Advice is, keep your advice.

The subject of my latest diatribe is advice. More specifically, unsolicited advice. It is something I am sometimes guilty of; offering unsolicited advice. But I must say in my defense, I offer it with a sense of necessity, not out of some misplaced, smug, superior state of mind. And we ALL have that friend or other, that family member that sits in passive-aggressive judgment of you at any given chance, spewing out sanctimonious words that are completely useless and utterly irritating.

My advice usually comes when one of my friends brings some crisis or other to me. Often, it is a personal issue, of something common to my experience. When it is about surviving depression, about family dysfunction, responsibility, relationships, abuse; when it is coming from someone I truly care about, I often find myself offering fixes rather than just listening.  Being a chronic advice-giver can sometimes mean you are a shittier listener than you think you are. Again, when you have traveled that same road many times, and have met that oncoming semi truck, face-on, and have the scars to prove it, and you see a loved one running towards that same place; hell-bent on the idea that they will somehow have a different outcome, and think they know better… well, to be expected to just sit there and merely mirror their feelings and nod while they careen towards disaster, into the path of that forsaken truck; it's a lot to ask. It is a symptom of love in this case. All you want to do is protect that person from your fate. But in truth, advice is moot, because if they’re going to do something stupid, there really isn’t much of a chance to stop someone from doing it. I have to learn this. I really do have to learn this.

Then, you have the people who just always have something to say about everything. It doesn’t matter. Diet, child-rearing, hobbies, you name it. And not when their input is asked for, but whenever you bring up anything remotely connected to their favourite subjects. Any opportunity to pontificate and hear themselves talk. Whenever you open the door for them to opine, to share their invaluable wisdom, and show the ignorant world the depth of their brilliance.

The parenting experts

"Now boys, we already talked about spying on our neighbour Mrs. Murdock
when she's in her bathroom..."

Type A: The expert in the obvious

I challenge you to go on Facebook, and for the heck of it, just post an update describing anything your child is doing.  Invariably, someone will pop up with the ‘Oh, you think that’s bad… Wait until this and wait until that…’ as if you’ve just stepped out from under a rock just before your child was born and have never experienced anything to do with these tiny humans before. The tone is often: ‘good luck handling that, friend, you can in no way anticipate normal things!’ No post is left un-interpreted as some sort of cry for their infinite fount of experience in the mundane. My response is: Shut The Hell Up. Really. If I am unsure of anything, I will ask. Describing a basic thing does not automatically signify a need for you to profess the flipping obvious.

Type B: The unqualified advice giver.

I have an in-law that gives advice and makes really badly veiled criticisms of how we interact with our child. This in-law is also an alcoholic and has a child that doesn’t speak to him, and another that has also become a drunk and who has shown to have seriously questionable ethics. Listening to him spout his parental wisdom is a joke. To the parent who has little to no relationship with their children and never sees them at all, and hasn’t for years. Please don’t roll your eyes at my choices. I plan to be there for my kid and invest in him. The opposite of you. How much I hold him, coddle him, say yes or no to him is really none of your concern. Why not look more closely at your failures and stop worrying so much about what you think are mine.

Type C: The parent of an asshole.

Let us be realists here. Some kids are assholes. By no fault of their own, granted, but everyone knows one of these little kids. The one you are pretty confident will be enjoying a bright future of bar fights, date rape, criminal behavior, and all around uselessness to society—possibly in thirty years, still living in their parents’ basement sucking on a bong.  You know why these kids are dicks. Because their parents are ineffectual as disciplinarians and at providing guidance. These failed parents come in all forms, helicopter parents, detached 'let them be free' parents, 'I.wanna be your bestest friend parents'. You may not see the complete devastation your bad parenting has wreaked upon your child’s future, and you may be blind to the fact that nobody likes your kids because they’re just plain assholes.  But your kids are obnoxious, spoiled, nasty, loud asshole terrors. Nobody wants child rearing advice from you. We have all seen the products of those wise efforts. No thanks.

Experts in anything diet-related (a.k.a; the ‘annoying upstart who’s surfed on the internet for a few hours or stayed up late watching infomercials and thinks they’re an expert’ expert)

I have raged on this subject before, but man, it still rankles me. When Dan and I were really full throttle on Weight Watchers, we had lost over 110 pounds between the two of us. Changing our eating habits worked. Now that I'm breastfeeding, all bets are off, I'm eating like a pig and gaining weight back. It's not any other reason other than that. I'm not using good eating habits and I am paying the price. It is my own lack of discipline that is the problem. It isn’t my glands, or gluten, or paleolithic genes. It isn’t a lack of any miracle weight loss supplements or because I’m not drinking enough green tea. It isn’t any other reason except that I eat a lot. Period. It’s MY fault that I’m fat. It is my food addiction. It isn’t easy to overcome, but as the past two years proved, with self-regulation, it can be achieved.  It took me a long time to take responsibility for my own weight problems, and stop finding random justifications for the volume of noms I shove into my craw on a daily basis. Admitting you have a problem is the first step, right?

When we were in full swing, losing weight and shedding pounds, you’d think we would have gotten really supportive efforts from our friends and such. But boy, were we wrong!  And gawd, did the advice come rolling in from near and far, in spite of positive proof of our success. It just wasn’t enough for some folks.

“Weight watchers doesn’t work!” we were told. “There are simpler ways!” “Surely you will fail, it’s only a matter of time.” It wasn’t our resolve that would fail, it was the diet, you see, according to the ‘experts’. And yes, always, always, “There is a better way!”

Now keep in mind, this was mostly from people struggling with their own weight problems, but never getting results themselves. All manner of trend diets and miracle products were suggested. In fact, my mother just told me I should get the lap band and be done with it instead of bothering to try and fail.  We were told about all number of deprivation diets. We were told not to bother, that we were genetically predisposed to be fat. We were told that we were going to fail anyway, so why bother to begin with?  This was our support system in its full form; trying so hard to undermine us with advice that was so obviously flawed, because it wasn’t working for them.  We know what works for us. Weight Watchers worked for us. And the only reason that it’s not working is because we are not doing what we need to do to continue losing weight. It is that simple. There is no easy button. No miracle diet. The diets that work are the ones that require self-discipline and hard work. Period. So if you are overweight, and you think you know the great diet secret, you probably don’t. Sorry.

Sadly, now that I’ve gained half of the weight I’d shed back, the peanut gallery has gone quiet again. It seems some folks must be relieved because it takes the pressure off them.  I know, deep in my soul, that the only reason why I have Alex today is because I lost weight. All of my fertility problems stemmed from my weight issues. And I need to figure out how to wrangle my self-discipline again, because now that I have this beautiful child, I want to be here for him for as long as I can. I do not want to be Aunt Barbs, who fell over and died while feeding her chickens at age 52 from heart failure.  Whatever your choices are, they’re yours. But don’t hinder people with crappy advice because you can’t take responsibility for your own choices.

I have all the answers baby,
but I can barely tie my own shoes.

The sanctimonious fool

“Hi, I have absolutely no way of comparing my situation to yours, and have never lived even remotely close to your experience, but here’s what I would do in your situation…” or…

“Hi, my life is a complete mess, and has been an uninterrupted string of bad decisions from day one –OR- I have no identity, no self-esteem, no notion of self to speak of, and yet, I am pretty sure I have all the answers on everything. Let me sing you the song of my people.”

Erm… yeah. Shut it.

The advice rambler (a.k.a: ‘Oh, a chance to talk about me? Saweet!' experts)

Blahblahblahblahdeblah!

There are a couple of people on my Facebook feed that spend a good deal of time on their feed, just trembling in anticipation of a post where they can just go on and on and on and on about themselves.  One lady I know has a husband dying of cancer, and whenever she posts an update on his condition and her emotional state, another friend cannot even begin to restrain herself from posting paragraph after paragraph of comments, hijacking the whole thread, talking about her own experiences with cancer, or loss, or whatever the hell it is she is talking about in order to focus the attention on her.  It is utterly annoying.

Now as a child of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder, I confess, I too have some narcissistic tendencies. I will sometimes do those kinds of replies, but occasionally, I will type out my experiences on a comment and realize that I need to just STFU and move on. At least I have the capacity to limit my ‘all about me’ tendencies, but good god, I can spot people like my mom from a mile away. Here’s an example:

Status update: OMG! I just fell in the snow and twisted my ankle, it’s so swollen right now.

Comment from Narcissist windbag with advice hidden somewhere in there: Once, I was summiting Mount Hood, I was by myself, because two of my climbing companions had to duck out because they were concerned about severe weather, but I wasn’t daunted by the blizzard conditions and I decided I could handle it alone, which I knew I could, because I did it two winters before, and found a cozy little chasm in which to set up my winter gear, and listened to Liszt on my iPod, made Bergamot tea with my little camp stove, and sipped that while reading War and Peace while the storm raged on outside. But I digress, here I was, alone on Mount Hood, snow whipping around me. I was making record time, even without the crampons, the ones my abusive ex-boyfriend gave me just before he tried to beat me one last time, and I knocked him out with a vegetable juicer and had him arrested… and the cop that came for him totally hit on me…aaaanyway, I was at about 10,000 feet when some ice shifted and my boot slipped and bam… I twisted my ankle so hard I saw the back of my heel.  It started swelling up so big, it started straining up against the lacing like a piece trussed pork, so I hopped down the mountain to Timberline lodge, and had a cocoa while this super-smokin’ ski-instructor from Italy named Giorgio pressed an icepack on it. The swelling went down super fast under the ice. So I’d try ice.

Shut. The. Fuck. Up. Seriously.

::calms herself::

Newsflash: 'Asshole' is not a management style.

*warning, my language is less-than-lovely in this post.

“Well, that’s just his/her /my management style”. This is something both my husband and I have heard a number of times throughout our working careers. This is a statement often offered in order to excuse what amounts to nothing more than unchecked douchebaggery. I’ve only really had *one* d-bag boss, and he wasn’t 100% d-bag, he just had d-bag moments—mostly when his wife emasculated him in front of her staff (they ran two businesses together in one location). He owned a private small business, and the guy went as far as to call me an idiot without really understanding what I was asking him, which I thought was pretty damned unprofessional. Luckily I was his only employee, and I was also free to snark back at him. My husband has had several of these cock-monkeys as bosses. My husband is also not a boastful ass-kisser, which makes him more disposed to being barked at by The Big B with an obviously little p.

I get really angry at the notion that being an unadulterated assmunch can be excused away with calling that a ‘management style’—because it’s not. It’s unadulterated assmunchery but nobody wants to call it that. For some reason, it’s accepted practice in various work environments, to protect and defend what is really nothing more than bullying. Too many times there are people promoted into management positions they are simply not suited for. They don’t have the personality to motivate and inspire their underlings, they don’t really understand the dynamics real management, of employee morale, and think that the only way to get people to do more than they should is to treat them like shit, belittle them, micromanage them, answer their questions with vagaries and expecting them to do it without any real guidance, except in the form of verbal and emotional abuse. What’s sad is that if there were a real manager, one that knows how to guide and motivate staff, the production would probably be much better, but since a douchebag is usually placed in that position, the rest of the company has no idea what they’re missing.

Why is this permissible behaviour in the workplace? Who the hell wants to get up every day, try their hardest; work to their best potential when all they have to look forward to is being harassed by a big asshole every day? How can anyone believe that being a gigantic jerkwad is going to be positive for production and efficiency? I know for me, that only has the opposite effect. I do my best work when I care about what I do. I know for a fact that when I am pushed around, verbally abused, mocked and humiliated by a ‘superior’, I sure as hell won’t put a lot of care into what I do for that buttcheese, that I can guarantee. People working under assmonkeys usually do barely is what is required of them. If they could feel positive about the person that has expectations of them, someone who knows their capacity, who understands their skillsets, and is willing to identify the ones that would thrive being challenged, they would do far above and beyond the scope of their duties. It’s common human psychology... Yet somehow, some big mouthed scro-sack from middle management succeeds in convincing the company they know what they’re doing, and they get put in the job instead, stalling out any real efficiency and production in the folks beneath them. Being continually frustrated by the demands of upper management, instead of looking into their own management choices for reasons of failure, they simply shift the blame of inefficiency and incompetence on the employees beneath them.

The Obvious Signs of an Asshole Manager:

When an employee goes to a Jerkwad Manager for guidance, they are often met with sarcasm, told ‘why don’t you know this already?’ or they receive some sort of Confucian reply like: ‘the answer is in the numbers...’. This is what I’ve come to decide is an unsubtle diversion. It’s the douchebag manager’s way of hiding the fact that the manager really doesn’t know how to answer the employee’s question. So they instead direct it back onto the employee in a humiliating way insuring they will think twice about coming to them again for answers. In the unlikely event that they do have an answer, they make sure they are as condescending and belittling as possible in the delivery of that answer to the employee, to insure that the employee is made to feel like an ignoramus.

Another Scro-Sack Manager tactic is the public humiliation tactic. Scuzmonkey Managers like to call meetings, select a person that particularly annoys them, and then subject that person to a public flogging for not being able to perform the impossible, for not being aware of something that has nothing to do with them at all, for not being able to foresee with their psychic abilities something that would be otherwise impossible for them to know, or not being experts about something that isn’t in their job description. This employee will be barraged in the meeting with a succession of questions and accusations they are not able to answer or not given a chance to answer, being talked over and shouted at repeatedly, until the end of the meeting, when the employee has been pushed to contemplating bringing a semi-automatic to the next meeting, and the manager feels this person has been sufficiently humiliated.

Skid-Mark Managers are also notorious for joking about certain employees in their small circle of butt-kissers, giving them derogatory nicknames, mocking them when they are present and also when not present, and finding a flaw and riding that flaw until the employee is pushed to the point of wanting to quit or commit homicide.

There are very few defenses in place for employees that are being victimized by these bullies. EthicsPoint may be something many companies provide for employees to use when they believe something isn’t being handled properly, but I’ve seen many times where these horrible managers receive repeated and various complaints by various employees through EthicsPoint, they are marginally reprimanded on occasion by utterly clueless superiors, and they just return to their old habits a few days afterwards, making sure that they come down even harder on the employees they suspect might have reported them.

Is your boss or supervisor one of these douchebags? Here are some key behaviours that might identify them as such:



Quizzes by Quibblo.com | SnapApp Quiz Apps

If you got 50% or greater on this quiz, your boss's management style is 'giant asshole' and should be pummeled with EthicsPoint submissions or continual and numerous complaints to upper management. No employee should have to put up with that kind of BS, it doesn't matter where you work.

My husband will be starting a new job in a few weeks. He is coming out of an environment that is dominated by one of these kinds of managers. His prior job also had a manager like that, and worse, that manager was my COUSIN. My cousin was eventually fired for taking kick-backs from vendors and stealing company assets—so in this case, this ‘manager’ got what was coming to him. He received flurries of complaints from many employees, but it took him stealing from the company and using company resources for personal gain for them to finally jettison him. My husband never really felt comfortable confronting him or getting him in trouble because he was related to me. But justice did occur in this case. Unfortunately, my cousin decided that my husband was to blame for his expulsion instead of his fault, and we no longer speak. But since my cousin is a colossal idiot, it’s no loss to me.

Let’s hope the dick my husband is now escaping will also someday learn a hard lesson that his ‘management style’ is not appropriate. :D My hubby’s new job doesn’t have any direct supervisor riding his ass. So there’s light on the horizon.

Natural Selection. I'm all for it.





A messy office special from yesterday. First one in forever. I'm a bit rusty.



I don’t get it. When I was a kid, I had to take public transportation to my school when I went to the local schools, or my parents drove me when I attended the American DOD School or the International School, since they were far from where we lived. But when I was in Catholic Intern School, my dad would drive me there to drop me off, but after the end of the week, I’d take the train back to Brussels, and the Metro to the embassy where my mother worked. I did that all by myself, carrying my bags for laundry. I navigated all over the place using public buses and trains from a pretty early age. In the mornings, it was up to me to get out there and to get on the bus to go to school and up to me to find the bus home when I attended a non-intern local school. There was one convenience and that was my student pass.

But I was always fascinated with the American icon of the yellow school bus that I saw in movies. Those did not exist for me. The DOD school provided bus-service for the kids that lived nearby (we did not), but they were not the yellow buses, they were the big huge flat-faced buses with mustachioed Belgian drivers. Kids filed in, kids filed out. They waited at bus stops. Got on, got off, waited to cross the street when the time was right. It was simple.

Then I moved back to the US. I was shocked to discover that the iconic yellow school bus not only has the power to stop traffic to load and unload kids, it can also disrupt traffic to stop at railway tracks. They have to stop and open their doors before they go over railroad tracks—what that accomplishes I do not know? So the kids can run off when not getting hit by a train? But that’s not the end of it; the crowning achievement of the Yellow School Bus is the arm. American school buses have a little arm affixed to the front that opens out towards the curb and bars children from crossing in front of the bus when it’s stopped.

Okay, call me heartless... but WHAT THE HELL? Seriously? What are we teaching our kids if we are coddling them to the point that the world has to stop for them to get on and off a god-damned bus? If the kid is too stupid to figure out how to cross a street responsibly, then he or she is probably better off getting run over. Natural selection! If the kid is that stupid, he'll probably grow up to be the guy that gets tragically killed doing something else incredibly stupid on the job anyway. 

Yep, that kid you protected with the yellow school bus grew up
to be the reason why this warning exists.

Reality is, SEEING EYE DOGS can be trained to cross the street safely, why can't your kids? Is this a sign of devolution? Someone, somewhere thinks your kids can't be taught to make safe choices as well as a German Shepherd can. For God's sake. ::facepalm::

And what about the bus drivers? Are they so retarded they can’t be trusted to drive safely enough not to kill your children? They have to have all these crazy precautionary measures and accessories in place to help them do their job responsibly? I mean jesus, where should the responsibility end? Oh, I don’t know... with the PARENTS??? OMG... Flash of red lights, traffic needs to stop both ways because little Bobby and little Suzie can’t be trusted to cross the street on their lonesome. ::facepalm::

What next? Are we going to start making all kids 20 or under wear Kevlar to school on the off-chance someone pulls a Columbine? Wrap them in bubble-wrap when they go out to play? OMG... it’s CRAZY! What about teaching them to be responsible in the REAL WORLD? How’s that for a concept? How about teaching them to do things like cross busy streets safely? No. Instead let’s create a massive traffic inconvenience to the countless masses that happen to be driving to and from work during the times when these buses are picking up and delivering your hapless, bumbling offspring. As long as the kiddies are safe.

What are we breeding? A bunch of mouth-breathers that don’t have to take any responsibility for anything? A pack of coddled oafs who don’t have to make a single god damned decision for themselves? Oy! It’s infuriating. It’s like those warning signs posted for the most obvious dangers... why does the lowest common denominator have that much power as to make thing inconvenient for the rest of the world? Some idiot makes a dumb-ass decision and all of a sudden everyone else who has managed to avert disaster by using their eyes and brain is stuck having to abide by the most ridiculous precautions. Thanks ASSHOLE—so sad you died doing something colossally stupid! FU!

This is the perfect microcosm of America when it comes to kids. They are increasingly turning out to be entitled, the ‘world-will-stop-for-me because it always has’ kids. It spares the parents having to bother to teach their spawn any valuable life-lessons, or for that matter, even bother to take the time to supervise them so they don’t step in front of buses.

But hey, let’s force society to make all the decisions and take all the precautions to keep your brats safe and sound. Then you don’t have to do any parenting at all!

Okay, I’m done now. 

One of my Worth1000 submissions. It seemed appropriate.



Mumbly Mondays are the Worst.

My Halloween costume. Took HOURS for me to put
together. I call him Nommy the Skull-Eating Shark.
Ignore my huge eyebrows. I'm growing them out for a culling
and weeding session.

Our septic is failing.  Yes, yet another pitfall in the trials and tribulations of the Mt. Hood-Johanesen household.  Our finances in edging on ruin, we barely scraping by, and lo and behold, let the wastewaters rise, let them breach the surface, and spread their aromatic scents across the land!  Of course, even as this huge expense raises its monstrous head, the universe is sure to make it as difficult and challenging as possible, making sure that the simplest solution is simply not good enough.

You see, our home is sitting on a bed of glacial sands; likely deposited there by a lahar that came sluicing off of Mount Hood during its last eruption sometime just before Lewis & Clark came mincing across the Cascades.  The whole area is composed of this sort of soil. It sucks terribly for gardeners. Anyhoo  Naturally, because it’s a rural area, we do not have public treatment works available to all. And of course, since the aquifer below us supplies our community well, as well as many other individual wells, we are now forced to install a system that will cost about $mucho$.  Once we had the county come in to assess our test-pits, they were made aware of the contraption that the previous owner put in and marked it a violation and demanded we fix it immediately.

When we were buying the house, we were told that the previous owner had installed a new septic system, and she disclosed as such on the sale, however, she did not disclose that the septic system she installed was not code, and done without the county’s knowledge. She did not share that it may have been built by a half-wit tweeker village idiot, who cobbled it together out of sticks, rocks and pinecones*. She installed a septic tank (with a gravel bottom) with a couple of perforated pvc pipes splayed off of it as a leach-field.  The county however, is pretty particular about this area. The sandy soil, the aquifer and the river nearby are huge considerations for them.  No home can install a septic system these days that is not a small self-contained wastewater treatment system.  So no tank will do.  They came in, saw the disaster that is what is in place now, and demanded that we install a specialized system that includes two tanks, a pump and a ‘bottomless sand filter’ bed that takes up a good hunk of our property.  We will have to reshape our driveway and knock down a couple of trees to boot. ::grrr:: *may be a slight exaggeration.

So yeah.

Our weekend was spent getting quotes from septic companies.  Oy vay.

It’s Halloween. For us, that means very little. We will not get trick-or-treaters (unless we count the dbag kids who ran over our fence last week, except they didn’t ask for Candy).  We got two bags of fun-size 3 Musketeers just in case some freak thing happens (after seven years in our home) and a kid knocks on our door... but we really got two bags of fun-size 3 Musketeers  because they’re 2 points a piece and they’re DELICIOUS. Nom.

If any of you partook in my rant about Pacific Northwest Snow Drivers, then you’ll know where I stand on the use of studded tires on PNW roads.  Come November 1, the lazy people who don’t want to be bothered to learn how to drive properly in snow will choose to change out their regular tires for tires with metal studs that gouge out the road for the five to six months they’re permitted to use them.  Newly paved roads are virtually ruined over one winter in Oregon. Studded tires cause an estimated $40,000,000 in damage annually, and guess where that money comes from people. An enlightened Portland man, Jeffrey Bernards, is also sick and tired of hydroplaning on the highways from driving in the ruts filled with rainwater; he is tired of having his windshield immersed in water during rain events as other cars cause 55-gallon rooster-tails as they navigate the twin rivers in each lane. Oregonians should be using pontoons and those big fan-motors they use for swamp boats to get around the streets during rain events with all the damage the studded tire makes on Oregon roads. The ruts are so deep on HWY 84, you can let go of your steering wheel and your car will continue on like it’s on rails. You have to get a running start to change lanes.

Mr. Bernards is hoping to get enough signatures on his petition to BAN the use of the studded tire in Oregon.  And I’m standing with him on this one. They are an unnecessary, destructive crutch for people who probably shouldn’t be driving in inclement weather to begin with.

So if you are an Oregonian, and are not so lame that you need to have little studs in your wheels to make you feel better driving, please sign this petition and send it in! Save us some tax dollars and maybe they can direct that money being poured down the studded tire toilet towards our failing educational system.

Horse: Has ANOTHER injury. His foot injury is still lingering, but now the barn owner has gone against my wishes and let him out with other horses, and naturally, he's been beaten up. A swollen rear leg at the knee, bit marks, and another nasty cut on his hip. I'm so sick of this! ARGH!

Weight-wise: I'm STILL hovering for the third month between 25-29 lbs. I have not broken the 30lb mark as of yet. But I am working on it. AFTER Halloween and 3 Musketeers, obviously.

Sewing for the retreat wise: because of my chronic procrastination problems, I have not advanced much in the sewing department. I have ALMOST finished one of the more involved projects, and that is my new set of smaller stays.  I gave my old ones to S2, and she complains the busk is not comfy for her. I'm tempted to ask her for the busk back and making her a shorter rounded one.  I need a busk! And my husband is stonewalling me. But ultimately, I have the bulk of the stays finished. I just need to add grommets and shoulder straps (and a busk naturally).  Here's a picture of my OC the murder-cat helping me sew (by helping I mean batting at my fingers with his claws exposed).



I did some rudimentary jute cording in this set, mostly reinfocing the circumference
and under the gussetted cups.  It looks nice, except one part. I didn't pay close
enough attention to matching the line as it crossed the back closure. Oh well.

I bound it badly in cheap binding for now.  I was too impatient to wait to go to the store and get simple white binding. I may cover it in lace. Not sure yet. I just wanted it closed because I'm OCD.

I also secured a pair of half-booties for the retreat. They were $7.99 on eBay. Shipping made it $12ish dollars. Big deal. Until I can get those Robert Land boots I want, these will do just as well (after lysol spray and Gold Bond treatment--they're used).

Yay for eBay. :D

Anyway, happy Halloween all.  It’s a beautiful Halloween day here in Portland. Sunny and lovely.  Sorry for all you folks back east who got whomped. How unusual is that? A storm in October. But since you fall-hogging New Englanders get all the beautiful autumns all the time, maybe nature thought you ought to get some less-than-savoury weather for a change. Truly, I hope all my friends and loved ones over yonder are okay!

I have anger issues. Big news.

Very few people in my life have seen me truly angry. My life has been an exercise in control, from my childhood on. I’ve swallowed a lot of my anger, and I have smiled and kept my cool in situations that would have set many others off like a moon-rocket. It’s a side effect of growing up in a violent, abusive household. We all learned to avoid conflict in the most creative ways, even if it meant stuffing your own feelings into a hole somewhere until you could find a suitable outlet for your anger (if at all). Those feelings fester and turn into little creatures that nibble and gnaw at you. They want to matter. They want out.


When I do get mad, I have a ridiculously horrid temper. My filter is turned off. When I’m angry, truly angry, the gates that keep the unkind thoughts that I’ve been fostering for years to burst open, and everything I think of you might be poured out in the most hideous way. I’ve destroyed a number of good friendships and relationships losing control of my barely-contained ire. Most of the time, when I am angry, I’ll retreat and retrench until the fire in my belly cools enough to avoid having a meltdown on some hapless fool who’s poked me with a sharp stick. But that doesn’t mean the battle is over. It’s still boiling. It will continue to boil.

But there are ‘innocent’ triggers too; the things that make those repressed monsters inside me start growling and roaring; things that cause me to have to do my retreat thing and to pace my breathing and to close my eyes and bite it all down. And all those are signs of an impending Thermo Nuclear explosion. If I go quiet on you, it’s not a good thing. If I’m yelling at you and it’s not devastatingly cruel and you’re not humiliated or crying, you’re probably okay—you haven’t been affected by my true temper and will probably be forgiven. There’s no mistaking my true anger. It’s hellacious.

Three things that will light the fuse of hellfire inside me:

1. DO NOT call me hon. This will likely turn me into an instant bitch. I will snap at you and treat you horribly for doing it. This isn’t the worst of the offenses, but it definitely will piss me off.

There are two kinds of ‘hon’ frequently used by strangers (often younger people) towards you (mostly older people). The one where the speaker is haplessly thinking they’re being personable and cute and the kind where the ‘hon’ or ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie’ that is meant to knock you down a notch; where it is a thinly veiled insult; a passive-aggressive patronization. It’s pretty easy to tell the difference. The hapless ‘hon’ is dispatched with impunity in the customer service industry. Servers and retail workers will use terms like ‘hon, sweetie and sweetheart’ unknowingly, and have no idea they’re irritating the shit out of their customers instead of ingratiating themselves to them.

“What can I get for you hon?” ::chewing gum like a bovine and gazing at you vapidly, pen poised over her pad::

“Are you finding everything you need sweetie?” ::tucking a trendril of her helmet-like hair away from her foundation-slathered forehead before thumbing through more sales racks::

“Thanks, hon” ::said in a flat, uncaring monotone while shoving your purchases into a bag and then subsequently into your face::

The Passive Aggressive term of endearment is delivered with more acidity:

“Hon, you have no idea what you’re talking about.”::said with an arched brow and a smug smirk::

“That’s not sage, it’s green, hon.” ::said with an arched brow and a bit of a disgusted smirk::

“Sweetie, you should be happy I’m telling you this now, because if I waited until later...” ::said with a barely controlled voice and a forced smile::

As a forty year old, I find it especially annoying when the speaker using the term of endearment is many years my junior. You are not my sweetie, hon or darling. It’s disrespectful and presumptuous. You certainly are not qualified (qualifications are: You are a member of my direct family or you are a dear friend) to use a term of endearment with me. You certainly are not qualified to use those terms with people who are older than you, and you sure as hell should not use those terms of endearment with strangers. It’s obnoxious.

If you want to avoid some crazy woman snapping at you, don’t call me hon.

 

2. Do not give me commands or make demands of me.

I hate it when people tell me what to do. A command will send a patch of instant razor-sharp hackles to bristle from my back and shoulders the moment it’s dispatched. If you cannot ask politely, then don’t open your mouth because then I will deliberately *not* do something just to prove you can’t tell me what to do. It’s irrational, but it’s the way my brain works, and once that switch is flipped, it’s hard to get control of it. DO NOT try to engage me immediately after you’ve set me off, or there will be a knock-down-screaming fight (this is not to be mistaken with a pissy argument, these are distinctly two different things). Remember, I’m half Puerto-Rican and I grew up in an abusive household. I have no lack of passion and temper, and I can reach some pretty high volumes and be pretty mean. And 99.9% of the time (family is generally exempt from the following part) I will no longer have anything to do with you after I spill my ire on you. I won’t even want to see your face. You will be shunned from my life and I will make it my business that everyone knows how much I despise you. Spiteful? Yes. Evil? Yes. Do I care? No. At that point, you have been scrubbed from my list of viable human beings worth interacting with and that’s that. So do not push me into a fight if you want anything even remotely to do with me or things that involve me. Approach me with caution if you want me to do something for you, or let me offer. But you sure as hell better not demand it of me or you’re pretty much guaranteed not to have it done and to lose any remaining respect I might hold for you while you’re at it. Learning to use the word please will save you a lot of misery. That *should* be a general rule for everyone, but not everyone has even basic manners or common consideration these days.

3. Do not make passive-aggressive or plain aggressive statements to me in settings where my sensibilities prevent me from making a spectacle of myself in front of others in response to it.

If you’ve made a snotty statement directed at me in mixed company and I haven’t responded, please know that you haven’t won your little snotty battle. You’ve ended your battle in all truth. You’ve guaranteed your demise in the most humiliating of fashions, but you don’t even realize it. All you’ve done is merely add reactive fuel to the possible, subtle implosion that is going to occur sometime in the future. What you’ve guaranteed is that you’ve made yourself useless to me at that point. I do not respond well to cattiness. At all. Once you’ve made yourself disposable, it’s only a matter of time before you are winnowed out of my life. When I go quiet, and I do not react, know that a little mental note just went into your file; and my memory is long, and I have stopped caring about you. After the first passive-aggressive attack, I will be focused on it whenever I interact with you. I’ll be looking for reasons. I will be watching for more fuel. Time? Not an issue. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes, I will even bait you for more fuel; bait you to make an ass of yourself, finding or making reasons to justify why you should be ejected from my life forever and for others to see it for themselves without uttering a word to influence them. I’m evil and unforgiving in a mean, insidious and smiling way in this situation. So if you’re a douchebag who can’t keep their mouth shut, I offer a sound beware. When the inevitable happens, it’s open season. But what I’m especially good at in those situations is letting the offender dig their own grave—and because I’ve remained tight-lipped and kept smiling, I end up the classy one while the offender has only revealed the depth of their snottiness and lack of couth. It’s my best ‘death’ strategy and it has worked very well for me over the years. People ultimately reveal themselves for what they are. Just keep cool and give them time. No Thermo Nuclear explosions required, yet you still get that same satisfying, devastating fallout.

That’s a little insight into the less than peachy side of me. It’s there, I’m sure you are all well aware. But it’s the direct result of my upbringing. I may be grumpy a lot, but that’s not even remotely close to what I’m like when I lose my temper and write people off. I have the capacity of shutting people out who are very close to me, and pretending they don’t exist. It’s horrifying, imagining what that would be like from the other side, but it’s part of who I have become over the years. After living with unkind and cruel people, you learn to filter that sort of thing out of your life in effective ways as a personal defense mechanism. Either with fire and bluster, or with a cloak and dagger, I will achieve my ends. These are three guaranteed ways of making it happen.

Keep Your Spam To Yourself.

I hate forwards. I really do. There are few things that will set me off more than receiving a random forwarded message with some cheesy pictures or a saccharine quote or some stupid chain letter in my email inbox. I’ll get even more pissed off if it’s from someone I never hear from at all. In my mind, there is nothing more obnoxious than just being one of many on a blanket mailing list for useless crap. If you can’t be bothered to drop me a personal note, you sure as heck had better keep your spam to yourself! Especially if you are family. If you are family, then that’s the biggest crime of all.

I especially hate spam that is made up of some really idiotic political stance. I get some from people I know that are so bad, like when Obama got elected, someone I know sent me a spam with a picture of the White House with watermelons covering the front lawn.  Nooooo, their objection to the president has *nothing* to do with race at all... <--sarcasm.  It really cracks me up when these groups of people insist their hatred for Obama has nothing to do with his being black, when they keep circulating racist spam between eachother. It's disingenuous and moronic. My own in-laws deny it, and still forward every moronic racist email to my husband (not to me). ::ai ai ai::

Today, I got this gem from a friend at the barn. Bless her heart, she’s a wonderful person, but sometimes I just think she doesn’t read what she sends. When I get pieces of sh*t like this, I will automatically REPLY ALL and expose that part of me few people see... the full-on bitch.

This email was very long, and formatted and written by someone who might have been developmentally disabled, not sure. I had to break it up into seven different images so you could all share in this wonderful example of the unapologetic ignorance of people in this country. I truly believe that people who think this stuff is laudable ought to have their right to vote revoked, because they are too stupid to be allowed to. Anyone who believes this contrived, made-up attempt to spread ill-will towards other ethinic groups should be shot into the sun.  This email is very likely a feeble fabrication. And yet stupid people gobble this sh*t up like it's mana from heaven. ::gods::

It begins with an almost incomprehensible opening sentence and some really bad clip-art. And I strongly disagree with the 'not a joke' statement. This email *is* a joke. An embarrassing, ignorant joke. 

You see, apparently Budweiser itself had a strategy to deal with ‘those who laughed at those who died on September 11’. I’m intrigued... shall we go on?

Pass it along and spread the ignorance and stupidity? Umm... no.  I will not assist in perpetuating ignorance. I will read it and mock it, and then reply to everyone and tell them all they're idiots.

Common sense to anyone with brown skin on September 11th and for some time thereafter was to lay low. There were people who were so angry, they got up, picked up a gun, went to the nearest place where they knew there would be someone from the middle east or in several cases, Asia, vandalized their shops, shot at the safety glass, and beat them up. Even Sikhs were attacked. It was like someone declared open-season on anyone who looked even remotely Arab. I remember this time quite clearly. It was awful watching scared Americans doing stupid things--and I'm seeing a lot of that lately too. Aaanyway...

Anyway, I digress... so according to this email, these supposed ‘Arabs’ in California, were doing a happy-happy-joy-joy dance and singing praise to Allah while pointing and laughing at the footage of the planes hitting the towers being cycled on whatever news channel, completely disregarding the folks in their store, apparently. Hm. So believable. Asshats are saying: "I'm going to buy that hook line and sinker because I'm a massive MORON."

So this employee, who is likely existentially-challenged, who wasn’t angry about the attacks or racist in any way, truthfully told the boss what he saw. :::mmhmm::: And the decision was made to pull all the Budweiser products from the store.

On a side note: have you ever *had* Budweiser? Seriously? My proud Belgian upbringing forces me to declare that this is NO punishment. Budweiser is horse-piss. It’s disgusting. Pulling their products improved the store’s quality by about 88%.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure Budweiser as a company probably wouldn’t endorse a race-based unilateral decision from some egghead distribution manager and truck-driver at some white-trash California town. They would avoid that sort of negative publicity like the plague, and fire the asses of the boss and the 'employee'.

I like how the town is immediately painted into white-trashness by declaring that Budweiser is the beer of choice, BTW. Fun!. Aim high people. Anyway, apparently this action by the existentially-challenged employee and his boss qualified them to represent the whole county too! LOL.

Ok, on with the riveting story.... you see, it continues...

NOT THE PEPSI PRODUCTS! OH THE HUMANITY! The health of the town probably improved when they took all that crap out. They were probably forced to buy food that requires assembling and cooking! POOR PEOPLE!

YAY! ANOTHER SMALL AMERICAN BUSINESS DESTROYED! YAY FOR US! U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A! We bankrupted an Arab (only 8 years after September 11) with our awesome product withdrawals. We so excited! How awesome are WE!? Pat ourselves on the back, we've successfully contributed to the downward spiraling economy! Yaaay!

Good ol’ American Passive Aggressive Ass-Whoopin’? Um no. Good ol’ American Ignorant Racist Idiocy, more like it.

I love this one ... ‘If you can read this, thank a teacher (if you wrote this, you need to go back to school, I’m afraid)’. The second bit made me LOL. “If you are reading this in English, thank a soldier”. LOL! I had no idea our military has been engaged for over two centuries in a battle to protect the use of the English language in the United States. Yay for soldiers! They keep English alive! I can see the person who wrote this, their eyes glistening with tears of pride as they mash down the caps key and tap out these lines, their chest swelling with patriotic fire.

NEWSFLASH: There is no official language in America. English just happens to be the language that 96% of us use. Although a great number of languages are spoken here. It is a country of immigrants. Get over it. Just because you are too lazy or stupid to learn another language and broaden your horizons doesn’t mean everyone has to make life more convenient for you. Get over yourselves. 

Oy, what a stupid statement. It’s so stupid, that if stupid were something tangible, this email would probably have enough mass to create a black hole. But this last picture puts a big whopping idiot-cherry on top of this whole pile of spam-poop:

Let’s elevate pure ignorance and stupidity to PRIDE. Because that’s what it is, peeps. It’s good ol’ American Pride that encourages people to victimize and hate anyone who isn’t Aryan and who doesn’t have the language skills and political knowledge of a barely evolved primate. PRIDE is sending out messages that are filled with lies created for no other purpose than to propagate hate and ignorance.  PRIDE.

How embarrassing! I am seriously embarrassed by people who write this crap, and who spread it around like fly-covered-dairy-queen-soft-serve-like sh*t.

Ugh.

Oh, and remember, if you don’t send this, you HAVE NO SOUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ::eyeroll::

Good grief. No wonder this country is going to pot. These dunces are opining and making up spam when they should be digging our ditches.

The Wonderful Annoy-a-tron.

So last week, my coworker Sherry came back from a two-week vacation. Before that, my husband had ordered a little device from ThinkGeek called ‘The Annoy-a-Tron’. Now ThinkGeek has a blinding array of wonderful items to make your friends, family and coworkers insane with, but this simple $12 item was just what was needed to turn someone who likes order into a madwoman.

This little device makes noises. You have a choice of six noises on this particular model: a tiny little beep, a doorbell, a cricket, a high-pitched beep only I could hear (maybe bats and dolphins and dogs too), and another high-pitched beep that everyone could hear. There’s a little option on the slider where you can choose random, and it will play them all.

This clever little device (which looks much like some sort of surveillance device) has a little magnet on it so you can just plink it onto the nearest metal office furniture, make sure your volume is set at an optimal level, and let it do its work.

So, that Monday, as soon as my coworker stepped out, I took the little Annoy-a-Tron, and put it up on the fluorescent light ballast behind her desk, facing away towards the wall. This made the sound bounce all over the office. I set it to random at first, and then went back into my office. About five minutes went by when I heard the doorbell from my office and it was REALLY LOUD. So I went back in, took it down and adjusted the volume, and stuck it back up there.

My coworker came back and I sat in my office wringing my hands with a malevolent grin on my face. But nothing happened. It was really irritating. Lucky for me, she had to run out again, so I rushed in to see if I’d accidentally turned it off. It was on, but the solder weld on the battery casing had popped loose, probably from the heat of the ballast. I had to hastily pin it down with a binder clip, checked the volume and put it back up there. Little did I know, I’d set it to the first faint beep... but it turns out that it was enough.

For the first hour, she was so busy she didn’t notice, we even went in there a few times to confer, and heard it go off, but she didn’t notice. We (my other co-worker and I) could hardly keep a straight face. It would go off about every five to eight minutes. But then later on that afternoon, after my other coworker left and it got quieter in the office, I heard: “What the hell *is* that? It’s driving me crazy!” Then I heard that same exclamation like six more times. Then, I heard her test the smoke-detector in her office. Biting back the snickers was almost impossible. You have to understand that Sherry is a student of order... something she cannot fix or prepare for would make her nuts, and that beep made her insane within the first hour of actually hearing it.

But because my other coworker had left, I didn’t want to tell Sherry about the prank yet. I figured we’d *both* share in the delight of her reaction. I also figured she wasn’t going to stay at work much longer (which, little did I know, she did anyway to try and figure out where the source of the beep was. She moved around her office for half an hour, listening). I went home giggling, and then promptly forgot about it.

The next morning, I came in, and she had the back door of her office closed (which is a door to our little laboratory). Again, I’d forgotten about the prank, and as soon as I came in there she was, holding some grey box with random equipment in it, looking visibly frazzled. “I’m keeping this door shut because I’ve been moving equipment out of the office one at a time. Every time I hear that damned beep, I know the beeping thing is still in here, but if I move it out there and it’s quiet for a while, then I’ll know the last one I brought out there is the culprit!” she declares to me as soon as I come in. Of course immediately, I felt really bad! I look in the lab, and on the floor, she had this huge pile of electronics in the lab she’d been carrying out one piece at a time every five to eight minutes all morning. While I was assessing this, she was talking about how she thought the source might be in this area, or that area, because it sounded like it was coming from here...

So, I had a moral obligation to reveal its location because it was making her nuts. When I told her it was a prank, she told me to F.O. and called me a dork, both half-laughing, half-annoyed. It was hilarious. To see someone who like me, is a control freak, have to be exposed to something so completely out of her power to stop; it was tragic and side-splitting all at once. She said she was even getting paranoid and thinking she was under surveillance or something. I’m sure she will exact retribution on me soon enough. She’s probably biding her time until I get comfortable.

Anyway... BEST. PRANK. EVER. So if you want to slowly drive a coworker insane, I recommend the Annoy-a-Tron. We got the 2.0 version. They also have other devices both my husband and I have been eyeballing for future wickedness.

The Evil-tron is looking pretty appealing.  Whispers and creaking. Muah-ha!

Just my style, stealthy and evil.

A wordy update and a diatribe....



Because every post, regardless of its subject should be preceeded
by images of Alan Rickman in all his sexy hawtness (and I didn't draw anything today).

I’ve plateaued at 12 pounds so far, damnit! I’m apparently not drinking enough water daily, so I’ve decided to discipline myself more about that. My husband hit 29.4 lbs in weight loss this week. I’m so proud of him it hurts! I want that 30lb mark too! Jealous! Damned men and their fast weight loss.

These past couple of weeks, my emotional craziness has tempered itself a bit, but the hot flashes have arrived and seem to be here to stay. Holy hell. I went to the fabric store with some friends on Monday, and I had this horrible hot flash that not only made me feel as if I was radiating heat like a nuclear fuel rod at Fukushima, but also, my entire thought process sort of short-circuited and it was impossible to focus on even making basic conversation. At the check through, I was fanning myself and sweating like a hog and the lady asked me if I was alright. I told her about the Lupron treatment, and she said: “Oh, my... how wonderful, you get to experience menopause TWICE, what a privilege,” she laughed. I didn’t think that was really funny at the time, but since my brain was in short-circuit mode, I just stood there fanning myself and staring at her blankly until I realized she was asking me for money.

I got my second Lupron shot yesterday. Month 2. Yay. Bring on the hot-flashes. ::urgh::

Last weekend hubby and I went into home impro-mode. We had bought some flooring material sometime back, and we decided it was time to install it in the bedroom and I thought, hell, if we’re taking everything out of the room, why not slap up a coat of paint too? So Saturday I rolled out a layer of really awesome coating paint (BAER Premium; that stuff ROCKS. I may sound like a cheesy commercial but as an experienced room-painter I declare its quality now!) while the rug was still in. I did not feel any remorse when I tracked paint on the floor and dripped it here and there. It was all going in the trash anyway.

Simon managed to get a blue dot of paint on his forehead and to also step on the lid of the paint can and make blue footprints into the kitchen. Once I got the majority of the painting done (everything but the cutting-in), we proceeded to tear up the carpet in our bedroom and O...... M...... G....... Carpet is GROSS. I ... for as long as I live, VOW never to install wall-to-wall carpeting anywhere ever again. It’s no wonder we woke up every morning congested and sniffly. It probably didn’t help that the previous owner left the old padding underneath the new carpet, and it was SO GROSS! It looked like someone had died on it and lay there for a few weeks before discovery. And the smell... ::gag:: It probably didn’t help that my mom’s dog saturated a corner of it with pee, which my dog Simon decided would be a wonderful tradition to continue. Luckily it and our subsequent scrubbing with Nature’s Little Miracle didn’t soak into the sub-flooring (thank GOD). The whole thing was just all out icky. I washed my hands like I had OCD for the rest of the day, and had to scrub the dust from it from my face and hair. We pulled it up, cut it into strips, rolled them into little tubes and crammed them into garbage bags. The padding ::gag:: we also tore up and garbage-bagged for the dump. N.E.V.E.R...A.G.A.I.N.

Underneath was a very plain wooden plank floor that was painted brown, with knotholes that were covered up with flattened tin cans secured to the floor by nails hammered in all around the edges. The bay window was floored in cheap particle-wood sheeting. So we scraped up the staples and other debris (apparently the carpeters didn’t mind just spitting out their gum onto the floor, leaving their cutting blades and didn’t bother to sweep up all manner of dust and dirt) and swept it all up. It took a long time to clear off that floor. I wiped it down with a bleach/water solution and we put down the thick plastic moisture barrier first before we laid down the foam base on which the floating laminate floor would sit. Before laying the plastic, I quickly, with hubby’s help, cracked out the cutting in on the high-areas of the painting, and we plastered holes and such.

Hubby spent most of Sunday on the floor locking together pieces of laminate flooring. I helped in whatever capacity I could, but in about four hours he had the bedroom floor pretty much done. We haven’t put in the new baseboards yet (or bought them at this point either), but who cares. We put the bed back in there and our dressers. We’re waiting to install some cabinets we also bought to provide much-needed storage in our teeny house. We’re missing some components and are waiting on IKEA to get their sh*t together and get the parts into inventory. Once that’s done, our room could be magazine cute—except the existing closet which still lacks doors, but that will happen someday. I even found some lovely dark fabric (for privacy) that has the same dark brown of the floor and a similar tone of blue to match the walls. I have some IKEA track system stuff to hang up so I can have a background of sheers and then the heavy drapes in front of those to close when we don’t want our pot-head-alcoholic idiot neighbour looking in our window (we were woken up last night to screaming and laughing from next door as his drunken, high friends stumbled out of his house and into their remarkably loud ramshackle pickup trucks and trundled off to wherever they crawled out of. My levels of dislike for this neighbour have been escalating for a while now, but when he cut down half of a cluster of maples straddling our property on Sunday, my feelings graduated to something akin to hate... MORON!), Ugh...

Anyway... It’s so nice to walk into the bedroom now. It’s so much more... sanitary-feeling. The problem is, however, now the rest of the floors in the house look even crappier than they already are and I am now wishing we could do the whole freaking house in the laminate (except the bathroom which I’d like to tile in ceramic and take out the tub and install a nice roomy standup shower instead). But finances are finances and even if the flooring is reasonably priced, it’s still requiring money we just don’t have... so I will have to content myself with the kyute bedroom for now. ::grumble::. I’d rather not go the stupid route most other people would and get ourselves neck-deep in credit card debt; it’s the sort of stupidity that put this economy in the state that it’s in. So responsible=shitty floors for now and no closet doors.

And onto more serious things...

So Bin Laden is finally partying it up with his great harem of virgins in the sky. I confess, as welcome as this news was to me, I was kind of a bit sickened I have to say, after Obama made his speech and the cameras turned onto the crowds of people waving flags and having a good ol’ time in the streets and landmarks. The image of it brought right back to the morning of September 11, when I stood before my TV frozen in horror and the international news broadcast images of people in the Middle East waving flags and having a good ol’ time in the streets celebrating the act of terrorism and deaths of what turned out to be 3,000 people. It was horrifying then, and I was horrified now. What REALLY astounds me is that the age of those people dancing and cheering at our landmarks are kids in their twenties. They were just rug rats when the whole thing went down... So I imagine they didn’t see how awful it really was. Either way, it was just so... unclassy. I guess is the way to describe it.

I remember 9/11 with an astonishing clarity. I was already in a depressed rut and when my home co-owner phoned me that morning to tell me to turn on my TV. I switched it on just in time to see the second plane hit and I was immediately and completely drawn into the spiral of misery that the whole thing became—my rut became a chasm I could not climb out of. I did not leave the television for days, I am not exaggerating. I lay on the sofa bawling as they broadcast images of people wandering around the devastation holding pictures of their loved ones, begging for someone to tell them they’d seen them alive somewhere. I was morbidly riveted to the dog searches, the eye-witness stories and could not look away from the footage of people jumping out of windows in desperation to escape the heat of the fires. It was a dreadfulness that took forever to get over and I didn’t even lose anyone in the tragedy. I cannot imagine the horror of the families affected by this tragedy. That event is what spiraled me down into one of the darkest moments of my life; a moment I almost did not survive. If it weren’t for my dog Eddie giving me a reason to get up every day and the intervention of a boyfriend who was bewildered by my utter depression and frightened for my safety, I don’t know where I’d be today. I began therapy then (was nearly committed) and began the job of learning to cope with what seemed to me, a pointless and hopeless existence.

It was impossible for me to quantify the reasons why anyone would do that. I couldn’t bear to live in a world where there were people who would be willing to harm so many others for ideological reasons alone. It was too bleak for me to cope with. Seeing other people celebrating the event like it was a wonderful accomplishment drove me further into depression. There was nothing redeemable about humanity to me. I was sick by it. I sometimes still feel that way. Cruelty can sometimes send me into periods of despair now and again. Survival for me is a matter of just forcing myself to face the world and its daily brutalities in hopes of finding some of the positive things in between.

Surviving depression at that level is not an easy task. Those who’ve never been through it cannot really understand how completely powerless a person can be against the wash of chemicals your brain is guided by, and a lack of dopamine can manifest itself into some pretty terrible things. I can say I’ve been dealing with it sans medication and on my own with some measure of healthiness for about six years. But it doesn’t take much to pull me right back to memories of that fugue; and seeing those kids wooing and yaying, waving little flags, dancing around in exuberance at the death of a mass-murderer, giving his expiration WAY more attention that the man deserves, I felt it for a second... that horrid darkness. I felt like humanity would not ever be capable of bettering itself and rising above the animalistic behaviours that seem to define us. Those kids seemed just as awful as the people in the Middle East celebrating the events of 9/11. I’m sorry, but that’s what I felt. 1 mass-murdering terrorist vs 3,000 innocents; none of those deaths should evoke joy on anyone’s part. The fact that it does makes me so very, very sad.

Anyway, that’s my view on it. /diatribe.

Everything x 100 (and happy Fry-daaaay)

O... M... G... This Lupron stuff is like capturing the word Volatile, distilling it into thick, viscous, concentrated syrup and then forcing it down someone’s throat with a funnel. I am acutely aware of how my emotions have revved up into hyper-drive and I feel things with an intensity that is wholly unnatural. I’m 100% not in control of my feelings. At all. Even in the depths of my worst depression, my sorrow never felt as complete as it did the night before last, when I was bawling like I lost my father again. Why? Because I was watching the end of Juno where Jennifer Garner gets the baby. We’re talking full-on grieving waterworks. I am 100% serious. This is unbelievable.

When I am worried, it's worry x 100. It’s like the world is coming to an end and the anxiety tightens my chest and the all my brain dwells on are the worst-case scenarios; complete with vivid play-by-play imagery. When I am mad, it's mad x 100. For instance, when a stupid teen-aged girl throws a cigarette butt and an empty McD’s fry-packet out of her car, my rage is like She-Hulk, steam puffing out of my ears, teeth gritted, tailgating, braking, screaming, shaking fists, flipping the middle finger, making the pig nose and following them until I realized how INSANE I am being and have to pull over and do a ‘breathe-1-2-3’ exercise to get the fury out of my belly. When I just talk about something that unnerves or upsets me, the words are filled with passionate conviction, and I start smacking things around, chopping the vegetables more violently, and almost becoming irrationally obsessed about the subject.

I am out of control. And this is only the beginning. The first of six shots. I am told the effects will abate a bit with each shot, I sure as hell hope so, not just for my sake, but for my husband’s and the people on the road with me during my commute, my co-workers and mostly my family, who usually invoke the most powerful of emotions... The day before last, I got all emotional about something at work, and thankfully my coworkers were so cool about it, Sherry doing a silly dance to distract me from my crying and freaking out, and Kris came and slapped me (playfully of course). They were funny and it helped a lot. But I can’t expect everyone to be able to humour me out of these irrational explosions of emotion. Holy Hell.

On another less CRAZY note, the Weight Watchers thing seems to be working. In spite of having moments of obsessive thoughts about foods that are bad for me (I dream about burgers, fries, Belgian waffles and cake pretty often), I am managing to stick to the program and I don’t really feel deprived. The funny thing is, I’m actually eating more, and more frequently than I usually do, I’m just eating things with lower calories and making sure I’m not putting my body into starvation mode by skipping meals (a norm for me—I hardly ever eat breakfast normally) or under-eating. I am pleased to see the items in our pantry and fridge taking a healthier turn, and we are still eating delicious things. Last night, I made some turkey meatballs. I sautéed some shallots and garlic and celery with some basil and a few other spices (including a passionate emotional diatribe about a recent interaction that upset me to no end) and then mixed them into the ground turkey with a handful of breadcrumbs, a rasp or two of parm and an egg. I steamed them and then browned them in a pan, and covered them with a marinara. Add some wheat pasta and it was absolutely delicious. A whopping 20 points with double servings of pasta and nine meatballs each, but hey... we deserved it and we both had the point balance to do it.

Hubby has been making a habit of supplying himself with fruit to attack all day—a habit I have picked up. I keep bananas and oranges at my desk all week. With Weight-Watchers, fruit and vegetables are unlimited, so you can pork out to the max on them. If you feel like you want to eat your own arm, make a fruit salad. You can have colossal salads and you only have to count your dressing. If you’re like me, and you make your own dressing from lemon-juice and spices... you don’t even have to count that.

With every few pounds you lose, your points allowance (about 1 point per fifty calories depending on fibre content of the food) goes down, so eventually, you can eat fewer calories a day using healthier foods and maintain your weight. It makes sense. And it’s working, if I can stick with it and not have a Belgian Waffle and double burger and fries melt down ::drool::. :^D

I am at the 8lb mark so far. Not bad for less than three weeks, doncha think? It feels good to be disciplined about something. If feels like it did when I decided to quit smoking in November of 2001. It was a decision. No more excuses, no more justification as to why I can’t, or coming up with reasons why this or that method won’t work for me... I just decided to stop for two weeks for my sisters’ visit and then just stayed stopped. I feel super-supported by my hubby, who started this in January and has already lost 25 lbs. I’m so proud of him.

Maybe I can reward myself when I get to my goal weight, and make myself a whole new Regency wardrobe. Now, I am free to ‘just show up’ to ORS events since I stepped down as the tyrant dictator. I am now free to just sit around and complain vociferously about the whole event but lift not a single finger to help. Sounds like a delightful change. I can concentrate on my costumes and start really trying to make nice things instead of rushing them because so-and-so needs a gown made or I am busy making event arrangements. Yep. Maybe I’ll just do that.  ::mua ha:: Anyway. As I warned everyone on Facebook, if you're sensitive, keep away for the next six months. My filter is severely compromised, if not completely gone.  Oh boy. ::sigh:: I guess I'll figure out who my real friends and family are in the next few months.

My elder (but not eldest) sister is coming to town to show us how it's done. :)

Oh, shoot, I almost forgot! My sister (the Cowgirl Cuisine lady); accomplished horsewoman to the 1000th degree, is going to be coming to my barn in Oregon to hold a special clinic on horsemanship.  She has worked with some pretty amazing luminaries of the equestrian world, including the famous Ray Hunt.  She only has fifteen spots available for those who want to trailer their horses over to the barn for three days and participate.  Here's the Facebook event page (you probably have to be signed in to see it).  Also you can download the flyer here.  I also Craigslisted it.  So if you're within trailering distance, you're welcome to take part, but you have to secure your spot soon, there are not very many spaces.