Diary of a Gamer Girl

Marriage ... Divorce ... and Friends ...

2011-07-06T00:04:00.000-06:00

Lately I've been contemplating my friendships ... past, present, future ... and it got me thinking about some things ....

When my ex-husband and I started dating I had a huge social network ... I had friends from the two high schools I had attended, from college, from several jobs I had worked at ... I had a group of guys I played roller hockey with ... I had friends I worked at the local amusement park with that I hung out with late at night at Denny's and IHOP or just their houses ... I had enough girl friends from various aspects in my life that when we got engaged I could think of more than twelve potential bridesmaids ... I was a social, popular person ... I just was ...

I ran across a picture a few days ago of my ex and I and a group of my friends, from various parts of my life at a Christmas party I hosted two months before he asked me to marry him ... and then I started remembering things ... well, I knew the concept had existed in my life ... but I started remembering the details ... of how I pushed a lot of my friends away ... for various reasons ... but mostly because he was uncomfortable around them ... all my friends from the high school I graduated from were giving me updates on my ex-boyfriend ... the one I was still dating when I graduated from high school and well into my freshman year of college ... my ex-husband hated that ... he really didn't like being reminded I had a past at all ... and now that I have more experience dating people that have pasts ... I understand more where he was
coming from ... but at the same time when your friends overlap your relationships it will happen and we have to accept that in other people as well ... but he didn't like me hanging out with my high school friends because of that ... he didn't like me playing roller hockey with a group of guys I knew from the sporting goods store I worked at ... and then I was also doing the new love/puppy love thing and kind of pushed my friends off to the side on my own as well ... my best friend through my first two years of college quickly became resentful of my lack of answering phone calls, my constant decline of invitations ... we finally ended up having a big fight and she dropped out as the maid of honor in my wedding ... she had her own responsibilities in the downfall of the friendship, but I did too ... and the blow out came mostly because she found a new friend ... that had time for her ... when I didn't ...

Then ... when I got married ... and especially I after I became pregnant with my oldest daughter .... I did what I call the new wife/new mommy snob thing ... and I think a lot of women looking back at this season of their life realize they did this ... but I was a wife and mother now ... I didn't have time for childish things like hanging out with friends ... and how dare you ask me to go bar hopping on a Friday night ... don't you know that is precious family time ... that I am now too good for that ... too mature ... too responsible ... and then you know what happens ... midlife crisis ... but that's a whole different blog .... but the point is that as I advanced into other stages of my life (especially engaged at 19, married at 21, mommy at 23) I pushed away and left behind friends ... they didn't understand what I was going through ... I didn't get their "party" lifestyle ... my ex-husband didn't like me going and doing things without him and he didn't like me leaving him alone with the babies (especially my middle child) ... I got involved in MOPS ... and made some amazing friends there ... but their weeknight activities were heavily protested by my ex-husband ... and I joined a Bible study with a group of women (some of whom were in my MOPS group) ... he didn't like that either ... it took me away from the house ... so finally I just stopped fighting it ... and then I got a part-time job ... which allowed me to get out of the house and socialize in a manner that was acceptable to him and the job I got was perfect because I was surrounded by other stay at home moms that just had part time jobs ... and my clientele was mostly moms as well ...

All along we gained couple friends ... we had two couples that we had dinner parties with every other month or so ... which usually involved really good, home cooked food from one of us three women, good desserts, bottles & bottles of wine, great conversation ... the guys (who didn't smoke) would go enjoy cigars together and leave us women to our wine-induced girl talk ... one of those guys was also in a band ... we would go out and watch him play live ... we had other couple friends we had game nights with ... and laughed hysterically ... and then we had a few that we just did things with now and then both kid-friendly and not ... but we had a social life together ... he just didn't really like me having a social life by myself ...

Then a co-worker and I started going out for dessert or drinks after work ... and I started realizing how much I missed the social being I once was ... I opened a MySpace account ... well it had been opened earlier just so I could read a blog a friend was writing, but I actually started using it ... reconnecting ... reaching out ... finding long lost friends and acquaintances .... i was downright giddy at finding friends I hadn't talked to in 20 years who told me they had been wondering what I had been up to as well ... then I started having girls nights (that usually were not confined to just girls, because they just weren't) ... and going out dancing ... it was almost like I found my soul again ... the inner extrovert that had been screaming to get out for years ... and I realized something ....

I missed me ....

I wasn't defined by wife or mother ... yes they were huge pieces of who I was ... and as a mother ... still am ... I could just be me ... I realized how much I missed having girlfriends to gossip with and bitch with and guy friends (which most of my friends throughout my younger years were) to just play around with ... and meeting new people ... and this discovery probably had something to do with my divorce, but in all honesty I think that my marriage was over long before that ... when I felt like I had to lose myself to stay with him ... but then I got divorced ... and my friendships were re-defined again ...

A lot of my girlfriends I had outside of my ex-husband were kind of taken back .... and I remember at one point my ex said to me that it was like all our friends thought that divorce was contagious ... because his friends were backing off from him as well ... I lost a lot of trust in a lot of friends in a short period of time thought when my ex made a bunch of phone calls and some in person visits basically flat out lying about what we had and hadn't agreed to .... telling people that I was a neglectful and alcoholic mother ... that I was going to go for full custody and not let him see the kids ... that he didn't want a divorce ... when I very clearly remember having a conversation with him and it was a mutual decision ... but he called some of my family .... and most of my best friends ... he went and visited with every single set of couple friends we had and did what he could to sabotage my relationships with them ... including coming back to me and telling me a bunch of degrading and awful things that they supposedly said about me ... but yeah ... he took most of our mutual friends with him ... he "won" them in the divorce ... I was left with a few broken friendships that I honestly haven't had the strength to try to piece back together ... maybe I'm too jaded ... maybe I just put up my walls ... but what I have now is mostly broken friendships ... I don't think they'll ever be the same again ...

Some of my older friends stepped up, came through ... turned out to be people I didn't know they were ... some people I would have described as mere acquaintances came out with amazing support ... amazing words ... I have some tried and true friends ... one I've had since I was less than a year old ... one I've had since my Junior year of high school ... that are the kinds of friends you can go years without talking to and pick back up like you hadn't missed a beat ... luckily thanks to social networks that years without talking thing doesn't happen anymore ... but I have some good friends ... it's just that I really don't have the support structure of friends I once had ... I lost my pre-marriage friends when I got married and had kids ... and my married life friends when I got divorced ...

My MOPS ladies have been amazing ... not so much in the hang out way ... but in the support through words, gifts and inspiration, they have been amazing and to be honest, I thought they would be the most judgmental of my friends ... I was so wrong ... I do remember in a MOPS meeting once basically having the "if mommy ain't happy ain't nobody happy" talk ... but the speaker was saying that we have to take care of us too ... that we can't and shouldn't teach our kids that when you're a mom you have to stop being you ... give up your friends ... stop doing the things you used to ... that's not a good message to send them ... it's actually healthy for kids to see their parents have a healthy and active social life ... so that being said ...

I think it's time to start rebuilding old friendships and forming some new ones ... especially since the bulk of my good friends right now came to me through my boyfriend .... which means I'm not doing much better than before as far as having a social network and support structure of my own ... so now I just have to go about doing all that ... and that is the hard part ...

Where's My Yield Sign? ....

2011-06-15T20:34:00.002-06:00

I haven't written in sooo long ... and I apologize to those that actually look forward to me posting ... okay maybe nobody does ... maybe you all do ... I don't know ...

But, life has been insanely busy ... I want to know where the yield sign on life is right now ... just let everything kind of slow down a bit ... in March and April I was really busy with spring break and then the start of a new job ...

I am working now at an Alzheimer's Center .... which is both rewarding and extremely hard ... I think I would rather die in pain or slowly lose the use of my physical body than to lose my mind the way my poor residents have ... it is an extremely sad disease ... that nobody should have to live with either from the inside or as a family member from the outside looking in ... I work two 12 hour nights from 6pm to 6am and I do work my butt off for those 24 hours a week ... but I adjusted really quickly to the schedule because when I started the job my kids were with my ex for a few weeks, so I adjusted really quickly to sleeping during the day and being awake at night and
then the kids came back, and I was getting a little less sleep, but was maintaining the schedule, but then came a week full of daytime school events and I readjusted for daytime and haven't felt rested since ....

On May 27th, my baby boy graduated from Kindergarten in a bittersweet moment for me ... he is the youngest and possibly last of my kids, so all his milestones hit me harder than they did with the girls ... so I was on an emotional roller coaster for a few days, on top of being sleep deprived ....

A few days after that I helped my boyfriend move back to the metro area where I live ... after living 130 miles apart for almost a year ... the 30 miles that lay between us now doesn't seem too bad ... he is very busy with his own life of taking care of ailing grandparents and their house ... he is so busy all the time and he doesn't get much of a paycheck ... but at least we get to see each other more often now ...

Then on June 6 I started school again ... going for my nursing pre-requisites again/still ... I picked one really hard class to take in a summer session but so far so good, I've gotten A's on everything so far and some extra credit too, so I should be okay as the semester takes on ...

I have thought of a million things to blog about lately, but have had little to no time to take time for me (which is what blog time is ... "me time") ... but I will try to find more time over the next few days/weeks/months ...

If it makes y'all feel better about me not blogging ... I haven't played WoW since April 29th ... I've played on the XBox maybe five or six times in that same period ... and I just touched all my Zynga stuff today for the first time since probably the beginning of April ... so I have definitely been busy ... lol ...

Maybe I'll find my yield sign for life somewhere ... but I doubt it ...

A Political Spew ...

2011-05-02T08:50:00.003-06:00

I think that many people are wayyyy too stuck on the labels in politics ... instead of looking at individual issues ... I know people that both hate and love the president that would actually agree with each other on almost every single issue ... but they’re stuck on the label of democrat or republican ... I am neither ... because I balance each issue and politician as they stand alone ... I also am over the name calling, stone throwing, and bullying based on the labels ... if you want to criticize the other side use hard facts ... not rumors .. and not just some derogatory statement ... remember that these people were elected to office ... so the majority of the people wanted them there ... I also find it interesting how people don't understand how the three branches of our government work and blame one branch when another is to blame ... or really all of them ... because it's designed to have checks and balances ... and it does ... I guess all and all I am proud to be an American (especially today) ... and proud of our abilities to be free and make choices ... and that is what we should do ... not just say ... oh he's good or bad based on his political party or some rumor we heard ... we have a right in this country to think for ourselves ... and to vote on that ... to follow any political party blindly is really quite idiotic … regardless of which party you affiliate yourself with …. If you want to call the president (whether Bush or Obama or whatever president present, past or future it happens to be) an idiot or stupid or unpatriotic … be able to back it up … but actually … in a more intelligent manner … why don’t you start with your back up … and not lower yourself to name calling … or to uninformed statements …

I have seen so much lately where the president has been blamed for things he has no control over … and things that are twisted and contorted to a point that they’re nearly unrecognizable …. One of the biggest is that Obama wants to cut military pay … where on earth did anyone get this from? … he vowed not to freeze military pay along with other federal pay (despite heavy protesting from several democratic congressmen) … and he proposed a 1.4% increase in pay which while smaller than usual is in line with the mathematical equation that every president since 1972 has used … with one exception … when Clinton was president and he proposed no pay increase for military … but guess what? Guess who has the real power on this subject? … The legislative branch … not the executive branch … when Clinton proposed no pay raise … congress went
ahead and gave the military a 2% raise anyway … but the more important factor is that the proposal was based on a mathematical equation … one that Reagan, Bush & Bush used, along with Clinton, with that one year exception …. To come up with the 1.4% number … Also, did you know that the Department Of Defense … the Pentagon themselves … asked for the raise to be less? …. That Obama’s proposal exceeded the amount the Department of Defense wanted it to be …. Because they want their budgeted money to go to other things …. Facts people, facts …. Next issue; gas prices … the number one reason before this weekend that people stated that Obama’s approval rating was falling was because of gas prices … okay … so I’m wondering when exactly it was that supply and demand and the cost of barrels of oil was directly controlled by a president … indirectly maybe there are some things that can be done … but I will say that in 1995 I paid $1.30 a gallon for gas ... and there have been three presidents between then and now … and really this is the first time I’ve heard people flat out blaming a president for the gas prices … Now … the budget and the near government shutdown …. That wasn’t the president either … that again … was the legislative branch of the government … and republicans and democrats not agreeing with each other … the president just said basically figure it out agree on it … or there won’t be a budget at all … which is what ANY president would basically be required to do under the same circumstances ….

This is actually just a handful of things that have come up …. And I am defending a man that I didn’t vote for … but I have the head on my shoulders that I choose to use to actually find out the facts for myself instead of listening to rumors … no president will please everyone …. But facts are facts … issues are issues … ignoring that just because his political symbol is the wrong animal is just kind of dumb …

The Tides Seem To Be Changing ....

2011-03-27T10:42:00.001-06:00

This last week has taken on a life of it's own ... in a good way ... the first was the opportunity to start writing for a gaming site, focused on all aspects of gaming and electronic entertainment ... the second was an actual job, as a CNA (which is what I am working toward my RN) that I was offered on Friday ... then yesterday I was offered a job writing for another website ... a World of Warcraft exclusive website ... writing articles specializing in priests ... then actually in game ... I downed two new raid bosses (Magmaw and Omnotron) .... I looted a rare fishing pole from my fishing daily ... finally, I hit the 15 pound mark on my diet I started February 1st ... it's just been a very different week than I have had recently ...

Of course the best and most important news is that I have a job ... well, technically, three ...
and life on the financial end will start getting easier ... and I will have more freedom, just from having money ...

On top of all that ... ever since my mom came back from her vacation things have been much smoother between us ... I don't know if it was the break from each other ... or my the time I was able to spend with my honey ... or the drama that the same people caused in both our lives ... or a combination of it all ... but things have been better ... I still have my annoyances when I think she's overstepping boundaries (like asking my daughter if she turned in her overdue library book etc.,), but for the most part things are a lot better ...

And the cherry on top? ... My kids are on spring break this week and we're going to see my honey for four days ... so we get some quality time as well ...

In short ... life is good!

Maybe It Really Is Me ....

2011-03-23T08:14:00.001-06:00

So have you ever had a group where you felt like maybe you didn't quite fit in? Or maybe you just had rotten timing or bad luck? Like say ... a book club ... where every time you're not there they go out for coffee and dessert after the club ... or a basketball league where every time you're not there they go out for drinks and appetizers or go back to someone's house .. or or or ... I think everyone has had experiences like that at some point ... and maybe it is just a matter of luck or coincidence ... but lately I've had some of these experiences ....

Now, mine are in the gaming world ... and that really makes it no different except you're not physically in the same space as other people ... but every time I'm on and can and want to go
and run a dungeon or a raid or something ... there either aren't people that want to or we go and do something that is long and taxing and really not much fun ... but when I'm not there ... it seems like they run dungeon after dungeon ... and do all these things ... same with Call of Duty lately on the XBox ... they'll be having fun and kicking ass ... and they call me and ask me to play (which is a good thing) ... and then it all goes to hell ... and all of the sudden nobody is having fun ... they're all just yelling and bitching ... and yeah ... I don't know lately I wonder if it's me .... if all these people do so much better, and have much more fun ... when I'm not there ... and then when I am there they either don't want to do things, or I have bad timing ... or many other things ... and it could all be just a matter of coincidence ... but it does leave me wondering ... maybe it really is me ...

Opportunities ...

2011-03-22T17:59:00.003-06:00

So, I think everyone that writes a blog has the dream that someone will stumble upon their blog and give them an opportunity ... to do something .... to write, to review, to teach ... to do many, many other things depending on any individual blogger ... and while I kind of had some of these fantasies myself, I never really, really thought about it. I've wanted to be a fiction novelist for as long as I can remember, even did a mentor-ship program in the fifth grade with a local author ... and someday, someday ... I will sit down and work on the book that I've been writing and re-writing in my head for the last twenty or so years .... but ... over the last few weeks an opportunity was presented to me ...

Someone came across my blog and read some of my posts that are more in depth about gaming ... such as my one on gaming addictions and stereotypes and well ... they offered me an internship of sorts. Project Allison is a project devoted to putting out a new gaming & entertainment arts news and networking website ... set to launch later this year. They asked me to be on board as a staff writer coming in on the ground floor. I know that I have to submit four articles a week, but otherwise we are still working out the details of content. This will be unpaid for now ... but as their profits kick in from advertising,etc., the pay will kick in as well ... do I know
that this could fail horribly and may result in no money? ... Of course I do ... but I will have professionally published articles ... something to add to a portfolio ... at the very least ... but I think that this website stands a chance ...

Gaming and electronic entertainment is actually growing, despite our economy .... people like me and many of my friends are opting to spend a one time fee to purchase a game as our source of socialization and entertainment, rather than spending the same money on a movie and dinner that only lasts the night ... so in this economy the gaming industry is growing ... and along with it websites, magazines and other peripherals that support the industry ...

So I guess this is my big "announcement" ... I am venturing into the world of professional writing ... all as a result of this little blog ... and to be honest ... I'm kind of excited!

PS This is my 100th post on this little blog ... kind of appropriate if you ask me :)

Art School ... FTW ...

2011-03-17T20:19:00.002-06:00

Okay, so those of you that follow my blog regularly know that I have issues with the fact that my two daughters are two very different individuals ... I struggle with labeling them as the "academic one" and the "creative one" because I don't want to pigeon hole them ... I don't want them to think that I'm calling the one that more naturally excels at academics and is actually interested in it "smarter" than the other ... because that's not true ... she applies herself differently ... and different ... is okay ...

But ... all that being said ... my "creative one" is looking at an amazing prospect in a school ... an art school ... public mind you ... I couldn't afford private ... that is for grades 6 through 12 ... she'll have to apply and have recommendations from some of her current teachers ... and
then audition ... but she's going in to focus on visual arts ... so her audition is drawing a still life and then drawing a creative piece of her own ... I know she has the talent ... so if her nerves don't get the best of her I think she has what it takes ... but to be surrounded by kindred spirits ... in a place where the creativity in her soul is allowed to thrive (while she maintains a 3.0 in her academics) ... I think will be an amazing experience for her ... and will definitely give her an advantage when she tries to get into post-secondary schools for art .... right now ... she wants to take her art skills and either be an art teacher or a tattoo artist ... but we shall see what happens over the course of the next few years ... I am very excited for her though ... very glad that she has this opportunity ... I will be nervous myself until the day we receive the acceptance letter ... and if we receive a letter of a different kind ... well, then we will take what we can learn from it and she can try again the next year, or not ... depending on her thoughts and feelings ... but overall we're both very excited!

Disturbing Thoughts ...

2011-03-17T13:48:00.001-06:00

Okay, so I'm kind of angry about this ... so if this is kind of discombobulated, I apologize in advance .... this girl is truly disturbing ... I chose to embed this video rather than her original because honestly I don't want to give her more attention ...

First and foremost, let me say that I am a cradle Lutheran ... ELCA ... not LCMS .... trust me there's a difference .... a rather large one ... but my point in that being .... that I am a Christian, baptized, first communioned, confirmed, parochial school graduated, my kids are baptized ... and while I logically doubt pieces and I personally believe that the Bible is partly metaphorical fiction ... proverbs if you will ... I do believe in the Christian God ... I believe that Jesus walked this earth as the Son of God ... and that the symbolism in Him dying on the cross for our sins is an incredibly important part of my religion ... so in other words, yes, I am a Christian ... I am a believer .... but I am sick and tired of extremists giving Christianity a bad name ... the God I believe in is loving ... not to be feared ... I don't think he cares about every single action or thought or whatever we do ... because even being a supernatural spirit, there are way too many people on this
earth for God to be involved to that extent ...I know many people that say that God cares about every little detail ... or God doesn't ... and that's fine ... we are all entitled to our own beliefs .... but I get kind of sick of people thanking God that he somehow willed their basketball team to win ... or win that award or bless one couple with a child while another remains unable to conceive ... meaning God plays favorites? It's ridiculous ... at least to me ...

But this girl crossed a line ... even if she was acting ... to say that her prayers willed thousands of people to die to prove God's existence ... and she's talking about atheists ... but what's funny is the bulk of Japan is not atheist ... it's pathetic and wrong to think that she is somehow more important than those poor people finding their loved ones out there dead ... their lives in ruin ... the dangers of radiation poisoning and nuclear meltdown practically imminent .... who does she think she is?

I am also a little perturbed by the people predicting the end of the world .... calling out things from Mayan predictions, the Book of Revelations, and other religious texts ... the end of the world will come eventually ... we know that ... but here's my thing for the people that truly believe that either by Easter this year or by December 2012 that the human race will no longer exist ... why do you go to work every day still? go to school? save for your retirement? buy ... well ... anything? why continue to have children? ... just to watch them die? .... why do all these things if you really believe the world will no longer be here sometime in the next twenty-two months? ... for those that are on the extreme ends like the Woody Harrelson character in the movie 2012 ... that are living in trailers and such just waiting ... I actually have more respect for you and your beliefs, because it's clear you truly believe in what you are saying ... but as for me I believe that the human race has come to a point with technology and knowledge ... that we probably could do something like send Bruce Willis and Ben Afleck in to space to blow up an asteroid headed this way ... we probably are capable of dealing with a nuclear fallout ... not all of us ... not the majority of us ... but some members of the human race would find a way to survive ... I think we have the technology to survive as a human race under most circumstances .... but if Revelations is coming this spring ... or the world will end next December ... then I guess that I will be proven wrong ... but I will be dead ... and probably won't care ...

And while I'm on this kick about religious extremists ... can I just say that since the death of Matthew Sheppard I have hated the Westboro Baptist Church and all they stood for ... I can't believe that they continue to have followers at all ... but they do ... and that is both frightening and sickening ... but I guess for some it's easier to believe in a vengeful God than a loving one ... so they can do their thing ... I'll do mine ...

End .. soapbox ...

The Stay At Home Mom ... Curse? ....

2011-03-14T12:58:00.002-06:00

If you had asked me 5 years ago if I would ever be writing a blog like this I would have told you that you were totally and completely nuts ... if you had asked for my honest opinion 5 years ago as to whether or not being a stay-at-home mom was the ~~better~~ best choice for any growing family that could afford it ... I would have said ABSOFREAKINLUTELY ... and then the walls came tumbling down ...

Now before I say all this ... please don't think for a minute that I actually regret the time I spent with my children ... watching them grow ... nurturing them ... seeing every single milestone ... taking all the teaching moments I could ... being their main source of, well, everything .... because I wouldn't change it for the world ... quite literally ... which will make more sense in a few sentences ....

So the walls came tumbling down ... in April 2008 ... my separation and divorce process started ... at the time I had been a full-time stay at home mom for 5 years ... I had a part-time job in retail management ... which I honestly got for sanity, to get me out of the house, to talk to adults, but ended up relying on the extra income ... I held that job for about 2 1/2 years before the divorce process started ... but ...

I was left in the end with a more than half-finished degree that I gave up on because I was going to be a stay at home mom ... and really no job history .... in an economy that sucks ... I had no way of supporting myself ... it wasn't for lack of trying if I could list the hundreds, no thousands of jobs that I have applied for since 2008 ... well, I don't think anyone that isn't in it can
grasp how the economy and job market have been ... I kept my retail job and then had to move through not much choice of my own ... and had to leave it ... I found a new job nine months later and ended up having to leave that one under the same circumstances ...

So, because I made the choice to be a stay at home mom ... to leave my plush office accounting job to do so ... (did I mention it had a pension) ... because I made this choice ... I have been struggling, really, really struggling for the last three years ...

You can be judgmental of me being divorced, I would have been five years ago ... but ... it's not just the divorce ... what if something would have happened to my ex-husband? ... what if he had been permanently disabled, or ... died .... I would be in pretty much the same boat ... yeah there would be life insurance ... well, now there's child support ... but still ... as stay at home moms I don't think we realize the vulnerable position that we put ourselves in ... how we put ourselves in the full hands of our partners .... and that anything that goes wrong could mean financial disaster ....

Like I said I wouldn't change it ... but I will share my story with some people ... to maybe help save them from the same fate ... there are things you can do here and there to keep up your chances of being hired ... I made a choice to put my fate completely in the hands of my ex-husband and his ability to earn money ... and while I don't regret it ... if I could go back ... I would have made some different choices ... like finishing my degree ... and maybe making that part time job in something with more living wage potential than retail ...

Offense vs Defense ...

2011-03-12T00:07:00.003-07:00

I think in life often times people confuse these two areas ...

I've seen it a few times recently ...

When you say and do things completely unprovoked, without someone opening that door for you, I think that makes you an offensive person ... this can lead to good things in places like Corporate America ... but when it comes to friendships and relationships there is a whole different story ... I think that's my definition of bully ... someone that does and says hurtful things unprovoked ... when the person they're doing them to, has caused them no harm .... that kind of offensiveness ... is in my honest opinion ... wrong ... it's the opposite of all things good ... it lacks compassion ... and an understanding of humanity ....

On the flip side ...

When someone wrongs you ... or people you love (especially your children) ... and you defend yourself or them ... that is natural and noble .... there is a line where it can be too much and that is a line I have crossed more than once in my life ... but when someone actually does something wrong to you ... something that hurts you (emotionally, physically, or any other way) or your loved ones ... I think that defending yourself & them is an appropriate reaction ...

I think sometimes those on the "offensive" side forget that ... they forget that the person they were hurtful toward did nothing to harm them in the first place ... I mean people can rub you the wrong way ... people might annoy you or many other things .... but if they don't actually do anything to hurt you ... there is no justification for hurting them ...

I do have the problem of taking bait ... and I do have the problem of thinking I can fix and change people and make them understand how wrong hurting someone else is ... but I do eventually give up ... because some people just will never realize how hurtful they can be ... whether they don't know or don't care is another story ...but it is still wrong that they continually hurt people with their actions and words and take no responsibility for it ... and that is something I will just have to learn how to accept ... that some people are just like that ...

Quakes & Waves ...

2011-03-11T22:44:00.003-07:00

I was playing COD on the XBox last night when the people in our lobby started talking about the earthquake in Japan ... and the tsunamis ... and the tsunami warnings that Hawaii, Alaska and the west coast were under ... I got off the xbox and hopped online to look at some of the news and then I saw my Godbrother posted the information on the evacuations in Washington, Oregon and California ... it was around 3am at that point and I just had to get some sleep ....

I figured I'd wake up to more news ... to people on Facebook that would be talking about it ... but not so much ... I had one friend who is in Hawaii right now on business ... his hotel was evacuated and he was moved to another hotel ... he shared some pictures ... and a few handfuls of friends that said something about it ... but overall there has been a remarkable quietness ...

Maybe it's just too soon ... I noticed that Zynga is already fundraising for the Red Cross & Save the Children for earthquake
and tsunami relief ... and I saw on the news that a handful of celebrities have spoken out ... but so far this just doesn't feel like the outreach/outcry I normally see after a major disaster ...

I am grateful for so much ... for the people in Tokyo that remained almost unaffected ... for my friend that was evacuated before a small tsunami engulfed the lower floors of the hotel he was staying in ... for my Godbrother and his fellow US Coast Guard members for keeping our shores alerted and safe ...

For the lives and relative health of my little family .... there always is a sense of mortality that comes at times like these ... I think the outreach/outcry is coming ... maybe just more slowly than usual ...

The People We Don't Choose ....

2011-03-11T17:18:00.002-07:00

This really should be several different blogs ... one titled "Negativty" ... one titled "Clarification" ... and one titled "The People We Don't Choose" ... but really this all came about because of one big snowball that started from the last of those three ... and the three pieces of the puzzle fall together in a way that without all three pieces you can't see the whole picture ...

I talked recently about a bully I encountered online ... one that I considered a life long friend ... well as it turns out this led to another bully ... and in my mind someone that probably should be more capable of taking a higher road ... more capable of being mature and wise (as she is twenty or thirty years older than me) ... but that would be me judging her ... which I try very hard not to do ... people are as they are regardless of gender, age, race ... religion (in fact I would say that some of the harshest most judgmental people I have ever met or dealt with claim that they are extremely religious ... which given my vast knowledge of the Bible, Biblical history and the life and ways of Jesus is kind of ironic ... as their attitudes are far from the words that were given to us) ... but people are as they are ...

One of my biggest problems in life is that I believe in basic human kindness and goodness ... I am naive enough to believe that traits like kindness, empathy, compassion and honesty are traits that are innate in human beings ... and unfortunately, as I get older, more and more people prove me wrong ...

I guess there is no way to tell this story without just telling it ... and realizing it is entirely possible for either or both of these people to read my blog ... I must say that I am writing this for cathartic reasons, the way I do most of my blogs, and for the many other people that like to read the inner ramblings of my mind ... I am not writing this in the hopes that they read it, in fact, much of me would rather they didn't, because I don't really want to fuel the fire ... but this is my way of getting thoughts and feelings out of my head ... and getting the weight off my shoulders ... so here is the basic story ...

As I said in my previous post I had a "friend" on Facebook that several times had made negative comments on my posts ... if she had only said things when I was "bitching" or venting frustrations ... the explanation that I was to get indirectly later on might make sense ... but it wasn't, in fact, she would make these negative, mean, bullying and snide comments on either things that were completely innocent and stupid or times when I was celebrating the good things in my life ... times when I was happy ... she felt the need to bring me down ... for what reason I don't know ... and rarely did she have that
effect ... but the very last time that she did it ... my inbox on Facebook was practically flooded with friends saying they didn't want to go off on her on my wall ... but "how dare she?" ... "why do you have her as a friend?" ... "how could anyone in your life know what's going on with you and say something like that?" ... I did have one friend respond directly to her ... and my boyfriend almost did ... but refrained ... but in total I had eleven other Facebook friends respond to her negativity in a way that made me question why she was my friend as well ... this leads me to the title of this blog ... the people we don't choose ...

I find myself a pretty good judge of character ... I get a feeling about people almost right away as to whether I think they are compassionate and caring or judgmental and mean-spirited ... I choose my friends very carefully ... and while I have somewhere around 350 friends on Facebook ... with few exceptions ... each and every one has left an impression on my heart and in my soul ... and I hold the majority of them fairly close ... I get along with my ex-boyfriends ... and my ex-husband most of the time ... the times I have been "betrayed" by people I have chosen to be a part of my life are minuscule ... in fact sitting here and thinking about it ... I honestly can't remember one, not there haven't been fights or spats (especially in jr high and high school) ... I'm sure there have been times ... but I've grown apart from some people here and there ... but I honestly don't remember any drama or horrible issues with the people that I've chosen to be in my life ... this came into play with some of the things that these two women had to say about me .... which I'll get more into later ... but there were some implications of "misery loves company" and "those that are bullies see a bully" ... and to some extent I agree with both those statements ... you know ... it takes one to know one ... but that's not always true ... sometimes it just takes having prior experience to know one ... and this leads me right back into the people we don't choose ... there are people we deal with in our lives, both face to face and in the cyber-world that are not people we would necessarily have dealings with, nonetheless a friendship with, otherwise ... these are the people that I have had issues with ... so it's not that I like having negative, bullying people in my life ... it's not that I am attracted to judgmental people ... in fact quite the opposite ... it's that I have a hard time letting people go that I feel "obligated" to ... there are people like co-workers, classmates, my kids' friends' parents, family (can't forget family), friends' significant others and family, friends' friends, and family friends ... that I wouldn't necessarily be friends with outside of those connections ... people that other people or genetics chose for me ... not people I would have met on my own and thought, "wow she seems like a really nice person, compassionate and caring, the kind of person I want to be friends with" ... in fact some of them initially rubbed me the wrong way ... but for the most part I just smile through things ... keep my mouth shut and follow the "if you don't have anything nice to say don't say anything at all" rule ... unfortunately these two women fell into the people we don't choose ... the older of which has been friends with my mom for years ... and my mom treats one of her daughters like a niece ... which I understand being an only child myself ... the desire to love and care for someone's children like they are part of your family ... and for a long time I have watched my mother struggle with this friendship as well ... and in fact that has led to some recent bonding, which was good for us, so in some ways I have a reason to be grateful that these people are the way they are ...

So, when I unfriended this girl on Facebook after she made yet one more comment and I had a flooded inbox asking me why I would keep such an awful and judgmental person in my life ... I have it on good authority to say that she put on her status on her own Facebook page, "So you know how you have some people on facebook that their posts just annoy you to no end. Easy fix: comment on their post and call them on their stuff. Problem solved they un-friend you! Celebrate!" ... which I guess only goes to prove that she wasn't just innocently saying something I took the wrong way ... ironically I also have it on good authority that after my last blog post about this situation that she deleted that post ... and others that said things like "some people are crazy" and things like that where others and me both attributed to her ... I honestly don't understand how people can completely lack compassion and empathy and be mean, but apparently they can ... and it's also kind of strange that apparently my positive posts annoyed her ... but this whole part where she was calling me on my crap is kind of funny ... again ... I think it goes without saying that finding a job and getting out of this house would make my life feel easier and more normal to me ... so if telling me that was calling me on my crap ... well obviously she doesn't have a clue as to what really is going on in the world and how hard jobs are to come by ... especially for people that don't have a stable work history ... that seems to be on the top of employers' wish lists right now and unfortunately I don't have that; from being a stay at home mom to being basically forced to leave my last two jobs at the whim of my father ... I mean I could go on and on about the cards that are stacked against me, but everyone close to me; especially my mother and my boyfriend know very, very well that I am doing everything in my power to make that happen ... when you get thanks but no thank letters from places like Wal-Mart and Target it can be very discouraging ... but I have been pushing through the discouragement and trying very hard to get out of this spot ...

Shortly after I unfriended her, her mother (my mom's friend) unfriended me ... she would go on to blog about it herself ... and make comments on her facebook page referring to me as a "maladjusted social networker" and other things ... I am glad they are so sure in their judgments, and I hope when they look back at their lives and the times they chose to judge people that they are still willing to stand by that and not question themselves ... I personally believe that judgment is left to a higher source than me ... however that does not mean I need to surround myself in venomous and toxic people that only wish to bring me down ... people that lack compassion and empathy fall into that category ... I do believe some people can change ... but not usually ... sometimes a recognition of one's own mortality makes them kinder ... makes them appreciate the people in their life more .... but sometimes it doesn't ...

In the meantime ... my mother was actually out visiting this friend .... while all this was going on ... I don't think she had much knowledge of it at the time ... but my mother came home from this visit and I could just tell that she was frustrated with a lot ... because this relaxing vacation wasn't all that relaxing ... she said she was snapped at while she was there and judged ... and then her friend wrote a blog basically talking about what a burden it was to have a house guest, which my mom took very, very personally ... then I told her about my problems lately with these women and she assured me that neither of them are happy with their own lives right now ... that the younger one is very unhappy in her marriage and wants to move closer to her mom but her husband doesn't want to ... and that they are both struggling financially ... and maybe I just ended up being a punching bag ... which is possible I guess ... but when I'm down and out I tend to gain more compassion and empathy not lose it ... anyway, since my mom was no longer in direct firing range, I wrote the younger one and told her that I thought she deserved an explanation as to why I unfriended her. I meant to ask exactly what I had done to her that made her dislike me so much, be so angry and mean ... but I forgot ... I did start with "I don't know what exactly your problem with me is" ... but she wrote back and the first letters of her response was "I am sorry" ... I took that as an apology, but later on, I wonder if she really meant it that way ... especially when she blocked me ... so I couldn't write her again ... she made it clear on her own Facebook page and in her comments to me how she felt and the kind of person she really is ... and I guess that I just have to settle for that ....

That is another one of my problems ... I take bait ... in my thinking that if somehow I can just show people that lack compassion how it makes the other person feel ... how being hurtful is so wrong ... how to 'change their ways" ... I often say too much ... react too strongly ... respond to things I know I shouldn't respond to .. I know logically that I am just feeding a pack of frenzied sharks ... and I had the problem in grade school too ... people would tell me, "if you don't let them get a rise out of you they will stop" ... but I always have defended myself to a fault maybe ... tried to show people the other side of the story ... after all there always is more than one side of the story ... I play devils advocate on subjects where I don't even remotely agree with the side I'm arguing, I'm just trying to get whoever I'm talking to to understand there could be another point of view ... and some may even say that writing this post now ... I'm taking bait ... letting them get to me ... but in reality I'm writing this all out so I can let it go ... I tried to kill them with kindness ... give them the proverbial sugar ... and was just met with the same lack of compassion and empathy ...

I guess that leads me to really "taking the bait" on some of what they have had to say ... about my "annoying" posts ... and how negative I always am ... and I admit I have my moments ... as I've said before there is a full spectrum of human emotion for a reason ... psychologically it is healthy to express that entire spectrum ... I have some very frustrating parts of my life right now ... however, I ran this little app on Facebook a while back ... that tells you what your most used words in your status messages are ... my first "lol" ... second "kids" ... and third "night" .... I have to say that my number one used word in status messages being lol ... says a lot ... I can laugh and smile my way through most things in life that bug me ... my name is "etrnlsmiles" on almost everything because I am almost always smiling and always happy ... even when bad things are going on ... I am really an incredibly optimistic person ... I've had some things go very, very wrong in my life over the last few years ... and things that would bug a lot of people .... but ... even if I say something that sounds negative and I end it in "lol" ... that means that I am laughing and smiling about it .... that it may suck ... but I can find the humor in it ... there was a line in a blog about how I was talking negatively about my "benefactors" ... and I will full on admit to that ... but you can't tell the whole story in a 420 character Facebook status ... I also don't have keyboard bravery ... with very, very little exception I have said everything I have said about my mother and father in this blog to them; whether in writing or face to face ... I have ... I don't believe in being two faced or making someone think things are all perfect on the outside when on the inside you aren't happy ... so the things I say on here are pretty much the same things I have said to them, with very little exception ... I also have said many things that I qualify with being grateful for what I do have ... being grateful for what I have been given ... some of the feelings I express I can't do very well without sounding like an ungrateful bitch .. .and I'm aware of that ... that's why you have to have the whole story ... not just the pieces you choose to hear ... my mom is probably my best friend ... living together drove us apart ... part of my issue was I missed my mom ... I missed my best friend ... because she took over this controlling stance of being someone else ... of providing more for my kids' needs than mine ... which is a hard thing ... when you're jealous of your own children ... it is ... and it doesn't mean my feelings are justified ... but they are what they are ... and when I went to move away from my dad's control he offered me one final thing ... he would take all my money and he would take me shopping for what he thought I needed or buy me gas when he thought I needed it, etc., .... my mom, and this friend of hers were absolutely adamant that was not acceptable, that I needed more control than that, etc., .... well .... that is basically the position I have been put in now only the money isn't mine (which I know is kind of a big difference) .... but say for example sake ... my mom spends $600 on my kids and I in a month ... well $200 is buying the kids clothes they don't necessarily need ... $100 is spent buying hair products and soap products and other things I think aren't really necessary ... $100 is spent on food items that she neither needs to be paying for and things I don't really think are necessary ... and the other $200 on things that are necessary and I'm totally fine with ... well then it comes to me needing or wanting something ... like a tank of gas to go see my boyfriend (our biggest fights are over this) ... a haircut before I go out on job interviews, interview clothes, etc., .... and she says there is no money for that ... what I'm upset about is I don't have the power to sacrifice my Redken shampoo and conditioner (at $15 a bottle on sale) for gas ... or say "the kids don't need dessert every night, so can we save that money and I can get a haircut?" .... it really ends up being the same as what my dad was offering me ... which is to give up all control over my own choices ... I can't choose to sacrifice one expense for the sake of another ... and that leads to real frustration ... also her relationship with my boyfriend is very stressful ... and my outright need to defend people I love ... leaves me constantly defending them to each other ... and when she was more concerned about me getting my boyfriend out of her house than she was with my son being in the hospital, and adding to my stress with that stress ... that was an issue ... we have our issues ... as I think any grown up child and a parent would having to live together after the child had been self sufficient for over a decade .... I'm sure if these two women had to live together and the daughter had little to no money of their own they would find that they had issues too ... I also have a great amount of empathy for my mom and the fact that we have "invaded" her house where she was used to living alone for over a decade as well ... it's why I try to keep myself and my children in the basement as much as possible ...and out of her living area ... trying to respect her space ... I know none of this is easy for her either ... and she knows I know that ...

As far as Facebook and "negative" status posts ... there really aren't that many of them ... I went through in my paranoid frenzy and read back months and months and months ... they're not all happy go lucky, but they're certainly not all negative ... I do have friends that go in spurts of posting only negative things for a while and then they go back to positive .... it happens ... people have hard days ... people post things maybe they don't even really think about ... that's why if I don't have something encouraging to say ... or nice to say ... I just don't comment ... people have frustrations with their kids, and their partners, and their friends and their jobs ... I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to comment on a post where someone was bitching about their job and say "shut up ... you have one" ... but I don't ... because when it comes down to it I'm not that kind of person ... but people also have to not assume that things are about what you think they are ... often times if I'm talking about something that frustrated me, it has to do with WoW ... with a game and people that play it with me ... people that I also didn't choose ... as far as my blog and negative posts .. much of my blog is cathartic and me thinking outloud and in that a lot can come off as negative, but it's me working through my emotions .... as far as directly about my "benefactors" ... out of 95 blog posts ... 18 of them are tagged with the term "parents" .... and of those probably at least half are about my father ... so when it comes down to it I guess about 20% of the time there might be something negative about one of my parents in my blogs (although not all are negative) ... but given the circumstances of my life I would say that's fairly normal ... it's a stressor in my life right now and blogging is helpful in getting some of that stress out ...

I guess when it comes down to it ... I wish people wouldn't jump to conclusions and judge ... I've had many people send me private messages on Facebook and ask me what's going on or if they could help when I've posted something negative ... recently I said something about having to deal with my dad's family and one of my friends sent me a private message telling me how he understood all to well about family not being all it's cracked up to be and then told me that when things get really bad he just closes his eyes and pictures sending them through a wood chipper ... and obviously he was trying to make me smile and he did .... I have plenty of friends though that want the bigger picture than the 420 characters in a Facebook status ... and they ask ... they don't just judge and act like they know what's going on ... when they don't ... and sometimes it has been "someone in WoW said mean things to me lol" and that's my answer back ... and I just realized it is physically impossible for me to type "lol" without turning up the corners of my lips ... but anyway ... I don't understand some people ... and I guess that's why I wouldn't choose to have them in my life .... the people I have chosen have compassion and empathy and an understanding of human beings that I seem to have as well ... oh and most of them like cats!

I Love Spring ...

2011-03-10T15:22:00.002-07:00

I went outside today to go pick my kids up from school ... I had no idea how gorgeous it was outside .... you know being in a basement with an underground window and all ;)

It feels like spring ...

Being Colorado and all I'm sure that we're still in for some cold days ... and I don't mind that too much, but my favorite seasons here in Colorado are spring and fall ... I think a lot of people have a misguided idea about Colorado; thinking it's always cold here ... it's not ... it gets ridiculously hot in the summer and ridiculously cold in the winter ... but being a mountain girl I would have to say that I definitely prefer being cold to being hot ... you can always put on more clothes, and start fires, and turn up the heat (if that's an option) ... but being too hot ... well you can't go further than naked, you can get in the water (if there's water around), and there is air conditioning, but that is a huge energy consumption
.... so really in the end if I had to choose one I would choose to be cold ... but what I love about Colorado in both the fall and the spring is that it is just perfect ... not too hot, not too cold ... it's just plain perfect ....

I am looking forward to next week ... when I get my kids back from their dad ... and being able to walk to pick them up from school ... that will be good for my new journey ... and I do just love being out in the fresh air in the spring ...

I feel like everything is looking up ... even though things still are relatively unchanged ... and the weather is just another part of that ... so bring on spring ... and I will try to enjoy it the best I can before the 100 degree days hit us in a few months :)

Here we go again ...

2011-03-09T13:20:00.002-07:00

So I haven't mentioned it much before, but my daughter has an eosinophilic disorder ... typically this is classified as an upper GI disorder called Eosinophilic Esophagitis or EE ... she has been lucky (at least so far) in that hers has been considered an EGID (Eosinophilic Gastrointestinal Disorder) affecting her large and small intestine but luckily not affecting her esophagus .... the reason the esophageal kind is worse is that the esophagus is actually much thinner and fragile than the lower GI ... the disorder can lead to lesions and even tears in the esophagus ... which leaves kids on feeding tubes in order to save the esophagus ....

Well, my daughter had a well-child visit yesterday and she has had some issues lately .... she complains of chest pain
frequently .... so for any "normal, healthy" kid this means antacids and that's pretty much it ... for her it means more GI appointments ... and an endoscopy and probably some other fun tests (including one she's had before where they implant a sensor in her esophagus and read her acid levels for several days) ... so we're back into medical fun times there ....

Also, my son who was in the hospital in the fall was cleared by the pulmonologist several weeks ago to return to normal activity, only to end up very sick again this week with a possible pneumonia ... he will have a chest x-ray on Friday if there is no improvement .... so here we go again ....

Hopefully both of these things turn out alright ... but only time will tell ...

A new leaf ... a new page ... a new well, everything ...

2011-03-09T02:46:00.004-07:00

I had some much needed time with my man both with and without my kids not so long ago ... we got a lot done ... we didn't do quite as much just snuggling and relaxing and talking as I would have liked, but when we get so little time together and things need to be done, sometimes it just works out that way I guess ... but it gave me a lot of hope ....

We got a lot done to make my living situation a little better for myself and my kids ... and since then I have done a little more ... I've put up pictures on the concrete walls ... pictures of fun times and good friends ... to remind me that this is not a prison cell ... I am grateful for all he and I were able to do, and for the ability to do the things I have done since ....

I feel like I have actually walked away from some people that have been horribly mean, even though they preach about not being mean themselves, I find myself not caring .... there was a time I would have obsessed ... but I find myself thinking they're not worth it ... let them continue to make their digs on me, in a public fashion even, all they're doing is making themselves look like fools and probably looking at ruining other friendships in the process ... and I realize in that, that my obsession over their bad behavior ... just isn't worth it ... and I let the baggage go ...

There are still some toxic people that I must deal with, but I think I have a better handle on that now too ...

While my honey and I were spending some wonderful quality time together ... my mom was off on a vacation of her own ... and somehow from that experience we have bonded more ... I feel more like the mother and daughter we used to be ... we still will have "roommate" issues ... and we have the major issue to work through of her showing much more respect to my relationship ... and other issues about undermining parenting, etc., .... but overall our relationship feels more like it used to ... we talked and laughed and many other things ... even gossiped a little ... she, I know, feels very upset and betrayed by some things a "friend" said lately as well, and the way they have been acting ... so it was like these other people with their drama helped us overcome our own ... on top of that a break from each other, and the ability for my honey and I to spend time completely alone together I think was a stress reliever to some extent, although not when it came to all stress, but I think the
stress and strain on our relationship has been muted ....

I have some really good job leads, and I've taken care of some other business things that needed to be taken care of ...

And life, although remarkably unchanged, is good ... and feels better ...

I do hate judgmental people ... and I honestly don't understand why people can't live and let live and give one another the benefit of the doubt ... but apparently some can't ... they feel like they must be right ... and they must be better ... but in the end all that hate that they are filled with ... all the mockery and bullying they take part in .... it injures their souls more than those they try to hurt ... or those they judge ... and while karma may not be instant or in a way that we understand ... it does usually find it's way back around to those people ... and I find peace in that ....

I am looking forward to what the future holds for me, rather than dwelling on the present ... I am learning from my past ... but looking straight forward .... I have been highly motivated since the day I moved into this house to be out ... I think when my goal of being out by Christmas was unattainable it made me focus too much on the present .... I need to look toward the future ... even though nothing I am doing as far as job searching and applying is any different than it has been for the last 9 months ... I am looking at it through rose colored glasses now ... and who knows, maybe that was exactly what I needed ...

Bullies Can Be Any Age ....

2011-03-08T01:07:00.005-07:00

You know since Columbine we have been a bully-centric society when it comes to schools ... every school my kids have ever attended has had major bully education and awareness programs ... the one time I had to deal with a bully issue with one of my kids it was handled very, very well ... we focus so much on bullies at that age ... but what about as we get older?

Bullying continues in multiple ways ... one of the main ways at this point is cyber-bullying ... with facebook, myspace, twitter, email ... they say people will say things they won't normally say ... I don't know if that is always true .. most of the "argumentative" stuff that I have written I would say ... a lot of it I wouldn't have had the chance to say all of, and doing it in writing allows me to be more articulate and do it without interruption, but really ... for me that's not true ... the keyboard bravery or whatever they call it ... maybe it is for others though ....

My friends can tell tale upon tale of workplace bullying, grocery store bullying, gaming bullying ... people who are arrogant and not empathetic and unable to apparently distinguish right from wrong ....

For the first time a few weeks ago I had to delete someone I considered an actual friend from my Facebook ... because she was being a bully, to the point that other friends were responding to her ... to the point that I received private messages from people that knew both of us and some that didn't saying how out of line she was ... I had to delete two other people before ... but one of them I met through a game and the other was a girlfriend of a friend and they broke up and she was nasty ... so up until then I had deleted two other people ... neither of which were big "losses" ...

But ... this one was different ... literally someone I had known my whole life, I had always been closer to her sister, but still ... known my whole life ... she played a role in my wedding ... but there she was being outright mean and bullying on my Facebook page ...

I wish I could have given her the benefit of the doubt of naivety, but I knew better, and later was proven right by someone that shared her reaction to my un-friending her ... her gratefulness that I had because she had "called me out" ... she didn't call me out ... she was just a bully ... basically I had said I was excited about having some time when I could have a real life ... it wasn't a depressing post ... in fact I think my original post just said "2 days and counting ... " someone asked
me why ... I responded that in 2 days I would get to go visit my boyfriend and have some semblance of the normal life I had before ... it was a positive, upbeat, happy about life post ... and she says "Ya know you could have a life everyday....secret is get your own place! Just a thought!." ... well no shit ... anyone that reads my blog on a regular basis knows that is exactly what I am trying to do ... that also wasn't the first passive aggressive comment she had made, that was just the last one I let her make ... if it had been the first I might have brushed it off as naivety, as just not paying attention ... but it wasn't ...

Anyone that thinks I'm not trying everything in my power to get out of this house and be in a place where life can be normal again is absolutely nuts ... and anyone that can be that cold about it lacks total and complete empathy ...

Life is too short to be that mean ... to be mean spirited just ruins your own life, and actually effects you more than it does the people you are being mean to ... I have learned over time to let these people go more quickly than I would in the past ... in the past I would just continue to be nice to them and hope that I could somehow change them, but as I get older, whether right or wrong, I have learned that mean spirited, bullies usually don't change ...

It sucks to have to lose a friend that you've had for 30 years because they decided to bully you and be mean ... and hurtful ... it does ... even if you rarely did talk to them ... those are the friends that are supposed to stand by you during times like this ... be the ones that know where you've been ... and have faith in where you're going ... I have people that have been mere acquaintances that have shown more compassion and empathy ... or maybe nothing at all ... but how does it go "if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all" ... apparently some people miss that lesson growing up ... and I feel bad for them, honestly I do ....

I pride myself on empathy being one of my greatest characteristics, my ability to give those that most judge the benefit of the doubt ... sometimes that makes me a doormat ... I understand that ... but I'd rather be a doormat ... than a bully ...

Sweet Charity ...

2011-02-02T13:28:00.001-07:00

So a long time ago ... okay, okay like 4 years ago ... when you know I had money to give away ... I used to do just that ... Alyssa had a friend in Kindergarten that didn't have money for the Santa shop, I knew they were struggling, his dad worked road construction and it had been a particularly bad winter ... and they didn't get "business interruption" pay (which I got when I worked retail and the store would be closed for weather or something ... so if he didn't work, he didn't get paid ... I gave the teacher $25 to donate to him for the Santa shop ... and later that night while his mom worked at the local wal-mart I managed to sneak a $100 Visa gift card and $200 in King Soopers gift certificates (half of which were provided by my church) into her car window (which was permanently open because it was broken) ... that was probably my biggest singular act of charity, but I did things like that all the time ...

So, why is it that in the situation where I am now that when people give me charity I feel guilty? I need it ... the karma would say I deserve it ... right?

Back when my son was in the hospital a friend of mine that is more of an acquaintance, but we've actually grown closer since the world of Facebook land has kept us involved in each others lives, well, she surprised me by nominating me in a
charity group she was in to receive their monthly donation ... to me it was an obscene amount of money (it really wasn't that much ... still 3 digits ... but to me it was more money than I had held in my hand in months) ... when I opened the envelope I cried ... it made his hospital stay easier, it made the things I had to go through that month easier ... but I felt guilty, like I was taking the money out of some other deserving person's hands ... now ... I haven't been able to be on World of Warcraft in weeks because honestly I couldn't afford the game time ... well people I play with got together and paid for 3 months of game time for me ... again I feel guilty ... I feel like I shouldn't be taking their money away from them just so I can play a game ...

So, I've been trying to look at it from the other side ... going back to that night sneaking the gift certificates in the car window ... the last thing I wanted was for that little family to feel guilty ... so now I just need to figure out how to get over it ...

Perfect Attendance ...

2011-01-31T19:20:00.001-07:00

I hear the words "Perfect Attendance" and I cringe .... all I picture is little germ factories running around the school getting other kids sick ... and as a mother with two kids that get sick far more, and far worse than other kids it almost infuriates me ... now I guess let me say that my kids have, on occasion, gotten perfect attendance awards for quarters or semesters here and there ... I'm not saying "if your kid sneezes, keep them home" ... but seriously ... if your kid is sick ... for their sake and the sake of all the other kids keep them home ...

I understand some people are in the difficult position of having to stay home from work themselves to take care of a child that doesn't go to school; I understand there are challenges, but sick children should still stay home .... even the schools usually send home guidelines ... "please keep your child at home if ...." and then list off a bunch of symptoms, etc., when your child should stay at home ... as parents I think it's an obligation to follow that ...

I have two kids with decreased immune systems ... most kids might get one out of five "active, live" viruses they're exposed to, two of my three get pretty much every virus they're exposed to and they get sick for usually twice as long as other kids as
well ... leaving them out of school for a week because some other parent couldn't keep their kid at home for two days ... if your kid has a fever ... they are contagious .... unless they have some kind of internal infection (like a urinary tract infection or something else internal) ... and then they need to see a doctor anyway ... keep them home ... if your kid is a snot machine or coughing in violent fits, then they are spreading germs, unless they are keeping themselves clean at the medical level ... if your kid is puking or has diarrhea ... they are spreading germs ... keep them home ...

I also take a personal note in this from the other side ... I was the kid that got sent to school sick ... my dad always prided himself on how he "took the BAR exam with a 104 degree fever and strep throat" ... so you know I sure as hell could go to school ... I would go to school and be miserable, embarrassed to blow my nose constantly .... and really not in any mental state to learn ... I would just survive the school day, I wasn't really there ... there really is no point in a sick kid going to school other than not having the school yell at you for your kid missing too many days ... there isn't ...

Okay, that's my little stance on sick kids and perfect attendance ... just sayin' ....

My New Journey ...

2011-01-27T17:39:00.000-07:00

So, from the very beginning of this little blog I've been writing I put "body image" in my description, although it's rarely to never something I've blogged about ... yet anyway ... but it is something that I probably should.

I'm taking a new weight loss/get fit journey, and I've started a new blog to help me on that road, to give me some accountability ... something that I think I need ... if you're not interested in reading it, that's fine, if you are, then feel free to do that as well ...

What I will tell you all on this blog is that body image is something I struggle with; and the thing is it's not just where I am now, it's actually a fear of being skinnier, being hotter, being a lot of things ... my ex-husband used to fear that, fear me being "hot" and actually admitted to me that he would try to sabotage my diet, that he would get mad at me for being successful, I guess he felt if I wasn't the perfect package that other guys wouldn't be interested and that gave him some security. For me, I have some fears in losing weight; the thing is I've been on both sides of this ... I've been the "hot girl" ... I've been the girl that could just make eye contact with someone in a bar or club and get them to come dance with me or talk to me, the girl that worked at an amusement park and got hit on once an hour on a slow day, I've been the girl that knew she could steal her friends' boyfriends, although (except that once) never did .... and then I had kidney surgery ... and I got pregnant ... damn those maternity clothes ... my whole life I had been pretty much able to stabilize my weight with my clothes, when I felt like my clothes were getting tight, I would diet for a couple weeks and all would be well, but when I had kidney surgery, I couldn't wear anything with a tight waist band for a few months, plus I wasn't very active post-surgery, I gained weight, I managed to lose almost all of that, and then I had babies ... and those maternity clothes, well, they're killer ... anyway, I now am about 90 pounds heavier than I was when I conceived my first child, 110 pounds heavier than I was when I graduated from high school ... and I have dealt with the opposite end, I've dealt with the jokes, and the remarks, I've dealt with being at clubs and bars and hearing chubby chaser jokes and fat jokes ... so here is the thing ... now in some ways I'm afraid to go back ... because I'm afraid that I will be angry at the positive reaction ... I'm afraid that if guys start to notice me, I will just automatically think they're jerks, because they wouldn't have given me the time of day when I was fat ... I'm afraid of silly things like if my boyfriend touches me more, will I be pissed off at him and think he's being superficial ... but the thing is I'm not alone in those fears, many, many women have the same thoughts, the same ideas, the same fears ... because once you've been on this side of it ... and had all the positive attention pretty much go away ... to go back is to acknowledge a few things ... A) you had control of it, and chose not to use it ... B) the bulk of the world operates on a superficial level and it's just so wrong that you, as a person, can change nothing but your appearance and completely change the way the bulk of the world looks at you ... and C) you have to face your inner demons that is just like the rest of them, the part of you that is also superficial ... some of these fears have stopped me thus far from achieving my weight loss goals, along with other factors that I will dive into more in depth in my weight loss blog ... but regardless ... it is time for me to be healthy, to face those fears head on ... and honestly, to probably be a happier person on the other end ... if you want to join me in this journey you can follow my new blog here ... Killing My Inner Nutritional Overachiever & Dealing With Her Lazy Twin Sister Too ... the "plan" commences on February 1!!

Misguided ... Well ... Everything ...

2011-01-27T16:07:00.001-07:00

So, after some though and some conversation and a few more tiffs with my mom, I have come to a few understandings ...

First and foremost is that I will never convince her that my priorities should be important to her, however, that doesn't mean that I need to make them unimportant to me ... that means that we need to come to some kind of understanding ... and I have no clue how to do that ...

Second is that she is not being honest with me, for whatever reason she isn't ... all along her main argument as to why my boyfriend can't stay here is that it is a matter of her privacy .... a matter of her not being used to have testosterone in the house, her not being able to walk around in her nightgown, etc., ... these are her main reasons ... but, she's going away for a week in February, close to Valentine's Day, so I say to her, well since you won't be here, can he come stay, since your privacy won't be an issue ... she tells me that she still has a problem with it ... so what exactly is her problem? If this was standard behavior of parents with grown children in the home, I may understand, if she was holding a moral high ground, I may understand, but it's not and she's not. The standard among my friends who have had to move back in with parents due to this lovely economy we live in (the number of friends that are doing that seems to be growing exponentially by the way), is that they are basically just living there like they would live anywhere else; friends, lovers, etc., all visit like normal, and they continue to maintain their lives. But, regardless, she is not being honest with me ... she is having issues with something else, whether it is me not being single and miserable (sidebar - I did at one point ask her if she was jealous and her reaction with her no, and the expression on her face, was downright insulting, then I clarified that I didn't mean about him in particular, but that I wasn't alone, that I had somebody to call mine, someone to hold, someone to talk to, and then she shut down), whether her issue is just him period, as mentioned before I kind of get put in the middle of really both of them not having any respect for the other, and really not being able to push it aside for the purpose of my sanity ... but she is not being honest with me ... and honesty is big with me ... I have walked away from more people over dishonesty and hypocrisy than I have anything else ...

Third is that I think that she may be misguided in her thought process as to why exactly I moved in with her to begin with. This speaks to her undermining my parenting, the other day my middle child was upset, we had been talking in the car for a good 45 minutes before we got home and we got home, my mom said something to her, she said something under
her breath and then went downstairs slamming the door behind her, my mom opens the door and says "hey, what's that about?" ... I guess this is maybe a typical reaction to some, but to me it was overstepping boundaries, if someone is going to say something to her about storming off like that it needs to be me, in that situation. There was the Santa Claus incident and then many, many other examples of her undermining my parenting ... the worst of which being to actually flat out tell my children that they didn't need to listen to my boyfriend when he told them what they needed to do or couldn't do ... she doesn't know I know about that one, but my boyfriend overheard it and several weeks later my daughters both told me she had said it ... that he had no idea what was going on with them or this house and that he didn't get to make rules or tell them what they needed to do ... this is what she said about a man that they introduce to people as their stepfather, that they have lived with for two years off and on, and physically spent more time with than their own father, a man who has had far more influence on their lives and far more to do with raising them, than she has, to completely undermine that well ... it's just completely and totally wrong ... and then I she had received a package from UPS with clothes in it for them, I told them they couldn't have it until their room was clean, and then later I told her "I told them they couldn't open the box until their room was clean" ... so a few hours later my daughter was wearing PJs from the box, I said nothing but a few weeks later when we were fighting about something else I brought it up, her answer was like that of a twelve year-old trying to get out of trouble "they didn't open the box, I did" and "what was I supposed to do she came in and saw it all there I had to give it to her" ... ummm no, you didn't, you could have used it as even more motivation to get her to clean her room. Instead she undermined my parenting ... so anyway, back tot he beginning of this paragraph, she has somehow been misguided as to why I am here, as to why we are here. I didn't move in here because I needed someone else to help me parent my children, I didn't move in here because I needed help with their laundry, I didn't move in here so that I could have someone else help my daughter with her homework or listen to her read, I didn't move in here because I needed someone else to do the cooking or the cleaning or decide whether or not the meals I feed my children are nutritionally balanced, I didn't move in here because I needed help being a parent, I didn't move in here because I needed help living my own life, I didn't move in here because I needed my mother to dictate whether or not it was an okay time to have my boyfriend over or to go see him, I didn't move in here so my mother could tell me that going out to a restaurant is acceptable, but going to a bar is not (even though going to a bar is cheaper), I didn't move in here for any of these reasons ... I moved in here because I needed a place to live ... period .. that's it ... because my life that I had established in my previous two homes was disrupted by my father ... I moved in here to have a roof over my head, over my childrens' heads ... I didn't move in here because I wasn't living just fine in all other ways on my own ... I've lived away from my parents for 11 years, and despite the fact that they don't seem to remember that I ever lived self-sufficiently, I did so for the bulk of that time ... yes, my ex-husband was laid off 3 times, yes, I lost my job when I had my second daughter and we had to walk away from a house ... yes, we had issues communicating about money, that got worse toward the end of our marriage and resulted in us being behind on the mortgage ... BUT ... for the bulk of those 11 years, I was self sufficient, requesting & needing nothing from my parents, although neither of them remember that, but why would they remember the good parts ... the good parts don't give them anything to hold over my head, that's why ... but my point still is, I lived on my own, I was the homework-helper, I was the laundry-doer, I was the cook, the housekeeper, the disciplinarian ... for the most part alone, my boyfriend was very helpful when he was there, my ex-husband never really was there, but did what he could when he was ... but I've been doing these things alone for 11 years ... I didn't move in because I needed help with those things ... I moved in because I needed a home ... that's all ...

Guess What?

2011-01-19T18:50:00.001-07:00

I found a little hidden button to restore my blog ... it's back ... and it's working =p

Very, very happy about that :)

Another Black Sheep Day ...

2011-01-17T22:44:00.002-07:00

It was my daughter's 8th birthday party on Sunday ... we had a party, that was mostly for the kids ... my ex and I worked together to throw the party ... at first my daughter said the only adults she wanted there were myself, her dad and our significant others (sidebar ... I was impressed that my mom was gracious enough to allow me the gas to drive and pick up my boyfriend to go to my daughter's party, that she absolutely insisted he needed to be at) ... but my mother was an addition, followed by my father and my stepmother ... I think that my daughter (well, that daughter) ... doesn't like the stress that certain people add to our lives either ...

Anyway, we got to the pizza place and I had forgotten my camera, so my boyfriend and I ran back to the house to get it, when we left, my ex and my mom were the only adults there ... when I came back my father and my stepmother were there ... now I wrapped myself up in the kids and doing all the normal party stuff I've done at my kids' parties for the last 10 years ... keeping the kids in line ... making sure everyone was okay ... but with the adults ... I felt like a black sheep ... as my mom, my stepmom, my dad and my ex all sat at one end of the table whispering and conversating and basically ignoring the rest of the party ... my boyfriend and I kept the kids entertained and kept things going ... and they sat down there all bonding together ... I must be an awful person ... I must have done something truly awful in my life, in a former life, in whatever life you all
believe in ... to have all these people that hurt me deeply so easily bond together ... none of them standing on "my side" (for lack of a better way to put it) ... none of them showing solidarity with me ... if I had to say any of them did that at all I would say my ex did ... but apparently my mom has lost all her negative feelings for my stepmom ... and doesn't care anymore about my dad's role in my staying in his house .. nope ... they're all buddy buddy ... and they all pretty much just ignored the kids the entire time ... involved in conversations about how spoiled my kids are ... (hmmm well I have no money so who the hell spoils them? ... maybe their grandparents) ... and my mom and my stepmom involved in conversations about the annoying nuances of my father ... I mean really ...

I felt like a black sheep at my daughter's birthday party and like I was being judged the entire time ... it was like taking all the most toxic people in my life and putting them in one room and leaving me with a a gaggle of little girls and my boyfriend (who also was ignored and not talked to by any of them except my ex) ... as my support structure ... this whole thing has been so toxic ... and taught me that family means nothing ... not one single biological relative has stood up for me for anything ... I'm over family ... I will stand by my children and my boyfriend ... because they stand by me ... the rest of them can go screw themselves ...

Mixed Bag ...

2011-01-09T11:00:00.001-07:00

Unfortunately (or fortunately) this isn't an uncommon scenario around here, but on Friday my ex husband asked me if I would be willing to take the kids back 7 hours early this weekend ... because he had some place to be Sunday night and wanted to beat the snow ...

I'm usually agreeable to these schedule changes, because I figure some day I may need a favor and if I'm not agreeable or somehow bitchy about it then he may not be very willing to help me out when I need help ...

However, when I had full custody and he only had them every other weekend he would do things like this as well .. now that we have straight 50/50 custody he still does and, according to my children, leaves them with their grandmother quite a bit when he does have them ...

I am all for parents having a life of their own ... I have seen what it does to parents who completely revolve their lives around their children ... I think date nights and girls nights and boys nights and all these things are important to the psychological and mental health of entire families, not just the people participating ... it isn't a good lesson to teach our children that they
have to give up their lives when they have children of their own, that they can no longer do things they enjoy, or get together with friends, etc., ... in fact it's important to teach them the opposite ... so I am not opposed to him making plans or having a life ...

However ... at some point in time (I know because I've been there), if not already, my kids will start to get the feeling (especially when he only has them for less than 48 hours anyway) that these "other" things are more important than them ... I was a teenager when my parents divorced, so not quite as impressionable, but I was fine with them having a life of their own, however, when it felt like they (mostly my dad) made someone or something else a drastic and obvious priority over me ... it caused issues that still exist in our relationship today ... I fear for my kids, that his constant "can I pick them up late," "can I drop them off early," "can I just not take them this weekend at all" .... will impact their trust in him and their relationship with him down the line ...

I could be wrong ... it could not even phase them ... but wherever it is he had to be tonight, was (to him) worth sacrificing 7 waking hours with his children ... maybe it's worth it, maybe not ... but the real question is how do my kids feel about it ... I won't put those thoughts in their minds ... and two of them protest leaving me every time they leave anyway ... but I want them to have a good relationship with their father ... I really, really do ... and I feel like he is taking them down a road he doesn't realize he is taking them down ...

My Love/Hate Relationship with Zynga ...

2011-01-07T12:01:00.001-07:00

So as a gamer that has gotten into everything from Tetris to Halo, Bejeweled to World of Warcraft ... and been known to play for hours on end ... I love the Zynga games ... it gives me something to do as the unemployed boredom sets in ... and you can play them all on different levels ... you can set it up so you have to be there checking on it every 20 minutes to half an hour or you can let it go for two or three days at a time ... or walk away completely for however long and come back and pick up where you left off .. mostly ...

Their games are simple, yet well thought out ... designed to be something you can just do for the hell of it, or be competitive about ... they give you a sense of accomplishment through ribbons, medals and prizes ... for the most part I do like these games ...

I hate that they make you spam your friends in order to accomplish almost anything ... I love that Facebook made it so the friends that really don't care at all can block the applications altogether ... I hate that in pretty much every Zynga application except Farmville the missions, medals, achievements, accomplishments, etc almost require you
to spend real money ... some of them flat out require you to spend real money ... some just make it easier if you do ... I hate that in Frontierville and Cafe World at least you are asked to play other games, less popular ones, in order to get pieces you need to create a needed piece ... like go play Treasure Isle to get your decorations for your Christmas tree in Cafe World ....

I almost wish that Zynga would set up their own social network ... where you know everyone on there wanted to play these games and you weren't annoying anyone with the required spam, etc .... but that won't happen ...

I guess the title sums it up ... I have a love/hate relationship with the games ... but they do help my boredom ...

Clingy ... Like Static ....

2011-01-07T05:30:00.002-07:00

Okay, so I'm going to take a break from venting about my personal life to dive into the World of Warcraft (shocking I know) ... and some of the issues that have come up there over the last few years ... I urge those of you that don't play the silly little game to read this anyway ... because honestly, it applies to people in many areas of life, from work to school, to that one annoying neighbor ...

When Cataclysm was released on December 7 ... I dove right in ... tied for the first 85 in our guild (will explain guilds in a second as it is relevant) ... was having fun with new leveling areas, new races (they released a werewolf race with the Cataclysm expansion ... very exciting) ... and new end-game content .... but then .... like a cheese grater in my social heaven .... came the "annoying ones" ... I know I sound like a bitch ... and sorry for that ... I'm really not ... but when you use a game as an escape from reality ... that's exactly what you want it to be ...

So, I am part of a guild with over 300 characters ... among 100+ real life people ... so over one hundred living, breathing people are sitting behind their keyboards and play in this same guild/group as I do .... basically 10-15 million people are active World of Warcraft players around the world at any given time, they are then broken down into about three hundred "realms" or servers .... so on a server there are still tens if not hundreds of thousands of people ... guilds give you an
opportunity to group up with people with similar goals and interests and personalities ... to form a smaller group that allows you to have a group of people to ask for help when you need it and group up with for group quests and dungeons, etc., .... well recently ... there have been a couple, but really just one person ... in our guild ... that just won't leave me alone ... sends me private messages constantly ... asks me to do things constantly and when I say I'm busy or trying to achieve a goal of my own gets snarky ... like it's my job to entertain this person ... I've dealt with this before ... but it actually makes me not want to play ... more because I'm afraid of hurting their feelings or getting sucked into doing something I don't want to do than anything else ... in "real life" these issues have come up ... the clingy friend, the clingy co-worker, the neighbor that is constantly asking you what you're doing and wanting to include themselves in it ... I am a social being ... and I love people in general ... but sometimes they just are grating on my nerves ...

I think that because of everything else going on with me and wanting to escape into the fantasy land that is the world of Azeroth (the name of the actual world in world of warcraft) ... I find it more annoying than usual to deal with the static cling of people like that ... because I deal with enough crap outside of game ... I just don't want it there ... but I will deal ... I have characters on other servers ... and other such things as well ... but sometimes I just wish people would take a hint ...

Supervision ... or lack there of ...

2011-01-06T13:12:00.001-07:00

Okay, so this is something that is kind of hard to blog about for me ... because it feels more personal than the feelings I put out there all the time ... I guess I'm worried about judgment ... and actually that leads me to another post that I will write in the near future ... but ... here goes ...

... so yesterday my stuff finally went through for food stamps ... so I'm officially on food stamps and in 45 days or less, once I meet a few requirements and they get done processing my information ... I will be on maximum TANF for a family of 4 ... TANF my friends, is welfare ... straight out cash benefits ... welfare ...

Last night, for the first time in 5 months I went to the grocery store by myself .... no supervision ... nobody telling me that this brand is better than that brand ... nobody telling me anything ....

I could taste the freedom ... I don't even think I bought anything I was told I couldn't in the past ... although today I completely plan on buying bottled water ... which my mom refuses to buy ... and I know my green side sounds unheard from right now ... but it is something that I've learned about myself ... I drink more water if it's readily available and refridgerator cold ... I refill the bottles with my Brita filter thingy .... so a case of water lasts me months .... but to not be able to have it at all has been frustrating ... and I have noticed I'm dehydrated .... you can pass that off as me being lazy ... but to be honest ... in this little basement I'm in I have four cats ... and anyone that knows anything about cats ... knows ... that if I have a glass of water sitting around .... one of two things will happen ... it will either get knocked over or filled with cat hair and for me at least seem undrinkable ... so yes, I will be buying bottled water with my food stamps as my one thing that has been always denied to me ... other things have been negotiated ... brands, substitutions, etc., .... plus as much as I hate Wal-Mart for their practices, I walk into other grocery stores (including Target) and see things for double the price and it makes me cringe .... my money will go further shopping in places that I know have good prices ... but anyway ... last night I didn't buy anything that she ever would have denied me or my children, really, I mean I bought my kind of bread ... and bought each of the kids a treat, one wanted oreos, one wanted rocky road ice cream, and one wanted Coke (I bought the mini-cans) ... I told them this won't be
normal, but I felt like with my first taste of freedom, they all deserved a treat as well ... but I didn't do the rebel thing ... I just did the natural thing ... but just the fact that I could do that ... without my mom there having to approve any request, any purchase ... without her deciding what we as a household needed .... it was amazingly refreshing ....

When I get my TANF it won't be much ... I mean I guess if you're in Section 8 housing, so you have little to no rent, and on food stamps ... then it's enough to pay the utilities ... and put a couple tanks of gas in a car, but that's about it ... I mean my utilities and car insurance would take up the majority of it ... but also to those receiving TANF ... the RTD is free ... that would be the local bus system ... and we get LEAP ... which pays for a portion or all of our electric and natural gas bills during the winter ... I have two kids with medical exemptions for turning off the power ... I guess one could make it work ... but the TANF and the food stamps together, at maximum level for a family of four is equivalent to making $7.22 an hour full time ... which isn't bad ... but really doesn't support a family of four ... but when I do get my TANF ... it will be nice to be able to do some of the non-food things I need to do without supervision ... I've lived on very little money before ... it's not like I want to be out there buying steak dinners and name brand make up or something ... but really ... just to taste the freedom of being unsupervised ... does my soul ... my emotional well-being a world of good ....

2011-01-06T08:39:00.003-07:00

I honestly don't know where to start ... the last two weeks have been a rollercoaster ride ... with a plummet this morning ... but I don't think I'm done, or anywhere near the bottom yet ...

... so I left off with the Santa thing ... anyone who doesn't understand why that would upset me has their head squarely up their behind ... I mean really ... that's a parent's privilege and right ... and I only get to do it every other year ... had I asked for her help or gone up and we'd done it together .... well that would be different, but that she took it upon herself to do it, with no consideration that I would want to is complete and total bullshit ... and then she said "I left (such and such) for you to do, because I figure you get to do something" ... wait ... GET ... get ... okay ... that's great ... lovely ... MY parenting privileges, something that as parents we actually look forward to ... and she's going to basically say she'll "allow" me to do part of it ... so yeah, who is the mother and who is the grandmother ...

Christmas was okay, my dad didn't get me anything or do anything, which is what I requested of him ... "please take any money you would have spent on me for Christmas and use it to pay off the debt you feel I owe you" ... that was my Christmas wish to him ... and my mom ... my mom still did some stuff for me, although it's all tainted by the fact that I asked A) for nothing and then B) for something non-monetary that she refused to give me ... I don't do "consolation" prize very well ... just like I don't do getting buttered up for bad news very well ...

The kids and I went to my boyfriend's grandparents' house on Christmas Eve for a while ... they got to see their puppy which they really appreciated ... and spend some quality time with the man they call their stepfather and his family ... which despite their own set of dysfunctions (and I would say that in many ways they are more dysfunctional than mine) .... feels more like a family to me than anything I've felt in years ... we were welcomed with open arms and hugs .... and just an amazing sense of welcome .... and maybe the thing about his family is they embrace and accept the dysfunction ... they don't judge ... they don't see things eye to eye ... and sure they have their gossip ... they hold their grudges ... but they stick together ... they call themselves a "clan" ... and rightfully so ... if you do wrong to one, you do wrong to all ... and their major issue of the moment is a member of the clan in their minds "abandoned" her children ... and they still accepted her ... being a surrogate member of this clan ... I will tell you that this family, this amazing, loving family, has very strong feelings about my father and what he did ... they threatened to go march on the lawn of his workplace with picket signs saying "if he doesn't care about his own family, what makes you think he would care about yours" ... technically speaking he holds a public position and the voters have a say in whether or not he stays there ... this family that has taken me in ... has vowed to do everything in their power to make sure he loses his job ... which I have mixed feelings about ... but when my own family doesn't even want to know my side of the story ... well ... I wonder which ones I feel closer to ... anyway ... Christmas Eve with them was pleasant ... we headed out, I wanted to go to church, but three overtired kids with only me to control them ... well, we skipped it ... we went and saw the Denver City & County building all lit up ... and then drove by some more Christmas lights and then we headed home .... and then that's when the Santa thing happened ...

Christmas afternoon the kids went off with their dad ... I spent some time getting some stuff together and headed back to my boyfriends' grandparents' house ... where again I was more than welcomed .... they made sure I knew where to find food, drink ... even a toothbrush ... they told me they missed having me around ... the couple few of them that were on Facebook expressed empathy and concern based on some of my posts about the BS around here ... the day after Christmas, Sunday, brought a wonderful surprise .... a good friend of my boyfriends who has now become a good friend of mine gave us Broncos tickets ... and for an amazing game ... was probably one of the best home games of the year ... so that was good for both of us ... it was fun ... and something neither of us gets to do often or ever ... that was followed by
a good night out with friends ... something I had been planning for weeks ... my boyfriend and his best friend were able to get together after over three years .... his best friend is in the Army and had been stationed in Germany between deployments to Afghanistan for the last three years, they are now stationed near by ... and although he will still get deployed, at least his wife and kids are close to friends and family ... the gettogether was supposed to be a birthday party for my boyfriend, not knowing where we were going to land for the week (thanks to my mother) I figured we better get it over with early, so a week before his birthday I surprised him with friends at his favorite restaurant ... it was amazing ... I <3 his friends .... all of them ... the guys, their wives ... they're jocky, preppy geeks ... just like we are ... I know that may make no sense ... but to sit at a table full of people that enjoy the same geeky things you do, but don't present as typical geeks, and still love sports and other things ... it's not as common as you would think ... we had an amazing night ... again ...

Monday was pretty calm, mostly worked on computers ... which I took to his grandparents' house, since we didn't have enough time where he was "allowed" to be here for him to fix it here ... ___ sidebar ____ I love Windows 7 ____ end sidebar ___ ... Tuesday, we took my son to see Tron 3D, as part of his Christmas present ... we discovered an amazing theater (thanks to a friend of mine) ... where they have half price Tuesdays, but also they have this thing called premium seating where you sit in reserved seats in a balcony and wait staff brings you your drinks and popcorn, what have you ... and the price of the premium seating is offset by the fact that when you sit there, your drinks are only $1 ... it was really nice ... and my son said the movie was "seriously awesome" ... it was a good day ... an expensive day with lunch and all, but a good day ...

Thursday I had lunch with my kiddos, I left my boyfriend at his grandparents' house to get some things done they had requested of him ... and since I was coming back to my mom's ... given his level of discomfort even crossing the threshold, like we can both feel the unwelcome vibes .... he and I figured it was a good time to let him take care of some of those other things ...

Friday was New Year's .... again spent with his completely amazing friends .... seriously I am blessed to have these people in my life ... and then New Year's Day .... we picked up my kids and headed down to his house ... 150 miles away ... where we had fun bowling on the birthday that my daughter and him share ... and were able to spend some time together with the kids ...

We ran into an old friend of his at the bowling alley and he introduced us to his baby daughter, Abigail, and then explained how he had three girls ... couldn't get a boy ... I said that I had the two girls and then got lucky and had the boy ... and my boyfriend said that he hadn't had any, and then said, "but I kind of do" ... I interrupted with "step-type" ... his friend said, "yeah, but you can tell they love you" ... that warmed my heart ... I mean I know they love him, they miss him terribly .... but to have someone say that from an outside perspective ... was nice ...

What's funny, is that at his house, we share a twin sized bed, in a sparsely heated trailer home, with no cable TV, crappy internet, and other creature comforts that I'm used to missing from the equation ... and it's MORE comfortable there than it is here ... just because of that unwelcome vibe ... the stress ... the other things that go on that are just not okay ... there we can just hang out together, just be together, without an authority figure trying to exert her power ... and he is staying with his dad while his dad goes through a series of surgeries, so it's not like the living situation is any different, other than me (and my kids) are welcomed there with open arms ... never shunned or made to feel like we needed to leave ...

Finally it was time to come home ... back to reality ... my mother still is clearly in "ignore it and it will go away" mode ... I hate that ... in case you hadn't figured that out from previous posts ... like literally hate it ... ignoring it makes it worse ... it might make a day or two easier ... but all the crap on both sides will build up and eventually has to come out ... I am still livid because of her decision (magnified by the fact that everyone in his family is exactly the opposite) ... I still feel like I'm a second class citizen in the home that I live in ...

I have this issue with the fact that she does my kids' laundry ... it's kind of a multiple frustration ... A) they're my kids and it's something else she's trying to control about them B) I don't have much in the sense of purpose and responsibility right now ... their laundry is one of the few I have and C) other people doing their laundry (even their dad) has always annoyed me ... I have a system ... and I want to be able to to it myself ... eventually they will do their own ... but right now I still do it ... one of my annoyances is that when my system isn't followed and someone else is doing things then I don't know what all is there or where it is .. she has two boxes of clean clothes sitting in their room, two laundry baskets outside their door (they don't really have functional dressers or a closet at all right now) ... and she has two laundry baskets in the living room ... when I have all the rest of their stuff ... I have halves of PJs ... I don't know where have their stuff is ... so this morning I couldn't find socks for the kids, and she starts going through a laundry basket in the living room and says there's a bunch in there ... I say to her "that's what happens when more than one person does their laundry" ... she says "I don't think I did any of that" ... I say "I take all the laundry I do downstairs" ... so she snaps at me ... while she throws the hat she was looking for that my daughter requested at my daughter ... "fine it's all my fault" and storms upstairs ... seriously ... that is adult behavior ... mmhmmmm ...

I didn't snap at her, I wasn't rude in my tone ... in fact if anything I was playful ... it was a logical reason as to why I don't want her doing their laundry ... I had NO clue that there were socks or a hat in that basket ... because I didn't do it ...

With all the control that has been taken away from me, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask for control over my kids' clothes ... but apparently ... again ... I am wrong ...

I did have an absolutely amazing nine days with my kids, my boyfriend, his family and friends ... but reality is back ... slapping me in the face ... I think I seriously am going to talk to the housing authority about Section 8 housing ... like I said, I'd give up the creature comforts for my emotional health and wellbeing .... and I just might need to ... I mean what good is it to have a bunch of creature comforts when you're deprived of emotional needs and comforts ... they mean almost nothing at that point ... my emotional well being is much more important to me than having a million channels on my cable TV or high speed internet ... or even a well-heated home (which technically I don't have now anyway) ... I am just so tired of being undermined and overrun and treated like an out of line teenager .... having the things that I request ... the very, very few things I request be denied and shunned ... I am an adult ... I have lived completely self-sufficiently ... I have three children of my own ... I don't deserve to be treated like this ....

Venting ... Venting ....

2010-12-25T00:45:00.000-07:00

I shouldn't have to do this 38 minutes into Christmas Day ....

My mom overtook Santa ....

I only get to do it every other year as it is .... this is the last year that my oldest probably even remotely still believes ... and I go upstairs to do it and she did like half of it already .... because it was "late" ...

I say, "we didn't even get home when I was a kid until well after midnight"

She says, "well I was twenty years younger then"

I say, "well I'm twenty years younger now"

.... I didn't lash out ... made one comment when she said she was going to dump Santa's milk in the sink and I said I was going to drink it ... and otherwise I kept my mouth shut ...

But ... I am seriously pissed off ... I know she bought the stuff, I get it ... but my grandma almost always bought my Santa stuff ... and my parents actually got to play Santa ... and seriously ... every other year as it is ... one more freedom, one more thing she tried to take away from me and did pretty much end up ruining ... I couldn't do it my own way ... couldn't just do it myself ... or even with her help because we worked together or I was asking her to .... she just did it ... on her own ... and acted like it was nothing ...

This is a big deal to me ... the Santa thing only lasts so long as it is and I only get half that time already ... like I said ... vicariously parenting my children ... undermining my parenting and my control over them ... and the things around them ...

I feel violated and like another freedom and parenting right has been taken away from me ... and now in the morning we go back to smiling so my kids can enjoy their Christmas, but my flipping goodness ... can this shit stop already ...

Elation ...

2010-12-23T23:44:00.000-07:00

Elation ... there is no other word I can use to describe how I feel about being able to see my honey tomorrow and every single day for the next week ...

My kids are super excited too ... it means more to me than any present I could ever get ... and no, my warden didn't change her plans or rules or whatever you want to call them, but we found an alternative at least for a while ...

So, I will have a week full of love and support from him ... and then the social events that we'll be attending will add to more of that ... Christmas, New Year's ... his birthday ... a week of celebration ... a week of love and support ...

Totally and completely ... elated :)

Friends, Hope & Isolation ....

2010-12-22T21:55:00.002-07:00

Before I turn in tonight I just wanted to take a minute to breathe, to decompress to find a way to get some of these feelings out and make the stress subside ... at least slightly ...

First off, I will tell you all that have been reading my blogs lately ... that I do smile, I do laugh ... I do love my life ... I love my children ... I love my man ... I love my friends ... the three of them together make my world whole ... they keep me going ... they validate my feelings (even the negative ones) ... I am not depressed as a whole ... I am pissed off over a situation ... over living conditions I can't control ... over my parenting being undermined ... my relationship being compromised ... I am pissed off about being treated like a delinquent teenager ... when I have no reason to be ...

I am sad that I am isolated ... sad that I feel like I live in a prison with concrete walls and floors and one solitary, underground window with a grate on it to complete the feeling ... I am sad that my children have to live this way ...

I thrive on my solitude ... I do ... I ~~like~~ love my alone time .... but I came across a quote ... that helps me come to terms with why I love solitude and hate isolation;

“Solitude vivifies; isolation kills” ... Joseph Roux

For me ... that says it all ... I could go on with other quotes that mean a lot to me right now ....

“Isolation is a dream killer” ... Barbara Sher

“Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.” ... Thomas Carlyle

... both of which mean a lot to me as well right now ...

I embrace the negative feelings ... they are as important to human nature as the positive ones ... and I would rather feel amazingly strong negative feelings than not feel anything at all ... I would rather be pissed off than indifferent ... I would rather be depressed than indifferent ... I would rather be in pain than indifferent ....

Indifference is (in my dimestore psychology) a trait of a sociopath ... someone that feels no empathy for others ... indifference ... is almost ... inhuman ....

I embrace my emotions ... throughout the spectrum ... sometimes I am a doormat ... because I am way too empathetic ... but why would I want to change that ... why would I want to scale down the level of empathy I have for others?

I have hope that there will be a brighter future ... I have hope that my children will never have to live like this ... and I have knowledge that if they do ... I will not degrade them or undermine the things they hold most dear ... I do believe I am a victim of circumstance ... a victim of other people making decisions ... a victim of people wanting to help ... and getting frustrated that things aren't moving fast enough and in the end just giving me enough rope to hang myself with ... of digging me a deeper hole ... I have moved twice because I had no choice ... I have left two jobs because I had no choice ... I chose to be a stay at home mom ... which is the only choice that I personally made that left me in this place ... everything else was the result of someone trying to "help" me ... but just because I feel like a victim does not mean I'm moping in a corner not doing anything
about it ... I am trying my damndest to overcome the obstacles that others, and life and a shitty economy has put in front of me ... to beat an obstacle course that even my parents and other biological relatives have no faith in me beating ... I am also pissed off at their hypocrisy ... they borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from their own parents to get by ... they lived in my grandparents' basement ... we ran out of propane ... we had our phones turned off ... because they couldn't pay ... my dad wasted all the family's money on his addictions ... and I somehow am worse than them in their eyes ... the hypocrisy pisses me off more than about anything else does ...

The thing that comes closest is the "ignore it and it will go away" philosophy which is all I have faced in the last few weeks and months ... I would rather fight it out than have her pretend that it doesn't exist ... to completely undermine the validity of my feelings ... of my wants, needs and desires ... to basically say "they don't exist" ... because that's what "ignore it and it will go away" does ... in fact it makes me lash out more ... it makes me keep talking ... keep expressing ... looking for something human to look back at me ... instead of this cold, heartless, indifference that I get ... I would rather see anger ... because to feel indifference for your own child's feelings ... well ... it's just wrong on so many levels ....

This Sunday I will have the opportunity to go out with friends, and my boyfriend ... it will be the first time I have been out like this in a very, very long time ... since well before I moved in to this place ... I have hope that I will probably have the best night of my entire year that night ... that for one night I will get to be me ... not someone controlled by someone else ... not somebody being treated like an out of line twelve year-old ... but I will get to be .... me ... with my friends ... that is my hope ... and it will for one night ... remove this isolation .... and for once I will be able to be myself ....

I'll never find my heart
Behind someone else
I'll never see the light of day
Living in this cell
It's time to make my way
Into the world I knew
Take back all of these times
That I gave in to you

Lately I'm so tired of waiting for you
To say that it's ok, but tell me
Please, would you one time
Let me be myself
So I can shine with my own light
And let me be myself
For a while, if you don't mind
Let me be myself
So i can shine with my own light
Let me be myself

... "Let Me Be Myself" ... 3 Doors Down

I should be sleeping ...

2010-12-22T00:43:00.005-07:00

I have to be up and getting ready for work in 8 hours ... I should be sleeping ... but I want to clear my mind first ... so that I can stand a chance of sleeping ... so I can stand a chance of not crying ... so I can stand a chance, well, of anything ...

I will say that I am grateful for the things I have been given ...I am highly aware that people have suffered greater losses, have lived under worse conditions and have suffered in general far more than I have ... and been given far less than I have been given ... however ... the wrongs done to them ... the suffering they endured ... does not justify the wrongs that have been done to me ... just because someone else "had it worse" ... doesn't mean that I'm not entitled to my own suffering, to my own angst, to my own disappointment and anger ...

Here is the thing ... in my last post about freedom ... I was emotional ... justifiably so ... but I admit I was emotional ...

Here is the thing about that ... I made one request for Christmas ... ONE ... I asked for nothing material, nothing monetary ... I asked for one single thing for Christmas ... to be able to spend some time, a week full of special moments, with the person I want to spend my time with most ... I made one wish for Christmas, one request ... and I was told no ... what made this all harder is in the "let me think about it" period ... she was sticky sweet, she bought me things I didn't ask for, didn't need ... like she was buttering me up to let me down ...

I have volunteered to give up things of monetary value ... I have offered to sacrifice things ... I have offered to do things ... I have done everything I can think of to make this happen ... to get my solitary Christmas wish ... and none of it was enough ... there is a lack of compassion ... a lack of caring ... a lack of loving ... a lack of
humanity in that denial ...

I could go into a list of things that were messed up ... he was going to help me fix my computer, and my kids' computer, he was going to help me fix my son's dresser ... we were going to do some stuff for a hobby we do together we do much better when we're physically with each other ... there were practical things that were going to be done, that now there is no time for ....

We have friends to visit, family to visit ... time to spend with my children ... who love him dearly ... and it was all cut out of the picture ....

Now, I'd understand if there were principles of hers I was violating ... but I'm not ... in fact before I moved in she flat out said she expected and understood that these visits would happen ... and the first of them happened just before my son went into the hospital ... and it was much longer than we expected it to be, than she had agreed to ... because ... my son was in the hospital ... I wasn't going to drive 150 miles away and be that far away when I got a call that he was going in for emergency surgery ... so yes, he stayed passed the agreed amount of time ... but there were circumstances outside our control ... I didn't plan for my kid to end up with life-threatening pneumonia and end up on a ventilator ... I didn't plan for him to stay past the time ... and the entire time ... while I should have had all my focus on my son ... she bugged me about it ... about how he needed to leave, needed to go home ... let's just forget that my son wanted him there, that I wanted him there, that he wanted to be there for me and my son ... that he was really my primary source of support through the whole thing ... it was a relief for us to go spend the night in the hospital ... because we were away from this house ... away from the stress and the pressure ... that just the presence of her would bring ... the constant negativity ... the constant nagging on me that he needed to leave .... and he stayed so far out of her way .... hell, if I didn't tell her she wouldn't have even known he was here ... we were at the hospital so much ... and hiding away in the basement ... afraid of the stress that would come up if we left ... so yes, him visiting now would have stresses ... because I'm sure her attitude would be the same ... really she hates him ... putting me in the middle ... although all she's really doing is promoting my negative feelings toward her and creating a star-crossed lovers situation that is just making our relationship stronger ... so since she dislikes him so strongly ... it's not a real smart move on her part ...

I don't know if she has just forgotten what it's like to be in love ... I don't know if she has forgotten that he and I lived together ... we've been together for over a year ... and we've lived together ... this isn't like being in high school or something and it's just "some guy" I'm dating this week ... the only reason that he lives 150 miles away is because she wouldn't let me have my dog here ... so he sacrificed so much of his life, so that one of us could keep the dog ... so in his mind I know, and in my mind to some degree, it's because of her that he lives so far away to begin with ... I still put a lot of blame on the situation that made me move in the first place ... and blame on her in a secondary position ... but still .... had I been able to keep my dog ... he would be 15 miles away ... not 150 ...

And now, here I am ... with one single wish for Christmas, one single desire ... unmet .... and I can't meet those of my kids financially ... I wish I could skip Christmas this year ... but I can't and I won't for my children ... they will be okay ... they know this will be a light Christmas ... and they will have something to make up for it someday ... but even my children want non-material things for Christmas ... including for "mommy to be happy" ...

Well, that was pretty much flushed down the toilet at this point ... not that he, or this visit, are my sole sources of happiness ... but the denial of them hit me like a ton of bricks ... like a piano dropped off a ten story building ... my stomach went up into my chest and my heart sank down into my stomach ... I was nauseous and had palpitations, an instant headache and my entire body started shaking ... and now I can't even look at her ... I can't make eye contact ... I think I'm afraid of how piercing my eyes must be right now than I am of anything I would see on her face or in her eyes ... I am so upset, so hurt, so angry ... I feel like a child ... who is being punished for no reason ... like I'm grounded just because she felt like it ...

So, then I start thinking about my options ... I wonder if I could hide him in my basement ... how sad is that ... my kids are almost to the age where I need to start worrying about them sneaking people in and out ... and now I want to do it ... so what am I thirteen years old? or am I just being treated like it leaving me with little in options other than to act like it? ... I just can't handle this feeling of being isolated and imprisoned ... I have never felt like this ... in my entire life ... hell, when I was a teenager I had a boyfriend that lived 130 miles away and was three years older than me ... and my mom drove me to see him ... and let me stay the night at his house and let him stay the night at mine ... so when I was 14 it was okay ... but now it's not? ... and I'm supposed to believe that it's not personal about him ...

The other thing I don't think she has thought through is that I am serious about him ... this is a serious relationship ... I could see us getting married, I could see us having children ... more of her grandchildren ... and at this point when I move out ... when I have him back under the same roof as me ... I am feeling like we should make her feel just as welcome as she makes him feel ... which means not at all ... I don't think she's realized the effect this could and will have on her relationship with me in the future ... or her grandchildren .... I mean one of my kids has already expressed flat out hatred toward one of her grandparents ... I'm sure she's capable of feeling that way about another ... she had one take away her house ... one deny her her precious puppy dog ... and she feels just as strongly about this relationship as I do ... to the point that when I told her we were dating she started crying because she is afraid of losing him, and as a friend in her mind that was less likely to happen than as a boyfriend ... and that's just one of my three children ...

Parents are supposed to be supportive of their children ... unless they are in some way hurting themselves or others ... their aspirations, their goals, their relationships should be supported .... needs extend beyond physiological needs ... as humans we have a need to socialize with other people ... to laugh, to cry, to smile with people that are good for us ... as humans we have a need to be loved, to be surrounded by people who support us ... our parents, our families should be the main source of that ... I wish I knew what it was like to have parents like that ... but I haven't had that in a long time ... my parents both have had phases in time where they supported me ... but mostly all I have been is a thorn in their side ... and I wonder if I'm so awful ... if I'm worth all this negativity and control and power ... I wonder if they ever think about who shaped and molded me into this person in the first place ...

What's funny is they're all about helping my kids with anything and everything they want ... they need ... support coming out their ears for my kids desires ... it's a sad day when you become jealous of your own children .... but I think both my parents forgot that they had a daughter of their own when they decided to vicariously take mine ...especially my two daughters, that I have lost in many ways since I moved into this house, since they are two floors away from me and I can't be in two places at once ... but yes, I believe that my parents have forgotten that I am their daughter ... I'm just the mother of their grandchildren ... and that is what I'm worth to them ... so why would they be compassionate toward me ... why would they support the things I need in life, besides just keeping me alive ... and confined in this wonderful, unfinished basement I live in ... they have no reason to ... so again, as I have said before ... I will fight back my tears, bite my tongue ... and be there for my children ... pretending I am not being torn apart inside by all of this ... her philosophy is ignore it and it will go away ... but it doesn't go away ... it just gets worse and worse and worse ...

She was surprised when she said she didn't want her not wanting my boyfriend here (just to visit) to effect our relationship ... and she was surprised when I told her it already had .... I don't know how that could have possibly come as a surprise to her ... it is the main issue that we have period ... some of the other things are issues of power and control, where she exerts it all, knowing I have none, but so much of that could be overlooked if I could just have her support on this one thing ... I would be so much happier ... I would be more positive and optimistic ... if I just had her support ... if I just could have this one Christmas wish ... if she would just accept that he is a major part of me and my kids' lives ... that we need him ... if she would just accept that so many of the other problems would seem so small, but as it stands this is just one HUGE magnifying glass on the whole situation ... but why would she understand any of that ... I try to explain it to her and she tells me I'm crazy and I need to talk to a counselor and that she's not listening ... just ignore it and it will go away ... I wish this was something talking to a counselor could change ... but when the hatred for the man I love stares me in the face every day ... that's nothing a counselor can fix ... I actually think I've handled the situation well, I rarely lash out at her ... I bite my tongue all the time, I find cathartic ways of dealing with my depression and anger over her attitude, her decisions ... this isn't a counseling issue ... this is an issue with her ... now maybe if we went and saw one together ... but I know that she has the upperhand ... she gave me a roof over my head ... so ... yep ... I owe her ... apparently I owe her more than I am willing to pay ... but the only choice I have is to go live in a homeless shelter ... and we all know that's not realistic ... so yeah ... she'll sit there and ignore there is a problem at all ... and I will continue to hurt ... and she, as the person in this world that is supposed to care about me the most, be the most compassionate, my mother ... will continue to not care ...

Freedom ....

2010-12-20T14:44:00.005-07:00

So I asked the warden if my boyfriend could come stay with me for the week after Christmas ....which would allow us to spend Christmas, New Year's and his birthday together ... and allow us some time to hang out with friends, including his best friend that I have never met and he hasn't seen in three years since he has been serving in Afghanistan ...

The answer was he could stay for two days ... which is better than not at all ... I will say that ... although it's more of an insult than it is an offer to help ...

I am so over this all ... I would understand if I were some kind of addict or criminal, hell, I would understand if he was ... but neither of us are ... we are just two people trying to survive in an economy that sucks, in a job market that sucks ... and still maintain a relationship ....

Maintaining the relationship isn't really very hard ... but to be able to spend time together and to have to ask
permission to do that ... is something that nobody that is our age should have to do ... he doesn't ... but I do ...

... I shouldn't have to ... I should be able to say it as a statement ... "he is coming the week after Christmas" ... why do I even ask? ... because I'm polite ... maybe I need to stop being polite, and meet my own needs, my own desires ... after all it is my life ... not the warden's ... maybe I need to take the bull by the horns and just do what I want and not consider their wants and needs, since they don't consider mine ... or at least put their own set of priorities on mine ...

More than ever ... I need out of this house ... I can't even look at the warden without immediate feelings of disdain and near-hate coming into my body ... I physically react ...

It's not that nothing has been done for me, it's not that I don't appreciate having a roof over my head, food on my table, internet access, etc., .... because I do ... but then again ... I would have all those things in prison now wouldn't I? ... and the things that have been denied to me ... those I wouldn't ... so really this is a prison that I live in ... I'm over it ....

*** edit afterthought ***

I also told the warden this was all I wanted for Christmas ... nothing monetary ... nothing at all ... that this request was my one and only single wish for Christmas ... I don't know where people put their compassion ... my kids seem to get it from everyone ... but apparently I am not deserving of it ...

Fake Plastic Mistletoe ... Archived From 11/25/2008

2010-12-20T04:09:00.003-07:00

The opening words of the song below :

"Great, fake plastic mistletoe, wrap me a in a great big bow, and tear me apart. . . It's Christmastime, so open up the floodgates, tell me that it'll be late, and rip me apart"

So, I don't know that I even need to write anything in explanation . . . but from the time I can remember, from the time my dad and his siblings can remember, my grandmother hung mistletoe over her and my grandfather's bed . . . something I recall even as a child thinking was terribly romantic . . . so when I was 15 (the first year I wasn't "single" on Christmas) I followed in tradition (even though I definitely wasn't sleeping with the guy lol) . . . since then I've spent a few Christmas seasons single or barely dating someone . . . but this year just seems
a little harder . . . a little less like tradition . . . I dread the sight of mistletoe . . . the Christmas love songs . . . all the emotion and sentiment that goes along with Christmas at all . . . I'm glad I have the kids to focus on . . . because Christmas through the eyes of a child makes the whole thing much more amazing, much more worth while . . . and then I think I have to focus on healing my spirit, because I can't keep going on with life with a broken spirit . . . there is hope in the song . . . which is part of why I like it . . . it starts out bitter and sad . . . but then leads to this . . .

"It's not Christmas if the snow don't fall, And I'm still standing here three feet small, Lose our troubles because after all, It's Christmas time"

*********************************************************************************
Added with the re-post:

I will say that while my reasoning has changed ... this song means a lot to me this Christmas as well ... being without the ones you love at the holidays, isn't much different than being without anyone ... but overall I still like the message that this song ends in hope ...

Yes, I know I've Been Quiet ...

2010-12-20T03:52:00.002-07:00

... so I'm going through one of those times right now where blogging is both my best friend and my worst enemy ...

I have feelings I can't explain ... feelings I can ... and then of course this blog is not anonymous .... so I have to be somewhat careful, guarded if you will, about what I say about certain situations, people, etc.,

The holidays are very hard for me for multiple reasons ... but mostly it's the pressure and the tug of war of both myself and my children .. and then I come off as uncaring and not wanting to spend time with people, which isn't true ... but I've spent a lot of time as a black sheep, and I emphasize a lot ...

I went through a phase right around my senior year of high school where I felt much the same way I do now ... but basically it comes down to this ... I play a very good black sheep from the sidelines ... so what is the purpose in joining a game, where further injury will inevitably be the only result? ... the bulk of my extended family has made it very clear to me that I am not in the "in crowd" through various actions & words ... I grew up as an only child and considered my two closest cousins (the third of my three cousins is much younger and always lived several states away) to be the closest thing to siblings I had ... it is clear that they never really felt that way about me (now mind you they had each other, they didn't have that only child thing going on) ... anyway, I included them in everything as I got older ... invited them to kids' birthday parties, baptisms, they
were among the very first to know that my children were born ... I have been included in nothing as far as events for the three children that they have combined .... and that is just one example in many about where I stand ... and a fairly calm one, for this not so anonymous blog I have going on ...

I've always been looked at as the "wild child" (I use that quote because it actually was used by them) ... the delinquent ... the one that didn't follow the right path ... although as I've gotten older I've realized that no matter what path I chose, it would be the wrong one ... in their eyes at least ...

What's funny is to the kids I grew up with, the ones I hung out with in high school, I was a goody goody .. I didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't do drugs, didn't have sex ... had many boyfriends but didn't get around ...
and the shortest relationship I ever had was six weeks I think ... even in jr high ... the few falling outs I had with friends was usually because I was standing up for something I truly believed in when it came to morals, ethics and fairness ... all and all I was a good kid ... but to them I was always a second class citizen ...

When my ex-husband and I split up I'm sure there was judgment, I'm sure there was gossip, but outside of one mention of it in an email about something else from a cousin ... there just wasn't any support ... nobody reached out ... nobody offered anything ... and now, much like I did after my parents were divorced, I feel like I need moral support just to visit my family ... to know that someone is there that actually cares about me, that cares about my feelings, my side of the story ... literal moral support ... and how sad is that ... I feel like I need moral support to visit the people that are supposed to be the most supporting of all ... my family ...

For a long time I think things were okay because my ex-husband was there ... he was my moral support ... he would stand up for me ... but now ... the idea of going to any family function just me, or just me and my kids ... is basically my idea of my own personal hell ... to sit there and face the judgment that nobody will speak out loud, but they certainly don't speak the opposite either ... and now after having gone through what I did with my father and stepmother in the past year ... it makes it all worse ... I know he and she both have made me out to be something I'm not ... made themselves look, again, like they did nothing wrong ... and not that I'm blameless ... I own the things I did, the things I said ... which is more than I can say for the people that are supposed to be more mature, and more wise than I am ... my dad made a decision that forever changed his relationship with both me and my children ... and his reasoning was that to not make that decision was "hurting our relationship" ... I honestly don't think he thought it through at all ... because the decision he made was more detrimental to our relationship than anything that happened up until that point ... but I'm off track ... my point is that my extended family, not a single one of them, even asked me what my side of the story was, what happened ... not one ... even when I tried to open up that door with several of them several times ... they don't want to hear it, for whatever their reasons are ... which makes being around them without that moral support even harder right now ....

Having my boyfriend be so far away ... I just don't have anyone that really provides that for me ... anyone that I know will have my back ... or be able to send me a comforting glance or gentle touch when words are said that they know sting ... instead I spend my time fighting back tears .... biting my tongue .... and letting stress and pain keep growing within me ... I can let it go ... but not when it's staring me in the face ... with nobody to comfort me around ... and I can't do that to myself .... I can't live in a personal hell ....

Then you add the stress I have from my current living situation ... the fact that it's not even my decision if I spend Christmas or New Year's with my boyfriend, none the less the birthday that he and my daughter share just a week after Christmas ... it's not my choice ... I can't make that decision for myself ... I have to ask for permission ... and will honestly be heartbroken if the answer is no ... but I have no choice ... I have a roof over my head, a furnace that runs, internet and many other things ... and my freedom and independence is part of the price I pay for that ... and apparently heartbreak may be as well ...

I am grateful to have my kids with me for Christmas Eve/Christmas morning this year, as they weren't last year ... but there is so much pain and so much stress ... so much heartbreak .... this holiday season is so incredibly hard .... I still feel like I am not complete ... like my holiday is not complete ... I want the Rockwell painting, but have always been too realistic to know that will exist ... but I would take being able to spend the day with the four people I want to spend it with most ... and to have the other people give me the gift of letting that happen without the additional stresses, pressures and heartaches ... but I doubt that will happen ... so I just have to do what I've been trying to do all along .. fight back the tears, bite my tongue .... and pretend for my children's sake that I don't feel completely torn apart inside ... while not lashing out at the people that make me feel that way ... I am strong enough to do it ... but I still don't know if I can ...

15 Days ... My Reason for Taking a Break From Blogging

2010-11-12T18:39:00.003-07:00

Last fall with an O2 tank bigger than him!

My five year-old son spent 15 days in the hospital, including two surgeries, six in-room procedures and countless tubes, IVs, pokes and other fun things ... so here is the entire story.

First off, I will preempt this by telling all my lovely readers that my middle daughter has a history of chronic illness, and usually when these kinds of things happen, they happen to her. My son does have a history of Reactive Airway Disease (RAD) and has had pneumonia three times, but two of them weren't bad at all and the third was associated with lab-confirmed H1N1 last fall. He did end up on in-home oxygen with that one, and they talked about hospitalizing him, but never did.

So, here is the story of our little adventure this fall ....

On Wednesday October 13, my cute little five year-old boy started off a cold with some sniffles and a little bit of a cough, but nothing seemed too bad, according to his dad (sidebar- my kids go every other month and every other weekend between their father and me, October was their month with their dad). Saturday morning his dad started getting more worried about him, he was spiking high fevers, throwing up almost everything he ate (including medicine), and had a really good, unproductive cough ... Sunday morning my son was taken to urgent care, they said that he sounded clear, his O2 Saturation was in the low 90s, which isn't bad ... they told my
ex-husband to take him home and get him some rest, that it was just a virus, the normal thing that us parents here over viruses, and of course; if he's getting worse or not better in a few days, take him to his normal pediatrician ... well Tuesday, October 19 I had the kids for dinner, and he was just not himself, he was lethargic and coughing almost constantly, his dad and grandma told me he was actually doing better than he had been ... but that night he took a turn for the worse, a fever spiked again, his breathing became rapid and labored ... so Wednesday morning my ex took him to the pediatrician ... where he was bouncing around the office, and his lungs sounded clear, but the pediatrician didn't like his respiration rate and sent him for a chest x-ray .... what they found looked something like this:

This isn't my son's x-ray, but one that was remarkably like his ... it's called a white-out, and basically means that his right lung wasn't really working at all ... the pediatrician called my ex-husband and told him to drive him straight to Children's Hospital that he might need surgery, but he definitely needed to be at the hospital, he then called me ... about 10 minutes later I received another call from him, telling me the pediatrician had called him again and that our baby boy needed to be taken by ambulance, instead of driven to Children's ...

So, that's what they did, they went by ambulance to the hospital ...

Whether luck or fate played into the fact that my boyfriend was here visiting during that time I don't know, but he came up to visit me on the nineteenth, and was able to drive me and be my main source of support through all of this, and I am grateful he was here ... so he drove me to the hospital where we actually beat the ambulance ...

In the ER

In the ER, his vital signs were okay, the doctor said he "didn't sound that bad" after listening to him breathe ... he said he would have the nurse come in and start an IV, go check out the x-ray and be back in twenty minutes or so, he came back about a minute later and said "ok, that x-ray is impressive" .. and told us he was going to arrange for a room for him on the pulmonary floor and called in surgery for consult ... surgery came and looked and decided it wasn't "bad enough" for surgery right then ... a few hours later we were moved to the pulmonary floor ...

Over the course of the night, he became worse and worse, he was sweating constantly, coughing constantly, his O2 sat kept dropping and an early morning chest x-ray came back worse as well, it looked something like this .... you could no longer even see his ribs on the right side ...

The PICU team was consulted and he was moved to the PICU ... within an hour of being there the PICU team decided not to wait on surgery and to insert a chest tube themselves to see if they could get some of the fluid out of his pleural sack ... so he was intubated and put on a ventilator ...

Smiling through the pain just before moving to the PICU

They tried to get fluid out of a chest tube, but weren't successful, so they called in pulmonology ... he then had the first of two bronchoscopies ... where they looked at the inside of his lung and sucked out some bad junk from the inside, but they still knew there was stuff on the outside as well ...

While he was on the ventilator, he would "choke" ... the ventilator and his airway would become clogged with mucus and such, they would have to bag and suction him ... that was the hardest thing for me, of everything he went through ... watching his entire body rise and fall when they bagged him ... watching his eyes water when they suctioned him .... knowing it was all for his good and saving his precious little life ... but still scary as all hell


In the PICU ... he had a ventilator, the feeding tube, two IVs, one central line, an arterial blood pressure monitor, a foley catheter, EKG monitors, suction for the ventilator and his O2 monitor ... a lot of tubes and gadgets for such a little boy

His two chest tubes

... the next morning his chest x-ray wasn't any better, after boat loads of antibiotics, and all sorts of other things they had done ... so they took him into surgery and did a procedure called VATS (video-assisted thoracopscopic surgery) ... they cleaned out what was a large empyema (basically a large abscess between the pleural sack, or lung sack for layman terms, and the lung itself ... a large pocket of pus and other loveliness, from the pneumonia in his lung draining out into the sack) .... they left in two chest tubes to continue to let fluid drain ..

During his bronchoscopy

Immediately after he came back from surgery he was given another brochoscopy ... to, again, check the inside of his lung and suck out what they could ... the pulmonologist was very satisfied with what they were able to get out this time, saying that they were able to free a bunch of plugs and that it should help him a lot to get air back in the lower portion of his lung ....

He spent the next twenty-four hours in and out of consciousness, he would be awake and alert and nod his head and squeeze your hand, and follow directions ... the nurses were all amazed they said adults would never act like that while on a ventilator ...

Less than three days after being put on the ventilator, the decided it was time to extibate him, he was taken off the ventilator the evening of October 23 ... he was exhausted and drugged up, but the fact that he was no longer on a ventilator was very relieving to me ...

Off the ventilator looking at his ABC book with my honey

He was moved back to the Pulmonary floor the next afternoon .... where he remained the rest of his stay at Children's ...

He was making very good progress and on Monday October 25, they took out his chest tubes, giving him the freedom to walk around his room, they were encouraging him to get up and move, saying that exercising and working that lung would help him get better ... he spent some time decorating his room, and blowing marshmallows with a marshmallow gun (a clever device to get them to exert lung power) ... he also was blowing on party blowers and spinning pinwheels ...

Up and moving around his hospital room

His x-rays and bloodwork still showed signs of pneumonia/infection, and it wasn't getting better ... so there was discussion about what to do ..

But then something else happened ... Wednesday October 27, his morning chest x-ray revealed that he had suffered from a tension pneumothorax ... his lung had collapsed due to air pressure from outside the lung ... his pleural sack that they had cleaned out from all the pus and gunk had filled with air and collapsed his lung ...

They tried to re-insert a chest tube in his room, but couldn't get his lung to re-inflate ... so he went in a few hours later for emergency surgery to place the chest tube and re-inflate his lung, by bagging him ... which I already told you all I loved so much ... I went with him into the surgery room and held his hand as the anesthesia hit him ... and then left him in the hands of skilled surgeons ... less than two hours later they were done ... and he was out and conscious ... and hungry ... he had ordered breakfast that morning, but between when it was ordered and when it got to him, he went NPO (nothing by mouth) ... because they knew the surgery was coming .... so all he wanted was the waffles he had ordered, so we ordered him fresh waffles, and he was able to eat ... but he was back to being confined to his bed ...

Things were pretty stable for a few days .... and then his bloodcounts revealed that his infection may actually be getting worse, so on Friday, October 29, they put him on two new antibiotics, one was Vancomycin, which is literally considered the drug of last resort in the antibiotic world, it is the broadest spectrum, strongest antibiotic available, and the other was an antibiotic designed to kill anaerobic bacteria, which is bacteria that live in low to no oxygen environments, which, for a while now, the bottom of his lung had been ... the combination of the two or one or the other was helping him greatly ... but he still wasn't going to leave the hospital in time for Halloween ... so he laid in his hospital bed, in his Batman costume, all day on Halloween, he was a great sport about the whole thing, and his sisters did extra trick-or-treating for him ... I had to cut holes in his costume so that the nurses could get to his IVs and his chest tube could sit properly, but he still got to be Batman all day ...

Up and eating lunch on the couch/bed in his hospital room

By Tuesday, November 2, he was doing a lot better and they decided to remove the final chest tube ... he was now on oral antibiotics, room air and had nothing attached to him, except his EKG wires and oxymeter ... so he was somewhat free ... we were told they hoped he would go home by the weekend, but they wanted to be able to make sure he was keeping his oral antibiotics down and that his bloodcounts and x-rays were getting better ... we expected maybe Friday or Saturday, but on Thursday morning they decided he would be discharged Thursday afternoon ... so at 4:45 on Thursday, November 4, he was discharged from the hospital ... he had to continue taking an inhaler and his antibiotics at home, and saw his pediatrician on November 8, who said he seemed like he was getting better, not healthy, but getting there ... he will see the pulmonology specialists at Children's at the end of December to determine his long-term care .. because it's not just about him getting better from this ... it's about making sure it doesn't happen again ...

All packed up to go home ... he acquired a lot of goodies at the hospital

He is lucky he is young, the pulmonologists say in post-pubescent people that something like this would leave them with diminished lung function for life, but at his age, it will probably all resolve itself within a year or two ... provided he stays healthy ... he was told to return to school as tolerated ... he went to school Monday for a half day, Tuesday he stayed home, Wednesday he went for a half day, Thursday he went for a whole day, but then Friday (today) he said he was sleepy and his stomach hurt, he stayed home, and slept until almost noon. So, his stamina is coming back slowly, but it is coming back.

It is very hard to see a child go through all this, and he was amazing and brave and strong, and he is very sick of me telling him that, but outside of a few break-down moments, he really, really was ...

He has a road of recovery ahead of him ... and hopefully will be healthy the rest of this winter, but the thought of him getting sick right now is definitely frightening ...

Home with his kitty, Loki ... they missed each other a ton!

The Cataclysm Cinematic Has Been Released ...

2010-10-17T18:16:00.001-06:00

The commercial aired for the first time today ... followed by the release of the full cinematic ...

You know what's hard?

2010-10-16T16:55:00.002-06:00

... changing shoe laces in your kids shoes, in a house with seven cats ...

... just sayin' ...

Compassion .. a message for all ...

2010-10-14T20:57:00.003-06:00

I was raised in a church where we were taught compassion ... where acceptance was taught as one of the main principles of scripture ... where empathy, love and compassion for our enemies, for those of different faiths, or no faith, different cultures, different political views were to be respected, as fellow members of the human race .. we were taught to show love and empathy by example ... and not force our views or scripture on to other people ... we were taught to examine other religions ... we were taught to do this in an academic and respectful manner ... in my confirmation classes we read pieces of the Torah, the Quran, the Aqdas, the
Book of Mormon, books on Wiccan and Pagan beliefs, we were taught about the missing and hidden books of the Bible ... and then we were taught different versions of the Bible ... the way things were worded differently depending on whether you picked up a King James, an NIV .... or one of the hundreds of other versions of the Bible that exist ... we studied the views of atheists ... the views of scientists ... we discussed whether or not we individually felt that science and scripture could coexist ... and we were not judged by our pastor or each other regardless of where we fell on that belief spectrum ... and finally when we finished the confirmation class, it was very clear that it was our choice whether we wanted to confirm our beliefs in that church, in that religion, in those teachings ... two of the sixteen chose not to ... and they were commended for their honesty and their ability to be upfront about how they felt ...

I was taught as a child, in a church that I miss and cannot find an equal to ... that we were to be examples of God's love, God's compassion .... God's empathy ... and in that we were to fight for all humanity to have respect, understanding and compassion .... the message that this organization is putting out there is exactly what I was raised to believe ....

I have compassion for all humanity, empathy for many situations, empathy for all ... I think discrimination of any form is completely uncalled for ... whether based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, occupation, age, economic status, marital status, familial status, disability, culture, weight, height, hairstyle, body art, or any other thing that people find wrong with each other ... we must see ourselves as one united human race ... before anything else ... and only then can this world, this country, this city, begin to exist in a manner of peace and equality ...

Labeling our children ...

2010-10-13T18:55:00.003-06:00

I think there is a fine line between encouraging and nurturing the strengths of our children and labeling and pigeon-holing them into something, somewhere that is unfair to them ... so here is my confession/struggle ...

Hi, my name is Erica and I just came back from parent teacher conferences, and this is where I find it very hard to not "label" my children ... those of you that have read my muses page, know that I do it somewhat there as well ... so let me start out by saying that all three of my children are bright ... all three of them have areas they stand out in and areas they don't do so well in ... but ... here is where the issue lies ...

My oldest is "the creative one" ... she naturally draws better than I did when instructed by high school art teachers ... she is musically inclined, I have never heard her sing horribly off pitch ... not always perfect (and I'm a tough judge with three years of vocal music major fun stuff in college) .. but she is a decent singer ... she is interested in musical instruments and drama ... and writing .. which is about the only academic thing she is interested in ... she has already had plenty of F's and D's and I's and "needs improvement" and "below grade level" and other such negative comments on her report cards ... I fear her parent teacher conferences ... and
today ... was no different ... below grade level in two major subjects ... at grade level in the other major two ... problems with responsibility, problems with focus ... although she is a social butterfly ... she is, in my mind, and in the minds of many others ... an artist ...

Academics are not something she cares about ...and even I, the queen of the run-on sentences and the "..." in my
blogging (which I know drives some of you nuts), ... am very, very OCD about formal and academic writing ... I was a straight A student (except the semester I had mono ... and that semester I got a D in PE ... and then the semester we thought I had thyroid cancer ... so sans three semesters ... I was a straight A student) ... I was a TAG kid (Talented and Gifted) ... I was in AP classes ... I was in sophomore math classes in the 8th grade ... this not caring about academics is something I don't understand ... but then again ... I am not my daughter ... she is an artist, she is creative ... she has talents that I do not possess, nor will I ever possess ...

Now on to the middle child, "the smart one" ... this is my child that I almost dread going to parent teacher conferences for, for the opposite reason ... praise up, praise down, not only is she amazingly academically inclined, with "above grade level," "exceeds expectations," etc., etc., etc., ..... she is a "role model student" ... I fear for her from the bullies that hate the smart kids who are good role models later in life ... because that was me .. and from about the fourth grade through the seventh grade I endured way more than my fair share of bullying ... which is a blog for another time ... this is my child, that schools would fight for to have her be on their standardized tests ... the child I pick up from slumber parties and the parents can't stop praising how polite and wonderful she was ... this is the child that loves to read, loves to go to school to learn and yet still ends up being one of the most liked kids in the class ... this is ... the perfect child ... from the school's point of view ... from her friends' parents points of view ... now she has her issues, when she is bad, she is by far the worst of my kids ... she negotiates everything ... "love and logic" says give your kids peas and carrots choices (so they feel like they have power, but the choice doesn't matter ... they're still eating vegetables) ... well this is my middle;

Me: "Would you like peas or carrots?"
Her:"How about corn?"
Me:"Well corn isn't an option, would you like peas or carrots?"
Her:"Well, I'll take carrots, but only if you promise we can have corn tomorrow"

Everything is a negotiation ... everything is a chance for her to see if she can push the limit, out smart, out think ... out do ... everyone ... school is competition ... and after every parent-teacher conference, after every report card, I have to have a discussion with her about not bragging and making her sister feel bad ... but I am proud of her, outside of some of her issues at home (behavior, negotiating monster, etc.,) she is an angel ... and I understand her much better, because she is more like me ... like I was ...

But here's the thing ... by labeling, even in my own mind and the minds of others that know them and choose to label them ... "the creative one" and "the smart one" .... and before you all hate me ... I do not say these things to their faces ... by nurturing the creative side in one more, while understanding her downfalls ... and nurturing the academic side in the other while understanding her downfalls ... am I doing them a disservice ... my child, who is a bookworm, well, my mom and I bought her five books at the book fair, while my oldest got two ... a book about Justin Bieber and a fashion design book ... are we, am I pigeon-holing them? ... or am I recognizing their likes and dislikes .. their strengths and weaknesses, and not pushing them to be something they're not ... and trust me, my "creative one" ... gets plenty of academic help ... and my "smart one" ... gets plenty of access to creative outlets ... but by even allowing myself to think that way ... maybe I am somehow harming my children ... it's at least something to think about ....

In the middle ...

2010-10-13T14:33:00.002-06:00

This is actually something very hard for me to blog about ... I feel like I am standing naked in front of all of you that read this ... but I had to do it ... I had to share the truth about the past ... and my feelings about the present ... and right now ... I only have like eight people that read my blog on a regular basis anyway .... so maybe that helps?!?! ....

Throughout my marriage I had to deal with a lot of drama with my in-laws ... from the day they found out we were engaged, my sister-out-law was horrible, and my mother-out-law had her issues too ... they made my life, and to some extent my marriage a living hell ... always with their disapproval, always with the pessimism, avoidance, passive-aggressive behavior (like refusing to ever even take a beverage in my house ... none the
less eat anything) ... always pointing out everything wrong with me ... up to and including an "intervention" with my ex just before our first anniversary ... where they sat him down as a family to basically tell him how horrible I was ...

Here's a sidebar of sorts ...

Now ... I will admit that I am not perfect ... that I did things on rare occasion to antagonize ... but for the most part ... all I wanted was acceptance ... or at the very least ... to make life easier on my husband ... who wants that? ... Who wants the love of their life and their family to not get along? Who wants to constantly be told that they're married to the wrong person ... that they should have made a different choice? ... Yes, these were people that outside of him I just would have walked away from ... not cared what they thought and gone on with my life ... but there wasn't an outside of him ... this all hurt him ... it was hard on him ... and it was for his sake that I tried everything within my power to be the bigger person in the situation ... no matter what they said or did, I was always polite to them ... no matter how they hurt me in both aggressive and passive-aggressive ways ... I was always polite, always trying to cater to them ... always trying to make it easier on my ex-husband ... I was beyond civil ...

... sure he and I would have our conversations after the fact ... I would run things by him, because he knew them better than I did .... we would talk ... nicely ... to each other about the issues that were there ... but I tried with all the power I had to be the bigger person ... to be the adult in a situation where I was the youngest ... to be the one that didn't instigate or make anything harder or worse ...because this was the family of the man I loved ... the only family he had ... so I tried ... constantly overlooking things ... constantly smiling through things ... constantly asking God to keep His arm around my shoulder and His hand over my mouth ...

... end sidebar ...

So, back to this "intervention" .... he came home from this discussion with his family with a whole bunch of statements of how they were right ... mostly saying that I was a snob and looked down on them (the only thing I ever looked down on them for was their complete and total lack of compassion and empathy, and the way they treated their own family) ... but he had a laundry list of things I had done wrong .. things I should apologize for ... things that made his family hate me ... and I remember asking if he was serious and if they took responsibility for the horrible things they had done and said (from his sister telling me the morning after our wedding that she thought we shouldn't have gotten married, to completely disrespecting our home with criticism and a refusal to eat or drink in it) ... he told me they had their reasons ... at that point in time I was not in a good place ... my thyroid was way out of whack ... I had been searching for a job (I had one, but I needed a better one) ... and getting not much response ... I was having to borrow money from my family ... and basically it came down to I felt like I was nothing but a burden to anyone ... to my family .. certainly to his ... and to him ... well, he agreed with his family ... so ... I took an entire bottle of beta blockers (which slow the heart among other things) ... and called my sister-out-law and told her she wouldn't have to worry anymore about me because I'd be gone ... I threw the phone so hard against the wall when I hung up ... that I broke through the drywall completely ... I was by far at the lowest point I had ever been in my life ... then ... I realized what I had done and ran to the bathroom and tried to make myself throw up ... to no avail ... so an ambulance ride ... a whole lot of charcoal and 2 days in the ICU later ... I actually had saved my own life in multiple ways ... it turned out from blood work that I was in the middle of a thyroid storm ... for those of you that don't know what that is ... it can kill you ... and it presents itself as delirium and psychosis ... on top of physical symptoms that aren't very noticeable ... people in thyroid storm are often thought to be on hallucinogenics among other things ... but ... by taking all those beta blockers ... my endocrinologist believed I had saved my own life ... how is that for ironic .... and not only that I was in a hospital where they took my blood ... and they treated me for it ... but also ... I think that it made me realize who I lived for ... it wasn't for anyone else ... it was for me ... I wasn't here to make my family happy, or his family happy, or to make him happy ... I lived, I walk each day of my life for me ... I turned into a much calmer person .... and my ex ... well ... when his family showed up at the hospital he asked them to leave ... his sister stopped talking to him for more than three years after that night ... and his mom, well, she still talked to him, until another fight that happened between my ex and his brother drove her away ... and she didn't talk to him for about a year and a half ... I never understood the kind of people that could cut off their own family that way ... but that's just because I never really could ... I can avoid, but I can't cut off ...

... five months after that wonderful ICU stay ... I found out I was pregnant with my oldest ... and my life changed again ... I now did have someone else to live for ... someone else that I wanted to be happy (although as a parent it is far from my job to make sure they are happy) ... but through all of this I think I became a better person ... more capable of love, more capable of empathy, more capable of compassion ... and actually much more capable of being the bigger person ...

So, now fast forward to today ... I stand in the shoes of my ex-husband ... and to be honest it's even worse than being in my own shoes that many years ago ... when the person that you love, the person that is your world doesn't get along with your family ... it just about kills you ... every snide remark from either side, every comment, every moment of uncivil behavior ... is like twisting a knife that is dug so far in that it hurts all the time anyway .... so now ... I stand helpless ... not wanting to be in the middle ... not wanting to hear one more negative thing from any of them .... just wanting everyone to step up to a place of civility and realize that if they all want to be part of my life and care at all about me ... that they need to care about me enough to stop ... because I don't need anymore twists of the knife ... and the last thing I need in my life right now ... is more negativity ...

The Delivery ....

2010-10-08T02:36:00.004-06:00

Sometimes it's the delivery ... not the message ...

If someone gives you the best news that you could have ever heard ... but in the wrong way ... or the worst news you have ever heard but in the right way ... it can change your reaction completely ...

When someone is angry all the time ... and everything they say ... even positive things ... come off with that angry overtone (or even undertone) ... the receiver of the message will probably not see things in the positive light that they may have if the delivery was upbeat and positive ...

Body language is extremely important in person, as is facial expression, followed by tone of voice ... over the phone ... tone of voice means more than the words you say ...

In writing ... now this poses an interesting thought process in the reader's mind ... what generally will happen is the reader will take what they know about the writer and put that tone of voice to the writing ... so if someone is always upbeat and happy ... they will read the message that way ... or vice versa ... if some one is always sad and depressing ... they will read the message that way ... angry ... same thing ...

The point of all this is ... that regardless of who you are ... or a million other factors that make us each individuals with our own thought processes and reactions ... that if the delivery does not match the message ... we will take what was in the delivery to mean more than the words in the message ... every time ...

For a great majority of people ... the delivery is everything ... you could sound like Charlie Brown's teacher and just say "wa wa wa ... wa wa ... wa wa wa wa, wa wa" .. but if it's done with the body language and/or tone of voice that means something ... we will get the message ... with no words ...

A long time ago I was taught something ... when I worked in a phone bank ... did you know that if you smile when you answer the phone ... or even when you're talking on one ... that your tone of voice automatically becomes less harsh ... even if the smile is forced ... the act of putting a smile on your face ... makes you sound less harsh, less upset, less sad, less angry, less (fill in negative emotion here) ... we all know a smile in person can make a person's day ... much like a hug ... but if you smile on the phone ... it can also ...

Mixed messages make for bad communication

When you deliver any message in life ... you have to remember that there is so much more to your message than what you say ... so much more ... so make sure that your delivery matches the message that you're trying to put out there ... because "I love you" in your angriest tone, with harsh body language ... does not mean I love you to most ... and "I hate you" with a big smile on your face and open, loving body language ... does not mean I hate you to most ... so just make sure that you put as much thought into your delivery as you do into your message ... it can save you a lot of misunderstandings and aggravation ...

Unrealistic Expectations ... Are Movies Ruining Relationships? ...

2010-10-04T18:00:00.013-06:00

There was a study I heard about on the radio several years ago that touched on this ... and now here is another one that came out a few months ago ... with this news report of a study headed by Dr. Gabrielle Morrissey .. has brought it to headlines again ... and then anyone that has been familiar with MySpace or the bumper sticker bulletin boards has probably at some point seen a sticker or icon that resembled the one to the right ...this is actually something I have given a lot of thought to lately, although not in the terms that the studies imply, I have a little different take ... but it's related in many ways ...

So the studies say that our romantic comedies and chick flicks create unrealistic expectations for romantic grandeur and communication and even sex ... that we then have this idea of how a relationship should be based on the romance involved in movies such as Notting Hill, Runaway Bride, You've Got Mail, The Wedding Planner & While You Were Sleeping ... just to name a few that are listed in the news reports and studies ... and I will preface all of what I'm about to say that those listed above and the rest of the movies that I will list are among some of my
favorite movies and I appreciate a chick flick and romantic comedy as much as anyone else ... but now here is my take ...

These amazingly romantic movies ... the ones we watch and cry and sigh and wish that our lives, our
relationships could just be that terribly romantic ... almost all of them ... involve cheating on some level and the hero or heroine breaking somebody's heart ... so is that the message that these films send that hurts relationships ... the grass is greener idea ... the idea that someone can come along while you're in a relationship and sweep you off your feet and that will be your happily ever after .... so let's think about this for a minute ... let me start listing off some movies that involve a girl/woman leaving the boy/man currently in her life or flat out cheating on him or vice versa in order to pursue this incredibly romantic relationship we're all cheering for ... we'll start with one of the most watched chick flicks of all time ... it's all in the title; An Affair to Remember ... okay ... now let's move on ... You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, Runaway Bride, The Wedding Planner, Six Days Seven Nights, It Could Happen to You, A Lot Like Love, Dear John, Letters to Juliet, Bridget Jones' Diary, The Notebook, My Best Friend's Wedding, Titanic, Never Been Kissed, Leap Year ... the list goes on ... but almost all those movies involve cheating on some level ... and those that don't involve a "grass is always greener" standpoint from the girl's point of view ... involve a guy leaving the girl he's with because he realizes that he loves the heroine more ... so really, are these movies sending a bad message? ... are they sending a message that the men in our lives can't live up to ... that we in our relationships can't live up to ... are we, as women, looking for drama ... the great obstacle to overcome? ... or is it about the fact that in a "new" relationship there are sparks and amazing attraction ... I mean ... we all know what it's like to get the chills when someone touches us ... but that doesn't last forever ... so is that what it's about ... the sparks? ...

I also agree about the romantic grandeur ... I mean what guy in normal life can make a life changing romantic speech in the middle of a press conference like in in Notting Hill ... and how often does a guy have a chance to declare his love to a girl on a balcony in pure Romeo style like in Letters to Juliet ... or even set up a serenade like in movies like Top Gun and 10 Things I Hate About You ... I mean realistically ... are these things that should even go into our storage banks to think are a possibility in real life relationships? ...

I think the study makes valid points ... and I think that as women, and even men, we need to take the "messages" these movies send with a grain of salt ... yes we all want romance, we all want our happily ever after ... but I think we need to realize that expectations need to be realistic ... and there is an inherent difference between men and women and how they view relationships and romance ...

Edit: ... I found this link The Five Ways Romantic Movies Ruin Your Love Life after I published this ... but just more food for thought ..

The Schoolyard ... Archived From 05/05/2008

2010-10-04T15:45:00.003-06:00

I'll start with the question . . . why does anyone purposely make someone else feel insecure? Why would you purposely answer questions in a manner that you know is not what the person doing the asking wants to hear regardless of what your honest answer would be? . . . and yes I'm talking to the guys about talking to girls . . . I'd give examples, but individual examples couldn't grasp the bigger picture . . . it's a purposeful intentional thing to not tell somebody what they want to hear . . .

. . . does it all just go back to the elementary school playground where somehow the boys thought that chasing you around the playground and pushing you down . . . actually hurting you . . . that somehow skinned knees and bruised elbows would make them appear more endearing to you . . . somehow said they cared? Well . . . back then it didn't make most girls think they were liked . . . in fact the total opposite . . . and now that we're all older, and it turns psychological, it really doesn't make a girl feel all warm and fuzzy . . . just like as an adult being
poked in the ribs and shoved off sidewalks and stuff still has to be balanced out with tenderness . . . skinned knees and bruised elbows are not a sign of affection . . . no matter how much our male counter-parts seem to think they are . . .

. . . . I can't imagine being single in today's world . . . what I've watched my single friends go through (both girls and guys) . . . but everyone has been burned so much, guards are so heightened, that everyone is afraid to say how they really feel about anybody, about anything . . . I think girls in general tend to be more insecure than guys, more in need of reassurance, more in danger of being knocked down to the point that they don't think they can ever be worth anything to anyone, and just shut down and stop trying . . . girls need to know that they're more than just sex (but still wanted), need to know they're beautiful (or at least that someone thinks they are), need to feel that it's okay to be vulnerable to let her guards down, to find someone she can cry in front of, someone that's willing to let their guards down, to cry in front of her, to know that someone wants to spend time with you as much as possible, every waking minute in some cases, that actually would sit around and wait for hours for just a few minutes of attention, girls need guys in their lives that are willing to just cuddle sometimes, and to use their words for reassurances and tender words that show they care (not that playful isn't okay, because it is, but not to the point that you're knocking someone down), a girl needs someone who believes in her, who believes in her dreams, who gives her wings when she wants to fly, and yes, we do still appreciate a guy who can open a car door, a guy who can give you his jacket when you're cold . . . we, the girls, do not need skinned knees and bruised elbows, that as an adult translates into nothing but insecurity, bad feelings and broken hearts . . .

The Quiet ...

2010-10-03T23:10:00.002-06:00

So, I haven't been blogging much, well at all really ... and there's a reason for that ... things are very hard right now ... and honestly I'm afraid of oversharing ... of saying things in public that I just shouldn't say ... there is a lot of strain and a lot of stress both within me and around me ...

... and then there's these mixed emotions of wanting solitude and feeling isolated ... and I miss so much ... I miss my independence ... I miss my closest friend and lover (long distance relationships are not remotely easy, especially when communication is cut off almost completely) ... I have all these stupid little things to talk about ... and in a perfect example from my grand mother ... if I'm going to tell you a story about my cat I don't want to have to explain to you that I have a cat first ... I just need someone to tell all those little stupid stories to, the ones that only those that know all the back story will understand ... I also miss hearing those stupid little stories ... I
mean to some it might sound strange ... but when you're basically used to knowing someone's every move, every thought ... and then you lose communication with them ... it's actually a very hard thing .... when you find out things that you didn't know ... that you just assumed you would .... so I miss hearing those stupid little details, and some of them not so stupid and not so little ... as much as I miss having someone around all the time to tell them too ...

... at the same time ... I've closed myself off ... I don't want to talk to anyone ... people in general kind of annoy me right now ... and maybe that's because I have all this crap locked up inside ...

... but I'm going to try to make a point of blogging more this week ... because it is therapeutic and helpful ... I just have to figure out how to do it without making it so personal ....

Control vs Happiness ...

2010-09-25T02:41:00.002-06:00

So, for some reason I have watched Ghosts of Girlfriends Past way more often than I should lately, part of that has to do with what is on demand right now and that I think that watching a movie that I've seen a million times would mean that maybe it would put me to sleep ... I like the movie for several reasons ... the characters remind me of people I've known or even still know ... of relationships that I've had ...

Anyway, there is a point in the movie where the main character, played by Matthew McConaughey, is given advice to basically not care in a relationship ... the advice is ... "the one that cares the least is the one with the most control" .... as cynical and downright awful as that sounds, there is a lot of truth in that statement ... to anyone that has ever been in a one-way relationship ... they know this ... we'll ignore for a minute that a relationship should not ever be one way ... but in the instance where a girl is head over heels in love with a guy and he is only mildly interested ... he does hold the power ... because she will, in most cases, go to great extents to seek approval, reassurance, love ... will be willing to change and compromise, possibly to a fault ... leaving him with all the control ... and yes, as sure as anything else in life, those roles can easily be reversed ... but when it comes down to it ... I think that it's true ... the person that is in "control" of a relationship like that is the person that cares the least ...

.... now we all know that those kinds of relationships are neither healthy nor very successful ... because eventually those issues will come to a head ... now ... back to the movie ... at the end of the movie ... after he's been visited by these ghosts ... and seen things from a new perspective ... he realizes that his fear of being
hurt ... fear of letting someone in ... fear of losing that control is what drives him to try to keep it ... and yes, in true movie form it's a very dramatic transformation ... however ... then while giving a toast for his brother's wedding he says that the advice he was given was wrong and that in order to find happiness you have to care ... basically to give is better than to receive ... there is a lot of truth in that as well ...

I've mentioned before and I will mention again that Robert Heinlan once defined love in this way; "Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own" ... for me this is very true ... there is a lot more to love, but to be a piece of happiness to someone else, and have them be a piece of my happiness ... to feel their pain as if it were my own definitely plays into love from my personal perspective ... but I believe that it is true ... the more you care; the happier you can be ... it leads to the feelings of only needing love to survive and being able to say that you don't care if you're in a mansion in Beverly Hills or a cardboard box down by the river as long as that one person you care so much about is there with you ... it surpasses material value .. surpasses most other cares and decisions in your life ... because that one person that you care about, that you love, basically becomes your life ... that is love ... now in that we must not lose ourselves ... but I do agree that the more you care ... the happier you can be ...

Solitude ...

2010-09-24T01:32:00.002-06:00

There are times in my life when I realize, more than others, how important my alone time is, how important my solitude is ... and it's such a balance because I am a very social creature as well ... but I do my best at almost everything when I am totally, completely, and absolutely alone ... cleaning, writing, organizing, unpacking, the list goes on and on ... there are obvious exceptions ... things that require more than one person to do could be named in multitude, but since all the examples I can think of at this exact moment would imply that my head is clearly in the gutter I won't name any of them ...

But ... for the last week, my kids and I have been sick ... they have been home from school all week .. and being nicely unemployed at the present moment ... and sick myself ... I have been home with them ... so 24/7 ... for going on five days ... of literally not one minute of solitude ... so ... this is what that means ... my house ... okay, okay my area of the house that I live in is totally trashed .... I haven't been blogging as much ... I have a list of
chores to do outside the house a mile long and none of them have been done ...

I find myself staying up later at night ... because it's just so quiet ... and peaceful ... and there are sick children sleeping all around me so I can't do anything productive .. you know like vacuum .. or even pick up toys and trash ... it's noisy business .... on top of just not having any time alone, I also have been sick myself adding to this growing problem ... I have my kids with me (meaning they won't be traveling to their dad's) for the next eight days ... so there is no break in sight, except maybe Monday they will be well enough to go to school ... but that's still three more days of 24 hours a day of basically no peace, no solitude, which makes me highly unproductive ...

Sure, I've been gaming .. leveling an alt in WoW, because it's something I can do in five minutes here, five minutes there, nobody will be mad if I disappear for an hour to deal with sick kids or to take care of the few chores I have taken care of ... but really, I am starting to resent the fact that I don't have any solitude, and maybe that should make me feel guilty, but it doesn't ... I need that peace ... again, like in previous posts about guilt ... I am looking forward to having an abundance of solitude to try to take care of the many things that I do best when I'm completely alone ...

Control ...

2010-09-22T02:12:00.001-06:00

Control of my own life is something that I have struggled with for a very long time ... and the balance between being a "nice person" and being a "doormat" ... I think I more often fall into the doormat category than I would like to admit ...

Some of the problems in my marriage stemmed from control issues, disagreements and flat out fights about things that really just came down to control ... and things I wanted done, or he wanted done, that just didn't happen ... a feeling from both sides maybe, but from mine for sure, of things not being give and take so much as give and give ... and give ...

I won't pretend that my current relationship doesn't have some of those problems as well, that doormat thing comes with being a perpetual people pleaser ... in essence I don't stand up for myself ... but then in true feminine form I hold resentment, because you know men are supposed to read our minds, and know that we
really, really want to watch that chick flick movie, but we're feeling agreeable and so we'll watch the action flick instead and then secretly hold it against you that we made that decision because in our minds we didn't make it ... you did ... yes, women are complicated ...

Anywho ... I'm getting off track ... back to "I want you to want to do the dishes" .... so despite control issues ... doormat issues in previous and current relationships ... for the most part I was in control of my own life ... of when I got up, went to bed, what I watched on TV or did on the computer (even if that meant I did it alone) ... of what I ate, when I ate, when I did my laundry, when I did well everything ... I am a mother of three children ... I had control over them ....

It seems now I feel I have lost part of my identity ... moving in with your parents (especially with children) as an adult is a very, very hard thing ... and my mother has been very sympathetic to the whole thing ... but, even though I didn't live under her roof for almost twelve years, she is used to being the parent ... I am used to being the parent ... I have three sick kids right now and I'm sick myself ... and any single parent, or even stay at home mom, knows that there is no break for mom when everyone in the house is sick ... and that doesn't really change, even though I'm living with mine ... I had to make a pot roast this morning ... feeling like crap, etc., ... because that's what was the expectation for what we as a household were having for dinner ... and it wasn't awful ... but if I had control over my own life ... with three sick kids, and being sick myself ... the last thing I would make is pot roast ... it would have been a soup night ... maybe a pbj night ... but it's one of the areas where I have lost some of my own control ... and if I hadn't done it, it's not like I would have faced hell or anything, but somebody else has expectations of me now ... parental expectations at that ... and that changes my identity ... my level of control .. and that is something I need to work on ...

Julie & Julia

2010-09-21T16:04:00.001-06:00

I finally watched this movie a few weeks ago, although I'd wanted to see it since it was in the theaters. I found several things about this movie very intriguing.

It was very, very real ... it follows the true stories of two women ... pursuing their dreams ... their bumpy roads, their faults, their hardships ... and it was just very, very real ... with a happy, movie ending of course ...

What amazed me a lot was that these two women had these amazingly supportive, selfless, yet hard-working men in their lives, that helped them and encouraged them every step of the way. There's the saying, "behind

every successful man, there is a wise and encouraging woman" ... well in the case of these two women that could be reversed ... it's very touching to see those kinds of relationships both in cinema and reality ....

They also both had acquaintances, but then that one amazing friend, the one that supports you through anything and helps you through anything, regardless of distance, or the crap we put them through ...

Also, I took away from that movie that just because I only have a few followers now on this little blog of mine, it may at some time grow into something much, much bigger ... everyone starts somewhere ... and has to climb up ...

50 Things Women Wish Men Knew (my take on a Men's Health article)

2010-09-21T02:38:00.004-06:00

Some of these are much more true for me than others ... but worth sharing nonetheless .... I actually originally posted this on 06/08/2009 ... so maybe this should count as an archived blog brought back ... but I'm going to add my own thoughts on these in [brackets] ... lol ... I actually think for a "Men's list" it's a pretty decent one ... I just like being able to throw my own twist on it ... one "actual" girl's opinion on this list ...

From Men's Health ... 50 Things She Wishes You Knew

50 Things She Wishes You Knew

Universal truths that all men should--but don't--understand

1. Saying "I love you" immediately before, during, or following sex doesn't count [it depends on how dirty the sex is ... ie, was it truly making love, period, or was it animalistic, if it was animalistic, then no, it doesn't count]

2. Real men drive stick shift. [absolutely ... or at least know how ... I prefer stick myself, so my man better at least know how to drive one]

3. I will leave if you lie [I'd say that's about 75% true in my circle of friends and confidants]

4. You are cute in raglan-sleeved T-shirts (two-toned baseball undershirts).[absolutely]

5. I'm convinced I'm pregnant and obsess about it for a minimum of 24 to 48 hours before my period, even when I have no rational reason to think so.[again, completely true, whether out of anxiousness, excitement or dread]

6. I love it when you hug me from behind and whisper in my ear. [hello? what girl would disagree with that]

7. "Fine" is never an appropriate response when I ask you how I look. [depends on the tone of voice to go with "fine" ... but generally speaking true]

8. Most of the time when I fantasize, it's about you. [I would go with somewhere around 97% of the time, the other 3% is usually about women ;)]

9. I'm terrified of becoming my mother, even though I admire her. [true]

10. I get turned on simply seeing that I have an e-mail or text from you. [This is absolutely true ... unless I read it and don't like what it says ... but seeing an email in my inbox, or getting a text message from my love, is an instant turn on, and an instant smile]

11. I expect you to call me. [again, hello? what girl doesn't]

12. Only rock stars are allowed to wear leather pants. [thank God, I have never even had experience with leather pants, well outside of chaps I wore when I barrel raced]

13. I'm scared of losing my independence. [yes, and no, in my case I am co-dependent and compromising to a fault, I will gladly give up my independence in exchange for a guy giving me the world, then again if he were giving me the world, that would include my independence]

14. I'm more forgiving of you than I really should be. [I'd say this is true of 75%+ of my circle of friends and confidants, and absolutely of me ... my problem is I still hold the resentment, even though I have forgiven]

15. Oral sex is your get-out-of-the-doghouse-free card. Manolo Blahnik shoes also do the trick. [I personally don't care about shoes, or really anything of monetary value, a surprise of doing something nice, an appearance when it's not expected, or a really caring & compassionate, sincere note/email/voicemail will usually do the truck ... oral sex is good in the make up part though ;) ]

16. You did something bad. I seem cool with it. I'm not. (See directly above.) [Again, resentment, women hold on to things until we feel that you have apologized "enough" ... which could mean various things depending on what we're forgiving you for]

17. If I'm not having sex with you, I'm... a.) ...having a fat day. b.) ...not feeling "connected" to you. c.) ...blackmailing you to get something I want. [meh, if I'm having a "fat day" I want you to have sex with me to help me remember I'm wanted, it I'm feeling "disconnected" I want you to make love to me ... in the true sense of making love, because the connection will come back ... and I don't believe in sex as a form of blackmail ... I have three reasons to say no .. a) I'm really, really sick ... b) it's that time of the month or I just had a baby ... c) I'm really mad at you, or really hurt by you or both ... I'm not a huge believer in makeup sex, to me that's like rewarding bad behavior lol]

18. Shoes determine whether you're fashionable or not. [again don't care about shoes]

19. I own a Debbie Gibson CD, and I'm not afraid to use it. [I do own one ... I haven't listened to it in years though]

20. When I compare my flabby tummy to a kangaroo pouch, say nothing. [lol]

21. A man I love plans the occasional fancy-schmancy dress-up date and impromptu weekend getaways, and he buys my favorite candy in advance when we're just going to the movies.[true, true and true ... and does smaller versions of these things, in his own way, when money is an issue]

22. You look hot in hooded clothing items. [true]

23. You should never tell me what to do. [true ... including when I appear to be asking for advice ... unless the words "what do you think I should do?" come out of my mouth I'm not asking for you to tell me what to do and how to do it]

24. If I slept over, you owe me breakfast. [true]

25. My breasts love much licking and sucking. [lol true]

26. If you ask me out directly, I will say yes. [90% of the time provided I'm not already taken]

27. I'm very impressed when you ask for my advice. [very, very true and on top of impressed, I would say valued]

28. I'm unimpressed with a man who doesn't take the lead.[true]

29. When in doubt, go with the shirt that matches your eye color. [lol true]

30. I want to be Madonna. [depends on which version of Madonna we're talking about]

31. Women get urinary-tract infections easily, so watch (and wash) your fingers. [this is a very good piece of advice, that seems kind of out of place on this list]

32. I'm in heaven when you hold my hand. [absolutely true ... anytime, anywhere]

33. You're sexy when you're shaving, fixing things, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, driving, eating a peach, holding a baby. [yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes]

34. I need to hear how you feel about me. Often. Tell me now. [yes, often, tell me all the time, please]

35. Surprises, especially gifts for moi = more loving. [again don't care about things of monetary value, but pleasant surprises are amazing ... and make me want you all that much more]

36. I want to be the best thing that ever happened to you--and for you to recognize this. [and refer up to 34 again ... tell me often]

37. If I'm not feeling loved, I will start looking.... [absolutely true]

38. Discussion of ex-gf's and ex-bf's should be avoided at all times.[again, absolutely true, there are times when certain stories or pieces of history should be discussed, but those times should be few and far between and done in a very tactful manner, otherwise it leads to issues of comparison and possibly issues of inferiority]

39. I like it when you tell me what you're thinking, even if you don't know yourself. [absolutely .. and feeling]

40. Celebrating our anniversary, even if it's only been a few months, earns major bonus points. [true]

41. I love it when you're sweaty.[unfortunately, true]

42. It's best to consult your gal pals for gift ideas.[true]

43. A lady should always be greeted with kisses.[and a hug on the edge of "too long"]

44. I like porn.[true, although depends on the kind]

45. I love holding your bum in the palms of my hands.[lol depends on where and when ... I like hand holding and snuggling to some extent, but I'm not much of PDA girl]

46. Even nice girls like hushed dirty talk in public.[true]

47. It's cheating as soon as you're doing something with her that you wouldn't want me to see, hear, read... [Absolutely true, this should be much higher up on the list ... the second you're worried I would be mad/hurt for what you are doing or saying ... you have crossed a line]

48. For the record: I'd rather you break up with me than cheat. [Absolutely true ... no exceptions]

49. I remember everything about our relationship. [Very, very true, and have been molded and shaped by those memories]

50. You should know all this and more without my telling you. [ =D ... this should be number one]

Brewfest is Here ...

2010-09-20T12:57:00.013-06:00


The Stormwind City Fountain decorated for Brewfest

To those of you that are not gamers that read my blog for what it is 90% of the time let me give you my nerd warning here ... although you may find this funny ... and can make fun of the true nerdiness that is WoW ... within the game all sorts of holidays are celebrated ...

My mage on her Swift Brewfest Ram, at the entrance to Brewfest

My Mage on her Great Brewfest Kodo at Brewfest

Brewfest is upon us ... two weeks of drunken madness ... inside a game ... so for those of you that don't know about these things ... when you drink in the world of warcraft your screen gets blurry and can even kind of swirl ... making for an
almost sea-sick, hand-held experience for those behind the keyboard. Full of small achievements to earn the meta-achievement, brewmaster and the meta-achievement being part of a larger meta-achievement, what a long strange trip it's been, that earns you the coveted reins of the violet proto-drake ... Brewfest is a very popular event in the game ... also you have a chance every day of getting the swift brewfest ram and the great brewfest kodo ... plus several pets ... so even if, like me, one of your greatest joys in the game is getting companion pets and new mounts to ride, there's something good for everyone .... plus, for those of us that can't or don't partake in an actual
brewfest or Oktoberfest in real life ... it give us an opportunity to feel like we're part of the season!

My Priest on her Violet Proto-Drake flying above Crystalsong Forest ... wings flapping and all

Sleepless Exhaustion ...

2010-09-19T11:37:00.003-06:00

I've always been a night owl ... never been a morning person ... I hate mornings ... I have been able to get up and be successful working at 6am or having class at 7 ... but it's not my first choice ...

Lately I've been having problems sleeping, but what drives me most crazy is that I could sleep until three in the afternoon if I let myself ... but I can't get to sleep at night ... at least not without "help" ...

I hate the idea of being dependent on a pill or even a stiff drink to get me to sleep at night ... and I don't understand exactly what is going on with my body right now. I've always struggled with issues of insomnia, but
this is something I've only dealt with a handful of times ... instead of just not being able to sleep period ... I just can't sleep when I should sleep, when I have the time to sleep ... but then I'm exhausted all day ... could fall asleep at the drop of a hat, but at night, I'm wide awake and full of energy, regardless of how much sleep I've gotten in the last several days ...

I don't want to rely on drugs to sleep, but I may need to for a few nights to maybe adjust my body to where it needs to be again ...

The Queen Bees ....

2010-09-18T22:06:00.005-06:00

To most of us women, this is not a new concept ... in any situation where more than one woman exists ... there seems to be a battle for superiority ... the alpha female ... the queen bee ... even in the most wonderful of relationships, the most close-knit circle of friends ... there seems to always be some level of it ....

In some cases it's so small it can be ignored, in some cases women balance each other out ... one is superior at her career, while the other is supermom ... sometimes it falls so far off the radar you never notice ...

Then there is the middle ground, where you can still stand them, family, friends, whoever they may be, you can
still even call them your friend ... but when they walk away you are left standing in a pool of inferiority or you're left there thinking that woman is fricking crazy ... what the hell was she thinking ...

Then there are those women that only other women like them can even stand ... the women who are better than every other woman on the planet (in their own minds) ... the ones that cut you off in traffic and cut in front of you in line at the supermarket (they're more important than you, you must know that) ... the ones who have kids that will always be brighter, happier, more athletic and more successful and involved than anyone else's kids, or sometimes their competition reverses itself ... their kids are the worst at everything, the most depressed, the most athletically challenged, the most unsuccessful ... but whether they're the best or the worst ... they are at the end of the spectrum, never in the middle ... their husbands are the same way ... their marriage ... yep, the same way ... and don't even get them started on themselves ... these are the women I do not understand at all ... so highly competitive at everything they do ... impossible to hold a conversation with, because anything you say they have to one-up (or even one-down) ...

When you have to deal with these women, for work or a social club or activity or anything ... they can make you dread having to do your job or be social ... and if you ever have to have a "disagreement" with one of them ... well you might as well just be prepared for a nice long fight with what will appear to be a brick wall, because these women .... are never wrong ...

A Night Out ... Say What? ....

2010-09-17T18:18:00.001-06:00

It has been ... well ... I think over a year since I have been out when it wasn't a birthday party or family event ... or some other more "obligatory" thing ... my life has been so incredibly crazy ...

Tonight I get to go have dinner with my best friend ... for no reason other than just to have dinner ... to talk, to
catch up ... no kids ... no boys ...

It's so weird to me that I am actually going to have this night, because it has just been too long ... it's relieving, I feel like I'm starting to get pieces of my "normal" life back ... hopefully a sign of things to come ...

Parenting Guilt ...

2010-09-17T12:13:00.002-06:00

So this is mostly from the viewpoint of a single parent, but I know (from having been married for six years of my motherhood) that all parents occasionally have this feeling. I said in the last archived post that I brought back to life that "I miss my kids like crazy when they're gone, and they drive me crazy when they're here" ... that's not an uncommon sentiment in the single-parent world ... and it creates this little thing I like to call guilt ...

I had a friend and co-worker tell me once, right after my ex and I split, "I love my husband, but maybe we should get divorced just so every other weekend at least I'd get a break from my kids." ... I think she was
about half kidding. As a stay at home mom to two toddlers, one of them special needs, and a husband that worked sixty hours a week ... she did need a break ...

My kids go to their dad's this weekend, then they come back here for ten days ... and then they will be gone the entire month of October, sans two weekends. This is our parenting plan, our new custody arrangement put in place in a final (mutually agreed upon, with no fighting) decision that we came to before we handed it to the judge at the end of August ... every other month, every other weekend ... with a separate holiday schedule ...

So here's where's the guilt comes in ...

Is it wrong that there's a part of me that just can't wait until October? It's not that I don't love my kids or that I don't want them here ... but since I moved at the end of August, I feel like I have been going non-stop ... that I haven't had a break ... my weekends without them are full of plans that other people make for me ... and then they come back and it's back to getting up at six in the morning (and I am sooooo not a morning person) ... and dealing with homework and dinner, and, and, and ... I haven't had a chance to just breathe, to unpack really, to do the things I need to do for my personal, psychological & emotional health .... so I am looking forward to this time ... to get my shit together for lack of a better way to put it ... to do things on my own schedule ... to finally meet those couple friends for lunch that have been asking me to go ...

I know that once they've been gone a few days, I will miss them like crazy, them being gone for that long will probably, in the end, be depressing and saddening and it will be a very joyful thing when Halloween gets here, which happens to be one of my holidays this year, and I get them back one day early, for the month of November ... I don't think I will feel this way about December, but I might ... I think this break coming up may be the break I need and December will be much, much harder, but we will see ....

In the meantime I think I'm going to try to embrace this selfishness (which for a lifetime doormat does not come easily) ... and take this month as a gift ... and to try very hard to not feel guilty about it ...

Letting Go ... Archived From 08/04/2008

2010-09-16T13:34:00.005-06:00

I am carrying so much with me, so much that I let effect me, I'm just hoping that this will be cathartic, help me to let some of it go and move on . . . I have so much going on in my life right now, so much that is expected, so much that I'm obligated for . . . a lot of stress, both good and bad stress . . . and I need to get a handle on it because I've turned into an emotional basket case - crying at the drop of the hat, or one misplaced innocent action or word from family or friends, or anyone . . . some of this is probably normal, I'm getting divorced, with this comes various stages of grief and stress and whatever else . . . right now I feel like the first and last thing I need is a shoulder to cry on, someone just to hold me and tell me that everything will be alright . . . my finances are well, not even finances . . . my dad who lives 150 miles away is going way out of his way to put gas in my car and help with my rent . . . I miss my kids like crazy when they're gone and they drive me crazy when they're here . . . certain aspects of my job leave me feeling completely unappreciated and at my worst incapable . . . I'm dealing with lawyers and doctors . . . and I'm trying to hold my shit together for everyone in my life . . . I try not to let anyone in on the emotions . . . because first off, this is nobody's burden but my own, but also I never know
the reaction I'm going to get from anyone; sympathy, anger, judgment . . . but no matter what I am countered with nobody has a full grasp of everything I am going through . . . I was asked last night if I still thought it was for the best . . . and yes, absolutely is it for the best . . . there are things that would never be ok, things my kids should never have had to deal with as long as they did, things that I need to let go of because there is no point in me carrying it with me anymore . . . and I'm working on that . . . and of course there are things I miss, as anyone would with anyone they've been with for eleven years . . . most of it is intangible, and actually completely replaceable . . . if someone ever comes along that is willing and I want to replace those things . . . stupid little things . . . a lot of it physical, because I am a touchy feely person, I have a huge desire and need for physical contact with people period not just lovers, or boyfriends, or family but everyone . . . a hug from my friends . . . my boss rubbing my back and playing with my hair . . . it's not sexual just physical . . . but yeah, I miss the stupid little things that helped to reassure me that I was/am beautiful - inside and out, loveable, worth the effort to be touched . . . and these are reassurances that I shouldn't and in all reality don't need, but they are missed and wanted and desired . . . and at some point there will be someone who will be that person to me without all the negativity that makes leaving those thigns all for the best . . . but as my quote said not very long ago, there's a reason that today is called the present, it is a gift, we cannot live in the past, nor predict the future and live to create it or nurture it, but rather live for today, appreciate what is here, try to ignore what isn't and go to sleep hoping that you wake up the next morning for the gift of tomorrow, but yes, worrying about tomorrow today will do nothing if you don't wake up the next morning . . . so why bother . . . .

The Irony Is ...

2010-09-16T01:47:00.001-06:00

Those that make you the strongest,
that seem to care about you the most,
that lift you the highest,
and bring the largest smiles to your face,
...
are also the ones that can make you weak,
that burn the most when they don't care,
that make you crash the hardest,
and bring the largest tears.

My Kid Has A Cell Phone ... So Shoot Me ...

2010-09-15T17:03:00.003-06:00

Back around the time my ex and I stopped living together we decided to get my oldest a cell phone ... it started because she was at a cheerleading practice that ended early, and she tried to call us from the coach's phone, but she had transposed two of the numbers in my cell phone number ... she sat around waiting with the coach for 45 minutes ... now why exactly the coach didn't have the information sheets that we filled out at the beginning of the year, I don't know ... but she didn't ...

So, with that and then the fact that we (parents) both wanted to be able to talk to the kids easily when they were at each others' houses, we decided to get our oldest a cell phone. She has had one go through the washing machine, one she washed because she got paint on it and one was dropped in the toilet ... but .. I've dropped my phone in the toilet and had mine go through the washing machine ... I know plenty of adults that have done that as well ... and since she doesn't do her own laundry (yet) ... was that one really her fault? ... and really knowing the amount of adults I know that have done things with phones that are just crazy .. including throwing them into walls and shattering them when a conversation ended badly ... the fact that in three and a half years the only thing that she has done to a phone that is really more irresponsible than most adults I know have done is wash it because it had paint on it (clearly I never had the "you can't wash your phone" discussion) ... means that she has actually been pretty responsible ...

She texts, which her second grade teacher said actually improved her spelling (you have to know how to spell to use T9) ... and she can text or call when she's at her dad's or vice versa, leaving constant communication open between my kids and both parents.

I ordered her a new phone today, she still has the one that was dropped in the toilet, and it works, but it doesn't work right. The new phone was free ... I had to pay shipping and a small "upgrade" fee, which my ex will pay half of, so for about ten dollars she will have a brand new phone ... but with our custody agreement being every other month, I think it's important to have the communication be a sure thing, not an "if her phone decides to work today" thing ...

Once I have a steady paycheck again I fully plan on getting my second oldest a line of her own as well ... so yes, maybe when we were kids we didn't have cell phones, maybe my kids don't need them ... but they are a convenience that is offered in our society today and one that I think benefits our family and the kids' life of having two homes ...

I am, however, tired of the judgment, tired of the "your nine year-old has a cell phone?" ..."why yes, she does .. and she has had one since she was six, so shoot me ...."

The Things Kids Say ... Volume One ...

2010-09-15T13:25:00.001-06:00

Several weeks ago, we went out to dinner with a group of people ... my son had to go to the bathroom, so my boyfriend took him ... sidenote: with all the bathroom horror stories I've heard, even if the chances are minuscule, at five, I still either take him in the ladies room or send him with a trusted male ... so they're in there doing their thing ... my understanding is that the conversation went like this;

T says, "this is where the big boys go pee."

J replies, "yep"

T says, "it's a good thing I have a big penis."

At that point I think J didn't know what to say ...

The Mommy Schedule

2010-09-15T02:38:00.004-06:00

Sometimes I wonder why we do it to ourselves .... but then we see the joy on their faces ...

This is one of "those" weeks ... I have one kid with practices from 2:30-3:50 and another with practices from 5:30-6:30 ... and then a performance to go to late Thursday night ... luckily my kids don't have school on Friday ...

My oldest is currently in track, newspaper & art club ... she thought about student council and decided it would be too much. It is all easy for her (& me) to keep up with until something comes along like a weekend ... like this last one ... where she has a slumber party and a family function and didn't have the weekend to work on her stuff ...

I've had worse weeks than I am having now ... last spring, I had one in softball ... two in soccer ... plus my man was coaching a soccer team ... that was crazy ...

I think in some ways this is a product of the mommy wars ... that our kids have to be involved in multiple extracurricular activities, a "keeping up with the Jones'" attitude ... I know so many moms that have their kids in swimming, soccer, dance, piano, and, and, and ... for a while I tried to do that, but with three kids, financially it became near impossible, and then the schedule was crazy too ... way too much stress .. and gas ... and I'm sorry, but I couldn't keep up ... I couldn't even come close ...

So, my kids get to pick and choose activities ... free ones (such as newspaper) are of course almost always allowed ... but the ones we have to pay for or that greatly interfere with our schedules have to be discussed and we have to determine whether or not the stress is worth it to everyone involved ... I want to give my kids the world ... but there is a sense of practicality that has to be at least acknowledged ...

Embrace the Curse ... Archived From 12/07/2008

2010-09-14T09:13:00.001-06:00

So lately, I've spent a lot of time being down and depressed and feeling sorry for myself . . . but many of you know, that in general that is the opposite of who I am . . . I am forever optimistic, eternally smiling and infinitely happy usually in almost any circumstance . . . I've allowed too much to influence things in my life . . . too many people, too much judgment, hypocrisy, and pessimism have affected my natural abilities to be optimistic . . . to see the silver lining . . . to see the open window when the door was slammed in my face . . . I usually cry more happy tears than sad ones . . . that hasn't been true lately . . . but it needs to be . . . so here I sit in my messy apartment that I've been procrastinating cleaning . . . talking to a couple friends on the computer . . . listening to my child who is on the verge of pneumonia cough behind the mask of her nebulizer . . . wondering how I'm going to pay the electric bill . . . feeling lonelier than I have in a while . . . and yet I'm happy . . . I'm not happy because anything great and wonderful has happened . . . I got a piece of myself back yesterday that I thought was gone . . . let's say I did that through an act of creative expression, for lack of a better way to say it . . . I'm happier than I have been in a while . . . more confident . . . more sure of myself and my decisions and my ability to make decisions . . . there are things in life I can't control . . . no matter what choices I make I will make people mad, people will judge me . . . they'll judge me on my parenting, my ability to make good relationship choices (both friendship and romantic) . . . it is unfortunately human nature to judge . . . but here's the thing . . . until you have lived my life . . . walked in my shoes . . .experienced my experiences . . . you have no right . . . people think they know things . . . they think their opinions, their decisions are the ones that others should follow . . . they are wrong . . . we all live our own lives . . .follow our own paths . . . make our own decisions for the reasons we do . . . we create our own karma . . . our own fate whether designed by destiny, ourselves or God, or the combination there of will be what it is . . . and my fate will be what it is . . . life is a rollercoaster . . . there are ups and downs . . . the trick is to be able to look down from the top of the biggest drop and know that you will reach the bottom alive and although the climb up will be slow you WILL come up . . . embrace your circumstances, regardless of what they are . . . change what needs to be changed when you can, but do it for yourself, not for anyone else . . . something that makes no sense to anyone else can be exactly what you need, exactly what you want, your source of unbelievable happiness . . . embrace yourself . . . whether you like yourself or not . . . no matter the mistakes you've made . . . the choices you regret . . . just try to be happy in your circumstances no matter what they are . . .

It's me against the world today
And that's fine
It's me against the world

And so I stand
I embrace the curse
I embrace the song
I embrace what I feel
When I feel what's wrong
I embrace the hurt
The hate and what's worse
I embrace what I am
I embrace the curse

I Love ....

2010-09-13T15:17:00.001-06:00

... days like today when everything seems to go right ... I had job prospects show up by both email and phone ... I had two checks I had been waiting for show up in the mail ... and I found out some good news about some government red tape I had been dealing with ... maybe sometimes we go through a slump of bad stuff so that we can appreciate days like today more ... just sayin' ...

Gaming "Addictions" & Stereotypes ...

2010-09-12T11:32:00.005-06:00

I don't think it's possible to have a blog with the title mine has without eventually writing at least one blog on this little subject ... I will focus primarily on the stigmas of PC Games, World of Warcraft in particular ... but I am highly aware that those that play console games, especially games like Halo and Call of Duty are met with the same stigmas ...

Just an fyi ... the pictures I have chosen to use in this post are meant as examples of the kind of demeaning and unfair stereotypes that are made of those in the gaming world.

This is something that can, on occasion infuriate me, the stigma, the labels, the stereotypes of not only those that play games but World of Warcraft in particular. I had a fellow gamer once say;

"I think a lot of people believe that playing isn't an acceptable form of leisure, second rate if you will, and think you should become more 'normal' by doing things that are more socially acceptable. There are those who think you're only playing WoW because you're too much of a 'loser' to do the 'normal' things. Until society views playing video games as a socially acceptable activity, I'm afraid that there will always be a stigma to being a gamer."

She is completely right ... that is the stigma that comes with playing PC games, if not console games as well, that those of us that play the game must be social rejects ... losers if you will ... incapable of a normal social life ... so we hide behind a keyboard ... hide behind a controller ... that we are not productive members of society ... from South Park episodes to a number of demeaning comics and "demotivational" posters ... not to mention the group of activists that want us and our kids off the computer and out from in front of the TV ... period ...

As much "research" has been done to show that these games are "bad" for us ... well guess what folks ... there is research that has been done ... news reports that these games are good for us ...

So, as to us being "losers" ... anybody who says that clearly has never actually played any MMORPG, but especially not WoW ... it is by far the most social hobby I have ever had ... and yes I said hobby ... we'll get into that later ...

Gameplay revolves around social activities, such as groups of players cooperating on a quest or forming large "raid" groups to tackle the toughest game bosses. - FoxNews

... I have met more people that I would call friends playing WoW in the last two years, than I have met in my real life of mommy groups, jobs and school in the last ten years ... I won't say it surpasses the amount of friends that I made in high school ... but I was (well still am) a social butterfly ... anyway, in the last two years I have made amazing friends ... so you say "yes, from behind a keyboard" ... guess what? ... that's bullshit ... first off, if you're reading my blog, my guess is that you do a lot of communicating (whether in, out or both) ... from where? ... from behind a keyboard ... second, when my kids had H1N1, when my daughter broke her arm, when my other daughter impaled the roof of her mouth ... guess who all the notes of concern were from in my email, on my facebook ... guess who texted me and asked me if they were okay and if there was anything they could do ... none of my "real life" friends ... but those notes came by the dozen from these so-called "fake" friends I have ... and finally ... I have met people I play WoW with in real life, even went and picked up moving boxes from one when I was moving ... on top of that ... it has been a place where other "real life" friends I have can do something social with me ... my boyfriend's best friend was stationed in Germany ... they couldn't meet for a beer, but they could play WoW together ... plus, it is a social life, a social activity that costs almost no money, less than going to a movie every month, that allows me to have a social life without finding a babysitter for my kids and around the schedule that I need to keep in my real life ... I'm not dragging my kids off every evening so I can drop them off in a fitness center's daycare while I work on my exercise and body image "addiction" ... I'm not dragging them off to watch me play some kind of recreational sport, with a rec league ... they have a stable normal life, of homework after school, bed, and then I get on and raid ... giving me "mommy" time, without disrupting their lives ... also, anyone that really knows me, knows I have an active social life, one that has been slightly diminished by my recent financial situation ... which has nothing to do with WoW ...

To be successful in the game requires a certain level of intelligence ... one that educators and after-school programs are actually using to help encourage kids to learn in other aspects of their lives ...

Constance Steinkuehler, an educational researcher who organized an afterschool group for boys to play, for educational purposes, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Some of the eighth graders and high school freshmen who signed up for the group couldn't have cared less about writing or reading in school.

Yet those students have gone from barely stringing together two sentences to writing lengthy posts in their group's Web site forum, where they discuss detailed strategies for gearing up their virtual characters and figuring out tough quests.

"It has worked ridiculously well," Steinkuehler said. "It shouldn't be working as well as it is." - FoxNews

I think what many people don't understand about WoW is it is an amazingly complex game with it's own economy, social structure, etc., it is much like real life ... you have to choose a job and do work to earn gold in order to buy things you want ... and if you choose to be lazy and not train your skills or not farm the materials to craft the things you can craft ... or not do your dailies (quests you can do every day to increase your reputation and earn gold) ... if you choose to not do those things ... then you don't reap the benefit of the things you can buy ... but that doesn't sound anything like real life does it? ... of course it does ... in real life if you work hard for what you want you can, within reason, achieve it ... the game teaches both children and adults alike that perseverance and tenacity can help you achieve your goals.

... unschooling mom, Kelli Traaseth, saw kids improve their literacy through online games such as "WoW." The results are strikingly similar to what Steinkuehler has witnessed in her afterschool group.

"We know several kids who learned to read while playing these games," Traaseth said. "If you want to classify some of the things we're doing when we play 'World of Warcraft,' the list could include math, reading, sociology, economics, creative writing and communications." - FoxNews

My boyfriend is the Guild Master of a guild with over 300 toons, and 175 accounts ... that means 175+ real people, different, individual people that he has to keep working like clockwork, has to deal with complaints, schedules, holding people accountable ... if you think that doing that is really any different than running a company with 175 employees, you'd be wrong ... yes people are free to leave whenever they want, then again if you run a business, they're free to put in their two weeks notice or just walk off the job as well ... keeping a large guild organized is much like running a company ... with a hierarchy of officers (managers from upper to low-level) ... to keep things running from the ground up ... younger officers especially have an amazing opportunity to learn about how to handle things in real life situations that come up later in their lives ...

Now let's get into this "addiction" thing ... okay people ... there is a difference between being a hobbyist and being an addict ... there are people that play games that are truly addicted to them ... they may need help ... they may need to quit playing altogether ... but the vast majority of people that play video games, whether World of War"crack" or Halo or Call of Duty or Guild wars .... are not addicts ... they are hobbyists ...

So what constitutes game addiction? It appears to be defined by various laundry lists of symptoms. When reading any number of articles on gaming addiction, responsible or clinical analysis are intermixed with some downright bizarre claims about this so-called addiction. In fact, these kinds of irresponsible statements are everywhere. According to a number of prominent articles on the subject, these symptoms may include:
Thinking about what is happening in-game when not logged in.
Dreaming about the game.
Playing up to several hours a day (or, conversely)
Playing 140 hours a month.
Seeking PvP advancement.
Belonging to raiding guilds or guilds with a bigger emphasis on goal-oriented play.
Time away from the game is spent doing things related to the game. This, apparently, is also discussed as being indicative of addiction. These things might include:
The purchasing of game books
Submitting fan art
Writing fan fiction
Talking about the game when not playing
Thinking about the game when not playing
Visiting web sites about the game
Posting on game-related forums
Researching tips and strategies for the game
Reading articles, like this one, about MMO gaming (guess you’re an addict, eh?)
Writing an article about gaming (I’ll be checking into rehab as soon as this gets posted, k?) - WanderingGoblin

"Geek. Nerd. Dork. Doesn't matter what you call it, all it says to me is

'I'm jealous that you're smarter than I am.'

and I've learned the fun fact that you can't have dignity while having fun."

- Friend and Fellow Gamer Josh

I will say, from a personal point of view that 140 hours a month seems somewhat excessive although ... that's 5 hours a day ... and really of the 16 hours that we're awake every day in a normal healthy life, that's not extremely obsessive. I mean, how much time a day does the average American spend watching TV or reading a book or countless other things ... I know plenty of people that turn on the TV at 5:30 when they get home from work, and then don't turn it off until 10:30 after the 10:00 news ... that's 5 hours of TV ... is that really better than playing a game that involves using intellectual and social skills? I think that "vegging out" in front of the TV has it's own set of issues ... that all being said I think I honestly play around 12-15 hours a week ... which is 52-65 hours a month ... on a "bad" week ... when we're really trying to achieve a goal or I am obsessed with getting to level 80 or other things, maybe my kids are with their dad, so I take advantage of some extra play time, I might play as much as 40 hours in one week, but those weeks are very, very rare ... and still don't interfere with my real life ... I still eat meals, and get out of the house to do things I need to do, I shower and take care of myself ... but I could see that someone without a job, and without kids could hit that 140 hour mark and not be an addict ... people have to understand that just because one person that does something has a problem does not mean that all are ... I mean all of you that go to the gym every day ... are you all anorexic? ... I mean by the definitions set above pretty much everyone I know is addicted to something ....

I have friends that are really into golf. While I’m not a golfer myself, their devotion to their hobby is obvious. They buy golfing outfits, they read golf magazines, they watch golf on television. They even visit golf websites. They talk about golf with their friends. If the so-called addiction standards, above, were applied to my golf buddies, they’d be declared golf addicts.

Come to think of it, if those standards were applied to any hobbyist, they’d all be declared addicts. Maybe I should have an intervention with my friend Julee. She’s quite the fishing addict. I know a couple of boating and motorcycle addicts, too. I’ve got friends who are addicted to books. That reading addiction needs to be overcome! And nearly everyone I know is, apparently, addicted to television. - WanderingGoblin

.... I agree completely ... I mean really people ... what is with this stigma we have ... that we're losers ... and addicts ... this game is a hobby to almost everyone I know that plays it ... I know a few where it has become an obsession, a few that may need help, but even they don't come close to the stereotypes that many activist groups are putting out there ... and to be completely honest I know plenty of people that would consider WoW their anti-drug ... their way of escaping their own reality ... there is a 15 year-old girl that we play with on occasion ... she has an alcoholic mother who has had a slew of abusive boyfriends ... she herself was arrested for "assaulting" her sister after her sister stole money and her iPod from her ... and I'm not saying that she was right or anything, but the thing is, this girl obviously has a life that she needs to escape from ... and to be able to escape to the land of Azeroth (the name of the "world" in World of Warcraft) ... has actually saved her from serious depression, cutting and suicide ... by her own words ... she has been suicidal more than once and logged into the game searching for someone that cares about her ... and low and behold these "fake" friends .... are the ones that are there for her ...

I know that no matter what I say here, people will hold their own stigmas ... their own stereotypes ... and that's fine ... I say live and let live ... I will do my hobby ... you can do yours ...

Games are the way of the future and it's not likely you'd be able to completely shield your child from them even if you wanted to. However, it's important to learn as much as you can about the games and their content before allowing your child to play. - Lisa Mason

Black Sheep ...

2010-09-11T23:14:00.002-06:00

I went to a family function today ... something I generally dread ... I practically pray that one of my kids will get sick, that I will have some excuse to not go ...

It's hard to explain to any outsider the feelings that I have ... over the years there have been so many sarcastic, backhanded compliments, so much favoritism among the grandchildren, so much judgment and disapproval ...

Today I basically was sat at the kiddie table (place card and all) ... now mind you I was one of two adults at what was more the kid "end of the table" ... a table that was set up at the end of the actual dining room table and three of the five children sitting there were mine ... so I'm probably being hypersensitive ... and if it wasn't for the history it may not mean anything to me ... but there is that ... there's history ...

There's a lot of history ... there's periods of time where I didn't speak to various members of my family and vice versa ... always on the outside looking in ... never good enough ... never met with a sense of approval ... they could always find the one negative in anything ...

Just several weeks ago there was another family event, and all my stepbrothers and stepsisters were there (well, maybe not all, I wouldn't know) ... my father who married my stepmother just over a year ago, nor anyone else introduced me to anyone ... there were people there that are supposed to be part of my "new" family and nobody bothered to even make an introduction ... there have been a lot of times I have felt like an outcast in my father's family, but that one probably was close to the top of the list, if not actually at it ... maybe that was my fault, maybe I should have introduced myself ... maybe I should have said something like, "are you going to do introductions" ... but I didn't ... then again ... neither did any of them ...

It might have something to do with the fact that my stepmother doesn't even speak to me anymore ... the whole thing is so weird to me ... I liked her, a lot, when my dad told me he was getting married I was genuinely happy and excited for him ... they were very lovey dovey, I had never seen him behave that way with any woman ever, not my mom, not the two multiple year relationships that he had after her ... not even the short ones in between ... they both seemed to genuinely love and care for each other. Oddly enough right after they were officially married, she seemed to change, and it wasn't just me that saw it, there were others as well ... she became much more naggy, and she seemed to want me as far from his life as possible. Then there was the whole house fiasco which you can read about in previous blogs, that pretty much everyone I know that knows my father as well, thinks she had much more of a hand in than he did. The couple I saw that I was happy for and the one that exists now are very different ... when my father came down on me for some things during the house issue I did say some negative things about her, in truth I think she is using him ... pointing that out to him was not taken well, needless to say ...

Anyway, back to today ... it wasn't that bad ... but still I am not in the "in crowd" ... not part of the inner circle ... a lesser person by whatever definition they use ... I'll just use the words black sheep ...

My Tribute to September 11

2010-09-11T12:42:00.008-06:00

As far as I know, nobody has taken credit for these words yet, I remember hearing it on the radio shortly after September 11, 2001 ... my apologies to those of you that don't share the Christian faith, or have a strong spirituality, but these words touched me deeply at the time, and continue to touch me on this anniversary of a horrific event on American soil.

You say you'll never forget where you were when you
heard the news on September 11, 2001. Neither will I.

I was on the 110th floor, in a smoke filled room with a
man who called his wife to say goodbye. I held his fingers
steady as he dialed. I gave him the peace to say,
"Honey… I'm not going to make it, but it's okay. I'm ready to go."
I was with his wife when he called as she fed breakfast to their
children. I held her up as she tried to understand his words,
and as she realized he wasn’t coming home that night.

I was in the stairwell of the 23rd floor, when a woman cried out to Me
for help, "I've been knocking on the door of your heart for 50 years."
I said, "of course I will show you the way home--only believe in ME now."

I was at the base of the building when the priest ministered to the injured
and devastated souls. I took him home to tend his flock in heaven.
He heard My voice and answered.

I was on all four of those planes. In every seat,
with every prayer.
I was with the crew as they were over taken.
I was in the very
hearts of the believers there, comforting and assuring them that their faith had saved them.

I was in Texas… Kansas… London.

I was standing next to you when you heard the terrible news.
Did you sense Me? I want you to know that I saw every face.
I knew every name, though not all know Me.

Some met me for the first time on the 86th floor. Some sought Me
with their last breath. Some couldn’t hear Me calling to them through
the smoke and flames. "Come to Me; this way; take My hand."
Some chose for the final time to ignore Me…BUT I was there.

I did not place you in the building that day. You may not know why,
but I do. However if you were there in that explosive moment in
time, would you have reached for Me?

September 11, 2001 was not the end of the journey for you. But
someday your journey will end and I'll be there for you as well.
Seek Me *now* while I may be found. Then at any moment, you
know you're ready to go. I will be in the stairwell of your final moments.

Remember.... I LOVE YOU.

The Thing About Being Single ... Archived from 01/17/2009

2010-09-11T12:27:00.001-06:00

Here's the thing about being single . . . in a lot of ways it's fine . . . beyond survivable. I think I've realized there were things I took for granted in past relationships (although I wouldn't go back into them) . . . but I definitely took for granted both being told and shown that I'm beautiful and desirable on a near constant basis . . . and although a lot of self image comes from within, and although I'm not comfortable with where my body is at this point, I am comfortable in my own skin, there is something very reassuring about knowing that someone else thinks you're attractive . . . something very reassuring about being wanted & desired . . . about having someone around that can't keep they're hands off of you . . . in public, in private, etc., . . . so that's really what I took for granted . . . and mostly because for the past 17 or so years I've had that in my life on a near constant basis . . . but really when it comes down to it that's not the thing that really sucks about being single. It's not the lonliness, I'm an only child, I LOVE my alone time, I thrive on solitude, it's when I'm the most productive, the most mentally healthy, the most happy really, when I have the solitude to do my projects the way I want to do them, to be alone with my thoughts, plus I never have to be alone . . . I have friends, a lot of friends, I could spend my time with someone else either in person, or on the phone, or the computer . . . the loneliness doesn't bug me . . . although I hate the feeling of being alone even surrounded by people because nobody seems to empathize with where you are . . . but what I really have a hard time with about being single is completely unmaterial and intangible . . . it's the safety and security of knowing that when I come home from work or wherever, or even if I never left home, knowing that someone will be there to give me a hug when I need it, to hold me when I'm sad, it's having someone to kiss goodnight, good morning and goodbye . . .the things that come naturally in relationships, the things when you're in them you never think about, because it's just part of being in a relationship . . . it's being able to say "I need a hug" and knowing that someone will be there to do it . . . .it's the security of knowing that someone is there . . . someone who puts you at the high end of their priority list if not the highest point on it . . . it really comes down to security, the feeling of home, the feeling that you're safe, that nothing can take it away . . . maybe it will take me a long time to feel that way again because I know that no matter what something can always take it away, but I think if the person came along that wanted me to feel that way, I would . . . so that's my thinking outloud for the day . . . thanks for listening :)

Little writers ...

2010-09-08T23:37:00.001-06:00

My 9 and 7 year-old daughters have decided that they want to write blogs, part of it is they like the idea of having their own "webpage" ... but I think they both have very creative thoughts in their heads and getting it down on "paper" may be just the thing they need ...

Plus, they can work on their writing skills along with their computer skills. I told them they could write anything, they could keep it as a journal, they could write fiction, poetry ... it is completely up to them. I am going to be amazed to watch how their writing grows and develops out of this.

Some are concerned that they are too young for this kind of Internet exposure, but I assure you they will be kept very, very safe!

Privacy ...

2010-09-08T08:16:00.001-06:00

In any relationship I think that trust barriers can be crossed that take away a person's "right to privacy" ... some relationships are very open from the beginning though as well ...

I can see this applying in various kinds of relationship parent/child ... roommate maybe ... our significant others ... there are many situations where I feel that someone loses their right to privacy, where computers, email, the hiding spots in the house or bedroom are no longer off limits ... especially if any of those things were used in the process of losing someone's trust.

When it comes to parenting ... I think until my kids are older, I will continue to have passwords to their email, gaming and social network accounts. I don't check them, or have any need to, but if something ever happens, I can ... as they get older, I think that their privacy should be allowed to be protected to some degree. If they want to email their friends about what an evil mom I am or who they have crushes on, they should be able to do that without fear that I will just pull up their email that day and read it ... however ... if they start in with behavior or are actually caught doing something completely inappropriate, then I think those privacy barriers come down ... at that point I get full access to everything ...

When it comes to significant others ... I see a few different trains of thought on this ... I always had access to everything of my husband's ... email, myspace, gaming accounts, phone records ... everything ... most of that just came down to the fact that I set nearly everything up, I paid the phone bill, etc., ... but he was an open book to me ... he didn't always have access to everything of mine, not because I was trying to hide anything, but just because he never asked, he didn't do much on the computer, etc., so he just didn't have a need to, in his mind ... so although (up until the end) I wouldn't have had an issue with being an open book with him, I never completely was.

I know couples that keep everything very separate and personal ... everything is private ... closed book persay ... and I know couples where everything is open ... nothing is private ... they have full access to everything. In my current relationship we both are completely open books ... we have passwords to each others' accounts for everything ...

I guess I personally think that we're all entitled to some privacy .. kind of like the example above with children .. if I want to email a friend and talk about how something my boyfriend did bothered me , I should probably be able to do that .... and vice versa ... I think that individual couples figure out what levels of privacy work for them ...

Now, I do believe that once trust has been broken in a relationship ... if somebody cheats (physically or emotionally) ... especially if communication with the other party existed through email, social networking sites, or phones where records can be looked at ... I think then privacy is given up ... I think that is one of the prices that somebody pays for lying and betrayal ...and if they have nothing to hide ... then they shouldn't care about providing the access or even knowing that things will be accessed ... I think that once you've given a person reason not to trust you ... if you ever expect trust to be rebuilt ... that you must open yourself up ... must open all the pages in your book ... basically you need to be transparent ....

In most cases, this angers people, but really ... if you are a liar or a cheater and you expect somebody to stay with you and try to move on with you after you have done things that most would not stick around for ... you should be grateful that you're there, regardless of the conditions or circumstances around that. So, you might have to deal with your phone records being looked at, your phone being looked at, your email or your Facebook being looked at ... but I can pretty much guarantee you that if the person doing the looking is a "normal" person ... the longer it goes without actually finding anything ... the less frequently they'll check ... until basically they don't even think about it anymore ... and in actuality you will have built trust back, by opening yourself up and proving that you really don't have anything to hide ...

I know there are people that think that both a child's and significant others privacy should remain private no matter what ... I personally believe that once someone has given someone a reason not to trust .. that the rules change .. that you are no longer allowed privacy ... that it becomes a privilege not a right ...

Clarification ...

2010-09-08T07:47:00.000-06:00

Unfortunately, every time I've ever had blogs, I've had to post a blog like this every few months or so ... I guess it's just the way the cookie crumbles ... it speaks to the paranoia and the narcissism in the world as well, but here goes ...

My blogs are very rarely completely personal, very rarely about a situation that I am in ... some person I play WoW with might say "hey my brother's wife's mother is going through such and such" ... and it will inspire a blog ... sometimes comments made by others to me, in their blogs ... on Facebook ... will inspire me to write certain things ... and even if the inspiration and some of my personal experiences are still part of the story that I write ... no blog is directed at any one person, or even group of people ... I have had a lot of experiences in my 32 years on this planet, plus being a social creature, I know of the experiences of many, many other people ...

I am sorry, if anyone, ever, thinks that my blogs are written for them, directed to them, or even about them ... because they're not ... they are my thoughts ... sometimes the subject matter is inspired by recent events ... but if I find inspiration in that, it means that it is not the first time I have seen or been through the same kind of situation.

So, please take them for what they're worth ... and anyone that knows me, knows I'm usually up for healthy debate, if you disagree with me as well .. some of what I write are things that I am questioning in life, in people ... things I'm not 100% sure about ... thoughts & opinions are welcome ...

Isolated ...

2010-09-08T00:03:00.001-06:00

So, I feel kind of isolated right now ... I have all these little things that I want to talk to someone about ... none of them are worth picking up a phone and calling a friend I haven't really talked to in months about ... they'd be irrelevant little things to blog about, plus some are personal to the point I wouldn't blog about them ... I can't talk to my kids about them ... and it's hard to talk to my mom about anything lately because I don't know how she'll react ... my boyfriend (who has been my main source of any and all communication for a very long time) is basically out of touch ... we can't talk privately ever at this point ... so that just leaves me feeling kind of isolated ... thoughts stuck in my head with nowhere to go ... emotions that need released with no healthy mechanism of releasing them ... it just is very, very hard to feel isolated ...

Words of a Friend "Butterflies, Unicorns and Magic" ... Archived from 03/16/2009

2010-09-07T01:46:00.002-06:00

So, I'm stealing the words of a friend and I know she won't mind ;) I read this blog weeks ago and it has stuck with me to the point that I wish to share . . . . you can find her entire blog at http://www.perilouslyprecocious.com . . . this particular blog describes very, very closely how I've felt lately - I don't know that I could say it any better myself . . .

"I want to feel ecstatically happy every day. I know this is possible, because I’ve done it.
I want everything to be magical; filled with unicorns, butterflies, and day dreams…
I want to be excited and find awe in my surroundings, instead of feeling numb and tired.
I know most of this is of my own doing, but I feel like I need to
have more social time… to be surrounded with people who experience this
in their every moment. Calling all you angels…
I feel depressed, honestly.   Blue.   Sad. I have lost connection with my inner magic.
Checking the calendar, I can see I’m in the middle of my semester.
It’s not unusual for me to be exhausted by the middle of the semester…
but this semester is easy. I’m not stressed out over school. I’m half
way through my second to the last semester before I earn my degree. I
am motivated in the school department.
It’s also the end of winter… winter has always been a harder time
for me. I need to be active, out playing in the sunshine, dawdling
amongst my growing things.   I need to be getting dirty, playing sports
and running around. I need
to be out sleeping under the stars, dancing around a campfire, looking
at things through my binoculars.   I need to be more aware of the cycle
of the moon, and how that affects my own physical makeup…
I need to be taking candle-lit bubble baths.
Maybe it’s all this responsibility: work, school, parenting…
Maybe it’s the mundane… I don’t see time for socializing in my
future. Hell, I don’t see many people that I can surround myself with
that will embrace JOY with me. I need this. I need closeness with
friends. I need silly text messages that make me laugh at
inappropriate times. I need adventure and laughing out loud, every
day.   I need to feel confident and beautiful and amazing.
All of those feelings, they have so often been associated with how I
feel when I’m around my friends. Honestly, I haven’t had time to be a
friend… It’s of my own doing, and I see this, but still, I’m not sure
how to fix it.
I need to see the beauty in sunsets again.
To be hugged more. To affirm good things for myself more. To feel unstoppable again.
I want to be catapulted across the universe like a great big ball of fire, blazing like a beacon for everyone to see.
I have grown in so many ways over the last several years. I’ve
grown up, into a parent, into someone who can be a good example. Into
someone who is comfortable being herself. I want to share this. I
want to shout out to the world, “SEE! You CAN feel amazing like me.”
I’ve been making mistakes at work lately.   I am human, I realize
that. But I think I’m a little burned out with work. I’m not excited
to spend more than two hours every day commuting to a job where I sit
in a cubicle all day long, where the only human contact I get is with a
telephone. I know I’m in the right place, I just…
Honestly, I haven’t even been taking much joy in writing, lately.
*sigh*
Butterflies, unicorns and magic.

Butterflies, unicorns and magic.

Butterflies, unicorns and magic."

************************************************************

In addition to her words . . . I need the feeling of a loving touch, the feeling of being wanted . . . I need fingers in my hair, my hand to be held . . . I need to know that no matter how I look on any given day, someone always thinks I'm pretty . . . I need stability and security . . . to know that there is excitement to see me, happiness to hear from me . . . that I'm missed and appreciated . . . I think these are all things I take for granted when I have them, but when they're gone are missed so much . . . these are things I must come to terms with . . . or somehow find on my own . . . I need magic . . .

Relationships That End Relationships ...

2010-09-06T21:53:00.001-06:00

I have seen too much of this lately, but why is it that when some people enter into committed relationships or marriages even, that other relationships are lost?

I understand the leave & cleave belief ... in fact I believe in it ... but leave does not mean abandon. Not to me anyway.

I have seen 15 year friendships thrown away ... hobbies stopped ... careers changed ... and for what? Because the person you have decided is the love of your life doesn't understand them, or think they're appropriate?

I have friends that have proven loyalty through several relationships ... why would I let them go for the sake of a new man entering my life? Why would I let go of something that I enjoy for the sake of a new man, even the absolute love of my life?

Not that we don't make compromises and sacrifices for those we love ... because we do ... we cut back ... we change things to accommodate, to include ... we ask them to be part of our hobbies ... to hang out with our friends ... that is the nature of a relationship ... to learn to embrace things in another person ...

There are obviously exceptions ... abuse (substance, physical, etc) ... friends of those we love can be real jerks sometimes ... but sometimes we have to realize that they've been a part of our loved one's life much longer than we have ... and learn to embrace them and their quirks as well ...

It's hard enough to deal with losing friendships & relatives when we break up or divorce people .. it's even harder to lose them because they enter a relationship ...

Surprising ...

2010-09-06T00:24:00.001-06:00

Sometimes things surprise me ... I thought that this last weekend would be both really hard and not end well ... I thought that going into it ... and then basically I made bad things happen ... well, that's probably giving myself either too much credit or too much blame, depending on how you look at it ... but when all was said and done, it seemed very normal ... things were okay and looking up ... and then I realized when I got home, that I couldn't stop smiling ... that something had gone amazingly right ... it wasn't what I expected ... but in the end ... I can't stop smiling ... sometimes it's okay that our expectations aren't met ... that our plans are broken ...

An Update on Life ...

2010-09-05T21:33:00.000-06:00

So, I got a call back for a second interview ... I don't have an exact date & time yet because she had to talk to someone else ... which is fine ... but I am very excited at the prospect of a paycheck and a really nice place to work.

I spent the weekend with my boyfriend, our visits now will be few and far between. We went on our ghost hunt with his dad .. nothing too exciting happened .. well except when the neighbors from across the street started firing guns .. and we had to call the cops .. and yeah lol .. but it was mostly a good weekend .. I feel better for it, on multiple levels ..

Have a lot of stuff to do with my mom tomorrow, including shopping ... should be fun ..

I know this was an absolutely boring blog entry, but I'm bored and that is a little update on my life!

Excited ...

2010-09-05T19:12:00.001-06:00

Okay, I'm going to get all nerdy for a second ... but my inner nerd is very, very excited that Cataclysm is officially on pre-order ... now if I can only come up with the money to buy it ...

Ghosts ...

2010-09-03T15:47:00.000-06:00

... to those of you that regularly read my blog you'll probably think that this is going to be some nice, deep blog about how the ghosts of our past can haunt us .. blah blah blah ...

Ironically I watched Ghosts of Girlfriends Past earlier today ... but that is not what this is about either ...

My boyfriend's dad is in the business (so to speak) of ghost hunting ... yeah T.A.P.S. all that ... so I'm leaving to go on a ghost hunt .. could be interesting ....

The only true "diary" blog part about this is that I am leaving my house right now mostly because my mom and I can't stop fighting ... so yeah ... figure we need a break from each other ...

Unconditional ....

2010-09-03T09:01:00.002-06:00

A friend recently wrote a blog that got me thinking a little bit ... she talked about how "you have to give love to receive it" is easier said than done ... when you're actually in a difficult situation ... I agree completely ...

I have always been of the belief that you can kill them with kindness, that if you show someone enough love, especially unconditional love, they will realize how amazing love is ... they will want it ... and in turn they will give it ...

Unfortunately ... not all people react that way ....

Unfortunately ... what happens then ... as they take us for granted ... as we show them love ... they ignore it .... when we reach out ... they pull away ... this ... builds resentment ...

Maybe it's wrong, maybe resentment shouldn't be built, maybe the answer is to walk away from someone that takes away from the naturally loving people we are ... maybe someone that makes us want to reverse the golden rule, by treating them how they treat us instead of how we want to be treated ... maybe somebody that inspires that negativity in us ... maybe they are toxic to us ... maybe they shouldn't exist in our lives ...

Easy to say from the outside looking in ... I don't know many that would stay in a relationship if it was like that from the get go ... but years of dating or even marriage in ... and children ... it's hard to walk away ... you remember the times when they did love you back ...

You remember when they wanted to touch you ... couldn't keep their hands off of you ... when you could talk on the phone for hours and hours into the night about ... absolutely nothing ... when you could sit in a restaurant and talk until they kicked you out ... and now you stare at each other over the dinner table and have absolutely nothing to say ... you remember passion ... you remember love ...

Is this what they mean in marriage vows when they say "for better or worse" ... that there are times when the love isn't there .. but you stay anyway ... or is the pain too great ..

Did this happen because their love for us changed from unconditional to conditional ... or is their behavior not a reflection of their feelings ... but their behavior has now changed our love ... it is no longer unconditional ... we need things ... as minor as they seem ... we let ourselves be torn apart by the sheer lack of reciprocity ...but in order for there to be reciprocity, the action has to be done in the first place ... so which came first the chicken or the egg? ...

I think for many ... we try and try and try and try ... we finally do give up ... we have no reason to voice our needs or show how it is we want to be treated ... because there is no point ... because what's more heartbreaking than not getting the attention we need in the first place ... is practically begging for it, making ourselves vulnerable, asking for it ... and being rejected ... it hurts too much ... so why ask ... why tell them how we feel ... is there a point .... why try .... when we know it will lead to more of our pain ... while those around us are either too ignorant to understand or just plain don't care about the pain that we are in ...

Part of the reason this hurts so much when it happens is that we are capable of love ... unconditional love ... we are capable of seeing past the faults ... of moving on ... we don't understand how someone else could not be ... we treat people how we want to be treated ... and moreso ... we treat them how we know they want to be treated ... they like their back rubbed .. we rub their back ... they like their hair played with ... we play with their hair ... their favorite dessert is brownies ... we make brownies ... we think of this as natural behavior ... a natural way of being as a human being ... as a person capable of love ... but then we tell them ... we like our hair played with ... we like to be hugged ... we want to hold their hand ... we tell them these things ... and it means nothing to them ... it is not their natural state of being ... is that a lack of love ... does that lack of reciprocity mean that their feelings for us are not as strong as our feelings for them ... or ... do they just operate completely differently ....

And in either case ... does the relationship really stand a chance in the long term ... or is it set up for failure ... a love that's unconditional would imply that none of that really matters ... but I think with unconditional love there is a matter of redemption ... it can't all be bad ... we can't feel unloved and like crap all the time ... there has to be times when things are good, when love is felt ... when love is known ... otherwise even unconditional love can fail ... rejection can destroy it ...

You have to give love to get it ....

Again, easier to say from the outside looking in ...if we're giving all we have and getting nothing in return ... then technically those we are giving it to are getting love without giving it ... so the saying, the advice is already flawed ... and in a vicious circle theory ...so we stop giving because they're not giving .. and now nobody is giving ... our relationships in those circumstances go to hell ....

I think that much is taken for granted in relationships ... the passion .. the unending conversations .. the desire ... the feeling that all you want to do is talk to and be with and touch this person .. it's all taken for granted ... and when it's gone ... you have to look at what you're left with ... and decide if picking up all the pieces off the floor ... if trying to put this puzzle back together is worth it ... or if there are too many pieces missing ... too many holes in the puzzle ... and it's just time to walk away ...

... but most of us will stay ... through the rejection ... through the pain ... we will continue to give the best of ourselves, regardless of what we get in return ... because the love that we feel ... the love that we show ... even when it's truly flawed (which it often is) ... is totally and completely ...

...unconditional ....

I am this girl ... Archived from 03/24/09

2010-09-03T08:23:00.001-06:00

Soo, this was sent to me as part of a forwarded email . . . but it holds so amazingly true to me I felt like posting it . . .

I'm the girl who is loyal and trustworthy...
I'm the girl who will call you handsome, instead of babe, sexy or hottie...
I'm the girl who will put my head on your shoulder, not because I'm sleepy, but because I want to be closer to you...
I'm the girl who likes to be kissed under the stars, rather than inside your bedroom or in an expensive restaurant...
I'm the girl who holds your hand and plays with it....
I'm the girl who doesn't mind you playing with her hair....
I'm the girl who makes jokes with your mom...
I'm the girl who stares into your eyes looking for what you see in me....
I'm the girl who loves to end each hug with a kiss...
I'm the girl who will take care of you when you are sick...
I'm the girl who you can talk to about anything...
I'm the girl who will cry, but still remain calm when you're hurt.....
I'm the girl who laughs at your jokes...
I'm the girl who will have many inside jokes with you and remember each one...
I'm the girl who will brag about you to all of my friends...
I'm the girl who will listen to you talk and hear every word you say...
I'm the girl who remembers when and where we first met....
I'm the girl who loves to hear you sing, even if you're horrible....
I'm the girl who loves when you hug me for no apparent reason...
I'm the girl who loves it when you hug me from behind or kiss me on the forehead, cheek or nose ....
I'm the girl who loves you for you, and doesn't care what other people say about us...
I'm the girl who'll love and adore you unconditionally...no matter what...
I'm the girl that listens to you and tries to talk to you, not at you...
I'm the girl that accepts you for who you are, good, bad and ugly...
I'm the girl who doesn't wish to change you, just wish to grow & learn with you...
I'm the girl who likes you for who you are, not what you can do for me...
I'm the girl who'll be your everything...your lover and your best friend...
I am this girl . . .

**********************************************************************

I think a lot of what is listed there above applies to a lot of girls, but certainly not all ... and I think a lot of those things are things that guys take for granted ... but when they're with a girl that doesn't have many of those traits ... they'd probably miss ... I could be wrong ... but who knows ...

Music ...

2010-09-01T19:27:00.001-06:00

Anyone who reads my blog often, or those that read it before it moved to this site, know that I make a lot of references to music ... music is an absolutely amazing source of everything to me ... it's amazingly therapeutic ... and it amazes me how one song can change over time to fit different stages of your life, or relationship ... there's a quote ;

"you can tell more about a woman from the lyrics in her favorite songs than you can from any words that come out of her mouth"

I think that is so amazingly true, I have had the image on my MySpace forever, and now on this blog that says "music says the words we're too afraid to speak out loud" and to a large extent that's true .. I have songs that make me happy, songs I turn to when I'm sad, songs that may have literally saved my life ...

My music collection is huge, with over 10,000 songs, ranging from classical to country to hard rock to rap ... I have a few that I would classify as "in" my favorite songs .. my actual favorites vary depending on the point of my life that I'm in, and other things, but I figured I would share some of the songs with you that have meant the most to me in my life ... songs that may have changed me, saved me, moved me ... I am very lyrical ... I am about the meaning behind a song, which is why my taste is so eclectic ... but yes, the following songs have meant a lot to me ... I think there is something in them that is real, but at the same time hopeful ... an acknowledgment of loss, fear, pain, but also of hope ... Chasing Cars may actually be my favorite song ever ... it has a very deep meaning that many may miss, it can be taken as spiritual or romantic ... but the words "those three words are not enough" ... followed by the unsureness of how they will make it, with the surety that they will make it together ... it's a song about uncertainty and certainty at the same time .. and then to me the blaring chorus means everything ... isn't that what we all want from the loves of our life? ... someone that will just lay there with us ... forget the rest of the world and just lay there with us ... not forever, not always, obviously, but someone that will ... Speeding Cars .. ironically after chasing them we speed them lol ... is full of realities of life that we all face .. things that may bring on depression, etc., ... the song reminds us that we are not alone in these feelings ... they exist for all ... and finally Breathe (2 am) .. also a song about the lessons in life, the frustrations of our personal relationships and a reminder that we are not alone in our pain, in our sorrow, or in our hope ... like I said, these songs are "in" my favorite songs but are far from the only songs I would consider favorites ... in my lyrical nature I will find songs from every genre over time to share with all of you ... you will find references to music constantly in my blogs ... that's just who I am ...

Back from the interview ...

2010-08-31T17:59:00.001-06:00

The interview went really well I think, they are going to call me in a few days to do what's called a "job preview" ... sounds like it's basically an 8 hour shift, where I don't get paid and don't do anything for liability reasons, but I shadow another caregiver (not all are CNAs there), to see how it all works and to see if the staff that I meet that day thinks I'm a good fit.

I guess some history, since this is a relatively new blog ... I am a Certified Nursing Assistant, which means basically I do the grunt work of nursing, cleaning stuff up (bodily fluids wise), helping people on and off the toilet, helping them bathe, etc., I previously have worked in two nursing homes, this place I applied at is an assisted living home, and the workload definitely looks and sounds different. They don't wear scrubs, the places I worked before I couldn't imagine being in without scrubs, seriously bodily fluids all day long, they have an executive chef instead of just "cooks," where I worked before all staff had to have BLS (basic life support) certifications, here they don't do CPR on the premises .. they call 911 ..., where I worked before there were RNs 24/7, here there is an RN 40 hours a week, and LPNs from 8am to 8pm and that's it ... so very, very different .. and it pays more ... I won't say that this place looks like the work will be easier, but definitely different than nursing homes I've worked at in the past.

I'm kind of excited, I hope they call back soon ... they do start all their new people at part-time and then promote to full-time from within their group of part-timers, so maybe I'll be looking at two part-time jobs .. maybe .. GameStop? lol ...

Interview ...

2010-08-31T12:34:00.001-06:00

So completely out of form as of late on this blog, yet completely in "true" diary fashion .. I have a job interview in 2 1/2 hours ... it's a group interview so not quite sure what to expect. I need a paycheck now more than I ever have in my entire life, so I feel the anxiety coming on. It doesn't help that I'm sick and sniffling ... I may have to invest in some alka-seltzer to get me through the interview. I hate being sick ... but with everything going on lately, it's a surprise to me that it took me this long to get sick ...

Burn ..

2010-08-31T11:19:00.009-06:00

How capable of change are people?

Will a cheater always cheat?

A liar always lie?

A thief always steal?

An addict always find an addiction?

An abuser always hurt those they love?

A narcissist ever see anyone other than themselves as a first priority?

I personally think that a one time slip, a cheat, a lie, a chance to steal taken, a bout with an addiction during a rough time, a one time loss of temper and occasionally being selfish ... may just be that ... a slip ...

But the older I get ... the more experience ... the more people burn me ... the more I wonder ... burn me once shame on you ... burn me twice shame on me ... burn me three times ... well, yeah ...

I think that a track record means that change is less likely. I also think that when these things compound on themselves (for instance a cheater lies because they have an addiction to foreign sex if not just sex period, maybe blaming an addiction for what they did, in the process they are being selfish and psychologically abusive to those they love), it makes someone even less likely to change ... a track record of doing these things in a compounded form ... well maybe they need help, maybe they are still capable of change ... but I think a pattern of behavior is predictable ...

Someone that is likely to change, in my maturing opinion, experiences remorse & regret ... will beg for forgiveness when necessary and do anything to win back the people they hurt in the process ... people who don't experience remorse & regret ... that continue to lie .... that continue to think only of themselves first ... through watching other people's pain .... I think they may be incapable of change ... and that, for the sake of many around me, breaks my heart ....

Just gonna stand there
And watch me burn
But that's alright
Because I like
The way it hurts
Just gonna stand there
And hear me cry
But that's alright
Because I love
The way you lie

... You don't get another chance ... Life is no Nintendo game...

Flashes in my Mind ... Archived from 09/19/2008

2010-08-31T10:41:00.002-06:00

I have flashes in my mind
of things I didn't want to see
things I don't want to remember
places I didn't want to be

Flashes in my mind
of things that were done and said
all I want is these flashes
to just get out of my head

Crippling are these images
that just can't let me be
like a flashing neon sign
saying you must remember me

These flashes in my mind
they come on suddenly
they keep me in the past
they just hold on to me

I just want these flashes
to leave and let me be
but I have a funny feeling
they'll always be with me . . .