise my brother and I while denying her own pain. I didn't see her much, as a matter of fact, I spent the majority of my time alone, or at least, that's what I remember most.

My father was a blazing alcoholic, and my mom divorced him shortly after he tried to kill himself while he was home alone with me (and my brother? I don't remember him being there.)

He quit drinking after that, but has never changed. He hates life as much now as he ever did, and this is the only way I have ever known my father. He is a man that walks through life, enjoying moments now and then but eternally focused on the sweet release he believes death will offer him. He does not believe in an afterlife. I have asked him.

This struck me particularly yesterday, as my friends casually mentioned the lyrics to the theme song from the show M*A*S*H. I stared at them, unbelieving and feeling as if someone just walked over my grave while trying to keep a straight face. You see, M*A*S*H was my fathers favorite show, and the few memories I have of him living with us is of us watching M*A*S*H together. The theme song to M*A*S*H has always choked me up with a sentiment of...I don't know....(sighs)... a loss of innocence. I never knew there were words to the song. There are.

I read them a little while ago and just sat here, staring at the screen, feeling decieved and abondoned all over again. I thought about going to kill my dad myself, just to hurry it up. I've waited my whole life for him to die. He talks about it all the time. No, really. He does. It's just part of knowing him.

Can you say abandonment issues?

(a long tearful pause)

Anyway... uh. That's my dad. My mom has her own history of trying to shape my life after it was far too late, and she did it by trying to shove her own inane version of wisdom down my throat like a jagged little pill that I refused to swallow. She and I are not close, we never have been. The friction between my mother and I is tangible, but I try to be nice. I don't know if she's trying to be nice, or if the way she acts towards me is a nice as she can be. For me, it is a concerted effort. I find her to be two faced and cruel. I doubt she sees herself that way, and I don't know if she has any idea that I see her that way. It would hurt her, and I don't want to hurt her, I just want her to accept me as I am. I suppose that could go both ways...

(another weighted silence)

My brother and I barely ever talk, and by that I mean maybe once every year or so. My grandmother I am close to, but what can I do? She is old, and she CARES. I can't unload my pain on her.

When I was nineteen, I wrote a long letter to my mother telling her about the time that I admitted to her that I had been raped, and how much I hated and resented her for not being supportive. Her response, at the time, was, "Oh. (icy look) Were you drunk?" That was the entire conversation. I ran out of the room because I was seconds away from just punching the shit out of her face.

I don't think I'll probably ever forgive her for that, and I told her so. She sent me back an awkward letter apologizing. What is interesting is that my grandmother sent me a heartfelt and heartbroken letter, too. She has many times wept while telling me she's wished I didn't have to "grow up so fast." It's not that her feeling MORE than my mother did is surprising, what is surprising is that she apparently never knew. I guess my mom thought it wasn't very important, or something we don't talk about, although anything I do that she's ashamed of seems worthy of mention.

That's my family.

As far as friends, I have few. They are more precious to me than gold, although I suspect they could never possibly understand how much they mean to me. I don't think even I understand.

When people haven't left me or hurt me, I tend to assume they just haven't done it yet. That whole abandonment thing...

Being involved with a string of carbon copies of my own father has just made it more ingrained. And when relationships like that fail, they take with them the "friends" that "we" had. More ingraining.

The fact is, I'm a walking abyss of pain. This is not all that I am, but this is what I need to address.

It's tied to the anger like a parasitic tumor, but I just don't know how, exactly.

When I think of really releasing my anger, I end up bawling my eyes out, wanting to go back and beat the shit out all those who have done me wrong, certainly not leaving out my own family.

The other night I had a really fucked up dream, and when I fell asleep the next day, I continued into the dream. It was so bizarre that I told my husband about it, asking him his opinion.

The dream:

I am in a smallish older house. It's decorated the way people who don't give a crap would decorate. There are two children in the house, and I am somehow responsible for them. I don't know who they are, but they seem to be about eight and ten, maybe. The girl is the younger, the boy the older one. I don't see much of the boy in the dream, he comes and goes, but the girl is a steady presence.

At some point I realize that the windows are covered completely, and I want to let some light into the ugly little house. I start to pull down valances and drapes, only to find more and more layers of fabric beneath them, even opaque plastic stapled over the glass itself, making it impossible to see out or in.

I rip it off. As I do, I am startled to find the house next door is located DIRECTLY next to the house we are in. It is large and foreboding. I turn to the girl and ask, "Is this why the windows were covered? So no one could see in?" (An issue I have in real life.) As I look at her, she explains, "Yes. We can't let them see us. They want to kill us when they do." As she says this I suddenly see her slightly older, in some fucked up psycho light, and her voice is screaming and alien, and I want to kill her, I want to murder her immediately and without a thought. Then everything is normal again and she's just looking at me, waiting for me to respond. I am horrified and shaken, and think maybe I am seeing it through the eyes of the people next door, as if that is what THEY see when they look at her, and just turn back to cover the windows again, quickly, shaken as hell.

I realize we cannot leave the house.

The next day the dream continued:

I notice there is a huge ugly porch on the far side of the house, just a giant long slab of concrete covered in astroturf. There is only one house visible from there, and it's a long way off. Most importantly, the angle of the roof is perfect enough that the people in the house next door cannot see anything on the porch.

I start to plan how to enclose the walls around the porch so we can be outside without anyone being able to see us. I envision a little playground set, a table with an umbrella, and a little plastic kiddie pool with the wall around it. It's not much, but at least we could be outside a little bit...

When I ask my husband what in the hell this dream could possibly mean, he pauses with a strange look on his face. He asks me what the age difference is between my brother and I. It is the same as the children in the dream. He says perhaps the little girl is me, hiding.

I suddenly start crying, picturing myself taking care of this girl who is so hideous she cannot be seen in the light. I think, this is me. This is my inner child. I am her. She is me. And the possibilty of anyone witnessing her... she inspires murder. She is psychosis. She is rage.

And I must spend my life protecting myself by not letting anyone see her...

(long pause)

I'm not sure WHY I feel this way. It seems like there must be a root, a cause, an event. Maybe a gradual shaping. But regardless, the most important part is that IT IS NOT TRUE.

I must not hide her. I am not a monster. My rage is there for a reason, and even if I don't know why, do I need a why? I mean, (laughs while crying) it's not like I don't have a lifetime of reasons to be pissed off. Why must I hide my anger?

When I get angry, I cry. When I am angry and I am NOT crying, fucking run. I've been there, and it's bad. There is a fine line when I get that angry where I start to crack and feel like I'm a hop skip and a jump from the mental institution.

A few examples:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I was twenty I had a housemate that I hated. It was mutual. Shit finally exploded one day and she started screaming at me. I kept yelling for her to shut up, but she kept screaming, advancing on me, jabbing her finger in my face and screaming.

I was trying to stop it, I was. But I snapped, and went straight for her neck, both hands wrapped around her throat. If she wouldn't shut up, I was going to SHUT her up. There was no thought there, just to quiet her. I couldn't be screamed at for another second, and that was all. Would I have killed her? I couldn't tell you.

She went flying backwards, terrified and trying to cartwheel out of my grip. Once she did, she wheeled off and punched me. I think she did. I don't know. I didn't feel it if she did. I saw her arm swing, but I wasn't really there anymore.

That was when my boyfriend threw open my bedroom door and she stopped in shock, realizing that a whole group of my friends were sitting in there, witnessing the whole thing. She ran out of the house.

I walked into my room and gathered up a dozen dried roses. They belonged to her, from when her ex-boyfriend came into town and she fucked him while her boyfriend was at work. She had told me about it, and was going to throw the roses away, because she certainly couldn't explain to her boyfriend (who LIVED with us) where the roses came from. I told her I wanted to dry them, and I did.

I picked up the dried roses and set them at the base of her closed bedroom door.

When she came back in, she just stared at the door. Checkmate. She stared at me, and everyone else stared at us to see what would happen next. My friends, her boyfriend, everyone just stood there.

I said, "I realize they are dried roses, but I had no other flowers to express to you how sorry I am."

She just stared, shaking. She knew damn well I wasn't apologizing, but she had no choice but act like I was sincere and make up. She hugged me, and I could feel her trembling. I loved it.

I cracked, went into my happy little psycho place, and I won. She moved out days later. I did not cry.

The next time I really lost it was when I found out my sons father was STILL cheating on me. Not only did my intuition tell me before he left, he denied it, then confessed when he came home, AFTER the deed was done.

I grilled him on details, telling him if it's so fucking important to drive me insane, he should give me all the details so I could enjoy it, too. I asked him morbid questions, and he answered a few, about her sucking his dick outside the bar, him driving her home, blah blah blah.

The motherfucker started to fall asleep on the couch while I was still asking him questions. Oh no. I picked up a pillow and hit him as hard as I could in the face. He's goddamn lucky it was a pillow.

He jumped up and freaked. "Don't you ever hit me! Ever!" and he ran out the back door, out onto the deck and down the stairs. I ran down the stairs on the inside of the house and opened the door right as he got to it (the deck led to the driveway, right next to the door) I whipped the door open and smiled brightly at him and said, "Boo." He actually screamed and ran for his van.

He jumped in and locked all the doors. I don't think he had his keys or he would have driven away, but he sure as hell wasn't getting back out. It was mid summer, and hot. He couldn't keep the windows up, so he cracked them slightly and I talked to him through the cracks.

I asked him to open the doors, in a sickeningly sweet and totally psychotic voice. "Aw, gee, come on honey! I won't hit you again, I promise!" I said, while grinning with waaaay too many teeth showing. "No fucking way," he said, and a good thing. I had every intention of beating him until I was done, and I don't know when that would have been, honestly. He could easily have overpowered me, but if you've ever seen a little guy in a fight that spazzes out and beats the shit out of the bigger guy, you have an idea of why he didn't open the door.

I kept it up for maybe ten, twenty minutes. The sweet psycho voice, but he wouldn't budge. No deal.

Ok. I walked back upstairs and sat on the back porch smoking, out of his line of vision. The whole time our baby was asleep in the bedroom. But I couldn't sleep, and I was going ot make damn sure he didn't either.

I waited. No tears, just waiting and smoking, for about an hour. By that time I was sure he was asleep, and I snuck back down the stairs and picked up a huge pile of gravel from the driveway, then walked back upstairs.

I sat just around the corner of the deck and the stairs, and would occasionally toss a chunk of gravel at the roof of his van, then duck back where he couldn't see me, and keep on smoking. Just sitting there in the pitch darkness, a pack of cigarettes and a huge ass pile of gravel.

Each time the gravel hit the roof of his metal van, it would crack so loudly all the the neighborhood dogs would start up barking and howling. I would wait until I was sure he asleep again, and toss another one.

I sat there all night, smoking and not crying, just blank, leaning over to chuck another piece and going back to staring blankly at the black trees in our backyard.

He woke up to find pictures of us mutilated all over his windsheild, and then came inside to find his favorite hat, cut perfectly down the middle, so that when he picked it up he just got half of it. I just stared at him, poker faced and then going back to tending to the baby.

There was a lot more, but I don't remember. I remember that night clearly, clearly thinking about nothing but making him share my misery, even enjoying, nay, REVELING in the total psychosis of my actions.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Is that it?

When I get angry, I cry. I don't want to cry. I don't want to feel the pain. Too much of it and I shut down. I get psychotic. When I was a teenager there were a lot of "episodes" I had that I didn't share with my family (duh, they were useless), and for quite a while I was terrified that I was going insane.

Is that it?

Was that what made me afraid of being angry? Am I afraid that I'm insane, or that someone will find me out, or....

(bells going off)

I think I'm getting somewhere. Fucking better be, my hands are shaking and cramping from writing so long, and if I cry any more today I'm going to die of dehydration (actually I'm sitting here drinking glass after glass of water).

Ok. I'm going to have to sit and think about this one for awhile. I've dug up a lot and my hands hurt terribly.
Anger= fear of psychosis?

Hmmm.

dreams of home ownership

...it occurs to me that sometimes, watching the paint dry can be a very exciting thing, indeed.

hysteria

Here's me, losing my mind.

What's wrong? I don't know. Hormones? The migraine? Anxiety? Me stopping taking my Zoloft? A combination of all the above?

I don't know.

My husband called today at lunch, to tell me his brother is upset. His girlfriend is having emotional instability problems, and he's driving her back home to be with her parents. He wanted to know if Jack would meet him in Richmond (about two hours away) so they can hang out and little bro can get support from big bro (my husband).

My initial reaction was, "Of course, honey, your brother needs you!"

By the time he got home I was in tears, desperately holding back from begging him not to go, feeling hysterical and terrified. I haven't had a night long panic attack like this in a long long time.

Where is he staying? He doesn't know. Where is he meeting his brother? Oh, turns out to be a party, a big party, with lots of his old friends there, including a bunch of girls, a least one he's made out with (many years ago), and I'm sure he's smart enough to not mention if there's any others.

Ok, it's 10:30 at night, he's in a strange town, at a big party, and still doesn't even know where he's crashing for the night. I keep asking him to figure it out so I can relax and quit being so anxious about it, but he keeps calling me without knowing. I mean, it's really and truly sweet that he keeps checking in on me, but FIND OUT and TELL ME already. I don't plan on staying up till 1 am when you finally decide! At this rate, I won't have a choice.

"Go to sleep early," he said, so I wouldn't feel so anxious. Is he insane? No. He just doesn't understand. This is the kind of shit that went on with my ex, where he would be out and I wouldn't know who he was with or where he was and when or if he was coming home. Sleep? You've got to be fucking kidding me.

I know it's not the same. I know. It doesn't matter. I'm bordering on psychosis here, trying to regulate my ingrained paranoia with an accurate portrayal of the facts in front of me.

I really just want him to drive home. It's 10:30 now, he still hasn't had a chance to talk to his brother alone, and it's a two hour drive in the rain. It's not going to happen, but that doesn't make me want to demand it any less.

I bite my tongue. I try so hard not to cry every time he calls. I'm taking my Xanax and trying so hard to not freak out.

Maybe I should be back on my Zoloft. Maybe I should... I don't know. I feel so fucking hysterical I want to make grand sweeping dramatic statements like, "I should be alone, I'm not fit to be in a relationship." This is the same kind of shit we went through when we first got together.

It doesn't help that he's hanging out with his old crew, the ones he used to hang out with during his drinking and whoring days, and that I don't know them, never met most all of them, and I'm not there. In my defense, this is a PERFECT scenario to trigger all my buttons at once.

Fuck. I'm going to watch TV. If he calls one more time without being able to tell me where he staying, I just don't know. Maybe I'll just freak the fuck out and stop apologizing. I don't think it's so much to ask.

As a matter of fact, the more I think about it, the more pissed off I get. He would flip the fuck out in my shoes. I swear he would.

cum covered jammies: a migraine muddled post

Today I exist in the nonsensical and painful world of migraineland. Right now your darling Jill is loopy as crap, after taking some Darvocet in desperation. Not much, I cut them in half, but it's still Darvocet.

The migraine started last night. I finally fell asleep. Woke up, felt ok for about thirty minutes, then felt it come back with a vengeance. I got my son on the bus, and went straight back to bed. I recall seeing Jack looking innocently at me from the computer when I came in (looking at porn, but clicked on his blank desktop screen as I walked in). I mumbled something about, "I'm back, now I'm not...." as I walked down the hall and fell back asleep.

I remember him kissing me goodbye, and saying goodbye very quietly. So sweet. My eyes were covered with one of those sleeping eye mask thingies so everything was pitchblack. I did not pull it off to say goodbye, just smooched at the darkness.

I dreamed of huge thuderstorms, of blackened skies, of panicked people trying to get out of the way of the storm. When I woke up enough, I realized it was just the fucking jets flying over my house.

I hate those fucking jets. We live near a military air base. These aren't your passenger jets, which sound like a mosquito by comparison. These are mind numbingly loud screeching pieces of flying metal, that take a rusty hatchet and drive it though the center of your brain pulp at any given moment. See them coming? Too fast. You hear them coming, with just enough time to drop everything and clamp your hands over your ears, in a desperate attempt to keep your brain pulp intact.

Why did we move in here, you ask? We had no idea. We signed the lease on a non flying day. Surprise! And when it's a low cloud cover, they come in right over the treeline. There goes one now...

So here's me, doing a rain dance, hoping for a thunderstorm because that will at least be quieter than the jets and make them land their evil on the ground and quit flying over my house. Fucking fuck fuckers.

What about sex? Ah, yes. While I was asleep and having bizarre storm dreams, I was also dreaming of masturbating. Damn, I was so GOOD at it in my dream! It was like magic. But then the fucking jets woke me up enough to realize that I was only dreaming so I had to finish myself off by hand.

That is not an easy task with a migraine, but for sex...well, I rallied the troops (my own two hands) and got to work. The strange thing was, I never took the eye mask off, and I kept slipping in and out of semi-consciousness. I could hear people talking, and it sounded like they were in my house. Am I sleepily masturbating in front of company? I don't know. I could pull the eye mask off but it's hideously bright, so fuck it. I'm just gonna do me, I decided, and if people are standing there watching me do myself in a migraine muddled haze, well, that's their problem (or joy) for watching.

The fantasy was so complicated and broken, with people talking and jets screaming, me half asleep and in a hell of a lot of pain, trying to keep my arms at angles that wouldn't aggravate my neck or shoulder muscles...

This is all testament to what I am willing to endure in order to get myself off. And I did, beautifully. After I slipped my fingers back out of myself, I realized I was covered in my own goo. Not willing to get up or look around the insanely bright room, I just wiped my own hands off on my pajamas, and fell the fuck back asleep.

How much time passed, I don't know. Was Jack still there to witness my sleepy sexing myself act? I don't know.

All I know is that I got up, ate a pile of food and took some of the Darvocet my dad gave me. And suddenly, it occurs to me that a friend is coming over, and I should probably change out of my cum covered pajamas. Oh, she would laugh like hell, but really, that's just too much.

(Funny note: she called while I was writing that and said, "No, you can stay in your pajamas, it's cool" and then I had to explain why I must change. She did indeed laugh.)

Anyway, I fucked me in my sleep, damn I'm good, Darvocet is my friend, the jets are not, and I have to change clothes now. I think that about sums it up.

the light of retrospect...

Although wishing to be rid of misery,
They run toward misery itself.
Although wishing to have happiness,
Like an enemy they ignorantly destroy it.

-Santideva, "Bodhicaryavatara"

women are batshit

Men of the world, let me let you in on a little secret:

Women are fucking batshit.

No, really. We are. We know. We just hate you when you point it out, so shooshy, there's a good boy.

Any woman who has ever worked in an all female office knows it's a recipe for a fucking disaster. All those hormones. It's like estrogen gets into the ductwork and becomes some sort of alien parasitic creature, living off the potential for joy and companionship between women, sucking them dry and leaving behind the worthless shells filled with jealousy and suspicion.

It's not good.

I had one such job, and vowed to never, never, EVER make that mistake again, lest I go fucking postal and blow up some shit. Even better, it was while I was pregnant.

No, it wasn't just me. All the women there were going slowly but surely insane, and I was the only pregnant one. It all started with the boss, who was The Queen of Batshit Bitches. Let's call her Batty.

Batty had a few problems, starting out from the gate. She was definitely hypoglycemic, and I suspect bi-polar as well. She was really into the whole "new age" thing, and she was one of those people that gives all mysticism a bad name.

Batty owned her own jewelry company, and the rest of us girls were there to assemble jewelry, stock, ship, whatever. It was a small company, but we shipped all over the place. All her jewelry was made with sterling silver and semi precious gems, all specially picked out for their psychic properties.

Now, I'm not debating crystals have any powers, I'm just debating whether this bitch would know her head from her ass, much less what amethyst or moonstones did.

Some days we would come in and she would be all peachy keen, giving us grandiose speeches about how the universe was in harmony and how much she loved us all, and ten minutes later she could be on the phone screaming obscenities which were clearly heard throughout the office. So much for the universal harmony, I guess the universe just took a huge shit.

All of us girls got along, for the most part. Most of us were friends that hung out outside of work, other than the one bitchy girl that was younger and judgemental, so we found her tres annoying, and the older redneck chick that answered the phone and always had some Jerry Springer waiting to happen story about her boyfriend that lived in the trailer next door.

My favorite story was the one about how she went into the Bascilica downtown, and on her way back out she fell down the stairs because "something" pushed her. Not "someone", some THING. She came back to work all spooked, and told us her tale, and we all stared at her and gave the appropriate "Dude"s and "Fucking weird"s and whatever else she was looking for. I thought about going over there and grabbing some holy water to pour on her head, just in case she really did start burning and screaming at the touch of it, but decided what the hell, let her be demonic. She sat closest to Batty, so either it was her catching Batty's crazy or perhaps the demon was a safegaurd protecting the rest of us FROM Batty. Either way, I really could not have cared less.

I knew Batty from when I worked at a health food store in town, and she would come in every Sunday for the brunch, just bitching her way all the way through the line, "How long can it TAKE to make a fucking waffle? Christ!" to "Does anyone even know how to MAKE coffee?" She would pick at the silverware, disgusted by it's cleanliness or lack thereof, and then finally go sit down and glare murderously at us until one of brought her her food. As soon as she ate, she was back to wine and roses, complimenting us on "Yet another lovely meal!" and "See you next week!" (Oh, the fucking joy, I can't wait.) I called her Jeckyl and Hyde, and hated her guts. So, when I took the jewelry job, I knew damn well what I was getting into, but I needed a job and she had one, simple as that.

The very first day I showed up to work to find her hysterical, telling me she just couldn't believe it, throwing her hands into the air and flipping out. She said she had been loading the van for a jewelry show and someone must have lifted a pile of stuff from the van when she wasn't looking. I was immedietely put into the stock room, with the bitchy younger girl and some other chick, doing inventory. The girls talked quietly, we always did, because the walls did not go all the way up to the ceiling and you could hear whatever anyone said or did in there. So they whispered and explained how to do inventory, while telling me that nothing was missing, Batty couldn't pay her mortgage and they were pretty sure she was trying to get away with some good old fashioned insurance fraud.

I remember once I was doing shipping. I loved doing the shipping, because it was a loner job. Although I could hear everything else going on in the office, Batty rarely had to ask me for anything and so I had a little corner to myself. The package I was shipping that day had to go to Canada, and required special forms. Batty didn't have a clue how to do it, so I went about researching it to find out. Once I had them all completed, Batty came in a just flipped.

"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT? DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING? HOLY SHIT, YOU CAN'T JUST MESS AROUND WITH CUSTOMS! YOU'RE GOING TO GET ME INVESTIGATED BY THE IRS AND DESTROY MY BUSINESS, DOES THAT MEAN NOTHING TO YOU? DO YOU EVEN CARE? I PUT MY HEART AND SOUL INTO THIS, AND YOU'RE GOING TO DESTROY IT ALL WITHOUT THE SLIGHTEST FUCKING THOUGHT!"

I glared at her, told her to shut up and check it her fucking self. She did. It took her three days to figure it out. It was perfect. She did not apologize. Whatever.

Over the months, the tension grew. It was growing into a full blown mutiny, and one day the top just blew. I don't remember what started it, but Batty was bitching at Amy, and Amy crossed her arms with true diva style and said, "Well, Batty, (blah blah blah)". Batty screamed, "Don't you say my name as if it were a cuss word! This is MY company, do you understand? MINE! I own it! ME! I'm the boss! I'm the boss!" We all just stared at her, Amy with her arms still crossed and staring her down, Batty wild eyed and hysterical. Amy said something like, "Oh, yah, Batty, you're the boss all right..."

And then...I don't know what happened, but suddenly everybody was yelling at Batty to shut up, and Batty was screaming about firing us all, and all the girls told her to go fuck herself and walked out, in unison. I sat there for a minute, continuing the piece of jewelry I was working on, and silently crying down onto the silver.

You see, I was used to conflict, and so it was just another day, just some more bullshit. Find your happy place, Jill, find your happy place... Batty noticed I was crying (she was standing behind me, flabbergasted), and yelled, "What the hell are you crying about? I'm the one who should be crying!"

I swiveled around in my chair, and glared at her with my red swollen eyes. "Then fucking CRY," I said, and got up and left.

All us girls met down the street and had lunch, trying to work out what to do. The problem was, all of us needed our jobs, why the fuck else would we put up with that crazy ass bitch for so long? Eventually, we all went back to work and nothing else was said the rest of the day. Everyone talked about quitting, but none of us did.

A short time later Batty told us she was going to lay some of us off and file for bankruptcy. She decided she wanted to get rid of the business and move to Florida. She said she had a vision, and that she was supposed to move to Florida and change her name to Rasha and start channeling and write a book.

Whatever.

So a bunch of us got laid off and got to collect unemployment. It was the last few months of my pregnancy, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Whoopdeedoo, see ya bitchface. As the group of us who agreed to be laid off walked away from the building, and straight to the unemployment office, we were elated at the sweetness of our freedom. I brought up the point that one single man in that office could have fixed everything.

My theory was that it was just hormones out of control. Any man in that situation would have long before stood up and said, "Y'all are mother fucking BATSHIT," and served up a heaping dose of steaming reality check. As it was, there was no reality check, just a bunch of chicks going slowly insane.

Whatever happened to "Rasha"? Who the fuck cares? I don't. I know some of the remaining girls stole tons of crap before they left, and these were not the kinds of girls who would ever do something like that, but they showed up at my house one night with tons of stuff, both giddy with rage and indignation justified in some small way.

I still believe, to this day, that that woman was insane, women should not work in an all women environment, and cock can save the day.

Because, really....women are fucking batshit.

don't fight the river

"Don't cling to anything and don't reject anything. Let come what comes, and accomodate yourself to that, whatever it is. If good mental images arise, that is fine. If bad mental images arise, that is fine, too. Look on all of it as equal, and make yourself comfortable with whatever happens. Don't fight with what you experience, just observe it all mindfully."

-Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"

joy

And now, a break from my regularly scheduled PMS bitchery....

I crush your head, crush, crush

Interesting.

I have come to believe that Zoloft is not my friend.

That was something I've long suspected, but now I have confirmation.

Here's the thing- I've been feeling crappier and crappier for months now. I'm tired all the time, but I can't sleep, at least at night. During the day I can fall asleep on a moments notice, and frequently do. For the first two hours after taking my Zoloft, I feel anxious and overwhelmed and exhausted, and that usually leads to my morning nap.

(Makes a stupid face) However, when I take it before bed, it makes me jittery and I spend the night thrashing around wake up feeling as if I've been run over my a truck full of evil gnomes, who stopped briefly to jump out, pummel me with rubber mallets, then back over me and drive over me once more before driving away.

Some mornings I swear I can still hear their menacing laughter as I awake...


My doctors (had to switch due to insurance snafu) have been trying to talk me into switching SRI's for awhile now, but I told them I felt crappy enough without playing fun time chemistry set with my own body, thank you very much. There was a lot going on, the wedding, the kidney infection, the migraines, my son's ADD, family issues and emergencies, friends having miscarriages, divorces, parents dying...it's been crazy.

What has finally motivated me to try a switch? Vanity.

Yes, good old vanity. The thing is, I've been gaining weight ever since I've been put on Zoloft. And while I am by no means a cow yet, it seems inevitable. I've cut out almost everything yummy to eat, I've been working out like crazy, and I've even been taking that shit that crazy ass Anna Nicole took. I figured if her fat lunatic ass could lose that much weight, I sure as hell could.

But my scale doesn't budge. And after months of denying myself the foods I love, I had a moment in the gym where I was sweating away and thought, "Why the fuck am I doing this?" Total despondency kicked in and I decided I'm just going to be a fat lesbian with a house full of cats. (This is not to imply lesbians are fat, it's a personal joke between a reader and me.)

This week, I have an appointment with the shrinky dink, and I've been slowing weaning myself off of the Zoloft so we can go right into trying something else. By weaning, I mean taking half of what I was taking and then I'm just going to stop taking it. This is not the proper way to do it, I must note, so don't use me as any sort of good example.

After two days of taking half the amount of Zoloft I was on, I feel shitloads better. Fuck you, Zoloft! You suck ass! You suck my fat ass! I'm not as tired, I'm not as jittery, and I'm going back to my original stance, which is that my first doctor can take that Zoloft and shove it up her ass.

I know SRI's are hard to determine, and it really comes down to a guessing game and trial and error, but fucking A. Now that I have the energy, I'm pissed.

"When you know more about what's wrong, you can help make it right."

I sure do. I can take that cute little Zoloft blob and stomp on it's fucking head. ~squash~

Don't mistake me, I'm quite cheerful. That's what's pissing me off. After months of feeling like shit, I found out the thing that was making me feel so crappy was the thing that was supposed to make me feel better.

Fuck you, Zoloft. And that's all I have to say about that. (snorts) For now.

hmmph

My sons father just called, (Aka Shithead) to "ask" (insist) I come early tomorrow morning to pick up my son. "I've gotta work," he said. He's been working all week and while he was gone, his girlfriend watched my son. Honestly, I trust her parenting skills better than his, and she's twenty one.

But, whatever. I tried to take the day "off" today and just chill at the beach, and I just can't fucking relax. I've felt more fucking nuts this week than I have in a long time, and I think it's just that my son is with his dad and it makes me queasy.

I should enjoy the time, but I don't.

I laid on the beach for about an hour, alternately staring at the clouds, the ocean, and the construction vehicles building something or other. All I could think about is WHY am I so obsessive? Yes. I was obsessing about obsession itself.

And now I am alternately relieved that my son will be home and pissed off in a "I fucking knew you couldn't handle a whole week, you loser" sort of way.

He told me he had taken the whole week off of work to be with "his" (MY) son. Each time I called I got his girlfriend, who told me, "He's at work". Whatever. Same old bullshit, new sandwich to eat it out of.

My son was disappointed, and said he wanted to stay another day. (shrug) I don't take it as any kind of attachment, other than being attached to getting to get away with whatever he fucking likes. I explain to his dad what "the rules" are, and he chooses to ignore it. He wants to be "the good guy" not the enforcer of rules.

Pssh. Whatever. Picking him up a day early just means it's one less phone call I have to get from Shithead, who has been calling every day.

I'm one grumpy bitch right now.

brilliance at work:

gold stars, shoes, and sausage

Today:

I went to my shrink and told her about Shithead. There was a follow up conversation later that night that resolved much. He basically admitted he was just freaked out and that the medication is fine. Whatever.

My shrink told me she was going to give me a gold star for my excellent performance on staying on the subject at hand, and even refusing to talk to him while I was angry and hanging up. She told me I should write a book. Mwaa haa! Oh, I am, I say. The cutest thing ever? She actually gave me three little stickers, like little kid stickers that say, "I'm #1!" and shit like that. I love her.

I spent the rest of the day, as well as the majority of my day yesterday, shopping. Not any wild crazy, oh-my-god-it's-cute-I'll-take-it shopping but serious shopping. The kind of shopping that is inspired by watching What Not To Wear.

I have tons of clothes, but I have a problem- they don't go together. I buy cute stuff that I have nothing to wear it with. So, I took Stacy and Clinton's advice and went straight for neutrals. I refused to buy things that "would look fucking awesome when I lose 5 pounds". I even bought -gasp!- a bunch of flip flops. You long time readers know my fear of the dreaded flip flop. But fuck, I live at the beach. I look like a dork in shoes all the time. So I bought fancy sexy flip flops, three different pairs, and a pile of neutral bottoms that make my butt look bootylicious.

And after two days of hard core picky ass shopping, I have blisters on my feet and a ridiculously low self esteem. Nothing says, "Loathe Thyself" more than trying to stuff yourself into pair after pair of shorts that look great on your butt but make your thighs look like cotton encased blinding white sausages.

So, I came home and went immediately to the gym. And now, I'm going to pass the fuck out.



ps) for anyone just bored and looking for a good time, may I highly suggest you go to Google Image Search and try typing in "Passed Out"?

thoughts for today

All beings tremble before violence.
All fear death.
All love life.

See yourself in others.
Then whom can you hurt?
What harm can you do?

-Dhammapada 129-130



All that we are is the result of our thoughts; it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. If you speak or act with a harmful thought, trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.

All that we are is the result of our thoughts; it is founded on our thoughts and made up of our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world. If you speak or act with a harmonious thought, happiness will follow you as your own shadow, never leaving you.

-Dhammapada



Anger is the real destroyer of our good human qualities; an enemy with a weapon cannot destroy these qualities, but anger can. Anger is our real enemy.

-His Holiness the Dalai Lama



Conquer your foe by force, you increase his enmity; conquer by love, and you will reap no after-sorrow.

-Fo-Sho-Hing-Tsan-King

life is like that

dysfunction junction, fuck you Shithead.

How long has it been since I've mentioned my hate for my son's father? A little while, I suppose. I'm actually working on it in therapy. Yes. Instead of just hating the bastard, I'm actually paying someone buttloads of cash to help me find a way to like him.

So, I would like to state, I am not just a vengeful unforgiving bitch, but that instead, I am a vengeful unforgiving bitch who is trying to find a way to work around the anger, poisonous rage and bitterly painful resentment that screams like shards of jagged glass into my brain every time I hear the mans voice.

I would also like to state: it is hard as hell, but I am doing it anyway, because it needs to be done. Hating him does me no good, nor does it help my son, who is stuck with this piece of shit as a father for the rest of his life, thanks to me. Guilt? Yes. Also, not helpful.

My therapist tells me to stay focused on the conversation at hand, no matter how much I may want to veer off the subject. That may be the hardest thing I've ever had to do, because it takes practice, and practice requires talking to the man. I've tried for years to "be nice", but that's not the same. I don't need to be nice, I need to talk about exactly what we are talking about and fucking goddamn motherfucking shit, that is hard!

What am I talking about, precisely? Well, I'll give you an illuminating example, that happened about an hour ago. First, a bit of background:

My son is staying at his fathers this week. While this scares the bejeesus out of me in the general oh-god-my-childs-moral-fiber-is-degrading-and-I-can-sense-it-from-here kind of feeling, it also means I get to have a well needed break from parenting. I think I'm supposed to support the idea of my son fostering a relationship with his dad, and let him make up his own mind when he gets old enough. That's how it worked with my family, and I think my mom did a good job on that count. It was difficult when my father fell from the throne I had placed him on, but at least I came to that realization myself. I gathered the facts, I connected the dots, and I realized my father is not that man I had wished that he was.

My son has this same road to travel, and I cannot do it for him. He's come a long way already.

So, this week he is at his fathers house, about four hours away. My son has somewhat recently been diagnosed with ADD, and is now on medication. While deciding to try the medication out has been a harrowing enough decision on it's own, I dreaded talking to his father about it. His father has ADHD and "tried that medicine" and "it was a bunch of fucking bullshit". So, one count down, he's already made an opinion about it, and the man sticks to his guns, no matter how stupid they are or the fact that they are actually pointing at his own head does not sway him. He has an opinion, and that's that. Instead of taking "the bullshit meds those quacks prescribed", he has spent the majority of his life self medicating, mostly with alcohol, cocaine, crystal meth and finally it was crack that sent him into rehab two years ago. He's been clean since, and I mostly believe him, only because he's such an addict that he would spiral out of control if he was using- it would be fairly obvious. So, second count down, he's had a very serious battle with a meth addiction and is horrified at the idea of giving his child this medication. Again, his opinion is written in stone, no matter what the fuck he tries to tell me otherwise.

This is one of the things that is irritating the shit out of me. He's angry that I didn't tell him about it from the beginning. Why would I? He talks to his son once every month, and sometimes not for three to six months at a time. Am I supposed to update him? I've tried, and he always has reacted with a very bored attitude so I stopped telling him things. If he wants to know, he can show some fucking initiative and ask. But now he's pissed off that I "left him out of a very important decision making process." How can I explain to him that his opinion means nothing? He spends almost no time around his child. As a matter of fact, this week is officially going to be the longest he's ever been around his son for a consecutive period, ever. My point is, he doesn't KNOW his son. His opinion about his sons behavior is meaningless, he doesn't live with him, he doesn't know him, he doesn't have a clue what the problems are, he doesn't know a goddamn thing about it. Period.

Instead, what he has is a pre-conceived horror of the addictive qualities of ADD medications. My son is eight. My husband or I dole it out in the morning, and my son isn't going to run off to a treehouse and eat the whole bottle, developing a recreational habit. Unlike my sons father, we aren't buying it off the fucking street, it comes from a doctor, and it's a controlled substance. The only way I can continue him on the medication is to take him in, once a month, have a counsel with the doctor who then prescribes another months worth, no refills.

I'm try to explain this to Mr. Ex Crack Head, but it's like talking to a wall. "Everything has a price," he told me darkly, and I wanted to kick him in the balls. Instead, I calmly replied that I found the price of my son failing out of school and coming home off the bus crying from the sheer frustration of TRYING to behave worth it, at this point in time. Shall I not give him the medication out of fear? Or try it, and see what good or harm may come of it? Harm may come, yes. But harm has already come, in the form of an incredibly smart child thinking he's stupid because he just can't pay attention and getting in trouble constantly at school and at home.

Getting him to see that he is projecting his own battle with addiction onto his eight year old son is futile. I thought maybe we were getting somewhere, because he kept saying that he was "willing to give it a chance". I managed to not tell him it was not up to him. I kept on target.

The trouble is, while my son is at his fathers this week, it requires that his incredibly reluctant father actually give him his medication. He agreed that he will, and I think he will.

(sigh) As I'm writing this, my husband calls. I tell him about the conversation I had with Shit for Brains and he becomes VERY angry. He loves my son as if he were his own, and if my sons father fell off the face of the earth, my husband and I would have no problem with that. My husband (aka Mr. Wonderful) is very protective of my son. It was his idea to hurry up the wedding so that my son and I would be covered under his insurance. On a side note: my son is supposed to be covered by his fathers insurance, according to court order, and his father is supposed to pay child support. Neither has happened in years.

So, I finally get to the conversation I had with Shithead just over an hour ago, and tell my husband about it.

Basically Shithead calls up and starts immediately badgering me. This is the reason it is so hard to stay on topic with him- he likes to come in swinging, and my response is to go into defensive mode and then counter attack. My shrink says not to do this. Ok. (Deep breath)

Shithead: So, I don't think this medication thing is a good idea at all.

Me: (rolling eyes) Why is that?

Shithead: Dude! He's all freaking out! Twitching legs, involuntary muscle spasms, he's tweaked out of his mind!

Me: What the hell are you talking about? (this is NOT how my son acts)

Shithead: Yesterday we went to the store to rent a video game and he couldn't decide which one to get and his face started twitching and shit!

Me: (sigh) He does that. (Not that Shithead would know.) It's when he's trying to not cry. He scrunches his face all up and starts blinking really fast, pulls on his ears and starts clutching his shirt. (It's just his way of trying to hold back the tears, don't ask me, he's done it for a long time.)

Shithead: No, it wasn't! He was totally freaking out!

Me: (Probably because he's with YOU you fucking stupid asshole, I would freak out, too.) He wasn't freaking out, he's fine.

Shithead: (angry now) What do you know? You're not even around him when he's at the peak of his medication! He's at school! Have you ever even SEEN him at the peak of his medicine???

Me: (more sighing) Yes. Every weekend. And he doesn't "freak out", he's just fine.

Shithead: (accusatory) Did you even TAKE him to more than one doctor?

Me: (instantly enraged and using my cold calm voice) No. I did not. If you would like the numbers of the psychologist, psychiatrist, and his teacher at school, you can have them. You can talk to them. You can ask them anything you like, but you and I are not having this conversation, because I'm getting really angry and I feel you just called me up to attack me.

Shithead: (back paddling) No, that's not why I called! I'm just saying I don't think this medicine is a good idea!

Me: Yes. I know. You've already told me that. Look, I'm very angry, and if you'd like to continue this conversation later once I've calmed down, that's fine. But right now I feel attacked and this is going to go nowhere.

Shithead: Fine. Ok. I'll call you back later.

(click)

I paused to curse and yell at the phone, filled with rage and hatred for this man, this stupid jackass of a man. I think what he wanted was reassurance that "our" sons reactions were normal, maybe? I don't know. But instead, these are the kinds of conversations I have with him. His idea of a discussion involves harassing people until they give in. I told him before that I think he's a bully. He was dumbfounded, and actually speechless. "You really think I'm a bully?" he asked. "Yah!" I said. "You just yell at people until you get your way! That was our entire relationship! Your way, or else we could scream at each other about it. Those were the options. I always just gave in when I got tired of screaming."

Now, I'm going to a shrink, so is my son, and the one person who might need it most is not. Such is life. But I am learning how to stop the bully, stand up to the bully, and reclaim my own ground. If feels good. It doesn't make me hate him any less yet, but it does feel good.

It might be a small step, but at least it's a step.

Blogger=

Hello...what am I still doing here?

Have you ever had a friend who you thought was your friend, but it turns out they secretly hated you all along?

That's how I feel about Blogger right now, who has once again restored my blog but wiped out, AGAIN, every image and file I've ever uploaded in the last FOUR YEARS.

The change over to a new server is imminent. I highly recommend no one at Blogger come to my house, as my cutlery drawer is located far too conveniently nearby.

me and teddy, super best friends

Whether you find it cute or bizarre, the fact remains: I sleep with my teddy bear.

No, it's not some present from an ex-boyfriend or won from a fair, but the actual teddy bear I've had since I was a baby. It's pink, it has orange and black plastic eyes, it's nose it nearly worn off completely. It's pretty ratty, and the music box quit working many many years ago, so I have since taken it out and set it aside in a special place.

Teddy and I have been through a lot together. I have not named it, other than calling it my teddy. So, teddy it is.

When I was a teenager I took it with me to a Grateful Dead show, ala dancing bears. I had a great time toting it around, it was cuddly and proved to be quite the excellent tripping pal. My friend, The Bitch made some comment at that show, about how my teddy looked psycho. In her shrill screeching laugh she said, "I mean, it's eyes are orange! What the fuck? Who puts orange eyes on a teddy bear? That's fucking psychotic."

I'm pretty sure that was my first clue as to what a total cunt she was. Mess with a girl's teddy, and you have just made thineself an enemy. For the record, teddy's eyes are just fine. She was just a total bitch.

As I got older and moved out on my own, teddy came with me, and was always in a place of honor near the bed. I didn't think it was creepy, it's just a freaking teddy bear, it's not like I was twenty years old with a room full of stuffed unicorns or some shit. But I did have the occasional friend who would see my teddy sitting on the bed and make an offhand remark, like, "So...you still sleep with your teddy bear, huh?" The tone was always one of a subtle horror, as if they were begging me to tell them, "What, that ratty old thing? No, I was just on my way to throw it on a bonfire, as a matter of fact..."

But, no. My answer was, and still is, "Yep." The kind of "Yep" that manages to insinuate, with three little letters, the fact that I sincerely fucking doubt you would ask Mr. T that if you were in HIS bedroom.

When I left my ex *coughs*hairball*coughs* husband, the nutcase actually asked me later why I took my teddy bear. "What?" I asked him, confounded. "Teddy, why did you take teddy?" he pleaded. "Uh, because it's my fucking teddy bear? That I've had since I was a baby?!?" Yah, like I'd leave it with him, what the fuck? He cried, "At least you could have left it as something for me to remember you by..."

Oh, you'll remember me. Don't worry about that.

One night, a few months after my son was born, his father came home early and just hung out in the living room, talking to me. That was completely and totally unusual, I guess there weren't any skanks with coke around, I don't know. For whatever reason, I was telling him about how the music box in my teddy was broken, and he said, "Oh, really? I'm sure I can fix it." And he did. It was, honestly, the sweetest thing he ever did, and that's not saying a hell of a lot, but hey. Such is life.

As I've gotten older, strangely, people think it's cuter that I still have my teddy bear. Well, that or I've managed to make friends with people who aren't automatically judgemental assholes, it might be a bit of both. But at thirty-one years old, I admit it is odd to still have my teddy bear. The thing is, I can't sleep without it sometimes. Not every night, but some nights. Having something in the crook of my arm just calms me down. It's that or my pillow, which can cause an awfully sore neck. Teddy, on the other hand, fits perfectly.

So what's the deal with the teddy bear? I don't know, but I have a theory. It involves me losing my "blanky" when I was a kid.

Here's the deal- I never lost it. My mom took it away, because it was ratty, and threw it in the trash barrel on burning day (that dates me, doesn't it? Shit.) When I couldn't find it, she just claimed innocence, and told me I must have lost it.

This still fills me with a murderous rage to this day, I have got to tell you.

I looked for that damn blanky for over two years, every night checking my pillow case (that's where I would stash it when it was not in use), even though it wasn't there for years, I just kept hoping it would magically reappear. I was a child, and children believe in that kind of magic. Finally, out of total pity, my grandma got me a new blanky, which was just like the old one except NOT THE OLD ONE. My mom had a fit, and insisted I keep it at my grandma's house. I didn't want the damn thing, it wasn't my blanky, but I did appreciate the nice gesture, futile as it was.

The only reason I know the true demise of my beloved blanky was because I found a piece of it in my mom's dresser drawer one day. I was a teenager by then, and filled with the dark and bleak angst that only teenagers can really feel. Why I was going through my mom's shit, I don't know, but when I found a small, square, corner piece of my old blanky I was fucking PISSED. Pissed off enough to confront my mother with it, shaking it in her face and demanding to know how the hell she had managed to "find" a perfect square of my "missing" blanky.

She just gave me the shitty cold glare she had perfected over the years, and told me, "It was never missing. I threw it in the fire, it was disgusting. I just cut that piece out to be sentimental, I guess." I stared at her. "You burned it. You burned it. You cut out a little piece for yourself and then chucked it into a fire. THEN you told ME I LOST it. But you saved a piece of my disgusting blanky for yourself," I said, in total disbelief. "Do you know how long I looked for that thing? And you let me think it was MY fault? Dude, you are such a BITCH!"

Where is that piece of blanky now? I don't know. She probably still has it, to remind her of....what? The halcyon days of my youth? Some fantasy she has in her head of how I was happy as a child? Of how she was strong when I was weak?

Now I am a mother. Go ahead, ask where my sons blanky is....it's in a chest, with a few other choice items that I have kept from his childhood.

When it came time to give up his bottle, I told him it was time to buy a "big boy cup" and let him pick out a cool sippy cup with a straw and all. It was a pain in the ass to clean, but I let him be on his terms, and he threw his baby bottle away himself (I, of course, took it out, cleaned it and put in the chest). When it was time to let go of the blanky, I showed him the baby bottle in the chest, and told him it was time to get a big kids blanket. We went to the store, and he picked out his own regular bed sized blanket for his bed, and when we came home, we ceremoniously folded up his blanky and put it into the chest. He felt very secure knowing that he was "letting it go" but that it was still in existence. No trauma, no tears.

Why couldn't my mom have come up with such a simple idea? The thought that she threw it in a fire, but not just any fire, no, the TRASH fire, just pisses me off. Closure for her, and what about me? I'm sure she thought it was all for my own good, but there are better ways to do things. When I look back, I wonder how much she thought about the future consequences of her actions. I mean, she raised two kids alone for years, I don't mean to say she was irresponsible, but she just always seemed so cold about everything.

She told me once that I was a sentimental slob, just like her. (Qoute) I found that baffling, since I don't see her being sentimental, and how does that make me a slob? Other than the blanky, which was ragged, but she took care of that years before telling me that.

Whatever. I have my teddy. Nobody's throwing it in a fire, and I'll kick your fucking ass if you try.

dyslexics untie!

I wonder if there are any computer programmers out there that are interested in making a program that recognizes dyslexic passwords.

Each morning I sign in, and four out of ten times I get the message, "Did you forget your password?" For some reason (I'm cranky), this annoys me. I tell the computer, "No, I'm just retarded and can't fucking type!" You know, I'm close, cut me some slack, ok?

I realize this goes against all kinds of programming security features, but a girl can dream.