Adventures in Packing

Moving is hard.

You start off with the best intentions. "Everything is going to be packed properly! The kitchen stuff will all be together, the bathroom stuff, the bedroom stuff, the clothes, and the books will all be packed separately from each other," you say. Then you try to pack. First, you have a tote (or box, but in my case it's a tote) with all "memory box" type stuff. Then you have another tote with only books. But there's a little bit of extra room in the top and you don't want your books sliding around all over the place.

So you put a random dish towel on top to shore things up a little.

It all goes downhill from there. You start putting dinosaur tater tot toys in water pitchers and filling pasta pots with cosmetics, putting art supplies in the tote with the hangers, a single hanger in the tote with all the towels and breakable kitchen stuff. The purses and shoes are together, but they have a blanket in with them. At first, it still makes sense. Most everything is still organized. Then you start finding things around the house that you meant to pack but forgot about in your frenzy, and by the time you get to the last tote, this is what you have left to pack:

• A wedding planning binder (from 2 years ago that your best friend gave you after her wedding so you could plan yours that never materialized)
• A giant CD book
• A snake pen
• A wall night light
• A Christmas garland
• A plastic brandy glass the size of your head
• A pretty basket you keep bathroom stuff in
• Two hot pink file trays
• An accordian file
• Two photo albums
• A yearbook
• A catalog
• A half-done painting
• Various other artwork on paper
• A metal recipe box
• An enormous bathrobe
• A throw pillow inside piece for a pillow you never made

And of course, it doesn't all fit. You stuff things inside of each other, rearrange, take stuff out and put it back. You seriously consider attempting to concuss yourself with the brandy glass. Your back hurts and you just want this to be over with already. Finally, you give up, ditch the CD book, the pen, the metal box, the bathrobe, a photo album, and the wedding planning book, shove the garland in the brandy glass, and suddenly the tote closes. Then you dump all the extra into a laundry basket and put it on top of the giant stack of totes so you don't have to look at it anymore and run away.

This is why moving is hard.

Brief Explanation

Depression is a funny thing.  It can lurk in the shadows, unnoticed, for months, occasionally springing out to throw you into a despair so deep that you suddenly lose all ability to function.  It can just drop you into a pit of apathy.  ...Or maybe it makes you stop caring about that blog you were so excited about starting, or ever actually baking those cookies, or doing anything more than grumpily sitting in a corner.

Depression is weird.  I don't feel depressed... most of the time.  In fact, most of the time I feel pretty okay.  Maybe it's how lonely I am, because I feel like I have an impenetrable invisible wall surrounding me, and I feel overwhelmingly alone even when I'm surrounded by people.  Sometimes.  Other times, all I want is to be alone for awhile.

What I'd really like to know is why I only feel this way sometimes.  Today is just particularly bad, but I have days where I'm fine (or at least apathetic, which I guess I better than feeling mildly suicidal), so I'm really confused.  I always thought of depression as something that never changed, that you sunk into and didn't come out of, or bob to the top occasionally to get a look around before sinking again.  It's very frustrating.  I'll feel better one day, and then a couple days later, I don't want to do anything except sit here.  I can't do anything.

So... basically this is my explanation for why I haven't been posting.  Because I just don't give a shit about anything right now, and I can't find the energy to write and be entertaining.  Besides, it's not like I ever write about anything remotely interesting.

Anyway, if SOPA is passed tonight, there won't be a point in maintaining a blog anyway.

I May Just Die Now

Okay, so I don't know how the people with jobs have the time or energy to write anything worth reading.  I barely had the energy to make myself dinner.  Or the ability to get up and walk, for that matter.  I'm not kidding.  I spent four hours on my feet at work today, for the first time since I lost my job in December 2009 (when I'd regularly stand for 9-10 hours and be mostly fine), walking and shifting and reaching over my head and lifting heavy groups of hangers to bag orders, and that plus my decision to walk home (I was at the location within my perceived walking distance today) caused me to be unable to move around until about six hours after I got home.  I am not pleased with this development, and I really hope that my resistance to that kind of thing returns quickly, or I'm just going to die.  Maybe now.  Maybe I'll just fall over sideways onto the couch right now and just die.  Blah!

Anyway.. today I learned the Spanish word for stapler (es grapadora, apparently) and that you can get cramps in your knuckles.  I also learned that I need more pants than I currently have.  This whole owning only two pairs is not going to cut it for work.  Anyway, I worked for four hours today, and I've started helping customers for real.  As long as I stop forgetting that starch exists and remember to double-check the cash register when I close it, I think I'll be fine.  (My cash register training took less than a minute - I don't know how exactly to use the credit card machine, but I imagine I could puzzle that out myself if I really needed to.  I guess I'll find out on Monday.)  I actually really prefer the main store, where all the action is - it just feels friendlier, and I can walk there and back.  Please, scary boss man, let me have that location!

Today was also an excellent day at home - when I got home, S and the Toddler were outside because S was having a smoke, and you pretty much can't leave the Toddler in the house these days if you're going outside, because he will have paroxysms of grief over it.  It's kind of hilarious to watch (hey, the kid regularly gives me injuries, I'm laughing at him when he's ridiculous!), but it's really annoying to cope with, so he gets to go outside a bazillion times a day right now, and that works out well for everyone, pretty much.  Anyway, they saw me coming and he met me in the yard with a knee hug.  It was really, really cute.  After I went inside, I ate what was in my lunch box (I really don't need to pack a lunch for work - I never end up eating it, so I'm going to get grazing food instead) and watched Children of a Lesser God, which made me miss using ASL.  It also made me cry.  And I learned how to say "fuck you!" in sign language, which I'm sure will come in handy.  Haha.

J ended up waking up really early (about 4:30), and he wanted to get food, so S went to McDonald's for him, and the Toddler went along, and he almost climbed into his car seat on his own.  (I often put him in the car, so I've occasionally been asking him to try climbing in on his own.)  When they came back, I took him out of the car (S's hands were full), and I asked him if he could say my name yet, sounding it out for him very slowly.  And he said it.  Then he said it again.  And then he demonstrated for everyone else in the living room (Girl Child completely lit up), and then I used it as a form of bribery later when I was about to give him a bath - I told him if he said my name, I'd put him in the tub right then, and he immediately said it.  I'm pretty sure he knows that he's saying my name, S is really the smart one in that department, being his mother and all.  But oh god, what a rush!  Every time he says it, I just want to grab him and kiss his face off.  Totally made my day.  (Seriously, this is the absolute best part of my day today, and I mean that.  I would be more excited about him finally saying my name than if someone gave me $1000 right now.  Not that I would pass up $1000.)

Anyway, I played some FFX later in the evening, worked on my iTunes playlists some more (because I'm just never going to be done with the tweaking, I think), and then I had the idea to look up speech pathology, which I've been thinking about on and off for about 10 years now.  I think I'd like to become a licensed ASL interpreter and also get a speech pathology (or assistant) degree and work with deaf children and adults to help them learn to read lips and speak.  Maybe.  I've had a look at what you have to go through just for the interpreter certifications, and it's going to take me like four years just to get that, and usually a speech pathologist has a master's degree, so it's going to be a very, very long time before I get that, if I manage to do it at all.

Right now, it all kind of hinges on having a car.  Doing the math in my head, if I spend absolutely no extra money for about four months, I should have enough saved to get a car that runs.  Of course, Christmas is coming up, so I'll tack on an extra month for Christmas.  But in any case, I should be able to buy a car by this spring, and hopefully I'll have my permit issues sorted out so I can start driving.  (Though if I get the car and can't drive it yet, I'll just figure out how to make it be so S can drive it until I can drive it myself.  If she's agreeable - I haven't talked about this with her yet because I haven't had any prospects for getting money until this week.)

I can't think of anything else to say.  My brain isn't working very well - I'm really tired and I took two naproxen and a Zyrtec about half an hour ago, so now my brain is extra not working.  See?  I can't even make words be sentences.  But I'm off tomorrow, so I'm going to sleep a lot.

Goodbye, Facebook

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything worthwhile - my allergies and my sleep schedule nonexistence of late have made it hard to do anything that requires actual thought.  So I've been spending quite a bit of time tweaking my iTunes playlist, reading news articles (so many links to share!), discovering new music, watching movies, playing video games, and crocheting.  Also, playing with Twitter.

Things haven't exactly resembled anything exciting here lately - same old, same old for the most part.  I don't remember if I've mentioned this previously, but I applied for a job with a dry cleaner in my neighborhood, and am still waiting to hear back from them.  I don't know if this means they found someone else, or if they lost my application among the many they probably received, as everyone and their mother is desperate for work right now, or if they're just taking their time deciding who to call.  I've been on tenterhooks for days, though, and am starting to feel pretty confident that they're not going to call, just like everyone else.  I wish I knew what I was doing wrong.

J installed the dishwasher the day before yesterday.  It's wonderful.  Everyone is so damn excited.  We had to have the power off for about four hours, though, so that was kind of a fiasco, but it's a fair trade for a successful installation.  Also, because S needed to help J with the install, I had the Toddler for a large chunk of the day, and took him to the park.  Of course this was the one hot day this week, and of course I got a sunburn and 12 mosquito bites, and a horrendous allergy flare-up.  I'm mostly fine now, though, except I get new mosquito bites every single time I leave the house right now, which is really lame.  I am so itchy!

This morning, I woke up to discover that Facebook made some major changes to the entire site.  I was already angry with them to begin with after their last "tweak" of the privacy settings, making it more difficult to set them the way I want them because I can no longer tell what some things are set as at all.  This makes me pissy.  Anyway.  I'm completely sick of the way Facebook is run, I hate everything about it, and I've decided to quit using it.  I'm in the process of getting a copy of all my data downloaded from Facebook, and then I shall be deleting my account.  I don't give a shit who's going to miss me.  That's what Google+, e-mail, and fucking telephones are for!  Not to mention that I actively use both MSN and Yahoo messenger clients (well, I use Yahoo for E's benefit only, actually), and the fact that I'm not hard to get in touch with at all.  So fuck off, Facebook.  (I believe S decided the same thing this morning, as did several other people on my Facebook friends list, so I imagine I'll be seeing them all on Google+ shortly.)  I've even found a way to make up for the stuff that I was following on Facebook that it is now impossible to follow with the new News Feed - Twitter!  So I'm using Twitter to follow Huffington Post and NPR and all the other stuff that I use to find the news articles I read, and will probably use Google+ to keep up with the people I care about.

Anyway, that's really all.  As stated previously, nothing exciting has been happening lately.  I'm listening to a really beautiful song by M right now, which is pretty awesome. 

Speaking of M, he saved my butt on Sunday.  I was already having kind of a bad day, and then my iPod got frozen while I was trying to force my computer to recognize its existence.  Like really frozen.  I couldn't reset it, turn it off, skip the song, hear anything, lock it, or adjust the volume.  I could literally do nothing with it.  M offered to take it with him to work, and I don't know exactly what he did (something fancy, apparently), but he fixed it within half an hour.  Of course, I didn't have access to it until Monday morning, but I was just so happy to have it functioning again that it really didn't matter to me when I got it.

Also, S and I discovered raspberry ginger ale.  It's a very happy, pretty shade of fizzy pink.  I will be having some with vodka later to see if that's tasty together.  I will be having some alone in a minute to see if it's tasty at all.

I hope that I get back to regular postings soon - I'm planning on finally writing that post about growing up Catholic and how I've always sort of known that I was an atheist, but I'm lazy, so here's hoping it actually materializes.  Also, I have an idea for a new story bouncing around in my head, but I think I'm going to let it marinate for a little while before I try writing anything down, since about half my stories are poop.  Not that I've ever finished one, except for this story that was six pages long that was about a little girl and a pond that I wrote when I was 19.  I've been thinking about revisiting that a little bit and seeing if I can tweak it a little bit, and see if I can revisit the same family after a few years have gone by.  Maybe.

Anyway, I don't have anything interesting to say.

Fat Chicks Only Wear Muu-muus in Fashion Land

Today, I found a link to a blog about finding fashionable, pretty clothing for the fuller-figured girl with very large breasts, and some of the things she wrote really struck a chord with me, so it's essay time.

I wear a size 20. Sometimes I'm an 18, or a 22, or a 24, depending on where I'm shopping, but for the most part, I am a size 20. However, if I follow the sizing chart at Lane Bryant (which is where I bought the only pair of jeans I have that fit), I wear a size 26. Funnily enough, it even has the measurements that would be accurate to my size listed as what a size 26 dress would be, but if I tried on a size 26, I would be swimming in it. Except for my boobs, probably.

Most dresses I've tried on have only fit at the chest, because I have to size up for my breasts. I am already not a thin woman. I struggle to find clothing that actually flatters my body and makes me feel good without being painful to wear or uncomfortable. It is incredibly frustrating to have to buy tents for my body because they do not make dresses for my shape. Large breasts aren't even close to being accomodated by the fashion industry, at least not if they are paired with proportionately large waists. I am never going to have a 30 inch waist again, especially not with my chest, which ranges from a 42G to a 36HH, depending on the cut and style of the bra, and the individual manufacturer. I am not going to be a size 10 ever again. I think I'll be lucky if I manage a size 12 or 14, which is my goal for when I eventually lose weight.

Even though I want to lose weight, I am still a size 20 right now, with very large boobs. I believe I deserve to feel pretty, I deserve to look nice when I want to look nice, and I am sick and tired to death of wearing nothing but enormous t-shirts because none of my clothes fit and I can't find anything in the womens' department that does. Pepperberry, Bravissimo's clothing line, doesn't even go up to my waist size. In fact, the largest size they carry is a full 10 inches smaller than my waist.

This is incredibly frustrating for me. I feel like I am being told that I do not deserve to look or feel beautiful because I am a larger girl. I am told this everywhere I go. The last guy I went on a date with basically told me that while I was good for a quick fuck, I was not good enough to be a girlfriend because I am too fat. I am tired of this. I am tired of being laughed at, I am tired of being used, and I am tired of my size and weight being a "problem". It is not a problem, or at least it is not my problem. My only real problem with my body is that I can't find anything to fit it and that my weight is causing me some health problems. This is the primary reason I want to lose weight. Not so I can feel beautiful again, not so I can get honked at while walking down the street, but so I can run again, so my tendons stop hurting, so the weight of my chest doesn't cut off my ability to breathe. I didn't even start having health problems related to my weight until I got larger than a size 16.

I want to be able to look in the mirror and think I am beautiful without worry about whether I am "too fat". I want people to stop telling me there's something wrong with me. I want people to stop telling me that I should get a breast reduction. I want the opportunity to learn to love my body, my whole body. I deserve that. Every woman deserves to love herself for what she is and not what everyone thinks she should be.

(Next post will have a link round up and maybe a little bit of stuff about life, since I haven't posted anything in over a week.)

Epic Mall Trip with Clarification

Okay, so now that I'm not all goofy on a single Benadryl, I figured I'd actually write about yesterday in a way that made more sense than yesterday's post.  If I can manage to type like a human, I'm failing today.

Anyway, yesterday morning, we went out to go to the mall to pick up the bras.  As I said yesterday, mine didn't fit, which was pretty disappointing.  I wound up exchanging it for one that fit really well that they had in stock in the store, because they didn't have the color I wanted in the size I needed at all, not even online.  And it really was the most excellent shade of magenta.  Of course, it wound up taking almost an hour to get all of that sorted out, because we had to first find the right size, and then I ended up with the same saleslady who sold me the jeans I bought there not too long ago, and she was awful.  I started with the awesome manager, but was unfortunate enough to end up with the saleslady again.  She was inappropriate and pushy and just like last time, insisted that I sign up for a Lane Bryant card, to "save" money.  Thing is, she bugged me about it so much last time that I gave in and let her sign me up, and was still declined, and she still sold my jeans for the wrong price.  Anyway, this time she decided to do the return separately from purchasing the correct size, I assume so she could get the commission, but she fucked me over by doing that, because when she returned it, it went back to my card, but that wasn't going to post right away because, you know, bank, and I didn't have any money left.  So at first, it looked like I wasn't going to leave with a bra, and I was just getting angrier and angrier with her because she was a flaming idiot, and then the manager came over and fixed it by voiding the return so it never happened, and then processing it as an even exchange instead.  The saleslady was also rude when she thought I was ordering it from online to be delivered to my house (when we were checking to see if they had it in the color I wanted online), but when we discovered they had the same color options online as in the store, I wound up with one from the store, and she was nicer after that.  So the dumb bitch was just after a commission, but apparently doesn't understand that if you want repeat customers, you can't only care about the commission.  Also, she was snarky again when the manager fixed it so it was an even exchange.  Not the best shopping experience in the world.  She should really learn that giving the best customer service experience possible is much more important than getting her commission.

Anyway, I got home, took photos (including a photo for ThinkGeek of my Firefly shirt), and decided I missed eating bananas.  So I made a peanut butter and banana sandwich with a hilarious amount of peanut butter after taking a single Benadryl about 20 minutes before I started eating.  Even with the Benadryl in my system, my tongue still swelled a little, and the roof of my mouth was a bit itchy, but it was nothing compared to how it would have been had I not taken the Benadryl.  This also resulted in yesterday's rather special blog post.

Also, as briefly mentioned yesterday, I looked really good.  I even took pictures.  I even changed my Facebook and Google+ profile pictures to pictures of my face for the first time in months.  (Well, first time ever for Google+.)  Also, the hat I made for myself last summer now looks really good on me because my hair has grown enough that it no longer looks silly. 

Woo!  Well, anyway, the Benadryl made me very sleepy, which was kind of bad, since I was supposed to be watching the Toddler for S for a little while, but she got Girl Child to help me.  Well, until Girl Child got distracted and went to her room, at which point I held the Toddler on my lap on the big chair by the TV so he could watch Sprout and I could sort of sleep - I'd wake up every time he moved, so it worked pretty well.  Then S came back and I was able to sort of just sit and feel tired.

So that was yesterday.  Today has been pretty uneventful, but I haven't been awake all that long, and the most exciting thing that's happened is that a door to door salesman showed up and made the dogs bark.  There are links, though, because I'm tired of having a million tabs open on Firefox.

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Links Round-Up

Someone had an idea of how to help fix the economy, except that we all know that no bank would ever do this, because they care much more about profits than about fixing things.

The nurse that did this was a moron, and I hope like hell that none of the patients affected by this caught anything from her doing this.  Oh my god.

A woman who used to be a fashion merchandiser and is now a sociologist is committing to a year without mirrors, due to her fear that she will start having problems with her body image again.  It's kind of interesting.

Michele Bachmann is making more gaffes than I think Sarah Palin did.  This is one of the more idiotic things I've ever heard.  Especially since no one's god should have a place in government.

How the ink industry really works.  (Comic)

How Internet Explorer 10 should actually work, thus making it the best browser ever.  (Image)

Harry Potter and the VMAs

It's been a few days.  I haven't had much to say, really, so things have been boring!  Sorry!

Anyway, today I finally saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.  I was really irritated by some of the (unnecessary) changes that were made to the movie, including the HUGE plot change at the beginning of the Battle of Hogwarts.  I also cried from the point where Harry speaks briefly with Snape until just before the end of the battle.  I was really disappointed, though, all in all - they could have done it more justice.  I'm so glad Pottermore will be open in October, I'm looking forward to stuff that is actually canon.  At least I'll always have the books.

This afternoon was fairly uneventful - I got a migraine from a combination of lack of caffeine and attempting to stop crying and probably eyestrain and had to take a nap, had to suffer through a millionth viewing of a Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and heard a funny story about the Toddler.

The Toddler was not very pleased at being left behind when S dropped me off at the movie theater this morning.  (I went to the first showing they had available so it would be super cheap.)  When S got him ready to go pick me up, he ran to the door and said, "Me?  Meee?  Me!  Meee!"  When they got outside, he chanted "ME!" while looking everywhere for me before S told him that they had to go bye-bye to get me.  So he ran to the side of the car his car seat is on and tried to open the door himself.  Then he checked the car for me.  When I got in the car, he said, "Me!"  It was pretty cute.  He does the exact same thing, only with a lot more crying and screaming, whenever S leaves the house with M or to make a quick trip to the grocery store when he's awake and left in my care.  I imagine he also didn't spend the two hours I was gone asking for me, either, like he does when S is gone.  ("Ma?  Mom?  Ma?  Mama?  Ma?  Mom? Mommm!"  Imagine this protracted over the course of two hours, broken up by tantrums and staring at the television.)  Moral of the story?  Toddlers are a strange species.

I finally repolished my toenails tonight.  This is probably the most exciting thing I've done in weeks.  They're very dark, because it's getting to be fall and they should stay polished long enough for the weather to cool off so I can stop sweating profusely every time I move.  Fuck summer.  I had many problems polishing my toenails, too.  There was less than an ounce of nail polish remover left in the bottle, and Girl Child managed to lose her bottle, so I had to be very careful when using it to make sure I got all the old polish off on the first try.  Then, of course, the color I wanted to use died, so I grabbed the OPI bottle of black that was in the hallway, only to discover that the (almost completely full) bottle was permanently stuck shut.  J couldn't get it open when Girl Child asked him to earlier today, so he didn't even try when I asked him.  S saved the day with a different bottle of black that has reddish undertones, which was actually pretty cool and closer to what I was originally going for.

Speaking of sweating, S thinks I might have a thyroid problem.  Gahoogy-hoo.  I really need to get to a doctor sometime soon and figure out what all my myriad problems are.

Wearing my glow in the dark Toy Story shirt to the theater today would have been way more awesome if I'd ever been in a room that was actually completely black.  On the other hand, it is totally entertaining to get under the covers and look at my shirt.  Yes, I am easily entertained, and I do find it hilarious when Sunshine chases (and catches) her tail.

So tonight, after the nail polishing, S and I watched the MTV Video Music Awards.  What a waste of time that turned out to be.  I was so disappointed.  It was completely moronic, Lady Gaga was pretending to be a man again, which was really irritating, and the only good performance was Adele.  She was stunning.  Her nails were a little scary, though.  30 Seconds to Mars was nominated for Best Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing, which was why S wanted to watch it, but they didn't even show those on the broadcast.  And they didn't win.  I don't know who did, but that was pretty disappointing, especially since we got treated to a Lil Wayne performance before it immediately cut to the stupidest show I've ever had the misfortune to find myself watching in my life.  It was called I Just Want My Pants Back.  It was filmed very much in the style of another MTV show called Undressed, which was on in 1998, except with hipsters instead of college students.  Snarky hipsters who don't behave like any normal person I've ever seen.

Basically, MTV is a travesty, and really needs to find a new name for themselves, since I haven't even heard of a music video being featured on MTV in at least five years.  The whole thing was a train wreck.  One part that was good was when some guy I've never heard of named Rick Ross was in his "dressing room" in a pre-recorded segment, and he was painting and pretending to be Bob Ross.  That was absolutely hilarious.  "Happy little tree... right there.  Happy little trees."

Anyway.  I hope I never have the misfortune to ever have to watch MTV again for the rest of my life.  I don't care if that makes me old, I like quality music, and almost none of that was quality.  It was pulp.

I have a lot of links.  Because I am a lazy blogger.  Crap.

Links Round-Up Ahoy!  (Apparently it's a nautical edition.)

GameStop is a bunch of jackasses, and they'll be lucky if I ever set foot in one of their stores again after this stunt.  I might apply for a job with them, though, but I will never shop there.  I like my games unopened and unsullied, thanks.

Ron Paul finds FEMA unnecessary.  Oh boy.  I really do wonder which of the Republican candidates are going to terrify me into voting for Obama in the 2012 election, even though I was already pretty sure I was going to vote for him anyway unless someone truly awesome came along.

I'm disturbed by what some people label as unsafe.  I don't think radio waves are harmful.  I don't know why anyone ever would.  And of course this crazy woman is homeschooling her kids!  This is just as bad as that genderless baby.  I wonder if they're friends?

Corporations suck.  I want a job.  Fuck the fucking shareholders.

I love Bad Translator.

You know, I want to make a Jayne Cobb hat.  I would totally wear it.  I do not, however, think it is a good idea to cosplay as a Jayne Cobb hat.  What the hell.

Also, vote for my Rage Comic.  I really want to make the front page.

(This blog title was so easy!!  Haha!)

And now, I go to bed.

Overheating, Rage Comics, and Links

I'm overheating really easily today.  This is most unfortunate, because I can't move.  If I move, I break out in a sweat and feel sick.  So I can't do the laundry, or put the folded stuff away, or play with the Toddler, or do anything at all that requires any motion at all.  Typing is almost too much.  This is ridiculous.  It's only 85 degrees outside, and it's about 78 in the house!  (The A/C works unevenly - the bathroom and bedrooms feel fantastic, and the rest of the house is miserable.)

Anyway, I don't have the most exciting post ever here - not a whole lot has changed since yesterday.  As an example of how weird my memory is, J was talking about me being stressed over what happened yesterday before he went to bed this morning, and I was completely confused.  I'd forgotten about getting the boxes in the mail.  He looked at me like I was stupid until I remembered.  Wow.  Just wow.

The Toddler has taken to grabbing books off the bookshelves around the house at random and trying to destroy them.  He's already destroyed on of J and S's Robert Heinlein novels and S's copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.  We gave him a trash romance novel to play with so he'd leave them alone, but it's not much of a deterrent.

Today, I made a rage comic.  You should vote for it so it makes the front page.

I also have a ...

Link Round-Up!!

Florida forces welfare recipients to take drug tests, which backfires horribly, as only 2% of those on welfare tested positive.  Wonderful job, Florida.

Here's another case of too much paranoia in the airline industry.  As if terrorists will use airliners again.  At least, the serious terrorists probably won't.  I imagine they'll use some other means of major destruction to terrorize the government into removing more and more of our civil liberties.  I feel so sorry for the guy in the article.

I posted awhile back about a guy who wants to create a libertarian island nation in international waters.  I found an article with more information.  It still doesn't sound very promising.

Oh god, oh god, we're all gonna die!  Washington, D.C. had a minor earthquake.  WE WILL REBUILD.

A 12-year-old boy delivers his own baby brother after watching many hospital shows on television.  Is it a surprise to anyone that he wants to be a doctor when he grows up?

When a young Navy SEAL died, his dog was loyal to the end, even laying on the ground next to his casket at his funeral.  When I first read the article about it, I was worried the dog wouldn't have anyone to take him in, but the best friend of his owner has stepped up and given him a home.  Poor puppy, I feel so sorry for him.

Telemarketer Torture and Sad Memories

Today has been kind of weird.  I spent a good portion of the day talking to C, who I haven't really had the opportunity to talk to at great length in years due to circumstances, about recent and ancient history.  There aren't a whole lot of people that I talk to now who knew me well when I was a teenager, so it's a bit of a different experience.  I can't say E, LK, or JHB fit into that category - JHB never talks about much other than his interests, and I wasn't as close to him at the beginning of high school as I was to C. 

Anyway, talking to someone who knew me so well during that time period is a little weird in some ways, but it's also pretty awesome.  Anyway, that was the primary activity of the day, talking about all manner of subjects.  We basically picked up the friendship where it got left off in 2005, except with higher maturity levels.  It's different to talk to him now.  I can't explain why, as I'm in a weird state of mind and I'm having a hard time stringing a sentence together.

S tortured a telemarketer for 20 minutes today.  He wouldn't let her hang up, so it's his own fault.  He was really desperate for her to pay for a vacation to Branson.  Eventually the Toddler got bored, and this resulted in a lot of noise between me trying to contain him and him screaming, and it became a hilarious phone conversation with a really weird telemarketer who wouldn't let her hang up.  She kept telling him she didn't have money for that, and he'd suggest J was hiding money or that maybe I was hiding money, and suggested she tell the Toddler to go play in the sandbox and told her how he teases his kids with telling them to play in traffic.  Seriously crazy telemarketer.  Actually, at one point, I shouted at her that the kitchen was on fire in an attempt to get him to let her hang up.

The Toddler nearly broke the TV screen today because he decided to start smacking it.  Fun.

J woke up really early today, when I was laying the Toddler down for a nap, so once the Toddler got up, I was really excited, thinking I'd finally have the opportunity to fold the laundry in peace, but I only managed the kids' laundry before J came in to say he needed to take a nap, so I still have about five loads of laundry to fold.  Crap.

Today's been boring.  As usual.  I think I may watch Firefly again tonight while folding laundry so I can get it put the hell away.  Speaking of putting laundry away, I'm really annoyed with Girl Child, who won't let me put her laundry away and won't do it herself.  I had that dresser completely neat and she dumped everything out of it all over everywhere in her room.  And she's hogging a good basket because she won't put away the clothes I just folded for her.  Ridiculous.

I really need to get enough sleep consistently every night.  I'm always so tired.  And I'm having memory problems, which may or may not be related to lack of sleep.  I completely forgot what happened this morning.

My ex-fiance sent my stuff back to me from England, and it arrived this morning.  Two mugs I'd forgotten about (he forgot the fridge magnets, though, which upsets me a little, but I'll live), some clothes, a crocheting project I started in 2007 and never finished, a bathing suit that's way too small for me, a purse I'd forgotten about leaving there, and the bucket we collected seashells and sea glass in when we went to Scarborough.  This was the only thing that made me cry.  It was broken when it arrived, too, so it had to be thrown away.  The Toddler kept trying to steal it from me.  I hadn't expected it to be so painful, getting all that stuff back.

Anyway.  There's really not much to say after that.  It's really too bad this is such a depressing note to leave this on, but there isn't much more to say.  I feel like crap.  Today was just totally lame.  There were good parts, but my current state of mind says that today was a really dumb day.  I think I just need to sleep.  I'm just exhausted and kind of crabby.  Hopefully I'll have something interesting to write about in a day or two when I stop feeling like this.

Dog Baths and Head Injuries

Today has been extraordinarily boring.  Seriously, I've completely run out of internet.  S made an interesting dinner that she pulled out of her ass that's sort of modified chicken pot pie.  She made a ridiculous amount of it, too, so we're going to be eating it forever.  It was actually pretty tasty, even if it did have peas in it.  I hate peas, but I ate them anyway, because vegetables are important!

S and I are currently conspiring against the dogs to get them bathed tonight so they stop being such itchy puppies.  I think we have to clean up the floor and vacuum and Febreeze first, but then we're dragging each dog into the bathroom and making them suffer the indignity of a bath.  If S feels good enough, she's been in a lot of pain lately, poor thing.  We're going to have to break out the crutches again soon and make her use them so her foot will finish healing already.

I am easily entertained.  S and I just sat here making faces at each other for a minute or two.

The Toddler was a terror today.  I was watching him for awhile this afternoon, and it wasn't pretty.  I got his toy hammer for him, and he decided to hit me with it and wouldn't stop when I told him to stop, so I took it away.  I was going to leave it at that, but then he started screaming and hitting me, so he got a time-out for that, which was punctuated by attempted head-butting and more screaming and struggling.  Then, when I put the hammer on the bookshelf to take it from him for the afternoon (because of the hitting and screaming behavior when I took it away for hitting me with it), he started screaming and crying again and threw his cup across the room, so he got another time-out for that.  This was in the space of five minutes.  I also got my face crawled on today, but it was while we were playing, so I don't count those injuries as much.

I've gotten a lot of laundry done today, and should be almost done by tomorrow if I don't burn out again.  I definitely need to get to folding, which I'm going to try to get done pretty quick here before we clean the living room and bathe the dogs.

Today, Girl Child got PJ pants in her size that are the same pattern as the ones I just got, because S promised she'd get them for her this week.  It's a good thing I remembered, because there were only two pairs of those pants left at Wal-Mart, and only one was in Girl Child's size.  She was thrilled, though.  Of course, this will lead to lots and lots of mix-ups, just like with the lemon shirts.  Maybe less so, because it'll be ridiculously obvious that the pants don't fit if she accidentally steals mine.

Uh.. other stuff that happened today... Well, the Toddler fell on his head while we were at Wal-Mart.  He was really excited and running in the aisle we were in and ran right past S and around a corner, tripped over his own feet, and fell on his head so hard the floor reverberated.  He was very unhappy about that.  He also peeled a scab off his eyebrow and made the spot bleed all over again.  (The scab was from when he used his face to go down the stairs on the playground when we went to take storm pictures last weekend.)  The whole area is swollen all over again, poor baby.

I haven't really had the opportunity to play Final Fantasy X in about a week.  I've either been too tired or the Toddler has been around, and it's difficult to actually play when he's up because of constantly having to stop him from getting into stuff he shouldn't.  Plus, there's all that laundry.

So, basically, nothing interesting happened today.  There's a cricket somewhere in the house making way too much noise.  I hate crickets.  I'm also scared of them because of the jumping thing.  I just told it to die and it stopped chirping momentarily.

Today I decided I'm going to apply for a job at the Sara Lee plant.  I hope I get it.  At least it'll be a job, and if I manage to keep all my body parts and stuff, maybe I can find a job closer to home or something, unless it pays ridiculously well.

I have one link to share, so it's not exactly a link round-up.  Cracked has an article about things that stopped people from committing suicide, and it was actually really cool.  It was pretty sappy, too, but I like sappy.  I almost cried on the last one.  You should definitely go read it.

Broken Computer Redux and Other Crap

I had to switch computers yesterday morning.  The power switch stopped working on the one I've been using, so I'm back to the stupid Frankenstein computer.  I'm really frustrated - I've got a lot of stuff on there already that I don't have anywhere else, and my bookmarks on this computer are not updated to reflect the bookmarks on the other computer.  I guess this is what happens when I shut the computer down.  FML.

I slept most of the day yesterday because I woke up feeling awful.  I'm sucking today, too, but that's mostly because of the events of last night - there was a giant incident with Girl Child late last night after S went to bed and after I got the Toddler back in bed.  S won't want me to write too specifically about it, so I won't go into detail, but there was a lot of yelling and she's lucky that the police weren't called on her by the neighbors.  Also, as awesome as M is, he only made things worse by getting involved.  Let's just leave it with last night was very frustrating and stupid over something very simple, but I'm very proud of how J handled it when he got home from work this morning - he handled it beautifully.

But, partly because of last night, I only got about three hours of sleep, so I'm probably going to end up going back to bed soon.  Once I get actually sleepy, because I'm not feeling sleepy at all right now.

Before everything went all stupid last night, S and I watched a few episodes of The Joy of Painting, which causes hilarity to ensue rather often, because Bob Ross is kind of unintentionally hilarious sometimes.  I also made pudding from scratch last night and discovered that the recipe I used called for way more cornstarch than was necessary.  It tasted okay, but it was so thick and gelatinous that you could have rolled it into a ball and bounced it off the floor, so the texture was rather awful.  I actually dropped some on my shirt and it didn't even stick or stain or anything.  Yep.  Definitely way too much cornstarch.

My hair looks freaking terrific right now.  I am so never, ever using commercial shampoo and conditioner again.  I love the hell out of my hair right now.  I got a wide-tooth comb the other day to use in the shower, and it distributed the apple cider vinegar through my hair very nicely, and everything is all soft and perfect.

Anyway, I have a couple pictures to share.  I'd have links, too, but without my bookmarks from the other computer, I don't have any of them available and will have to collect others later today.

This is my awesome lemon shirt.  Girl Child has the same shirt in her size.  This leads to confusion on her part.

I discovered I was followed into the bedroom when I was taking the picture of my shirt, and found the Toddler, who had climbed on the bin of his spare toys and was just sitting there.  Yes, his face is hidden on purpose.

This is the Toddler.

I just ate a pile of bacon, so this morning just got transferred to the best morning ever.  Because bacon does that.  I love bacon.

Laundry, Tattoos, Video Games, and Politics

So, this is kind of a boring post until after the links round up, so if you don't care about my daily life or what tattoos I want, just skip to that part.

I went crazy sorting the laundry last night and organized it by type. Girl Child and I now share a hamper for what she doesn't wash herself and all my stuff, the Toddler has his own hamper for his clothes and sheets and stuff, and J and S each have their own basket because a lot of their stuff dirty right now. I'd intended to combine it, but that was impossible. Today, I have washed all the towels in the house and all of the Toddler's clothes, and am currently working on a mixed load of sheets and other random household stuff, plus one of M's towels that S borrowed last night because we were out of towels. I'm such a slacker. I also folded a ton of laundry yesterday evening between the time J got up and the Toddler went to bed, so I also got to have loud music and lots of really loud singing. This coincided with Girl Child doing some dishes, so there was also presumably singing coming from the kitchen, so I can only imagine what the living room sounded like for J and S. Haha.

I just switched out the plastic drawer bin that has been the Toddler's toybox for the last several months for two of my totes that had all my yarn and crocheting supplies in them - now my yarn is in the drawers (the only thing that didn't fit was the pillows I still haven't made covers for) and his toys are in one bin, and he's currently in the other bin. It'll have his stuffed animals in it later, once he goes to bed.

I finally returned one of my library books today, and discovered that I can't use the self-check or place holds online anymore because of my fines. Fail. But I can still check stuff out, so long as I don't accrue fines, so I'm going to check to see if the hold on the Nora Roberts book I've been wanting to read is still intact, because I would be very upset if I lost my place in line. It'd be my own fault, though. (I just checked - I still have my position, and I'm in 17th place, so my hold should become available in a week or two, yay!)

I've been working on a list of things the Toddler is really quirky about lately. He can't stand having a door be open, for instance. If he finds a door that is open, he must close it. This is most unfortunate when it's the bathroom door when the doorknob has fallen out of it, because this makes the person using the bathroom unable to get out of it without assistance if they happen to forget to take the knob in with them.  (Me.)  He also has a compulsive need to close any drawers that he finds open, but he also needs to open my dresser and "rearrange" my clothing. This usually means that my clean clothes get put in the dirty laundry sometimes, or he'll randomly put dirty clothes in my dresser. Sometimes it kind of sucks to have my dresser in the hallway, but at least I have it at all. He also can't stand it when S's computer goes to a screensaver - he'll run over and move the mouse or hit keys until it stops. He also hates it when the laptops are partially open. He'll either try to open it (potentially flipping it off the TV tray), or he'll slam it closed. He's also taken to demanding that the baby monitor be turned off if he sees that it's on when he's not in bed, and demanding that it be turned on when he's about to go to bed.

Now, some of these behaviors can get really irritating sometimes, but mostly they're just rather hilarious, and they're interesting personality quirks that make me wonder what he'll be like when he's older. I love that kid.

Recently, I made a list of all the tattoos I want for a Facebook meme that I still haven't done - it turns out that I actually want quite a bit more tattoos than I thought I did! I designed a celestial symbol about two years ago that I want on my left arm, and I'm going to put a Jecht symbol right above it (Final Fantasy X and X-2). On my right arm, I'm going to get those Chinese symbols done that S reproduced for me, in right about that spot. On my back, at the base of my neck, I'm getting the sign of the Deathly Hallows, and below that, I'm getting the Royal Crest from the Legend of Zelda games. I'm getting an owl right above my right ankle, and S designed a viney thing for me a few months ago, but I'm not sure where I want it yet. I'm also thinking about getting a penguin to match my owl for my other leg, possibly some stars on my right foot, and maybe an ankh somewhere. Wow, tattoo-tastic!

I like making lists.

Today's been pretty decent. Girl Child left for her great-grandmother's this morning, even though the poor thing is getting her wisdom teeth in and is in a ridiculous amount of pain. I think she's pretty excited about it, though. Maybe. I got her to put her clothes away for me before she left, which makes me happy, because now I'm not going to be without a basket until she comes home. I also worked on her file for Final Fantasy X because she never activated the Celestial Mirror and was all the way to Yunalesca and was unable to defeat her. I've also gotten everyone but Kimahri in overdrive mode (I never, ever use Kimahri unless I'm being forced to), and leveled everyone up a little bit - I may run around a bit more for her later so Lulu will have Flare, because it's nice to be able to do non-elemental damage! The Toddler's been exceptionally obnoxious today, partly because his nap consisted of sleeping on me for about twenty minutes.

Honestly, I don't know if today was decent or just boring. It's mostly been laundry, video games, and temper tantrums.  However, last night I discovered I can lift Girl Child over my shoulder and carry her around like I'm a fireman.  She weighs about 130 pounds and is taller than me.  I AM SUPERMAN SUPER WOMAN!!!  Holy crap, I am strong.  I had no idea.  I still can't hold a gallon of milk in my hand very long, or do anything that requires wrist strength because I simply lack the muscles in my wrists, but my back and upper arms are very strong... apparently.  (I discovered this after Girl Child was poking me incessantly, and decided to try to pick her up and carry her across the room and put her somewhere... and I could.)

I have a few links to post, and some of them have sparked outrage for me.


Links Round-Up

Okay, this makes me angry.  Really, really FUCKING angry.  This man is more concerned with making Obama a one-term president than he is in trying to fix some of the royally fucked up problems this country is having.  Seriously, your primary goal is to get Obama out of the White House?  What about raising taxes to get us out of this mess of debt?  What about some true educational reform instead of this No Child Left Behind bullshit?  I don't want fucktards like this running my country.  He doesn't give two flying shits about the debt ceiling or the economy disintegrating before our very eyes, he just wants to get rid of a president that seems like he actually cares and wants to bring some true change so he can just keep his cush, two days a week job doing a bunch of bullshit and generally being a corrupt asshole.

Speaking of Congress being a two day a week job, Congress decided to go on a month-long vacation without doing anything about the FAA's complete lack of funding.  A political writer and blogger wrote a speech he's dying to see Obama give to Congress for their complete lack of responsibility.  I have to say, I quite agree with him, and honestly, I think the whole political system needs a complete overhaul.  Just because it worked 250-ish years ago, does not mean it works now.  I am really unhappy with politicians not caring what the people they're supposed to represent want, because I thought that that was what they were there for, not to pursue their own agenda.  I say we get rid of Congress and all those other corrupt people and just have a lot of voting days where the American public gets to vote on the issues at hand and decide for themselves how they want the country to be.  Seriously.

In other outrage-tastic news, Fox News apparently thinks giving battered women the help they will need to get out of those situations and providing easy access to proper women's healthcare is as frivolous as getting a pedicure.  Really?  Really?!  I am so angry at these people.

I feel so bad for this girl, and cannot believe the school district is standing behind this.  I hope she wins a big fat settlement and goes to an awesome college and becomes their bosses and fires the shit out of them.

I don't know who I feel more sorry for in this case, the little girl who was kidnapped and adopted fraudulently, the couple who adopted her that apparently didn't know she was kidnapped, or her birth mother, who has missed the last five years of her kid's life.  (Also, the girl's adoptive parents are from the North Kansas City area, which was a bit shocking to me, as it came completely unexpectedly.)

And, for a palate cleanser, here are some awesome storm cloud pictures from Canada.

Today Was Obnoxious

I didn't end up posting yesterday partly because I had nothing to say, but also because I ended up getting sick toward the end of the evening. At that point, I decided it would be better to just forget it and not write anything.

I'm feeling better today, no ill effects, but today was obnoxious nonetheless. Why? Because the Toddler decided the best way he could spend his time today was to be as obnoxious as possible. I love the kid, but jeez. There was banging, doorknob removal, hitting, kicking, and general destruction, part of which caused about five extra loads of laundry. Woo. (I figure S would be a bit displeased to discover that I wrote explicitly about how there came to be so much extra laundry or what exactly he did today, so I'm not explaining it. Ha.)

After all that, he also didn't bother to nap. Because obviously, that's the last thing he could ever possibly want to do. He's been driving us crazy all day, and without a break. At least he's really cute.

Today, Girl Child was supposed to go visit her great-grandmother four hours away, and some relatives that were on the way down were going to pick her up and take her. Unfortunately, the driver ended up feeling very sick and they all got stranded in the middle of nowhere at a gas station an hour into the trip, and then Girl Child started to feel sick again (she's been sick lately), so she wanted S to come pick her up, but S couldn't, so Girl Child is spending the night at the relative's house and being picked up in the morning. Poor kid, what bad luck.

Today just hasn't been good for anybody in this house, not even the dogs - when the relatives came to pick Girl Child up, Shadow went outside just fine, but Sunshine wouldn't, and tried to escape again, so I ended up carrying her away from the door, all 80 pounds of her, before I could get Girl Child to get me a leash so I could have a more reliable method of restraining the idiot. Apparently Sunshine has forgotten that the reason she's been so scared for the last 6 weeks is because she got hit by a damn car. It is very hard to restrain a dog like that, especially one that is as muscular and energetic as Sunshine.

On the subject of No 'Poo, I think I'm going to end up changing my washing schedule for whenever the hell I feel like it. Because while I think OCD, I am not OCD in my actions. So I'm washing my hair tonight instead of tomorrow because I did it wrong on Saturday.

It is really hot here right now. It's so hot that the air conditioner can't keep up. I hate summer and I hate heat waves, and I wish this would just end already, because I am so ready for fall to get here, preferably in a nice cold rain with fallen leaves. I love that part of the year, when the leaves are falling and it rains and it's only about 60 degrees, maybe even 50, and it's denim jacket weather (which reminds me, I still need to replace the one I lost a few years ago), and it's all so beautiful and nostalgic. I really, really love October, especially when it's a wet October.

Sometimes I kind of wish I'd stayed in Washington, just for the weather, but then I remember that I had no friends and was completely miserable and I'm glad I came back. I wouldn't mind moving somewhere with similar weather, though. Seattle's weather is very similar to the UK in the winter - it's usually about 40 degrees and it doesn't usually snow, just rains.

Blah, blah, blah, lots of inconsequential nonsense. I'm not doing too well, I'm really overheated at the moment, so my brain isn't working correctly.

Today I finally moved about 100 gigs of my stuff from J's computer to mine.  Woo!  I have so many pictures.  Oh my god.

Anyway, tonight I think I'll put on a movie and ... stuff?



Links Round-Up!!


Apparently dolphins like to play frisbee with jellyfish.  And wear them as hats.  There are pictures.

"She was my wife!  She's still spitting out hairballs!"

Health insurers will soon have to cover birth control and other things without a copay thanks to a new Department of Health and Human Services policy in Washington.

Vocaloids are really cool.

Despite what I said about loving Washington's weather, the fact that the state has the highest rate of parents skipping vaccinations for their children makes me too uncomfortable to want to raise children there.

There is such a high instance of domestic violence in one county in Indiana that the women's shelters there are now having to enact waiting lists.

Deadbeat dads affected by the BP oil spill won't be seeing their disaster relief payments anytime soon.

Switcheroos and Baking Soda

I am so lazy! I've been having a hard time finding the desire to write anything. Really, all I'd like to do at the moment is a whole fat lot of nothing. Or sleep. My dark circles have bags. Even when I get enough sleep, I look exhausted.

I haven't done anything more with that essay about abortion that I talked about - I've been busy ignoring it in favor of things that require much less brainpower. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my brain has just completely deteriorated to a point where I'll never be able to think deeply again. That's kind of a scary thought, so maybe now I need to work on that essay and post it.

I'm listening to my favorite song by M at the moment, which is making it hard to sit and type everything out because it's so beautiful that I want to sit with my eyes closed and just listen to it.

Last night, I switched from my poor Frankenstein of a computer (which I never posted any photos of) to S's old XPS that used to be J's a few years ago. S inherited M's XPS (they're actually almost the exact same computer, except M's old computer has a better processor and RAM but a smaller hard drive than the other XPS), so I get a computer that I can actually keep most of my crap on, but now I can't play the Sims, unless I turn this one off and put it somewhere safe and hook the other one up with its eight thousand cables, because the optical drive on this one is broken from J dropping it so much. However, this computer has a much better, and less broken, keyboard. It's also faster, has Windows 7 instead of XP, and it's prettier. Not to mention, I could theoretically take it places with me that allow me to use the electricity, since the battery does not work at all. And I can close it if I need to, which is nice and something I've definitely missed. Anyway, I was intending on formatting this computer before using it, but then discovered that because the optical drive only works sporadically, it can't reinstall Windows (or run the Sims, since you need the disc to play if you don't want to play pirated copies), so what I've done instead is delete all of S's old files, reconfigure all of her settings and basically change absolutely everything to suit me. It's almost like having it be mine, except that it says Users>S-- instead of Users>L--, which just bothers the hell out of me, but honestly, if that's all I've got to complain about, I'll take what I can get.

Anyway, so lots of excitement surrounding the transference of computers - I'm keeping the Frankenstein as a way to play the Sims until I manage to acquire one with a functioning optical drive and other good parts, and this also means transferring my music library over - that's almost 18 gigs of music! And I have to completely resort it and delete all the stuff that I only deleted out of iTunes last time, because it's all back now since I never deleted the source files. (Over 1,000 songs, actually, that I'm going to have to go and find and delete. Oh joy.) Then I have to readd my audiobooks and fix all of them as well, probably, knowing my luck. Maybe it'll let me fix the chapter titles so they don't suck anymore, though, because a lack of formatting makes my head want to explode. And I need to find a better copy of Order of the Phoenix, as the one I've got is missing the end of the chapter The Woes of Mrs. Weasley.

Well, that's probably enough bitching about how disorganized I am and how much work I'm going to have to do in iTunes before I can even attempt to sync my iPod, so in other news, S and I are going to be trying out this "No 'Poo" thing that I found on a blog, which sounds completely awesome - basically, we won't be using store-bought shampoo or conditioner on our hair anymore, but a mixture of baking soda and water (and after J gets paid, we'll also be adding essential oils to give it a scent) for shampoo every few days and apple cider vinegar with water for conditioner, though just on the ends at first. Funnily enough, I found this not by searching for ways to stop using shampoo, but to find ways to make my hair healthier with food items, out of a combination of curiousity and frustration at how pathetic and weird my hair is. And because I just joined a long hair forum, hoping for some information that I might find helpful in growing my hair out. Anyway, I found this blog after a bit of googling, and it sounds like an absolutely terrific idea, especially after I got a load of her before and after pictures - her before picture had her hair looking dry and weird and poofy with this weird wave, and in the after picture, her hair was tame and soft and silky-looking, and it had darkened, too, to a shade of brown that she apparently was in love with.

Anyway, I've devised a schedule of how often I'm going to use the baking soda mixture on my hair, and I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to use the ACV every time I wash my hair or every other time. The way I've drawn up the schedule looks as if I'll be washing my hair on Saturday, Tuesday, Friday, Monday, Thursday, Sunday, Wednesday, and then back to Saturday again, in a nice little cycle, so there'll be two days between each washing. I don't know if I'm going to need to move them closer or not - you're supposed to just rinse your hair with warm water in the shower on the days you don't wash it. It's going to be an interesting first week, though - the first 10 days or so apparently involve some truly horrific hair days while the scalp stops being all weird and re-regulates the natural oil production, which is basically the purpose of this experiment. I'm going to give it about a month and see how I like it by the end of August, and if it ends up looking okay, that's just how I'm going to wash my hair from now on. Hopefully, I'll never need to use a styling product again.

I'm really excited about this! I've read one account of someone's hair falling out in clumps, but 90% of them say that after the natural oils of the scalp regulated, they were so happy with it that they'd never go back. Also, some people discovered that they had curly hair, or straight hair, or another entirely different hair type than they previously thought, and it cuts out frizz almost completely. Also, if this works and we keep at it, we're going to save SO much money in the long run - we use a lot of shampoo and conditioner right now, and it'll be nice to only have to buy a box of nice, cheap baking soda instead of shampoo and conditioner for every person in the house, if J and Girl Child switch to it as well. Actually, I'm doubtful that Girl Child will make the switch, since it's so close to the start of the school year, but J probably will, if it does good things for our hair. I'm hoping M will make the switch, too, from what I've read, it does amazing things for people with very curly hair, and I think he'd be very happy.

Today, we went on errands involving the Kansas Department of Revenue - specifically getting the car registered and going to get Girl Child her first state ID and to get my instruction permit so I can work on driving and get my license. Unfortunately, I'm listed as having suspended driving privileges, so I couldn't get my permit today, or take the test, or do anything but be hung up on by customer service in Topeka. So I'm calling tomorrow morning, after I call the other relevant places to get more information on why this happened. Hopefully, it'll be quickly resolved with little effort on my part and I'll get my permit on Tuesday or something. If I'm lucky and it doesn't turn out that my driving privileges are suspended for life or something ridiculous.

In D&D news, we're starting another new game what W is going to run, and I'm going to try out being a rogue.  Basically, I'm a fancy beat-stick, but it's still a slight departure from the norm, and since I'm not all that good at the roleplay aspect as of yet, that's the best I can do right now.  I decided to name my new rogue Zoe, and S told me that I'd damn well better live up to the name and be a Big Damn Hero.  It should be interesting with W running - I've never actually played a game with him running, because LW was born right as he was about to start running the last game that I was going to participate with him as DM, and we basically had to give that campaign up after one session.  So, yeah, I'm a little nervous, as from what S has said, W's games are usually something that turns into a Lovecraftian horror.  Anyway, because J's work schedule is changing, we're moving game from Saturdays to Mondays, which is handy, because that is the day I'll be watching LW every week, so we'll be able to get started sooner since they won't have to drive all the way out to Raytown to pick him up before even getting here.

I applied for a job with the county a day or two ago, I can't remember for what position right now (it's in my email, so it's not like I'll be totally clueless if they actually called me), and I'm intending on applying to be an election worker, so maybe that'll help me get a normal job.  The permit thing is going to cause me problems, though, but maybe not too many.

I don't really have anything further to add, so I'm going to go and be very frustrated with iTunes now.

Also, thanks to The Bloggess, I now want a scary metal chicken sculpture.

The Rambliest Post Ever

So I haven’t bothered writing a post at all this week. This week has kind of sucked. I’ve been completely sleep-deprived for the last two or three days, and we’re out of cigarettes (and I’m not sure if we’re getting more or if only J is going to be smoking from now on), so I’m a real treat to be around right now.

I’ve almost completely finished all the laundry that was taken downstairs, though, so as long as I maintain it a little better, we won’t end up with a laundry mountain taking over the hallway again.

I spent three days working on a new Sharpie art piece - I don't have a photo of the completed version (and I'm not entirely sure I'm happy with the completed version), but I do have a photo of it as it was right before I finished it off.

I haven't decided if I want to call this anything or not.  It now has a few more ribbons of yellow and some more stars and a black background.

I've also got photos of the crazy line drawing and the slightly schizophrenic-looking one that I'm pretty sure I've already mentioned previously.  I'm going to put those in the photo gallery instead, though, I think.  The crazy picture up above I'm thinking about uploading to DeviantArt as a work in progress photo since it's been months since I added anything to my profile.

Anyway, Thursday and yesterday were particularly bad in this incredibly fun week.  Girl Child had a friend over for a sleepover, which wasn't a problem, she's actually been working on cleaning her room, so S said she could have her over.  The problem came when Girl Child basically seems to have decided that since her friend is over, she can treat me any way she wants, regardless of the fact that I am an adult and she is not.  So the last two days have been nothing but us sniping at each other because I've finally cracked.  She completely overreacts to everything I say and do, even when I'm being perfectly lovely to her, so I'm done trying to be nice, at least until she adjusts her damn attitude and starts showing me some respect, because I'm sick of her crap.

Today, S and the Toddler are going out to meet up with a friend of S's, AC, for a little while, since it's been awhile since they've seen each other.  He's almost doubled in size (or at least it seems that way to me) since AC last saw him in October. 

Sunshine is slowly starting to get back to normal, so maybe she won't need to be put down after all.  She's sort of started wagging her tail again, and wagging her butt sometimes, too.  Unfortunately, she's also started being food aggressive toward Shadow again, even when he's nowhere near the food.  And for fuck's sake, we don't starve her!  There is always food available.  Dumbass dog.

My hair is about as long as it was in March of 2010, so I'm a little over a year behind where I would have been if I hadn't ever cut it, so at least there's that.  In about another year, it'll be waist-length, so in about two years, it'll be about to where I want it.  It's starting to look thicker, so maybe this not-dyeing thing is working out for me.

I don't particularly have anything of substance I want to write about.  I'm feeling particularly anti-social today.

I'm hoping to soon be able to get my learner's permit so I can start to get the hang of driving again - I discussed it with S a week or so ago and mentioned that if I got it in July, I could try for my license in October - I'm hoping to have my license before next spring, because S is planning on having a medical procedure done that would render her unable to drive for over a month, and the entire household would disintegrate if she didn't have a substitute driver.  Seriously, no bills would get taken care of, we would starve and die, J would never again get a prescription filled, and the car would eventually run out of gas or something.  Of course, we'd have starved and died by then, but still.  So it would probably be preferential for me to have a license so I can help in that way - plus, that would enable me to have a bit more independence - I could also get a job further away once I find a job nearby that I can use to get enough money to buy a car.

I was so angry at the couch the other night that I coated it in tape so it would stop falling on me.  I hate sleeping on it, we were supposed to get a new couch four months ago, but shit kept happening and we never were able to get one.  So I took a roll of packing tape that I had downstairs from a move and taped the cushion fabric to the top of the couch frame.  I think, since S and the Toddler are out of the house, I may remove the tape and nail it up there for a more permanent solution, at least until we get a new couch.  We're basically going to have to completely take this couch apart when we get rid of it to find all the crap we've lost inside of it.

This week has been crap.  The only reason I sound so damn cheerful half the time is because that's just how I sound these days - I don't think there's a power in the 'verse could stop me being cheerful for long.  This is what happens when you decide that you are going to be happy no matter what.  Eventually you stop trying to seem happy and just are happy.  And funnily enough, after writing all this down, I'm a lot less cranky and angry than I was when I started, so maybe that's another little nugget of wisdom I've learned: don't bottle everything up, find an outlet.

The weather here is awful, I wish it was winter again.  All my clothes that look good on me are too warm for me to wear unless it's 20 degrees outside.  It's currently over 90, and even with the air conditioning on, I feel like I'm melting.  I'm wearing my oldest, rattiest pajama pants and an ancient t-shirt, so I should be fine, but my stupid body is convinced that it's actually on fire.  (I've had these pajama pants since 8th grade, actually - I got the set specifically for pajama day at Sumner, and the only reason I can still wear them is because the elastic is basically exploded.)

I love the music that M makes - this particular song simultaneously makes me feel like my heart is swelling and makes me think of Jurassic Park.  What a combination.

I'm experimenting with not messing with my fingernails at all unless they get a snag, and am working on breaking myself of the only relic of biting my nails - sucking on them.  They're still very thin and bendy, and I hope they eventually get hard if I stop putting them in my mouth and idly playing with them, but right now they're like kitten claws - flexible and sharp.

Yesterday, S and I were introduced to a new way to play the Bad Translate game by my friend CN.  There's an online tool that does the translation transitions for you, so 10 translations, 20, 30, 40, 50, or 56 - and there are often hilarious results.  S and I spent most of yesterday playing with it, writing stream of consciousness passages, nonsensical sentences, and weird phrases to see what we would get.  For example, if you input, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," and tell it to translate that sentence 50 times, it comes back with, "Fox Brown cloth."  I don't know what the hell that's supposed to mean, but it's pretty funny.

I require more coffee and I am interested to see if we have any canned pumpkin in the house at all, because I'm interested in completely winging a pumpkin cake.  Since I'm awesome like that.  I just wish I wasn't so tired.  I hope today doesn't suck as much as yesterday did.

Mom's "Morales"

My mother has this incredible power to irritate the piss out of me.  I posted a status on my Facebook about how New York just made gay marriage legal.  Because, y’know, people should get to marry whoever they want, saying marriage is between one man and one woman is a little biblical for my taste when it comes to my government.  I mean, don’t marry your dog, that’s just weird, but love shouldn’t be restricted by a bunch of arbitrary rules made by people who are too puritanical to see that love comes in many forms.

Anyway.  I posted about being happy that gay marriage will soon be legal in New York.  My mother decided this meant I was a lesbian.  And since she does this to me occasionally, whenever I post about anything outside the “norm” that I happen to approve of, I toyed with her a bit.  She had the nerve to tell me that she hopes I’m not planning on marrying a woman (I’m not), and that she still wants grandchildren from me and hopes I marry a man.

My problems with this involve the fact that she assumes that I have to get married to reproduce and that she has a problem with the concept of me being a lesbian.  Of course, she first thought I was in New York (all my status said was basically “yay New York!”), but once I corrected that and explained what my status was about, she just had to say that she hoped I wouldn’t get into a relationship with a same sex partner, due to the desire for grandchildren.  Not that she’d see them all that often, due to her often having CRAZY TIME.  But anyway, this comment thread degenerated into an argument about how if I get pregnant out of wedlock, we’re having a shotgun wedding and how my “morales” are wrong.

No.  No no no no no.  See, if my morals were a problem, I wouldn’t care about anyone but myself.  I would steal, murder, and do... other things.  (Apparently, I’ve gotten so good at being a good person that I can’t even think of things that would be horrible.)  Also, I informed her that she can’t legally make me do anything, and that includes getting married if I choose not to be, and that marriage is not necessary for a stable, loving relationship, nor is it necessary for the purpose of raising a happy, healthy, well-adjusted child.  Her idea of “proper” and mine are apparently completely different, though it’s not like I particularly care about “proper” so much.

Then she accused me of being the anti-christ.  Well, she said she didn’t raise me to be anti-Christ, which is what I think she meant.  And now I will quote myself:

“I do not believe in your dear and fluffy lord. God is a myth. God has no bearing on how I live my life. I live my life for me, and do my best to be a good person to the people in my life. I do my best to be kind and supportive to those around me. I do not murder people, do drugs, commit genocide, or anything horrible. I believe everyone deserves to live with equality, whether they're transgender, gay, straight, bi, black, white, or purple.

And it's not like you exactly raised me, so you can't pull that card here. If I want to become a mother without being saddled with a man who will want to change me, there is nothing wrong with that. I will not be hurting anyone.

I will not live my life by an arbitrary set of rules dictated by people who have nothing better to do than orchestrate other peoples' lives for them. Your god's rules do not apply to me. I will make my own rules, my own moral code, with which to live by, because I am not going to go through life feeling guilty for every damn thing I do.”

It is my choice how I live my life.  Fortunately, I want to be a good person, not even necessarily do some good in the world, I’m only one person, but I care about more than just me.  This is just one in a series of incidents with my mother that makes me angry.  She has blamed me for every problem she’s had for years: she couldn’t have more kids, her marriage is falling apart, her husband’s health is failing, she can’t manage her own finances, her husband can’t manage to stop drinking, she lost her job, her husband lost his job, their house was foreclosed.  All of these are at least partly my fault, if you ask her.  I’m so fucking sick of that crap.  None of that was my fault.  I was only twelve years old when I moved in with them.  I didn’t force whiskey down his throat, I didn’t give her a medical problem that ended her ability to have children, I didn’t mess up their marriage, I didn’t force them to stop paying their bills.

This is the one area of my life that I am bitter about, and I am not happy to be bitter.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this anymore. 

The Longest Week That Ever Was

So we're officially not going to be playing the D&D campaign we've been playing anymore, because W and A haven't been able to consistently show up on time in weeks.  I know they're busy, but ...

I'm just really disappointed.  I was really excited about this campaign and interested in seeing how the story would play out, and I'm upset that I may never get to find out what happens next, especially as I was actually starting to get sort of good at playing.

Anyway.  Today has been kind of a bad day - the car broke, and they're having to have that fixed this weekend in anticipation of J going to work on Tuesday.  He's got Sunday and Monday off, though, for Father's Day and J and S's wedding anniversary.  I'm going to be taking the kids on a long walk/trip to the park, and texting to see if the coast is clear before we return.  Lots of water we will need.  Yes.

I'm still in a lot of pain from the whole "let's risk my life for Sunshine thing" - I damaged the plantar fascia tendon in both feet because of sprinting in untied shoes without arch support.  I didn't do near as much damage as S did to her foot in May, but it's quite enough to be going on with, especially with all the muscle pain and the other tendon pain I'm experiencing from that.  At least I know I can still sprint when I need to, I guess.  Oh, and for extra fun, I've finally started menstruating again after three months.  (I know, squick, sorry.)  I'm worried there's something wrong with me, but it could also be my weight or how stressful the last three years have been, or maybe something got broken when I had the miscarriage in 2009.  I don't know.  I hope it's just being all funky for no reason, though.  That'd be nice.

Sunshine seems to be doing a little better.  She's still being much more timid than usual, and she can't wag her whole butt at all right now (though she wags just the end of her tail a little bit when we pet her right after giving her her meds), but she's been a bit less stiff today, which I'm going to take as a good sign.  Also, I've discovered that since she can't scratch her own itches at all right now, if I scratch her ears, I can make her moan, which is hilarious.  I love those damn dogs so much.  Shadow's just been himself, though I think he's being a bit more gentle with Sunshine now than he was on Thursday - he tried to play with her and flipped her onto her back and she screamed, it was scary.  Anytime someone happens to say "where is it" about anything at all, he comes running, thinking we've got the laser out.

Today was pretty boring, actually, beyond the whole car thing.  It feels like that didn't even happen today because today has been such a long day, even though nothing really happened today at all.  I've been particularly tired all day (espresso didn't even help), and rather moody as well.  I'm sure I'm just a barrel of laughs right now.

W and A were here for a couple of hours without LW because he's actually visiting his mother for once this weekend, and we just hung out because J couldn't even remember what he wanted to do for the dungeon we were about to go into.  I don't know why he didn't write it all down like he did the last one, but whatever floats his boat, I guess.

I'm worried about C.

I haven't been sleeping well at all the last few weeks.  I'm always tired, but I can't seem to fall asleep, and once I manage to get to sleep, I sleep so lightly that everything wakes me up, so I'm barely getting any sleep at all, and that's not helping my mood, so I've been probably a bit unnecessarily cranky lately.

This week feels like it's been about three weeks long.

Sunshine Follow-Up and Other Stuff

So, after the last post, I was left with a lot of uncertainty.  We weren't able to take Sunshine in to see the vet until this morning, and S and Girl Child took her because I had to stay home to watch the Toddler.  When they talked to S, they told her that if Sunshine's tail was actually broken at the base, it could have caused nerve damage that hadn't developed yet that might render her permanently incontinent, at which point we'd have to have her put down if it wasn't possible to repair.

That... was pretty devastating to hear.  S came home with Girl Child from the vet's this morning a lot earlier than I expected her, because she had to leave Sunshine there, and that's when she told me all this.

A lot of the day was spent being really morose, not to mention physically exhausted (I'm pretty sure I bruised a rib with the wire of my bra when I tackled Sunshine yesterday, not to mention all the other pain I'm in from running like that), and I ended up curling up with Shadow on the floor and crying on him for awhile.

The vet called this afternoon, and they said that Sunshine has no cracks or breaks in any of her bones, and couldn't find the source of her bleeding (she may have peed on my leg and had some blood in her urine from the trauma or bitten her tongue, there's no way of knowing, since I had to tackle her twice to catch her) - but she's going to be fine.  We're not going to have to put her down, and she'll even be able to wag the Tail of Doom again in a few weeks once she's all healed up.  She's just very bruised and stiff and achy.

I'm so relieved.  J and S picked her up from the vet this evening after J's doctor's appointment, while I was baby-sitting the kids (that's a long story all by itself).  The vet gave her some narcotics for the pain (and they had to sedate her for x-rays), and she was wagging her tail at the vet's office, too.  Apparently she's very happy when she's on doggie narcotics, S said she was totally chilled out and delighted to see her and J.  They've got her on prescription doggie naproxen (anti-inflammatories that are chewable and meat-flavored), and she's doing a little better, though she seems stressed.  She's sleeping under the high chair right now, which she's been doing a lot since yesterday - trying to hide under things.  Damn dog thinks she's a cat.  Well, she's the biggest damn cat I've ever seen.

 Here's a picture of Sunshine from tonight.

Sunshine is hiding under the high chair, looking a little stressed, and very pretty.

Anyway, J and S were out for several hours, so I was home alone with the kids, which would have been fine, but.  There's always a but.  Why is there always a but?  The Toddler was an angel the whole time, it was wonderful and refreshing.  He did as he was told, he was as obedient as toddlers ever get, he didn't throw any tantrums or grab anything he wasn't supposed to.  Girl Child, however, started off really nice, then threw a tantrum when I told her to turn down the TV so the Toddler could nap and just gave me attitude for the rest of the day.  God.  If it's not one kid, it's the other.  She's had an attitude adjustment since her parents got home, so maybe that was her way of letting off steam about Sunshine or whatever, but I would really like it if she'd, you know, behave.  At least it's been awhile since she's been like that - we've been getting along great the last few weeks, so that's a huge improvement over how she'd been over the last several months.

So that's my day today.  Emotionally and physically exhausting.  I feel so drained, and so relieved.  I've been mostly giving Sunshine her space, due to the stress I imagine she feels about having had to go to the vet and have her butt messed with so much, so I've only pet her a little bit and taken some pictures of her pretty face.

I just wish I could get the mental image of her being hit by that car out of my head.